Conventioning - Gen Con 2017

GenCon!

Okay, so Gen Con happened this past week and everyone is running their recaps so I figured I should too! Because a lot of stuff happened, and this one felt like a weird Gen Con. Not a bad weird, more of kind of a strange weird. The lead up felt like it just kind of came up as a surprise, and the whole way there it didn't seem like it was actually happening.

Then we arrived, and it did. So let me give you a recap of what happened while I was there.

Booth Setup

We get there, and finally get the booth setup. It's always a great time, and the people who are doing all the hard work had done most of the annoying work first (the setup of all the flooring and the carpets on it) and then we got to work on setting up the booth.

The biggest issue came up when the big smirky ball in the sky wasn't inflating because the battery powered inflater we had ... died. Well the battery did. Thankfully the staff at the convention center is amazing and they found a way to pump it up for us and then floated it up right before the carpets went down.

IGDN Social

After that came the IGDN social. Now, at this point I have driven about 9-10 hours myself, and got about 3 hours of sleep in the afternoon before that so I'm a little ... exhausted. Now Exhausted Jonathan mixed with coffee and one drink turns into manic Jonathan pretty quickly so I was a little loud, and a little overly energetic.

That said! It was a great time. A bunch of Canadians took over the table by the door, and we indoctrinated a few of our American friends. They did accept the maple candy of citizenship so it was all okay. Particularly fun to hang out with Rob, Rachelle, Kate, and Anna who I have met peripherally a few times but was able to actually have conversations with.

If you've never been and are an indie designer, I highly recommend it. Loughmillers is a nice space (if small) and there are a lot of the smaller designers that you can hang out and talk with. The key is to get there early and grab a table because space is at a bit of a premium.

They announced the results of the Indie Ground Breaker awards, of which I probably should have kept track of but didn't because see manic Jonathan. I won one of the prizes and got a physical copy of Chariot which is great since I have the PDF. It's like I did the reverse bricks and mortar!

Stuff that happened

GenCon is always a bit of a blur. I got to spend most of it with my booth family, hanging out at the Smirk and Dagger booth. That said, I ran two RPGs.

We Used To Be Friends - Thursday

Ended up with a game of We Used To Be Friends, and it was a 4 hour slot because I find that the city creation and character creation takes a while because people get invested in it. It was nice to have a group of people who were invested in it but blazed through it. Fourty Five minutes and we were ready to go with our town with four clubs. It was a fun time where I got to play this game with Matt and his daughter Teagan. Matt was playing the Libertine and Teagan was playing a super Harriot the Spy like Plotter.

The Episode Mystery was based around why this equipment for this new nightclub got trashed. Which was a perfect episode mystery. For a while it looked like one of the character Duncan might have done it, but it turns out it was the family's security head honcho. It was heavily implied that Duncan's mom was getting kind of handsy with Security Dude at a party.

Shining Moments: 
-Omarr (Hard Boiled) coming out to Duncan (Socialite) and Opening Up, asking them out basically. Rolling a 6 and then the moment happens when that's when everything gets quiet and everyone hears so he basically came out to everyone and their parents.

When asked what Duncan was going to do the response was, "Pause ... and then just walk away without saying anything."

Then the Delinquent "started a fight" with Omarr to try to help them hide their embarrassment.

-Just outside Duncan went outside and had a moment with Matt's Libertine (whose character name I forget) and ended up also rolling a 6 which ended up being this moment where the Libertine thought he was having a moment but Duncan though he was hitting on him too.

"Is that what I am to all of you?" Duncan screamed.

Critical Go Westerly! - Faux Dungeon - Friday

This game was fun! I had a couple of people who had never really played RPGs before, and a bunch of people who I knew (Kate has owned this game for like 5 years and has yet to play it) as well as Michelle and her son Will. I had a table of 7 people but Critical is kind of the game where if you have more people it doesn't bog down too much.

We had everyone but Daphadiana and Tara, but that makes for a good group, and while there was a couple of times someone said something wincy (and I had to keep reminding someone that Angelique is a woman) it was fun. Laughter was had by much people!

Shining Moments:

-Urist has had enough of being trapped inside the demon's ball of invulnerability and wants out. The player goes, "Wait, there's like real stone beneath me. I want to find it, I want to find the real floor."

To which I replied, "So you're saying you want to disbelieve the dungeon?"

"Yes."

"Just checking."

-There was a RDI moment that made me smile.

"The wench over here --"

"HEY! I have a name. It's Mary."

I laughed because I think Mary would have approved of it had she been there.

-The players have messed with the mechanism and find themselves teleported to the actual realm of Ailee the Necromancer, and they see the house.

Barnabus, "Oh! I read about this in Magician's home weekly. It's 4 years out of date but it was very impressive architecture. I mean, there seems to be less bodies laying about the place but I guess that's to be expected."

Conventioning - Breakout 2017

Breakout happened! There was a long list of guests and a lot of amazing games and tonnes of fun were had. That's thanks to the tireless efforts of all the volunteers from the GMs who volunteer to run events to the staff that work relentlessly to make sure everything is run as smoothly as possible. It's a great convention, and everyone I know had a great time.

That said! What did you do Jonathan?

That's a good question self.

Saturday was mostly about panels.

First Panel was on GM Troubleshooting, with Matt McFarland, Robin Laws, Anna Kreidar, and myself. I was there as a last minute replacement of the missing Emily Care Boss (who was ill) and Guest Boss (who was tending to the ill) and it went really well. It was thankfully not a lot of the standard "I hate my group and how do I make them change" but a lot of great questions in regards to preparation, and how do you feel you should structure things.

Second Panel I was just moderating but it was the State of the Industry Panel so that means it had Eric Lang, Michelle Lyons-McFarland, Robin Laws, and Jonathan Gilmour. It was a pretty good panel, with a lot of questions and only a few limited "I have a statement to show off how smart I am, but I'm going to pretend it's a question" moment. The biggest difficulty I had was that there were lots of board game questions and fewer and fewer RPG questions, so to throw things to our RPG guests I had to kind of find the RPG nugget in them and then pass them along to the RPG part of the panel. I think it was a great time, and lots of people seemed to enjoy the information and had a good time which was great.

That night I got to run a game of We Used To Be Friends with Megan, Duan, Bill and Amanda who were amazing. They were experienced players, and had been through a bunch of games together including The Watch by Anna Kreider and Andrew Medeiros which I have heard nothing but amazing things about, so that's great.

We had a Delinquent (Amanda's Zia), The Hard Boiled (Duan's Casey), The Libertine (Bill's Nadeem), The Socialite (Megan's Kobi), and my Ingenue (Sparrow). I wanted to play the Ingenue because I was interested to see how it would play and what it needs, I tend to usually play the Tech Geek because I have all the love for Mac.

Anyway, the episode mystery is that someone, my Rival Erika, got fired from her job for stealing tips and her little brother swore that she didn't do it and went to Zia for help. Zia talked to the kid for information, and Amanda rolled Gumshoe and asked "Why should I care about this" which is because someone that Zia had listed as an enemy was the person who was the first suspect and this would be a great way to bring her down. So she called Casey to help her figure this out.

