Gamex 2018: Sunday+Monday

Sunday 8:30am: Game Design Lean Coffee

Once again we were blessed with Stephanie running us some Lean Coffee on Game Design. Various of us got together, put down some topics to discuss, voted on said topics, and then discussed the shit out of them. Great, great stuff, and I will be doing this at Gateway, even though Stephanie likely won't be there (sadness).

What is it? You can read more about it in my writeup at Orccon 2018, earlier this year.

Sunday kiddo time

The next hours involved me picking up the kiddo, getting together with other families and kiddos, checking out the dealer hall, and so on.

Sunday 2pm: Games on Demand Kids Edition

So good! About a dozen kids showed, and more than a few GMs... I didn't even run a thing. We had the following games:

• Chris Grey running Tiny Dungeons
• Rob Herbert running Teenage Witch Academy
• Zoe and father Bill running Spiders & Dragons (a Deep Forest hack); I did also play in this one a bit!

Additionally, Mike Olson was running some D&D AL and it overflowed into our GoD area, and this had a double-benefit: 1. He had a kid join us in gaming, and 2. the majority of his D&D table were teens, so it actually made it look like we had a bigger GoD Kids than we actually did. I'll take it!

Teenage Witch Academy

Chris running Tiny Dungeons, just the right amount of crunch for little crunchers.

Zoe running Spiders and Dragons!

Sunday afternoon: Artemis and board games

The rest of the afternoon brought on some various wanderings and board games. We got a table going of King of Tokyo in the convention's "Family area", which has been in pretty constant high demand over the last few cons, especially as people know it exists now.

King of Tokyo!

Strategicon used to run Artemis quite regularly, as one of the con-goers would bring his gear and have games set up. The premise is you are playing crew members on the bridge of a Star Trek-like vessel, and each player plays a different station: Engineering, Communications, Science, Weapons, Navigation. And of course: the Captain, who doesn't get a computer, but just coordinates everyone else. Problem is, the guy who used to run it got burned out, and so we haven't seen this at the con for over a year.

Good news! Strategicon just purchased the equipment, including touch screens, to run this themselves, and so this was the first con to re-introduce Artemis to the con-going masses. A few volunteers help you learn how to play and setup the scenario for you, so even if you have zero experience, you can still have a great time.

I knew about this re-introduction of the game, and so went and signed up for a slot for the kids, and they went to check it out, and of course: loved it. We actually ended up playing a couple of times, since there were some later slot drop-outs. Video down below!

Artemis training

Our captain, captaining.

Sunday late: Werewolf and Shadowcon

The afternoon also involved finding some other games, and one was Cash N' Guns, a little shoot-em-up LARP type thing.

Cash N Guns

As per usual, Sunday late-night involved lots of Werewolf, however in this case they had a game that started late, and went even later. I opted out, and instead played some board games with Ann-Marie while husband Jim played Werewolf with the kids. 

At a certain point while the kids are playing, I'll take little jaunts up to visit Gina and the lovely folks up at Shadowcon, to have RPG gaming discussions (or watch them run an off-book game, occasionally). It's a little slice of non-Werewolf heaven that I always take advantage of, and thoroughly enjoy.

Monday was just waking up late, having breakfast up in the lounge with as many people as we could fit, and then wandering about and playing the "scavenger LARP", for which we barely found anything this time (I think one 20-sided die, maybe?)

And thus ends another Strategicon...

Gamex 2018: Saturday

Saturday 9am: Games on Demand / Misspent Youth

First Games on Demand (GoD) session of the morning my friend Andy was willing to run a Dungeon World scenario called Curse of Terror Island, like with dinosaurs and Wushu, and that immediately grabbed a chunk of the players. Friend Chris pitched Misspent Youth, though, and that grabbed me immediately, as I've had a chance to chat with Rob Bohl many times in the prior year, and hey: Dystopian Sci-fi Punks... hell yeah.

It was just Chris running, with John and I as players. Chris freely admitted that he hadn't run it before and just read through the book the once, so it'd be a bit of test-run, but hell was it a great game. Chris played played The Authority (GM) and brought just the right level of adversarialness... hard-hitting and r, elevant and evil. You wanted to punch all those bad guys they were soooo good. To that end, it was also a very collaboratively driven game, for two reasons: 1. we players played a large part in creating the dystopia and the authority's drives and motivations, and 2. all three of us played super cinematically. 

We went for a generation starship which is way past its reserves, being driven mercilessly to find the perfect homeworld by the ship's psychologist Jaji ("98.5% habitable is not good enough, damnit"). She's also the only one capable of using cryosleep without it affecting her sanity (or is she?), and hence the only one which has survived the 100's of years we've been flying. We had our clique, the Chromites, little orphans and punks living in the ships innards, using mechanical hacking to subvert supplies and cause trouble. Some of crew included brothers Ahjo and Buzz, a 12-year old prodigy Tree, and Gloria (supposedly related distantly to Jaji herself). A former Chromite, Siren, was now part of the evil hivemind that are the security network ("the wolves"), and they were on to us. 

