So I went to Gen Con. And having had a good time there
before, I wanted to really pitch in for Games on Demand. While Gene had offered
us space if he went down as a guest, Gen Con opted to trim the comic track
after last year’s fiasco. That meant Sherri wouldn’t be able to come. I’d seen
that a couple of regulars wouldn’t be helping out (including the redoubtable
Jeremy Friesen). So prior to the convention I worked on the map, helped out
with the menu images, did contacting, and designed & printed cool table
tents (at my cost, but with unobtrusive ads). I’d be sharing a hotel room and
I’d laid in a supply of Soylent for the con. Steve Sigety gave me a ride down
and up since he ran for Pelgrane. That saved me a ton of hassle.
That’s the big picture: now on to the details. I’ve broken
this up into two parts. The latter talks about what I ran and how that went.
You can jump down to that. The former covers the oddities of my experience and
clearer realizations about how bad I am at socializing. This is feelings stuff.
I don’t usually talk about that on the blog; I just mention my shyness
and anxiety in passing. I don’t write about it because I’m not comfortable with
how much it runs and ruins my interactions. I don’t like talking about it. In
fact I usually skip these kinds of posts in other people’s threads because a)
I’m a hypocrite and b) I honestly don’t want to think too much about it.
WHAT I RAN AWAY FROM
But Gen Con really highlighted my limitations. So anyway…
As background, I got sick the Friday before Gen Con. My
assumed allergy attack turned into a full-blown head cold. Often a cold drains
you, but you can still get things done. Not this one. I had to park my
disgusting, nose-running self on the couch all the way through Monday. Until
Tuesday I didn’t know if I’d be strong and non-contagious enough to go. I
pulled it together, but I napped/rested every opportunity I got on Wednesday
and Thursday.
That then provided a convenient excuse to avoid seriously
interacting with anyone. Mind you, the Games on Demand group contained many
people I’d met or interacted with online. Did I go and introduce myself or even
just say hello? Nope. My brain fiction told me I didn’t want to intrude, to
impose, to be that guy who wedges himself into someone else’s personal space.
Sherri says that for introverts, we realize how much work other people can be
and don’t want to be that burden on another person. So I did my work, ran
my games, wandered the dealer hall, and went back to my room. I watched alot of
Law & Order. So dumb.
But I ran five sessions: four two-hour and one four-hour.
Two other four-hour sessions didn’t fill. That’s always disconcerting and
disappointing. In both cases several other tables went empty, which you think
would be some solace. But there’s no real bonding among cut GMs at that point;
we’re all trying to figure out what we did wrong with the presentation.
Despite good sessions, my specific stupid sticks with me
though:
- I skipped the Wednesday evening Indie gamers gathering.
People I knew went, but I couldn’t kick my head into gear to walk over there.
- We had an all-hands meeting for Games on Demand Thursday
evening. At one point Steve Segedy asked all the organizers to stand up. My
brain said “You didn’t do that much, you just assisted others…”. So I didn’t
stand up. I’d done real work and helped set things up, but my stupid anxiety
brain told me others would think “jeez, who does he think he is…” or something.
I don’t know.
- After the all-hands meeting split up groups did small board
games. I love these kinds of things. James Stuart offered A Fake Artist Goes
to New York. I went to that table because there no one else had sat there
yet. After a few rounds we were supposed to swap and perhaps go to other tables
to play with other people. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, to intrude into
an existing group, so I left. Despite there being people I knew at the other
tables.
- I had an interaction with one of the GoD hosts where I’d
misheard something. They seemed absolutely frustrated and pissed at me, or at
least that’s how my brain read it. I’m sure they weren’t, I’m sure they had no
idea who I was, I’m sure it was their reaction to the challenge of getting the
games up and running. But dumb brain got super tense. I ended up not going back
to play any more GoD sessions during the gaps in my schedule. I used that as an
excuse to avoid actually doing something fun.
- Along with a couple of other GMs, my Friday night game
didn’t fill. Renee Knipe, who’d I’d helped with the menus and who’d run my
amazing Warren session last year, was running a Conan game. A
couple of the other GMs joined that, one of them even said “hey, you come join
us” but I didn’t go. I didn’t want to impose. Plus James Stuart was playing and
I’d inserted myself at the board game table with him and I didn’t want to seem
like I was creepily following him. Instead I went back to my room and watched
TV.
…and that’s the one that really made me go “WTF is going on
with your brain?”. You’re a grown-ass adult, where does that shit come from?
Here’s the thing: once I’m in a social transaction with
someone, I’m good. If I’m running a game and you sit down at my table, I’ll
engage with you. If we sit at the same table for a meal, I’ll start peppering
you with questions about how your convention’s going. I honestly want to know.
I like listening to people talk about their enthusiasms and projects. When I
sit down to play, I’m good: I work hard to be generous and supportive. Get me
into that mode and I’m usually solid. But getting to there, breaking the ice, whatever,
that’s my block.