Casey was at home with Sparrow because he had been kind of somewhat under "house arrest" since he ended up blowing the whistle on his cousin. Zia and Nadeem ended up showing up and Nadeem got their attention by throwing rock at the window, even though they didn't need that. Sparrow ran interference (because everyone loves him, how could you not believe him) and Zia asked for Casey's help which he was happy to give because it would give him something to get out of the house.

Nadeem got sent out to get Erika out of her house and over so that Casey, and Sparrow, could talk to her and see what's going on. They got some more clues and were going to meet up with Zia at the underground mining tunnel club that we had built when we built our town.

Kobi didn't really seem to have a spot, so Megan did the one thing that I really hoped would happen and started working on her personal mystery. Megan picked a scene where Kobi had just come home and her parents were arguing about telling her something, so she hid and tried to Gumshoe it. I think we messed up because she should have still received a clue, but she did hear something about a facility and her cliffhanger was her dad walking over to her and asking, almost shouting, "How long have you been there?"

Because there was a cliffhanger we moved on to the party where Nadeem was already there trying to flirt with the suspect. It was great because he failed to flirt and managed to get a clue anyway because the Libertine is meant to try and fail and be okay with it. But what was awesome was that the suspect (whose name escapes me) was totally aware of what Nadeem was doing and set a trap for him later and told him to meet her by the lake.

Casey and Sparrow show up, and Zia who likes to mess with Sparrow's mind drops down from the balcony above right in front terrifying Sparrow. Amanda went to the move "Sometimes I'm up all night thinking about myself" where if she does something dangerous to turn someone on. She made the 10, which means that Sparrow changed his relationship with her (it would be more than that but that's what it said at the time) and so I decided "Okay, it's Rival. You've got to stop doing that to me." And that became a thing where clearly the Delinquent had a thing for riling up the Ingenue.

This is getting long, so to quickly start summing things up. Nadeem ended up getting attacked by some guy who turned out to be the manager at the restaurant in the Casino where Erika and the suspect worked. Then he got arrested for trespassing and spent some time in a chair next to a cop while hitting on everyone.

Kobi watched it happen, and got away but fought with her friend (the suspect) about it, and then went home to do some sleuthing on her parents. She ended up finding the name of the institute they were talking about.

Casey solved the case, with help from Sparrow and Zia, and made Erika's little brother's day. Turns out that the manager was the suspects cousin. The suspect was the one stealing the tips, and the cousin didn't want to get her in trouble so he framed Erika for it.

With Sparrow, I decided to use my Rival move with Zia. Ended up getting a 10+ which means I get a bonus, so I chose take +1 forward if you challenge them. Since Zia seemed to be intent on turning that into a game of I can make you feel things I used the Ingenue's turn someone on move, which is when you act innocent or naive. Rolled a 10+.

Zia's reaction was, "I've been waiting for this for a while. My place, or yours."
Sparrow demured and said, "My mother wouldn't approve."
Zia replies, "Hot. Your place then."

And scene.

It was a great game and it showed me a few things.

A. The "What should you care" question is so good early on because it provides that kind of impetus for a lot of things. It's not as useful later on, but that's why you get to ask other questions.
B. I think I made is explicit in the text that you have to deal with a cliffhanger before a character can appear in another scene, but I think I have to go back for it.
C. I ended up going over the few casefiles that had a "turn someone on move" and made them a bit more uniform and a lot more interesting. I had originally just replaced the "give them a string" with "change your relationship"
D. The question for the mystery was so good. When we were wondering how to make clues fit, going back to the question made it way easier to figure out.
E. The personal mysteries are perfect if your character really isn't doing much with the episode. If we were able to play with it longer you can kind of have two or three stories going on at the same time and it doesn't feel like it's dragging things apart. In fact, when we started to come up with ways to get Kobi into the episode, it felt more forced than letting her explore that mystery on her own.

Sunday I ran Critical!: Go Westerly - The Importance of being Gwendolyn

I had a bunch of players who were nice, and I had Michelle playing in the game which was awesome because she was supposed to play in this game when I first wrote it. I'm glad she got to play it because it's my version of Tom Stoppard's Travesties, where you have a game that's about a situation that is also about the Importance of being Ernest.

There were quite a few laughs and while I made the mistake of booking two hours (I had a thought to run Faux Dungeon, but switched my mind in regards to the game forgot to do so and so only had 2 hours of game) rather than 3 or 4. That said, it was super amusing and a good time!

I managed to playtest a bunch of stuff, as well as get a few board game moments in. It was a very good time, and something I recommend for everyone. Seriously, if you're looking to get someone into trying out games, or trying out conventions I can't recommend Breakout enough.

Conventioning! Play & Pub Toronto

Recently Dancing Giant Games hosted a Play & Pub convention in Toronto this past weekend. I had a great time for a few reasons.

The first was the it got Curt Cover from Smirk and Dagger up to check out the prototypes as well as try out a few things that were coming down the pipeline for S&D as well.

I'm not going to talk about every game, because we played a lot in a wide variety of levels of completion, but I'm going to hit on some highlights.

1. Finally got to play Biotix. I totally get why Curt is publishing this game. It's quick, so much fun, and very much backstabby. It's backstabby in the way that feels like you're also making strategic moves. Also, the germ meeples are adorable and everyone will want to play with them.

2. Got to play a Fast Food game by Joel Colombo. I didn't get the name, it was something about Drive Thrus and it was so good. Like heavy crunchy kind of "what am I doing" kind of game. Funny thing about me, I love playing those games and in part is that at no way shape or form does my designer brain go that far down the pipe.

Got to talk about how to many shorten it for players who are new to the game, or aren't quite fully versed in that kind of heavy game.

Also, there's a tag line that I hope he uses so hard. I have a long standing joke when someone asks me to define a "euro" game and I yell out "Is it about farming or colonizing shit? If yes, then see Euro." I know it's not quite the same, but anyway I think it's a good joke. That said, we're playing this game and I have an epiphany, "This is truly the American Euro. It's not about farming, it's about Fast Food."

3. Saw a couple of designs from Chris Chung. A lot of them were in alpha state, but there were some really good games but my favourite was Spell Smashers which hopefully we'll see in certain formats when he gets some more work done on it.

It was a great job by Kevin to get this up and running, and a great first time con!

Gen Con 2016 - J'ACCUSE!

Gen Con has come and gone again, and it was a great event. If you look into what I've written in the past (there isn't a lot and it's stretched out over time so you could do your research) and you'll see that I have not always thought so. The fact that it gets better and better every year is a testament to the hard work and dedication of a large number of people who work within Gen Con.

That said, what did I do this Gen Con?

Wednesday

We arrived early enough that I was able to hang out with my Smirk and Dagger crew for a while but it came time to hit some events. First thing I ended up going to the IGDN social and running into a huge number of the IGDN folks there. It came a point in time where I still had all my stuff with me and it was getting crowded at Laughmillers so I left about 30 minutes earlier than I intended, then I ran into Matt and Michelle who dragged me back to the social. Which was great, and we sat down and also ran into Rachel Kahn and made introductions all around.

Then it was time for Trade Day, where it started to bode well that J'accuse was going to be just fine. Everyone we talked to loved the game when they left, and even people came forward to ask what it was about without us having to prompt them.

Thursday

This was day one, and I spent all of the day at the IGDN room over at the Marriot. I thought I was only running one game turns out I was running two games that day the first one was Chill and the second one was Critical!: Go Westerly.