Our Authority involved traits such as Absolutism, and subverting our Humanity. Systems of control included the ships robots (we decided no true Artificial Intelligence in this setting), and chips in believer's heads (the hivemind; limited number of people and limited telepathy due to technology and resource limitations). Our exploits were that we know the robotic patterns due to our prodigy Tree, and Ahjo using that information to hack the system.

Our end goal was eventually to find a way to put Jaji back to bed, as she decided that she was done with cryostatis, and was the root of all our ills. Lots of great scenes, and great drama, but in the end the Authority won, and we were caught. 

I was super impressed with the structure of the games, including the scene types, systems of control, the collaborative nature of world and character and adversary building. Additionally, the conflict resolution mechanics uses a system that's a little bit like Craps, where you roll-and-claim numbers between 2-12. Similarly, the Authority claims numbers as well, however without rolling (as based by the rules). When you hit a number already marked by the Youthful Offenders, you win the conflict. Similarly if you roll a number that the Authority has claimed, you lose. The escalating tension this causes is well placed, and the back-and-forth narration is fun, especially if you're into story games and possibly "writer's room"-style games. 

I was immediately inspired to run this game (and in fact did so twice in the following months at our story game meetup and online; links to write-ups to be provided soon).

Robert Bohl has written a pretty amazing game, and even though it feels like there is a high bar to run it if you haven't played very improv-necessary games (such as GM-less games or games like Ten Candles which explicitly tell you as the GM not to prepare), the rules are very supportive and it makes the game very much a conversation. Highly recommended.

Myself, Chris, John; you can see the craps-like mechanic in the bottom center.

Saturday 2pm: Games on Demand / Ten Candles

Normally I'd just be running another GoD game, however Jim and Lori were supposed to be in last night's game, and due to snafu, had to miss it. Jim could provide a private room, and so without further ado I got the two of them, and friends Unique and Keith, to join me for some last minute Ten Candles. Also props to Jim Pinto who was around to take on many other Games on Demand folks for some of his gaming (Praxis, if I'm not mistaken), but it was the one time I almost didn't have GMs to deal with the number of gamers present.

We looked at a few scenarios, and ended up going with Bunker by Brady Tatro (available in the Ten Candles PDF), which reads, "The world is crumbling, but people in power have planned for this possibility. People like you. A massive bunker has been constructed, a bunker capable of saving many from the arrival of Them. It only requires minor modifications to account for constant light production. Of course, it also needs to be determined who will be staying there. How many is too many? Who gets to live? Who must die?"

This was perfect, given we were playing in a literal hotel board room. Unique passed me the card which read "I have seen Them... change size", and so my mite-like creatures that can change size from microscopic to gargantuan were eventually born, to ill effect. Especially when you see someone itching their arm constantly, or see bodies with pieces that have exploded from the inside out, or are driving in a vehicle and crash into a boulder that comes out of nowhere. But of course they didn't know all this until much later.

The one thing that was in great contrast from my prior nights run, is that I remembered to do the Establishing Truths phase, and it was just such a different game because of it. Lesson learned.

The players were great at inter-person conflict, and combined with my hard moves whenever the drama got slow, it worked out for a great story. There was a drive up a mountain road to the bunker door, an accident, a dark tunnel, and finally entry into the safe haven, which was of course already overrun from the inside. A tragic ending, and I was particularly proud of how the game played out. (You can hear Jim talk about it more in the Happy Jacks broadcast linked below, if you want to see my ego grow about 5 times.)

They look shockingly like real candles... I love my LEDs. They've served me many times (this is the fourth game with them?)

Our board members!

Saturday eve: Happy Jacks RPG Podcast live

After Ten Candles, it was time for a little R&R. Gathered with some friends at the bar (folks from the Happy Jacks RPG contingent as well as fans and friends), ate a bite, drank a beer or two, shooted some shit. Then the traditional 8pm live recording of the podcast, which Kimi was running (Stu was out due to Ren-faire stuff).

Good stuff, getting to hear about various games around the convention that I hadn't seen, and the usual banter and friendliness. It was a little less chaotic than usual (I think alcohol consumption wasn't quite as rampant as it usually is, although I had my fair share of drinks before and during). 

You can listen to the live recording of the podcast at Gamex 2018 here.

Saturday 10pm: Best Friends

The final game I played was off-book. Friends Stephanie and Toby came down from Las Vegas, and in addition to running some usual games of theirs, Stephanie wanted to try out Best Friends, a diceless role-playing game by Gregor Hutton about girlfriends, and their drama. We organized the game to help Stephanie do this playtest, and it came about through the Strategicon Games on Demand Slack that I created earlier in the year, so yay for that! (And of course if you are interested in joining, you are welcome to; direct message me through a social media platform of your choice).