I find it super frustrating when I can’t quite break through
to say hi and engage, especially with GMs and designers I’ve met before. I saw
several that I couldn’t bring myself to start even the briefest convo with.
There’s a gamer who moved into our area several months ago. At Origins and Gen
Con I avoided even going up and introducing myself face to face.
It’s not all bad: I did had a great time talking with the
people I managed to actually interact with, especially my two roomies Bill
White and Nick Wedig. But again that’s an established transaction. I got to
have dinner with Melissa Gay and Brian Cooksey. I walked around for a couple of
hours with my sister, Cat Rambo. I made myself go and play in a game run by
Anna Kreider. I ran for Phil Vecchione.
So why go on at length about this? I’m not sure. I don’t
talk about it much and maybe that’s not a good thing. I take anti-anxiety meds
and they’re otherwise great (confirmed by my wife). But while I had a good time
at Gen Con, I could have had an awesome time. I need to find some strategies to
get to that point. The obvious one is to have Sherri with me all the time, but
that’s not entirely practical. I’m going to go again next year. I’m going to
help out with organizing GoD if they’ll let me. I’m going to wrestle with my
anxiety. And maybe this time I’ll stand up when they call out organizers for
special mention.
/end feels
WHAT I RAN
I should explain how Games on Demand Gen Con works for those
who don’t know it or have only seen it at other conventions (like Origins).
GoDGC has to manage a ton of players while keeping the through-traffic space
clear. It offers both 2 and 4 hours session, so games start every two hours. If
you’d want to play, you come by before that slot and get a boarding pass (like
“D for Dragon”). Then, about ten minutes before the session starts, the hosts
call out letters (after handling anyone with special needs or mobility
limitations). When they call your pass, you come forward and look at the
choices on display.
You’ll see a gallery of menus, illustrated with an images
and a quick blurbs. Generally each GM submits two options for what they can
run. The first person to choose that GM selects which game they want. The hosts
then cross out the other one. So if I get up there and Everyone’s a Suspect’s
crossed out, I have a choice of Dog Eat Dog instead or another GM. Each
slot has has plenty of choices, with some GMs running four-hour and some
two-hour. Plus GoD offers LARPs. I helped type up the GoD stats recent and
noticed a trend. While a significant number of the four-hour games didn’t make,
all but one of the two-hour games did. The one that didn’t was a LARP and they
may have simply folded the two on offer together. If you sign up for a game
that doesn’t get the minimum # of players, the hosts will quickly reseat you
where there’s space or offer a pass for a future session.
A couple of years ago I ran two-hour sessions for Games on
Demand GC, but not from choice. One of the hosts split my four-hour session into
two two-hours by mistake. Both ran fine, with complete arcs. I’m good at
keeping tempo and speed at the table. I congratulated myself on my skill. On a
recent Gauntlet episode I spoke about the limitations of the two-hour format. I
thought it’d be too tight. But having run several sessions, I realize I’m
wrong.
I’d forgotten that most of my online sessions are two hours,
less if you exclude the BSing. Even with longer sessions, you lose time to
technical stuff, waiting on everyone, and goofing around. At the table I do
that fast: set up and cc should take at most 30 minutes.
That time should ease everyone into the premise before you kick the throttle.
You can even cut that with easier systems and completely pre-gen’d characters.
I saw folks running games I’d never considered doing in such a short span (Hollowpoint
for example). Next year I may only run two-hour sessions with an alternate
menu sub-in menu if I get burned out.
Of course all of this may be my way of compensating for not
getting picked for the four-hour team twice. Maybe I have to look at what I’m
running and how I’ve written up my blurbs. I also didn’t do something I’d meant
to: go out and sell my games to the hosts so they could sell them to others, so
that’s a problem.
In any case I brought four games with me to run. In
particular I wanted to make sure I offered some games written by women. I had a
ton of awesome choices across the board, making narrowing it down tough. For my
four-hour I took my Neo Shinobi Vendetta scenario, the one I’d run at
Origins. I wanted to offer my Action Cards game for at least one
session. I paired that with Before the Storm, Joanna Piancastelli’s game from Seven Wonders. For my two-hour sessions,
I put together a Fate Core version of Magic, INC and took the demo kit
for Threadbare by Stephanie Bryant.
As I said, only one of my four-hour slots went off, with the
group picking Before the Storm. We
had four players (including myself) for this collaborative story game. Before
the con I’d played it once f2f. That revealed some facets I wanted to emphasize
when I taught it at Gen Con. Before the
Storm can jump around in time which had gotten us lost a couple of times in
our home game. So for the con I asked everyone to be clear about location and
era when they narrated. I also made clearer how the end battle would work
rather than springing it on them. But the choice with the greatest impact was making
clear you could dictate your character’s flashbacks to reveal truths. In the
game you can play out scenes- drawing in other PCs as themselves or NPCs—or
dictate. In our home game, we’d almost exclusively done scenes and it had been
a tangle with some of them locking up.