Chill - Cold Dark Earth

The game went well. This is about the fifth time I've run this adventure so I've gotten it down pretty well. They players were spooked, not in a terror kind of way but one player was very much "I'm getting what feels like conflicting information, but I know there's got to be some common thread here. I love this!" It really shows how awesome Chill is as a game because you can totally evoke that feeling with the supernatural elements of the Unknown. They tried to take on the big bad, and I didn't even use all of its power and it manage to almost kill someone, mainly because they botched their roll and I colossal successed my roll and so with one punch I sent him across two lanes of highway. 

There was one issue that did come up, the players couldn't figure out how to defeat the creature. I did hint at several times what might be the answer, and they thought they had tried everything but the weapon right in front of them. This is a problem with any investigation game. You can give people all the clues that you want, but in the end sometimes they aren't going to get it. That's fine, in Chill because the mystery is usually how do you beat this thing, and if they don't get it they lose and/or get killed so it isn't as if it stops the play as much.

Critical!: Go Westerly - Just a Few Ingredients

This one is a fun little adventure that Geoff made from a one hour session that he devised for Fan Expo one year. I think it needs one more thing to make it a full 4 hour session, but sometimes with a comedy game you don't want to go a full four hours because being funny for four hours is hard.

There were some great moments in the game, the biggest was Matt who was playing Urist, ended up defacing a peat guild member's lawn by writing "WANKERS" in peat and setting it on fire. The thugs stopped and asked him if it was his battle cry, and once that was cleared up they started fighting again.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

The rest of the con was spent being at the booth, and running events for Smirk and Dagger. They kind of blurr so I'll give people some highlights.

1. J'accuse sold out. We came in with 200 copies and we sold out on Saturday around 3:30-4:00pm. We could have easily sold another 50 copies of the game. There was some great word of mouth happening about the game and it showed with steady sales increases over the convention.

2. The Run For Your LIfe Candyman Game. Oh goodness how this child has grown. I realized how long we've been doing this game when after getting everyone into the kind of rituals we have around the game I had to sit down. I did it with a sigh of "this was easier when I was 25" and then I realized I had been doing it when I was 25 and that we had been doing this for 10 YEARS! We've had kids grow up playing this with us every Saturday and families and familiar faces and it's been amazing.

3. Playing with the Shut Up and Sit Down Folks. While we were in the middle of the Candyman game they walked over and asked if we had any games to play. We got to play a game of J'accuse where I ended up losing, in the most wonderful way. I thought I was safe, but I had mis-timed when I wanted to get hit with the motive in front of me and so everyone had all their cards in hand when it came time to nail me with the motive that would end the game. I had opened my copy, because we had sold out at that time, and when they left they wanted to know if they could have some review copies so I gave them that one because I can always get another personal copy.

We also played Dead Last, which was hilarious because we're all a wonderfully backstabby bunch and I ended up winning that game through a double cross at the end and a grab one and go which netted me enough to win the game. It was a very good time, and there were lots of laughs had by everyone.

With every Gen Con it was awesome to see everyone. I would name names but that would be a huge list that would require me at least an hour to type out everyone's name. You amazing people know who you are, and it's always great to see you.

Onwards and upwards to Fan Expo!

Gen Con 2015 - Convention Games in Review

Gen Con this year was kind of amazing. I say that as someone who spends most of his time running between a booth and events and not someone who attends the convention. What I'm going to talk about are the two games of Chill that I ran this year.

Both games were Cold Dark Earth, which was a module that Matt created and was hoping to have on the website soon. I'm not going to spoil it too much, but it involves a nasty thing coming back from the dead.

My first group plotted, and planned and tried to figure out what to do and with some great thinking, great research and an "aha" moment they managed to defeat the creature without taking too much damage. Of course, they put the target at risk and almost lost her. In the end she survived but with dirty hand prints forever etched on her throat, and both of one of the SAVE envoy's arms aged 40 years from the fight.

The second group, did some research found the second body and was like "Screw it, we have to kill this thing." They tried their best, and they got some good shots in (a couple of colossal successes) but the creature had basically managed to Critically Injure two players before they decided to back off. That's when the person playing Jenny, one of the characters without combat skills, tried to hit the creature with a car. She knew that she was basically screwing her character over, but was like "this is horror, let's do it."

Finally they managed to get to the target, but since time was running short I flipped a chip and had the monster hitch a ride with them on top of the van. There was a great fight at the end, when they decided to try to find ways to damage the creature. It worked, and then they took the next mental jump to figure out how to stop the creature.

There were more things that happened, and I'll try to get some of it covered in another post but that's a quick run down of the games that I ended up running. Chill runs beautifully, there are so many things that I'm probably going to pick up and talk about because I really do think that this is a great game, and a great horror game. If you haven't gotten it you really should.

Gen Con 2014 - The Good, The Bad, and The Other

Everyone is already done with their Gen Con write-ups so I figured it would be time to get around writing mine. It was a great convention on the whole personally, professionally it was just kind of okay but I didn't really push for any kind of interaction in that way so that's way more on me than it was on the convention.

Anyway, onto the events that I ran!

1. Critical!: Go Westerly: Growling Door Gates

We had a great little time here running this scenario. The idea is that they're trapped inside a White Griffon Tavern that has been sucked into a different dimension, a demonic dimension. They end up finding out that it's a demon reform school and have to stop the graduation ceremony before it rips into the fabric of reality.

The Good:

It was a funny game. There was a bit where one of the players is like "I'm going to steal gold from another player" and I usually let that go the first few times around. If they keep it up I tend to give them something else to worry about, and if they can still find a way to get a gold steal in then it just makes it actually funny.

They got stuck on the language that the demon gave them. The demon, Gog, kept telling the players that Gog was a bad demon. It was a great moment because I didn't elaborate and they had to spend time figuring out if Gog meant evil or just bad at being a demon.

The Bad:

Again, it devolved a little bit into the "I'm going to steal from you, no I'm going to steal from you" which is fine because it was contained and we moved on.

The Other:

I had the same father daughter team who has played one game of Critical at least once every year. It's always great to see them, and they always bring something fun to the table. This time the daughter ran head long into a large battle with demons and was the first person to ever actually get knocked out in a con game of Critical ever.

But it was a glorious way to get it.

2. Dime Stories: Varmit

Well, I had written about 7k words for this encounter for Joe and then when I tried to access it my phone, which was supposed to have unlimited data, had no data and I couldn't get to it. Thankfully I had an understanding of the highlights of the module and so I just kind of ran with it. I'm sure I ran it wrong but as long as we keep the story moving and kind of get it right then all for it.

The story is about a small town named Varmit and the module is supposed to give you a couple of options. I ran with the corrupt mine foreman, with the local law enforcement having an issue with an escaped convict brother out in the wilderness.

Another moment of awesomeness was that I got to play a game with Matt and Michelle for the first time in quite a few years. There were always attempts but this is the first one we managed to have happen in a while. You can read what Matt thought about the game on his blog.

The Good: 

The story flowed well. The players were good, for the most part, at keeping the story going and understanding that RPGs kind of need the players to bite on some hooks. They did, and the ending really wasn't the easy one which is good because they could have forced the issue. Hell, one player did try to backstab them all and got away with no one the wiser.

