Loose Game Prep

Not a self-portrait, but close.

I ran my Fellport D&D game yesterday for the first time since September. Before that, I did some game prep, but I don't know that my game prep is the same as your game prep. So let's talk about it.

I don't like to do "strict" game prep. I think of "strict prep" like prepping for a dungeon. "Room 1 is 30 foot square with 10 foot ceilings, and it contains an orc and a pie." The description is stated as hard facts, and there's very little the characters or the GM can add in the moment. You can bake in some surprises and leave the furnishings vague, but generally the play experience is stiff and not very memorable. It's not great for the party splitting up and wandering an urban landscape, getting into trouble wherever they go.

As a general rule, I do "loose" game prep.

"It's a Magical Place."

It was either "Tahiti" or an animated gif.

Earlier this week I returned from a trip to Disney World. It was my first time, and more importantly my daughter's first time. We had a blast, and in seeing Disney through her eyes I rediscovered my sense of wonder.

The grind of daily life brings out the cynic in me. My imagination rebels against the repetition of work, and it lashes out. Sometimes it's funny; other times it's downright offensive. I didn't understand the big deal about Disney, but I get it now.

Magic exists at Disney.

My daughter wanted to catch a show called "Cinderella's Christmas Wish". It was a 10 minute stage show in front of the castle, where everyone debated about how to decorate for the holidays until Cinderella makes the call and her fairy godmother makes it happen.

As she waved her wand we watched this...

...turn into this...

...and in that moment I felt magic happening.

Don't get me wrong. I have a degree in theater. Intellectually I know it's a carefully staged production, reproduced every day at 6:15 sharp. I know there's some techie behind the scenes pushing light buttons on cue. I understand how the magic works.

But it's still magic.

I watched my daughter as she took it all in. The look of wonder in her eyes told the whole story. Her perception changed, and I think she has a greater sense of possibility after that experience. If she wants to build a life-sized castle, hang lights on it, and make those lights change colors, she knows it's totally doable - she had an example right there in front of her. What else can she imagine and eventually make real?

Magic isn't an effect we have on the world, it's the way our experiences change us. It's realizing we have more possibilities and more potential than we originally thought. The next trick is what we do with that realization and all that new-found power.

What should I dream up and create next? The possibilities are endless. They're also much more easily attainable after visiting my first hackerspace last night, but that's a different story.

I'll write up some ideas on how the Disney experience can apply to RPGs next week. Thanks for reading!

Looking Back at PAX East 2013

So PAX East happened this past weekend. I wasn't around as much as I could have been, but I decided that discretion was the better part of health this year. I've been sick off and on since Christmas, and the latest cough/sinus thing has been with me for the past 4 weeks. I think it's finally clearing up, but I didn't want to push my luck by staying at PAX until all hours.

Abbreviated though my pilgrimage was, PAX never ceases to amaze me. The amount of things to see, panels to hear and participate in, and people to talk with creates an embarrassment of creative riches and collaboration opportunities for game players and game industry folk alike. For those who have never been, I made a few crappy cell phone vids to give you an idea of the scope. You can go see all three videos on YouTube, but I've embedded the top-of-the-escalator view of the Tabletop Area below because in my mind it's the most impressive: thousands of gamers in a single hall talking and playing tabletop games for 15 hours straight. In the words of Rob Donoghue, "This is not a fringe. This is a THING."

PAX East's Tabletop Area is the largest high school cafeteria you can think of, crammed with people playing games and a pile of retailers to buy from. The game library is impressive, if slow to use. I heard 30 minute wait times to sign out a game were common at peak times, and almost the entire con is one big peak time. For me it's about the tables: a blank canvas on which to paint the world of your chosen game.

"But Wombat," you ask, "what did you do at PAX East other than gawk at the Tabletop Area?" I'm glad you asked.

Friday
Thanks to crap traffic on the Pike, I ended up arriving around 11, about an hour later than I expected to. I parked in the Overflow Lot down by the drydock, and half-walked, half-shuttled up to the hall. I had a bag of food for the hotel room that I bummed a key to deliver even though I wasn't staying the night this year. I needed dice to choose which of the many bathrooms in the suite to use. I also got a picture of the BCEC from the Commodore Suite high atop the Seaport Hotel. Swanky.

PAX East lies within. Do you dare enter?
(Correct answer: YES.)

I headed back, bumped elbows with Storm of Paul & Storm, walked the expo hall (overwhelming!), and hung out in the Tabletop Area for a bit. Pro Tip: Plenty of tables are empty on Friday during the day while people are still at work, so stake your claim on a table early. I limited myself to playing a demo of Dino Dice at the Steve Jackson booth since I wanted to hit the 2 PM panel on the Future of RPGs (guaranteed wrongness: 90%). The Tabletop Theatre line was declared full about a half hour before seating happened, but I hung out and sleazed into one of the seats left over after the crowd settled. An excellent panel was heard by all, challenging the idea that basements and caffeinated sparkling beverages and threatening the PCs' lives are somehow integral to the "true" RPG experience.