My emphasis swung things the other way. We ended up doing
dictated scenes for most of our exchanges. That’s isn’t a bad thing, but it
does change the tempo of the game. Joanna suggests a mechanism to speed up con
games: putting two event cards down in front of everyone. These mark round and
adding them here cuts down the play length. Because we moved quickly, we didn’t
need that. We ended up doing an extra cycle, disregarding the impact of those
additional cards.
James Stuart asked me about how Before the Storm ran at the table. He had it on offer as a LARP. I
suspect, at least the way I did it, is that the tabletop version offers more
storytelling time and control for the players. At a LARP I’d feel compelled to
play out the scenes, rather than dictating.
Anyway, I had a good time and learned a lot in play. I had a
good group with interesting character picks.
My two-hour games ended up being one session of Fate Core and three of Threadbare. I’d converted Magic, INC over from Action Cards for the Fate game, trimming
the character creation choices. I might need to cut even further. The session
went well, with a completely different approach from the other three times I’d
run it. They took a fairly straightforward approach, but did a nice job of
indulging in their characters’ appetites and drawbacks. I like Fate, but I’m not entirely certain it’s
the right approach for Magic, INC.
Still thinking about that.
Threadbare ended
up being crazy fun. I’ll admit I hesitated about the semi-post-apocalyptic toy
concept when I first heard it. But between Sherri’s enthusiasm for it and
Bryant’s appearance on +1 Forward, I
backed it. It’s goofy fun with a slightly dark edge to it, which you can more
or less emphasize. That fits with my style. You only have three playbooks with
quick choices so it’s easy to pick up and play. That meant we had more time to
do some Q&A at the table.
The demo scenario—“Furry Road”—has an incredibly open
premise. On a mission to travel from point A to point B the PCs have gotten off
course. As a group they make up their vehicle, who seeks them, what they’re
transporting, etc. Then I improvise completely off of those answers. I’d done
up a list of concepts and details as a reference page, but once we got going I
hardly looked at it. The first group found themselves pursued by a group of
monster trucks and ended with a Godzilla PC knocking down a Playmobil castle
defended by Decepticons. The second began navigating the darkness to an inn run
by wrestler figures and ending with them escaping Baby Nazghul. The third had
to outrun a storm and ended up Spartacusing a Barbie-chariot arena and deposing
Emperor Eeyore.
So good times. I dug all of the sessions, with some standout
moments from the enthusiastic Xmas sock to the self-sacrificing homemade doll
to the voodoo softie determined to make Troll Dolls hip again. All that plus a
Ninja Turtle Pizza Van, Refugee “Barrel of Monkeys,” the sock dance-off, and
more stick with me. The interactions between the voodoo doll character and the
naïve teddy bear may be my favorite moments from among all the games.
WHAT I PLAYED
I only played in two games. The first, Swords without Master, was interesting. We had a couple of players-
solid and fun-- I wish I could have gamed with more over the weekend. But we also
had one player who was a little off. The game clearly did click for them. At one point I wished we’d had the X-Card in play
because I would have used it. So overall I’m not sure this was the best
demonstration of Swords. The flow of
play stopped and started abruptly. I couldn’t tell how much of that was the
game and how much the table. I’ll have to try it again, given the love I hear
about it.
The other game was the Shab
al Hiri Roach at Hogwarts. I’d
skimmed the SaHR rules but never played it. Anna Krieder created and ran this
great hack. She’s a solid convention GM: setting up the premise, establishing
boundaries, giving us tools for feedback, and explaining the rules. She kept
the pace up and helped shift things so we ended up with a complete story. I
really, really enjoyed this session. One of the best games I’ve played at any
convention.
WHAT I BOUGHT
RPG-wise I picked up Velvet
Glove, Headspace, and the Fate Codex Anthology from the Magpie
(IGDN) booth. That’s it. I’d already bought the electronic versions of the
latter two items, but in the case of Headspace
I wanted to support the designer because he’d had such a terrible run with the
printer. Much of the other stuff I would have bought, I’d purchased through KS.
For board games I picked up Legendary Big
Trouble in Little China and the Marvel
Legendary Civil War expansion. I got those Sunday and really only bought
them because I was surprised they still had them in stock. Finally I bought
some accessories: specialized meeples for Imperial
Settlers (one of my favorite bgs), some Totoro
meeples, and some writable fantasy maps from Arc Knight. That’s it.
NEXT YEAR
1. Get all my games to run.
2. Talk to people.
3. Get Sherri to go.
4. No, really actually introduce myself to people.
5. Play more games.
6. Actually check my email during the con.
7. Game with Renee Knipe and Hans Messersmith (my two big missed-them
regrets)
8. Not watch Law & Order.
