How to run a con game, some notes for myself

Last Saturday I ran a online Stormbringer game for an online game con. It was in the middle of the nineties the last time I did something like that, so I was a bit rusty.

Running a game online has its own problems, and running a con game is also its own beast. I knew, in theory, how to do it. This is as much a reminder to myself for the next time as well as some advice for the potential reader.

Base the scenario on scenes
Have a clear idea of the location, and the concrete opposition in that situation. It will help you pace the game, and you know how much the game have progressed in time and in the plot.

Make the end goal simple to grasp
Don't make it too fancy, or subtle. In a long campaign you have all the time in the world to establish the metaphysics of the world or the power players in your setting. In a con game you can't let the players game their way to a stance on the global problems. There just isn't time.

The player characters have to be distinct
Make sure the characters have something they are good at, and some things they don't like. It's probably a good idea to make sure there are NPCs that push their buttons, as well as some of the other characters.

What I did
Sadly I didn't heed all that advice. I did a fairly involved setting, with subtle power play. I also included references to other media, which some of the players clearly had no experience of. But, my biggest fault was I did not break it into scenes. I just started it and knew where it was headed, planning on shepherding it along as we played. Naturally, it made it less focused than it should be, and rushed when I looked at my watch and how far we had proceeded.

But, some of my players got to shine, do weird things and kill every human being on that plane of the Multiverse. That's worth something.

So that was how a con feels like

I'm back home again after the con. To summarize things:

1. Make sure you have a map of the convention area, and a handout to give out at registration about what is going on where.

2. Place your con so it's easy to get there, to get to an ATM and to some source of food.

3. Make sure you know who is there as a dealer, speaker or panel attendee and help them out.

It's not that hard to run a convention, is it?

In the end all the gaming I did was the Blood and Mud WWII skirmish. It was fun, even if analysis paralysis made it far longer a game than intended. Maybe I should have had more coffee. Do stupid things faster, right?

Me and James Raggi and Tomas Arfert sat and chatted a lot. We talked about some personalities in the OSR, experiences of players not-getting-it-at-all. fun was had. Naturally we also analyzed the intricacies of system, play and text in old and new school, some of my old issues. There's a lot of fun stuff coming from both Tomas and James, but I'm not telling you yet what it is.

The Convention experience so far

So, my first gaming con in Sweden for ages, how is it? Well, it's in a small suburb os Stockholm at the end of a road, without any signs showing the way. It's well hidden, and it takes forever to get there.

Game wise it seems like the board game crowed are here in force. There are piles of "German" games for pick up play, and some miniatures games. Strangely enough, Magic is almost totally absent. It used to be everywhere.

I met James Raggi, and had a nice little char with him. Apparently the goods was not flying off his table, but I can see why. This was not a place where people buy stuff. He will probably post of his experiences later. We did chat about the wonders of travelling and how showers seem to be different all over Sweden. I guess you didn't knew that, did you? It was fun to finally see someone in this OSR crowd in the flesh.

Then I managed to talk old school design with the Swedish rpg designer and illustrator Tomas Arfert (page in Swedish). Very illuminating to talk about OSR stuff with someone who have done design in this new country of mine. He felt some ideas hadn't really found root here yet. It seems like some peole don't read the net, or something...

I did play some game as well. A miniatures game about WWII skirmishing was there, and I was drafted as one of three German commanders. It was great fun, but we procrastinated like crazy so it took forever to conquer Calais.

I hav eyet to decide if I will go back tomorrow. Nobody looked interested in playing T&T, but I did have someone ask me about my nice T&T shirt. Good work, Jeff!

Now I feel very tired. I hope this post isn't to incomprehensible.

Convention weekend

So, for the first time in ages I'm going to a convention this weekend. This is not one of my usual haunts, so I have idea what to expect. Apparently LotFP will be there, so I'll pass by and say hi. Maybe I'll even get to play a game or two of some sort, even though I'm not pre-registered for anything. I'll bring my trusty T&T book so find me if you want to play T&T.

[RPG Blog Carnival] My convention experiences - where to go for inspiration

Have you heard of RPG Blog Carnival? I hadn't either, but I actually participated in it one month! Someone had posted something interesting and I used it as inspiration for a post of my own. Oddly enough I forgot about it afterwards, and not everyone had tagged things so it was easy to find either. I'll try to be very clear. In short, the idea is to post themed posts, and they will be collected in a closing post by the host of that month. For the month of August the host is Chgowiz, and since I follow his blog I actually noticed it from the start. This time the theme is conventions, ren fairs and carnivals. Here we go.

I used to be a fairly regular visitor to conventions when I was younger. Around the year I had a few regular stops, and looking forward to the next one was part of the gaming calendar. Back then I lived in Sweden (regular readers know I have been living in Canada, but now I'm actually once again in Sweden), where none of the gaming conventions are trade shows with booths and game companies attending. I have never been to a game convention that is in any way oriented around commerce and selling stuff. It's all by the fans, for the fans. I went there with my friends to play with my friends, and try new stuff in tournaments and events. It did happen that tournaments started off with teams that had to few players show up, and I liked to join a few of those. But, it was never anything I used as a way to meet and talk to other gamers. I now see it as lost opportunities for broadening the mind. After many years like that, I got out of the loop. We did go back once (many years later) and visited two conventions, but then our children were born and nothing much came out of that experiment. Even though I married a gamer we haven't really been to game conventions together.

My Canadian experiences of conventions are almost all about science fiction conventions, not gaming cons. The latest one was of course the World Con, Anticipation, in Montréal this August. Apart from not knowing much about where to find Canadian game convetions, they also have the benefit of being easier to attend with children. Often when I come home from those conventions, where I also didn't go to meet people really, I came home with a sense of having explored something new and gotten new ideas. For very obvious reasons I also many times felt like I should try my hand at writing some fiction myself. That never happened. But, I found it interesting now after Anticipation to compare these two experiences. Maybe I could use that kind of enthusiasm I got from sf cons for gaming? Being a DM is creative work, and hearing people talk about fiction is of course a little like hearing somebody talk about their really engaging campaign. Also, every kind of panel on writing is usable. One clear example is a panel I listened to at Ad Astra this year, about how to write engaging combat scenes. Some of the advice was definitely usable from a gaming perspective. Nothing is new with the idea of bringing in ideas from something other than the usual places, but this struck me as a very suitable and for me untapped resource. It will be interesting to see what I can do with that, and maybe it can give somebody else who reads this an idea or two. Enjoy!