The Bad: 

Look, if you're upset because the game is getting off topic there are ways to do it that are both friendly and polite. We all understand being in a game where it goes kind of sideways for a bit. We just had a player who was leaving the game because of time and so we had that "after player leaves conversation" and one guy really soured the mood for everyone at the table.

Seriously, you can be like "Hey folks. I get the conversation is good, but could we get back to playing the game?" That works just fine.

The Other: 

You reckon'?

The problem with any type of western is that you'll end up trying to do "that" accent. I tried hard not to go too deep into it, mainly because I'm a french canadian with a raspy Gencon voice even by this stage of the game, but also because it's really easy to turn it into a "making fun of" voice which I don't want to do.

The aforementioned guy who soured the mood once said the words "you reckon'" at least five to six times in a single sentence.

3. Daedalus - Icarus Falls - When the Wax Melts

There isn't going to be a section here because the game didn't go off.

However, I was the only person sitting at an empty table in a room full of people with full tables. As far as a feeling goes, that sucks a hell of a lot.

I had people show up like 35-45 minutes after the game started but at that point I was dealing with the whole impostor syndrome that shows its ugly head at times like that.

4. Daedalus - Icarus Falls - Tribute

I told myself that this game, I was going to run it no matter how many people showed up, or how late they showed up. I ended up with one person and you know what? Ended up being a damned good time.

Basically we worked out that he had been working for Crime Boss Zidane, and his contact was a young Zenedine. A bunch of children had been taken by a local gang called the Bangers. They had cobbled together enough tech to give them a kind of cybernetics. It was all exoskeletal, because cyberwear isn't a thing in Daedalus and I had a single Ninja Tech who was busy trying to figure out what was going on.

The Good:

Man, the Alarm thing worked wonderfully. I threw it up in a situation with a lot of tension, and it just raked it up a little bit more.

The Bad:

One player made it hard to really see how anything would go in a group.

The Other:

Hilariously, he only failed a single roll. Everything else was either 7+ on the rolls let alone the bonuses.

Anyway, it gets me excited for that project when it comes down the pipe. I still have to go over the document, because I know for a fact that I'm probably missing a section on the revolutionary groups but that said it's looking like a fun game.

Fan Expo 2014 - Panels and Game a Go Go

Gen Con is behind us, and Fax Expo is in front of us. If you're going to be in the downtown Toronto area next weekend you'll be able to hang out and talk about things because there are plenty of panels here.

Friday
11:00 am - Room 709 - Finding Your RPG Style Panel
12:00 pm - Room 709 - Kicking Off your Campaign Panel
03:00 pm - Room 703 - Publishing your RPG

07:00 pm - Room 709 - Geasa: An Evening of Curses

Saturday
11:00 am - Room 709 - Finding Your RPG Style Workshop
12:00 pm - Room 709 - Kicking Off your Campaign Workshop
12:45 pm - Room 705 - In the Game of Boards you roll or you lose

02:00 pm - Room 709 - Gaming by Storm (1 hour blocks, I'm running 2 games of Critical! and 2 games of Marvel)

Sunday
11:00 am - Room 703 - Pathos and Probability Curves: Writing Adventures
04:45 pm - Room 705 - State of the Industry

01:00 pm - Room 709 - Critical!: Go Westerly: Growling Door Gates

Demos For You and Me - Part 2 - Running the Game

In part 1 we covered what you need to do ahead of time when running a game demo. Let's talk about what you need to do while you're running a game. This is where you're going to sell the people on the game, this is the actual test drive so make sure it's as smooth and wonderful an experience for the players as you can.

I'm going to assume that you've done the stuff in part one and have a tailor made adventure to introduce people to you game. What's going to make them feel like this is the best game experience in the world. Now here are some things you need to keep in mind over the next 2-4 hours.

I'm going to start with one of the most important ones, because it filters down to the other ones.

1. THIS IS A BUSINESS SETTING, AND A SELLING MOMENT.

There, that's out there. Yes you aren't wearing a three-piece suit, or even dress down to business casual, but if you're running a demo you can't forget that this is your business setting and you should remember that. You need to act professionally at all times. That means the things you wouldn't do because you're in a business setting, don't do them. Just don't. It doesn't matter that you're at a bar, convention space, church basement. You are selling something to someone, be professional about it.

2. Address your players directly

I'm putting this one out there because I have seen this, and have many people come up to me and tell me about this happening to them. You need to address your players directly. By addressing them directly, I mean look at them when you speak to them. It's not that hard. You look at them when you talk to them. You don't have to stare them down, you don't have to gaze lovingly into their eyes, you have to just address them as a person.

You'd be surprised how hard this is, apparently, for a good number of people who run games at events. It is also one of the larger complaints that I have heard from a wide variety of people. There are many stories about people not looking at people when they talk to them at a game, or addressing all questions to someone else at the table.

You can't do that. Can't, can't do that. One it makes the game not entertaining for that person. It's also a potential sale you are leaving on the table.

3. Make sure everyone has their moment

This is standard kind of GMing advice, but it doubly applies here. You want to make sure that every person at the table has a moment to be amazing. Otherwise they're going to get bored and think your game isn't worth buying. Part of that is making sure those moments are in your adventure, but another part is making sure that you give the player those moments in the game.

It's like the "Let the Wookie win" part of demoing a board game. People are more interested in buying your product if your product gives them an experience that they want to have.

4. Have fun

Ultimately we're all just playing a game. Remember that, and have fun when you're demoing a game. If you're having fun, the player can pick up on that and it will infect their play as well. Nothing can ruin a game like not having fun, or being bitter. That includes being bitter about other people's products. No one gets excited by negative marketing, so don't do it.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the four things I think you need to think about when you run your con game.

Demos For You and Me - Part 1 - The Setup

With the noises of interest coming off of the whole Convention RPG Selling (Found here in Part 1, 2, and 3) articles that I posted. Not to mention Lilian Cohen-Moore's article talking about a frustrating demo experience at PAX, and Ryan Macklin's following up with his own list of things not to do when doing a demo. With that in mind, I had this sitting in my drafts folder for a while so maybe it's time to come down and talk about what to do when running a demo game.

Why do this?

Well, I think running a demo for a game is one of those skills that people just kind of assume they have, and that they can do it just like running any other game. I seem to get that vibe when talking about it with other people. I've seen it in demo kits from larger publishers, and from being in demos for other games. Most of what I'm saying is applicable to RPG demos, but some of this stuff works for board game demos too, I'll try to point out when that's the case.

What's the most important thing to remember?

A game demo is another place where you will be selling your game. It's a sales moment.

In Part 1 of Selling RPGs I talked about how selling RPGs is the Used Car Salesmanship of the game industry. I'm going to use that metaphor again, because this is the test drive. This is where they take the system out for a spin, try it out, see if they like it. This means that it's another point where you have to make a good impression.

This is the same thing with boardgames. You're at the part where they want to see it before the buy. If you make a bad impression here, you've just discouraged them from buying your game and you both walk away disappointed. The player is disappointed because they were interested and the game didn't live up to their expectations, and you're disappointed because you lost a sale.

The Setup

If you are going to run a demo, the first thing you need to do is be prepared. Being prepared means a couple of things. It means that you're prepared to run the game right away. It means that you're prepared to talk about what makes the game awesome.

