August 25, 2007
On the Topic of GenCon...
As you may have noticed I'm home from GenCon. I haven't posted much of anything on my blog yet because I've been trying to recover and relax. I pushed myself too hard before and during the con and ended up more than a little sick. I'll try to do a sort of summary, since several people have asked me for a con report. Photos will follow at some point, although not as soon as I might like.
Thursday was not kind to me. I started out with a Cthulhu game at 8am. I was excited to try the Call of Cthulhu system, since I've become a huge Lovecraft fan and I'd like to run/play in more related games. The game was called "You Too Can Cthulhu" and billed itself as geared towards new players. Sounds good so far, right?
The game started a little late as the "keepers" were trying to coordinate and set up their stuff. I wasn't quite clear on why this was taking so long until they let us into the room. Not only did they have a projector and laptop set up, but there was also a large crate in the middle of the table we were playing on (not helpful for seeing other players!) and most of the chairs in the room had been arranged in rows in the corner. In a year where space was at a premium, this seemed more than a tad insensitive to me.
Anyway, so lots of visual aids you think, surely this will be exciting! The keeper started off by asking if we had all played before. There were five of us, three friends who were hardcore players, myself (with a good grasp of the fiction but no CoC experience), and another girl who had never played before. I expected the keeper to give us the two minute rule summary and then forge on into the game. The keeper SKIPPED THE RULES SUMMARY. So here I am trying to desperately remember the five minute casual discussion I had with Alan about CoC over a month ago while the game progresses. I'm also trying to help the other girl who has no clue what's going on but is even quieter and less assertive than I am. This is NOT how you introduce new players to a system! Grrrr!
So setting my anger for that stupidity aside, we determined who picked characters first by a dice role. This did not seem like the optimal way to get maximally happiness around the table to me, but I kept my mouth shut. I got shafted with being last to pick. There were two characters left, but rather than letting me chose, the keeper stuck me with a fifty year old recovered alcoholic case worker named Randy. Poor Randy started the game with a sanity of 45, not because he had ever seen anything occult or otherworldly but just because he was a caseworker who had crawled into a bottle for about 5 years. I felt really gypped at this point, but I did my best to get in some limited roleplaying while being helpful to our investigation.
The horror game that followed was interesting, but not all that good. I have played in much better horror games. I'm still pretty sure that being surprised by a raccoon should not cause sanity damage, but I'll let that part go for now. In the end, the game relied far too heavily on small surprise spookings and had almost no hint of the occult until the final confrontation. I really think that 1) there should have been more build up and 2) keepers shouldn't change old one's stats on the fly just because they feel like it (and they absolutely shouldn't admit to players if they are doing so!). In general, I think that having a great old one show up at the end of a one session game is anti-climactic and lame.
I think I'm going to write off the folks who run CoC at cons and try to get into more of Blackat Studio's games. The one I've made it to so far was by far the best horror game I've ever played in.
Anyway, so the other thing that made that CoC game suck was the part where I played through a migraine. That sucked hard, but I borrowed some ibuprofen and just did my best to deal with it.
After the game ended (over time, not okay!) I had to rush back to the room to get dressed before we ran off to True Dungeon. Because I had to be in a LARP right after our TD slot I played True Dungeon in Victorian underwear. TD was highly disappointing. Many of the puzzles seemed so bizarre as to be cryptically impossible and the one I knew the solution to I didn't have the information to implement it (ARGH!!!!!). In many of the rooms you were seriously penalized for trying the puzzles, so if you didn't know the answer already you might as well stand back and not touch anything. The self satisfied GM gloating when they dealt damage to us did not help matters at all.
Our entire party made it to the last room and most of us survived due to my brother's quick thinking. I still think the solution to the last puzzle was completely lame, but I appreciate the fact that he figured it out. The TD props were nice, as always, but did not make up for the super shitty puzzles.
The hints given to the Rogue were once again totally useless. There is no reason not to take the treasure, because I assure you the hint will not help your team. I've taken the damn hint every f'ing time and it has always been dictated as if from the mouth of the master of the super obvious. TD team, I'm not that f'ing stupid. Repeating the exact words that the puzzle description already gave me will not help me (I did read them the first time, I promise).