I will freely admit I was running on fumes at this point, but I've got strategies for how to do this with minimal game interruptions. For example: Play an absent minded character, or someone who doesn't quite have it together, or is a weirdo. All these come off well when you are already at a lowered brain capacity.

The beginning of the game is really interesting, in that character stats are determined by people basically voting for who they think is smartest, prettiest, coolest, and so on. You tally the votes, and the person who got the most votes for a thing, is the "best" at that thing. But even the prettiest person thinks someone else is prettier than them. It's all very interesting and delicious.

We had Dolories, Eunice, Patty, Beatrice, and Nora, and it was all very small-town USA in the 50's. The game itself was excellent fun, and we had some hilarious scenes. There was red scare drama, and pie contests, and much more, but the best was just our various personalities interacting with each other in all sorts of subversive ways. I'm always impressed when a system so very simple can create such good drama through basic mechanics. Of course it helps that the table consisted of great players.

I think Stephanie was looking to use the system for a game she has in development, and if it goes through, I can't wait to play it.

Gamex 2018: Friday

Stress-free

I can't remember the last time I felt this little stress going into a game convention. Partly it's because we run 3 times / year, every year, so it's super familiar to me. But even so, I used to get there early to ensure signups in slots I hadn't gotten in games, and normally I run a game in the 2pm Friday slot to kick-off the con.

Not this time. The one game I'd signed up for was 2pm Friday, and I was running later that night. And all Saturday was Games on Demand, and Sunday was kiddo-time. I just strolled right in without a care in the world. It was lovely.

Friday 2pm: Demigods (PbtA)

The first game of the day was Demigods, a playtest by Jason Mills for his PbtA game where you play as one of the half-mortal children of the gods. He's been playtesting for a while now, and specifically has a series of actual plays on the Happy Jacks RPG media empire.

This one-shot was called Ragna-ROCK, described as: This band of Demigods is exactly that, a real band! CharGen will include what kind of band you're in, and how you'll save the music industry. Rock on!

I remember a couple of things about this game:

• The story involved all of us in a band, and eventually having a battle for our supremacy on holing on to the number one spot on the Santa Monica Pier.
• I played the Warrior, a worshiper of a forgotten Babylonian god of dance and war. I was the bands dancer, as well as percusionist, and these two were tied together in performance.
• There were 6 players. Personally, I think that's too much for a PbtA game in general, and this one specifically, due to the many approaches that various players had in the game.
• Jason did a great job running the show and keeping us herded into something that resembled a coherent story, despite various gonzo turns.
• There was some player-based conflict that wasn't particularly fun to deal with.
• The system itself ran pretty smooth, and you could tell it has seen some action in playtest land.
• The system is probably what is now considered a traditional PbtA game, as far mechanics (Roll+Stat, flavorful playbook archtypes, character bonds reminiscent of Apocalypse World or Dungeon World).
• Overall, it was a fun session, but I'd recommend going with a smaller table size in the future, as spotlighting is very difficult on a table this big. Maybe 4 players max?

Demi-god of dance. And war. And percussions.

Friday 8pm: Ten Candles

I've run Ten Candles before at this game convention, and it was a pretty fantastic time. I also hadn't been able to run it for my friend Howie yet, so couldn't wait to see how he'd like it. I had a bunch of great players, including Howie, Ron and Will. 

We discussed options around which Module to play (the book comes with many starting scenarios). We went for one of the bonus modules: The Burning Man. Basically, they're members of a commune that's been anticipating and looking forward to the end days, but now that those days are here and They are hunting everyone, the situation isn't as palatable as they'd thought.

The players were great, and the story was still interesting, and the card handed to me was "I have seen Them... masquerade as others", so we had some doppelganger action towards the end of the story.

The problem with the game? Funnily enough, darkness. Ten Candles is to be played in the dark with 10 candles. And I do so with my cheat sheet, since running it by the book is too difficult. However after creating the players had created their characters, I confidently decided I knew what comes next (although hadn't run this in many months). I forgot about one of the main mechanics in the game: Establishing Truths. This is the mechanic where you take turns saying what is true about the world, and also what is happening next, and is a great transition from one scene to the next, often telling us how the world is actively changing and where the characters then find themselves.

Instead, in this game I ended up taking some liberty with pushing the story along and telling them where we were next, and although it worked, it removes some of the players' narrative control that they should have in this game. I realized my mistake a few scenes in, and at that point decided it'd be too disruptive to try and retrofit it. So, that definitely detracted a bit from the game, but overall I felt like it still worked really well.

Live and learn, right?