What Makes Your Game Awesome
This is all about knowing your product. Really, this should come first because if you know this then your demo adventure will be amazing. You should know how to run the game without referring to the book every few minutes. You need to know what makes your game amazing, and how to bring that into the adventure and how you run it. This leads into the next section which is ...

Be Prepared

This means that you have to have an adventure scenario set up. Now before you grab one off the shelf, or just come up with something you need to remember that this is a sales moment. You want a very specific adventure. You want one that's going to highlight what makes the game awesome, and showcase it right off the bat.

When I run Critical!: Go Westerly as a demo, we start with You All Meet in a Tavern. Why? Because the adventure is funny right from the get go, and that's what we're trying to show. Critical can be funny without getting in the way of doing stuff, in fact it's more funny when you're doing stuff. Having an adventurer's night where local adventurer's can meet and then have them go off on an adventure gets the people in the right framework for what's going to happen next.

This also means that you have to set things up so that the players have to interact with the system right away. Remember, this is the test drive, you need to show the players the awesome stuff about the system and why they're going to have fun playing your game. Roleplaying is great, and fun, but they don't need your system to sit around and talk in character for an hour. Have them do things! Have them do awesome things! Quickly!

More example time! When we run YAMIAT the first thing that happens is that we make them figure out what's going on, and then roll on the stairs so they get an idea of how the system works out. Then, usually something funny happens. If not, then we go straight into another encounter to make sure the few other parts of the system that aren't immediately covered by them walking down the stairs happen.

What else does this mean? It means you're going to need pre-generated characters. Unless character/setting creation is such an integral part of your game (think Fiasco, or Geasa) you're going to want to have characters waiting for your players to pick up and run with. This also means you're going to want to leave out a little bit on the character sheet so that the players have some choice. The easiest way is to come up with quick backgrounds and let the players decide on the name, looks, and gender of their character. If you have characters with genders, make sure that you've got an even number of them so that everyone at the table has a choice. Nothing is worse than when you feel like you're stuck with one or two options. 

Make your pregens diverse and interesting, and because you have control over what the characters are you can also make sure that there is something cool for them do to in the adventure. Nothing is worse than feeling like you're sitting on the sidelines doing nothing because you have a character that "doesn't fit" the scenario. If you have a "doesn't fit" pre-gen then that's a problem with your prep that you're going to need to fix.

Next, I'll talk about what to do during a demo. If you have any questions that you'd like to see answered about running a demo, then you can leave a comment or drop me a line and I'll try to include that in the next section.

The fine art of RPG selling - Part 3

The first two parts of selling an RPG are covered here, and here. Now it comes to the part that I've heard lots of people complaining about, closing the sale.

Before we start I want you to repeat a few things.

It is okay to close a sale.

It is okay to take people's money and give them a product.

This is all part of the process.
The person giving you money is aware of this fact.
It is okay to close a sale.

Repeat that until you feel comfortable. This is all about closing.

When people talk about sales, they say that this is the part that's really hard for them. They seem to think that people are going to be upset that they've brought in filthy lucre into the conversation.

If you are at a convention, in a space designated to sell product, then the people you are talking to are there to ... ready for this ... buy product. They understand that you aren't there for some philanthropic reason. They know that you have a product to sell and if they've gotten to this point there's a good chance they are interested in buying what you have to sell.

It is okay to close a sale.
It is okay to take people's money and give them a product.
This is all part of the process.
The person giving you the money is aware of this fact.
It is okay to close a sale.

Now that you've said the affirmation, let's talk about some tips to help close that sale.

1. Touch

At some point in time it's a good idea to get the product into the customer's hand. It makes it real, and concrete which is important. Why? Have you ever had a situation where someone says, "Hey, that's water's cold" and you walk into the water and go "Wow, this water's cold!" That's the difference between being aware of something conceptually and viscerally. The second one is always more powerful because we knew it was cold, but now it's personally cold.

Same thing with a product. They can be all for the idea of a game, but putting it in their hands helps when they're thinking about buying it. It's no longer an idea, it's a thing and it's right there.

2. Walk towards the sales area

If you're at a convention, usually you'll have a location where the sales take place. It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to shout that "HERE BE SALES" but even if it's one guy whose got three thousand dollars in his back pocket that is your sales area. If you're closing the sale, you should be walking towards that spot for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's convenient for the customer. They want to buy your product and get going, you want to make both of those things easy for them to do.

Secondly, it shifts the conversation to the sales part of the conversation. It's the segue into the money part.

3. Make the buying as painless as possible

I mean don't make them wait. If it's cash, make sure you have plenty of change ready. If you do credit cards, make sure you know the process and can do it. If you take 10 minutes to take the customer's money, there's a chance that they'll get annoyed and leave. Also, if you make the purchase hard they'll remember that and while it won't be a huge factor in coming back to buy other stuff, it will still be a factor. If they're pressed for time, or they're hungry, they're going to remember that and say they'll come back later.

At a large convention, come back later becomes come back never.

4. Make small talk

You still want to be conversing with the customer, but you don't really need to go on more about the game. They're convinced, don't over sell because you can lose people that way too. Talk about them, what they think of the convention, what they're excited about on the floor that they haven't seen yet. Nothing is completed until they have given you the money, and they have taken the book with them.

That's the end of the sale. They go away happy, you go away happy, and then you turn around and start the process all over again.

The fine art of RPG selling - Part 2

Mikael Andersson, who runs an awesome local convention called Hammercon, linked to the first part of The fine art of RPG selling and had a really salient point that he made, which was:

"your pitch should make it clear how the game fits into my life."

To me, this is important but it comes into the next section which is the middle part of selling an RPG. If you don't get your pitch down to the point where it doesn't catch the interest of the person then the rest of it is pretty moot. The pitch is the most important part of selling your RPG, right up there with all the other parts.

It's true. Because this next section is how you listen to your customer, and find out how your game is a fit for them. You're going to talk about the book, but this is where you get into their concerns as well as how your game fits well into their lives. If you read any books on selling, they say this is where you'll deal with your customer's concerns, and you will be to do that you really only need to do three things:

1. Listen

Listen to what your customer is saying. If they're saying if they don't have a lot of time in their lives you're going to want to talk about how your game saves time. If they really like to share narrative control, talk about the ways your game does that or if it doesn't what might interest someone who does like to share control like that.

The worst thing you can do is just plow ahead with a pre-planned bit of dialogue that doesn't fit with what the customer is saying. I hate it when it happens to me, because then I know that I'm getting a spiel and I just tune out what I'm hearing. Know your product, be prepared with some of the questions that come up time and time again (you'll know what they are because you're listening to your customers) but be ready to modify your answer to fit what your customer is saying.

It's like any conversation really, if you aren't really paying attention to the conversation the other person is going to know and it will do nothing but annoy them.

2. Love your game

I've said this before, but you have to love what you're selling or else it comes across as bullshit. Love the games you make, love the games you sell. It will help you understand what's great about them, and why other people will want to play them too. Love is infectious and if you display it in what you do, then the more people are also going to excited about what you do.

3. Be Honest

Yes, you want to adapt what you're saying to fit what the customer is saying. Yes you want to make sure what you're saying fits into the customer's interest and life, but don't lie. Don't misrepresent your product, because that customer has the chance to be a repeat customer. If you want them to come back and buy the rest of your products, then lying to them is a sure fire way to make sure that they never do that again. Lying in sales doesn't work. If it's not going to be a fit for the customer, then it's not going to be a fit for a customer. If that one particular product isn't going to work for them, find another one. If you only have one product, then no matter how hard you try to push it on the customer it's never going to end well.