Stepping out of TD, I was totally exhausted, sore (from my fashionable Victorian shoes), and couldn't even imagine trying to LARP for the next 6 hours. Then I came down with another migraine. That was not the high point of my con. Alan very kindly walked me back to the room and helped me change out of my corset. I slept for about 5 hours and then ate room service, read the book I'd brought, and generally tried to relax so I wouldn't be sick again.
On Friday I spent the mourning walking the exhibit hall with Alan. I wore my Suloise Sorceress costume (minus the false shirt front). A young lady (about 9 or 10) totally made my day by asking to have her picture taken with me. :)
Alan had a game around 11-ish so I spent another few hours going over the stuff he had seen the previous day while I was sick. I didn't see much that I wanted this year. Maybe my desires have narrowed, but it seemed like mostly I was seeing the same leather workers and game re-sellers as the previous years. I did manage to find some amusing looking dialect training CDs to buy. We'll see how those work out for me.
I was supposed to have a game at 1pm, but I was not feeling so well. I walked over to the hotel where the game was around 12:30, sat down to rest and look at the con schedule book. I was sort of ambushed by someone promoting an Edwardian adventure society game (not Spirit of the Century, but rather a D20 based one). He was interesting, but as I fundamentally disagreed with some of the game designer's choices I probably won't be investing too much time in it. I did give him contact information so they can use my period scans in their books/adventures later on if they like. By the time I realized what time it had gotten to be, I'd missed the start of the game I was supposed to be waiting for. (Doh!)
I went back to the room, drank water, and rested so I could spend some time with my Mom that evening (we went out to dinner, it was very nice :).
On Saturday I finished walking the hall in the morning and then I had to do an NPC guest spot in Aaron's ShadowRun LARP. I had made up DocWagon costumes for myself, Ben, and one other person. We had to rush into the LARP in character and stabilize (and extract) a gentleman who had fallen over twitching. It was amusing. I'm not good at improv acting in that sort of venue, but fortunately LARPers are pretty forgiving. Everyone seemed to like the costumes. Now I have to make one for Aaron too. :P
After that I hung out with Ben for a while and we played a demo of the indy game "Steal Away Jordan." It was interesting. I can't really see wanting to own or play the game regularly, but the dice mechanic was really cool. The game's creator was really cool as well, although I managed to forget her name in my unusual confused stupor.
That evening I called up people to arrange board gaming, only to be surprise invited out to dinner. Ben totally won the dinner place finding game. He got us tasty Greek food as well as flaming cheese and a belly dance performance. It was most awesome.
After dinner we got about twelve people together and played two board games. I played Mystery of The Abbey, which was a bit like Clue on steroids. All the traditional deduction strategies start to break down, because the cards that designate the clues get passed around between the players as the game goes on. It was fun, but more than a little confusing. I was so muddled in the head at this point of the evening that I just resigned myself to losing and enjoyed the game as much as I could. I'd like to play it again some time, but the game's hefty price tag will probably keep me from buying it.
Sunday was relatively quiet. I was supposed to have a game from 10 to 2, but I opted to deal with the errand that I had forgotten to do on Saturday. I took my leather bodice back to Journeyman Leather to be altered. They were totally awesome about this, and didn't even charge me shipping. I'd also like to note that it doesn't need alterations because of anything they did wrong, but rather because I've lost about 25 pounds in the last six months or so. :D
Alan and I managed to cram in one more tasty meal at Steak 'n Shake before we hit the road. It was pretty nice weather-wise in Indianapolis while we were there, but as soon as we had everyone in the car to head home it started pouring. Alan had to drive well under the speed limit for most of the trip just because visibility was so bad with all the rain.
I should note that there were several games that I bailed on throughout the convention because I was too tired, sick, or stressed to deal with them. I'm hoping that next year I'll be able to take a more relaxed (and healthy) approach to games and make more of them while scheduling less tightly.
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