There's an example, and I'm not going to be specific because the industry is small and I don't think it was malicious, of something that happened to me with a game. The person had an amazing pitch, and I picked it up their game (or swag traded for it, which made me regret it a little less) and took it home to read. I got home and it wasn't what they said it was at all.

I got rid of the game, and I can't really find it in me to recommend it to anyone. Why? Because I was really disappointed that it didn't really deliver on its promises. It could have been a really good game, but I never got over the initial disappointment at all.

Like I said above, this is going to be the longest part of your sale. This is where you'll do the talking, hear about personal stories, and it's a lot of fun.  Next we'll talk about the thing a lot of people have problems with, which is the close.

The fine art of RPG selling - Part 1

Corey Reid, of Dino Pirates of Ninja Island fame, wrote up a blog post about selling at the convention floor. He's got some good thoughts about how to consider a convention a success. Things to think about like metrics and key indicators which is always a good thing to have. We can discuss them at a later time, because what I want to talk about is the fine art of selling RPGs ... which is really just the fine art of selling.

That being said, when it comes to the hobby game industry it's on the higher difficulty end. I've sold pretty much everything you can sell when it comes to convention in the 10 years (oh god it's been about 10 years hasn't it) of doing all this conventioning and selling and stuff.  I would say that Card Games and Board Games are the easiest to sell. I've sold them without even showing the game, I've just talked about it and for some people it's the right price point with the right conversation and they've bought it sight unseen. I'd say accessories and miniatures are next on the scale because of the price point and/or the extra requirements (if you have an accessory for a game then I need to play it/own it in order to want the accessory). However, if it's a good accessory then it's easy to get the buyer interested.

RPGs themselves? They're the used car of the gaming industry. People want to take it for a test drive, they want to roll down the windows, kick the tires, and after all that you're going to get a "Oh ... I'll think about it and get back to you."  That can be demoralizing, and frustrating especially if you've spent a lot of time with this person and they've shown you a lot of interest in the product.

That said, there are things you can do to help you with your selling. This isn't original, a lot of this are stuff you can find in a wide variety of selling books but I figured I would put it out there anyway. This is mostly information at the beginning of the sales conversation, we can talk about the middle parts and the end later.

1. Give a Damn about what you're selling.

If you don't like the product, there's no way in hell you can consistently convince other people that they should care about it. I don't care what kind of actor you are, I don't care what kind of sales person you think you are, but if you don't care the customer doesn't care.  It's pretty simple, and it should be easy because you're probably going to be selling your stuff. You care about what you've made, right? Right?

2. Greet People, don't Grate People.

People are at a convention to check things out, that can also mean your stuff. Make eye contact, say hello, wave at people. If they're moving don't do much more, they're checking things out and will make their own decision on what to do. If they're stopped, you can move to "Would you like to check out" or asking them what they're interested in.

Don't try to force people into your booth. That's the worst thing you can do, because all it does is make people resent you and trying to win their interest after that is hard, and you want to make this as easy as possible.  If they don't want to stop, you can't make them stop, so let them go. They may come back later, they may not but you can then focus on the people who are interested in what you're doing rather than the ones who aren't.

3. Perfect your Pitch

You have heard this ad nauseum, but it's going to get said again. Have your pitch ready.

For those of you who don't know what a pitch is, it's a short blurb that tries to encapsulate what makes your game awesome. You want to highlight the cool thing that your game does, what makes it special, what might pique their interest and what might get you to a sale.

In reality, with so many things vying for people's attention you've got about 10 seconds to try to give the customer a reason to stay. You've got one or two lines at most before they decide if they want to listen more or they're done with what you have to say. Repeat after me ... 10 seconds. Practice all the words you can intelligibly say in 10 seconds. It's not a whole helluva lot of time so you have to work on getting what makes your game great out there.

4. Adapt your Pitch

If something isn't working for you, don't think you can change it on the fly. I know I've started out using feature X for a pitch and finding out that people really enjoy feature Y. That's great, change your pitch to include Y and get rid of X, or find a way to include Y and X. Find the things that people seem to enjoy about the game, and use that to get them to talk about all the cool things about the game.

5. Be Positive

This isn't some sort of always be happy in a fake kind of way, but it kind of is. When you're selling at a con, it's great and wonderful and exhausting, but it's also a job ... it's your job. That's right, when you decided to do this whole selling your own stuff thing, sales became one of the many hats that you're going to have to wear. Get used to it, and be positive. If you're showing signs of negativity then people will react to that and you'll get less people interested to get passed your pitch to learn about your product. Smile, make eye contact, be friendly.

6. Don't go Overboard with the Positivity

Of course, don't go too far. If you're being fake, then people will pick up on that too and run but more because they're worried you're going to be a serial killer rather than a sales person.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but this is really the important stuff that I find works for me when trying to sell games to people. When I get around to writing Part 2 we'll talk about the middle of a sale, which is where most of the conversation will happen but is actually one of the easier parts of a sale.

Post Metatopia Thoughts

Did Metatopia last week. Finally had time to sit down and collect my thoughts about the experience.

1. It's amazing and if you design an RPG or a Board/Card Game then you need to make it to this convention.  It's got a knowledgeable dedicated group of designers and players who are ready and willing to give you a lot of excellent feedback. You're going to get a lot of unvarnished, critical, much needed opinions. The kind that most people wish they had.

You know those times when you bemoan the fact that you can't find playtesters? If you play your game several times here it's quite possibly the equivalent of fifteen indifferent test groups that you managed to cobble together. If you have a lot of products that you'd like to get ready, then this is the place for it. Make your way here, you will not be disappointed.

2. The people who show up for this are great, and the people who run it are spectacular. It was a well run machine despite the fact that this was an area that wasn't all that far from the coast after Sandy hit. The hotel staff was a pleasure to deal with, and they were acting like a small shelter for people to come in out of the cold. Classy acts all around.

3. The panels were fun, and well done. They were willing to go at some tough topics, and for the most part stayed on the surface level but then again it's a panel in a one hour slot so it might not have all the time that it needs. However, there's a lot of stuff going on and it will only get better from this point in time.

Now, specifically about my games.

AIR went beautifully. Not to say that the game didn't have any flaws, it did. Some large gaping ones that were exposed by the playtesting. But these flaws were less holes and more like shallow ruts, things that can be easily filled in. People really enjoyed all the elements, they just didn't feel like the game didn't bring any of it together.  Hopefully the changes address that.

I'm changing how the Downward Spiral works, it's not drastic but it's now a group thing rather than an individual thing. The keywords are also unique to each character, and are things that the players are going to invoke on themselves.

The air content is going to be in the entire station rather than just in one area, and it's going to be visible to all so that they can see what's going on.

PvP situations were sorted out, so now that works and could use some testing.

FIXER was a rather huge success. It needed some tweaking of the rules to get it moving, and I'm going to need to go over the math on the cards, but the core rules are pretty damned solid. A few people were interested and I'm going to be playtesting and prototyping for the next little while to get it to a better spot before I send it out.

BANK JOB, was a beautiful horrible mess. No tension, no panic, no anything. The idea is still good, they just didn't pan out. I think I really need to sit back and rethink that one. I have a couple of thoughts but it's going to require some time and I'll probably get to it after FIXER is more done.

Fan Expo 2012 - The Post Con Recap

Fan Expo happened, and while there was the usual snafus with badges and stuff it was the best run one I've been at, which isn't saying all that much.  While I love the man who runs the gaming section, the convention as a whole has frequently left me feeling that this is the Red Headed Stepchild of the convention. Yeah, sure you're there and yeah it might be a draw but whatever really.

That being said, there was still plenty of good times to be had. The RPG room was full and always jumping.  The Board game area didn't have a moment that I looked in where it wasn't full of people doing stuff. It's good to see it growing.

I did some awesome panels, which I'll probably steal a page out of Malcolm's book and do them one at a time. I did a panel on doing your own game, the state of the industry, and board game design with some awesome people.

However, the games.

I ran one game of Critical!: Go Westerly and another of Geasa.

Geasa was amazing, I was a little nervous because there were some younger players who first asked me, "Okay, so like what level do we start at" which is usually the sign of death. Not that they can't be great players, but when you fall asleep at the table during the creation part of the game ... usually that's a giant flashing neon sign that just says, "Oh shit."

The game set up ended up being a space exploration unit. The explorer, the captain, the medic, the engineer and the science officer all go down to this planet, after some hiccups on the way which caused the explorer to yell at the rest of the crew, putting him on the wrong foot. Eventually they hit the surface of the planet and after one crew member dies exploring a lake they find this fish. With some Fae shenanigans in the way they end up plugging the fish into their engine, which powers the entire ship better than what was already there. Of course, this meant that they needed to control the fish because the captain saw it as his way to owning his ship and being filthy rich, the scientist saw it as her ultimate discovery, the explorer saw fame and fortune, the engineer saw it as an opportunity, and the doctor had a mission to discover some new life.  They killed many people to secure the fish, to the point where they couldn't really trust each other and were waiting for everyone else to make their move to eliminate the competition.

After all, those who control the fish ... controls the universe.

Critical! was our adventure You All Meet In a Tavern and it's always funny to see how different players react to playing this game.

No one killed any kobolds, though the wizard was chomping at the bit to do so.
Angelique managed to kill two Fairies with one blow by throwing them into each other, which then covered the Dwarf with Fairy dust ... so he began to float. They tied a piece of rope around his foot while he was screaming "Nobody drags the dwarf!" at them.

We even had a musical number ... or two. I got the player playing Mabel to write them down because sharing really is caring.

Mutiny
When the first mate
Throws you overboard
To the sharks. (Oh Lord!)
That's caaaaaaalled a mutiny.

When the bilge rats
Try to tie you down,
When you've run aground
That's aaaaaalso a mutiny.

If you hate your crew
And they hate you too
They might hatch a plan
And try to M-U-erder you!

But if you take the time,
To keep your crew in line
With a keelhaul now and then,
You ... will ... be ... fiiiiiiiiin!

Needless to say he convinced Ailee that she needed to take her skeletons, her organ, and her story to the theatres of Westerly. It took some convincing, but it ended up being hilariously awesome.  So, after poking the dwarf balloon a couple of times she made her way, with Mabel, to begin discussing plans for the musical.

Fun times had by all really.

Gen Con 2012 - The Post Con

So ... Gen Con.

Wow.

Little big this year. I'm late to writing this post so you're well aware that Gen Con this past year scored 41k unique badges.  That's a lot of people, and it kind of felt like it. If you don't know what my schedule kind of is like, I tend to spend most of my time at the Smirk and Dagger booth helping out because they make great games and they're just a phenomenal group of people.

That said when they opened the door to the VIGs (I still hate that name, for some unknown reason) I completely lost track of the time and found myself going, "This is pretty good for a Thursday, excellent pacing for demo time, lots of people wandering about."

Then they opened the doors and I wondered if I had managed to time warp into Saturday. It was huge, tonnes of people everywhere and it was non stop.  However, I'm sure you already know that.

I ended up running four games there, and there were some great moments.

The game of Geasa ended up being about the military during Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the two main plot lines that formed out of it were a Navy SEAL instructor who wanted to come out to his Base Commander Dad, the second was a denied applicant who was looking for revenge and her idiot cousin on the Base.

There was a really great moment too, the phone call between the dad and the son.  It was just priceless.

"Son, your mother told me to call back because I might have been a bit abrupt. What is bothering you?"
"You would like to come over for dinner? We'll make it intimate ... about 12 people."

The other moment when the mom was there to support her son coming out to the dad, and watched him slink away in utter terror. It was heartbreaking.

The Importance of Being Gwendolyn went off swimmingly well.  There was someone who was just happy to be there because she loved the title, and she didn't leave the game disappointed at all.

There was also more cookie mayhem, with all the stomping and crashing in the Run For Your Life Candyman game. I picked up a copy of Advanced Dimensional Green Ninja Educational Preparatory Super Elementary Fortress *breathes in deep* 555. Ports of Call for Bulldogs!  Saw some people, ate some food.

Gen Con, basically.  Not to say that it was perfect, I have heard things about stuff which is more than disconcerting. However, that's GenCon too.

Fan Expo - 2012 Schedule

Hey folks,

While Gen Con is just around the corner you can't forget that Fan Expo is just around, just around that corner.  Like someone with a club ready to take your money after you deal with the first mugger.

That said, I'll be on a couple of panels and have a game to run, which will be fun.

To be fair, my panels are mostly me going to be sitting there and being very quiet since I'm going to be on some panels with @RobinDLaws and @montejcook, mainly because they use their middle initials in their twitter profiles but also because they're rather large luminaries in the industry.

Here are the panels and the times that they're going to be:

I wrote the narrative backstory of an Orc!, Saturday 4 pm room 715
Reflections on the gaming industry, Saturday  6 pm room  707
Board Game Design, sunday 1 pm room 715

I'm also going to run an undisclosed game of Critical!: Go Westerly at the follow time:

Friday, 3:00 pm room 706

Fun times will be had, and apparently I'm going to be doing a lot of sitting there and saying not much.

UPDATE: note that I'm not on the kickstarter panel and my game is earlier in the day. I think it's at 3:00 pm but I can be wrong at that.  It's just earlier in the afternoon, or whatever the afternoon slot is.

Gen Con 2012 - Schedule

So there's that Gen Con thing. I heard it's pretty popular and stuff. I have games, if you're interested in showing up for them. There is a problem, most of them have kind of sold out. The games in italics have been sold out.

Anyway, here's the list of events.


RPG1230182 You All Meet in a Tavern Thu @ 2:00 PM
Location: JW :: 312 :: 3

RPG1230185 A Cursed Night Thu @ 10:00 PM
Location: JW :: 312 :: 4

RPG1230183 You All Meet in a Tavern Fri @ 2:00 PM
Location: JW :: 312 :: 3

RPG1230184 The Importance of Being Gwendolyn Sat @ 2:00 PM
Location: JW :: 312 :: 1

Let's talk about - Making Pregens for you Convention Game

This is something that's kind have been buzzing around my head since Origins.  It was a whole bunch of things, but basically it led to this kind of thought.

How do you split your genders when it comes to making pregens for your con game/adventure module?

If you'll notice, when we did Critical!: Go Westerly, which is available for the low price of five bucks, Geoff made sure that there were 4 women and 4 men.  Ultimate we ended with 5 women and 4 men, because of a quick of licensing that didn't pan out we had already created one character and included her anyway because her origin story is pretty funny, which ... kind is an anomaly when it comes to pre-generated characters.  I just went through some of the "free" stuff that was nominated for an Ennie and saw that when they had a chance to do a 50/50 split the adventure modules ... didn't do it at all.  There was usually just one woman character and the rest were all dudes.

This leads me back to Origins where there was a game that Geoff was running.  He was running the introduction campaign with a table of 8, which is the maximum that the game will go.  That means that there were 4 characters that were men and 4 characters that were women.  One of the players noticed this, and the first thing out of this mouth was, "Why are there so many women characters?"

Geoff replied, "Well, half of the population is made up of women.  So, half of the population of the characters are women too.  It only makes sense."

To which the player scoffed, "Not in gaming it isn't."

Which is of course, patently bullshit.  You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to notice that there were a wide variety of people, all of whom where there for gaming in some form or another.

We talked about it later at Big Bar on 2 with Amanda Valentine, who played in the intro game the day before this all happened, and she commented that she had instinctively picked up one of the female characters, and then a second one and stood there contemplating her options before she realized that there were two other characters she could pick from.  I believe, and she can correct me if I'm wrong here, she said that "One is usually all I get, two female characters is usually decadent."

Having two options is considered to be decadent.  Think about that statement for a moment, and then realize the fundamental absurdity of it.  I know if I have a stack of pregens put in front of me, I'm probably going to have more than two choices.

I leave this to you know, fellow game designer people.  If you're going to make a set of pregens for a game, a sourcebook, a campaign, or whatever.  Let's at least try to start making sure that we provide some equality here.  It's not that hard really, just make your characters and then sit back and look at them and count how many of each gender you have.  If it's not a 50/50 split then you should probably fix that.

Just saying.

Origins 2012 - Some Thoughts

Well, Origins happened and it was a great time.  It's one of those things that happen in a progression of anyone who is trying to be at least somewhat professional at this (even if you end up doing this while you're doing something else to make those ends meet) you hit that convention where you feel you're starting to get it.  Not that you can ever be complacent with what you're doing, or what you know, or anything really but you do feel like you've hit some sort of milestone on occasion.

This Origins was one of those for me.  It felt like I was more comfortable talking to people about work, though not nearly as comfortable as I should be yet, and promoting the stuff that we're doing.

Also, I found out one important thing

Geoff is way better at running Critical! than I am.

He's a lot funnier than I am when it comes to running the game.  I thought we'd be on par, and have moments that were hilarious while we were both running it, but do it differently.  No, he's just flat out better than me at running this game.  Now it means I have to up my game when it comes to Critical! and that means it's more good times for everyone.

Let's do some game recapping!

Game 1 - Unofficial Critical!

I ran a game for a bunch of people I know who were passing by and didn't have something to do right then, and it was a lot of fun.  We had a Barnabus (we always have a Barnabus), a Mary and a Marten at the table.  They ran through You All Meet in a Tavern, which ended up with them leading the protesters on a protest against the Duke rather than underground against the workers.

Best line goes to Marten, "Wait, let's over think this."

Game 2 - Geoff running Critical! - Clucking Arises

Geoff was supposed to run The Importance of Being Gwendolyn but instead ran a game that I had only heard of in stories.  It was a great time, and we had two parent child tandems.  We had a dad and his daughter (between 9-11 ish) and a mom and her daughter (again between 9-11 ish).  The daughter with the mom had never played RPGs before, and I'm kind of glad she ended up playing in this game.

Needless to say it was a fun time chasing chicken like creatures, who had kidnapped some chickens, with the farmer in tow.  We had a Barnabus (because my daughter says I'm a lot like Barnabus) an Angelique, a Mary and a Daphadiana.  The Daph player was great, "I come in and sing a song about how awesome you are!" and the Angelique player kept going, "I run ahead and do things! Score!"

In fact, the Angelique player kicked two Boogums through the uprights.

It ended up the giant stone statue waking up, but having been fed a levitation potion so I kept spinning on its axis when it talked, which Geoff modelled for us whenever it wound up talking.  We couldn't keep playing, we all ended up laughing so hard ... which is good because I found out that I'm best when playing an annoying pedant.

Best line goes to Angelique, "I want to punch Stelph in the face."


Game 3 - Geoff running You All Meet in a Tavern


My Game of Critical was going on the same time that Geoff's game of Critical went on. My game wasn't all that memorable, but Geoff's was.  He got a table full of people and this was a conversation that was had:

PLAYER: There's an awful lot of girl pregens here.
Geoff: Yeah. I made eight pregens. Half are male. Half are female.
PLAYER: Why are there so many girls?
Geoff: Because it's representative of the actual human population.
PLAYER: Yeah, but not in *gaming*.
Geoff: Sigh.


There were some good moments.  The player who played Mable was just amazing.  Every ten minutes we'd stop our game and listen to the song that Mable was singing.  It was on point.  Angelique was awesome too, I was recounted the tale of much ass slapping with the traditional sporting words of, "Good play" and "Get in there!"

What else did you do?

I ended up playing in a game of curse the darkness which was a lot of fun.  I can see that it would make for a great series of small campaigns.  You just have to get used to the fact that characters are going to die.  There's a nifty little mechanic, if it's allowed to develop organically, that really pushes the fact that even in death your characters can have an impact on the game.

Purchases!

Monsterhearts

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple

Pala - Trick Taking Card Game

Hunter card game thingy

The Resistance

Chronicles of Skin

Fan Expo 2011 - The Wrap Up

Ah ... Fan Expo. What can I say about Fan Expo? I enjoy the person who runs the gaming section, I enjoy sitting down and playing games. I enjoy waiting for that shoe to drop that makes us all look at each other and go, "Uh-oh ... here we go again."

This year that was the fact that all the gaming panels but one, the GM Masterclass one, got canceled for lack of space. Not that we were picky, basically the Gaming Track got to pick at the bottom of the barrel. Okay, that's not fair ... the Tabletop Gaming track got to try to scrape something together and in the end there was nothing left for us.

That said, there was a lot of good stuff going about. The Catalyst Folk were in force and doing what they do best which is running Battletech and Leviathans all day, every day of the con. Snakes and Lattes had a presence there, where you could just sit down and they would teach you boardgames. It's impressive when you consider that the place is usually full whenever I walk by, so the fact they where there was nice. Managed to play some Lemming Mafia and Hey! That's My Fish (and they were my fish damn it!).

The people who make Dungeon Crawler, Jay from Gifted Visions, was there and they were busy demoing their game. Malcolm showed up, and we had a good chat. Then Mikael showed up and he played some stuff with Justin, Amber and me. Brought out Blood Bowl: Team Manager and had a blast with it.

I think maybe I should have done more stuff at the con, but I'm glad I just got to sit back and relax. I didn't expect much of the con, it's the con that usually has then "when something goes wrong" feel rather than the "if something goes wrong" feel.

Next stop, Hammercon. I was going to go to Metatopia (and if you are in the area you should, it's going to be a developer gold mine) but I just can't afford another large trip. Gotta pay off the trips from this past year before I can start going off again on others.