We had our Worldbuilding 101 panel immediately afterward at 3:30 PM. It was "full" a half hour before, but we ended up with space for 5 more. We had a great time with a very responsive and appreciative audience, and we fielded a few questions. We also had it filmed by professional videographers with actual borrowed video industry high-end equipment (thank you Natalya!), so stay tuned for the edited video as it becomes available. I can't wait to see it myself.

After the panel we talked with panel attendees, then dispersed. I wandered through the expo hall again, and ended up picking up some PAX Merch. I found Dan in the Jamspace to return the room key. (Note to self: Spend time in Jamspace next year - that freestyler kicked ass rolling costumes and props into his rhymes.) I was tired, so I left and ended up getting home around 7.

Saturday
The Saturday morning commute held no slowdowns at all, and it delivered me around 10:45 because I started out later. Overflow parking became my friend, and the shuttle bus service didn't have me waiting at all on either end. Win!

I walked the hall briefly and stared at dice (the Chessex booth is the penny candy store for tabletop gamers), saw that the merch booth still had scarves, decided to take the aforementioned crappy cell phone vids, and wandered into the Tabletop Area, my default destination at PAX. I hooked up with both circles of friends, one group sitting down for a demo of the X-Wing mini game on the table directly next to the other group fighting through a game of Zombie Fluxx. Odd how convergence happens. I took over for a round or two at the end of the Zombie Fluxx game, and then we wandered over to the Tabletop Theatre for our Tabletop System Wars panel.

I prefaced the panel with a brief talk about the usenet newsgroup wpi.flame and the ritualization of flame wars in a safe space so nobody's feelings got hurt, which set the tone for the good-natured intra-panel disprespect which followed. After a rousing chorus of, "You're wrong, the correct system to use is..." from every panelist, we gave away Bob's bags of gaming loot that he was contractually obligated to part with if he wanted to remain married. Everyone who stuck around got something, I think. If you didn't, let me know or poke a head into the chat and we'll rectify that situation. And yes, I'll post the video of this panel as it's available.

We wandered back into the Tabletop Area, and Brent convinced Daniel Solis to demo a few of his card games for us.

Belle of the Ball has come a long way in the past year.

Suspense (I think?) is an evil little game with a 13-card deck which plays in about 2 minutes and breaks your head along the way. Part logic puzzle, part playing to achieve an unknown victory condition, it packs a lot of analysis-paralysis angst into a tiny deck. Belle of the Ball has become a complex game of matching guests and using Belles to change the game, and it'll take a few times through for me to really feel some of the subtler strategies for the Belles. The good news is it'll be Kickstarted in August, so stay tuned for that.

My mother calls me around quarter of seven, just about halfway through the game of Belle, about an hour after she should have delivered my daughter back home. If you've ever tried taking a call during PAX, you'll know that tens of thousands of smartphone users tend to stress the cell network a bit, and the roar of the hall doesn't make phone communication exactly easy. Suffice to say that monkey wrenches were introduced and I had to leave slightly before I wanted to.

Overall

• I spent a total of 15 hours in or near PAX. That seems like so little for a 3-day event, but it felt so full.
• Playing games with their creators just can't be beat. Thanks, +Daniel Solis!
• On Sunday, I learned that I missed a free ninja gig by +Molly Lewis and +The Doubleclicks on Saturday afternoon. Also various other folk I've talked with online were trolling the hall and active on Twitter. Note to self: Next year look at Twitter, you knob.
• It was a pleasure meeting everyone, especially folk at the panels. If you want to get in touch, please do so by stalking me or connecting to the Gamer Assembly webchat.
• Special thanks to +Brian Liberge for organizing and moderating our panels.
• Huzzahs to fellow panelists +Brent Newhall, +Kaitlynn Peavler, +Casey Peavler, +Bob Smith, +Tresi Arvizo, and Art Vaccarino.
• Thanks to my crew of friends for letting me live vicariously through you with a little help from Google Messenger. +Joe Amato, +Todd Dibble, +Sarah Schlesinger, +Daniel Afonso, +Tom Carr, +Jeremy Medicus, Keith, Airlia, Mike, May, &c.
• Hi to +Matt Maranda, +Tracy Hurley, +Meguey Baker, +Philippe-Antoine Menard, +Christopher Amherst, and various others I bumped into who I may or may not have names for.
• If we talked at PAX, feel free to ask me anything. It's like Reddit, except it's all the time and everywhere. Seriously.

I'll see you next year, PAX East.

Kids RPG: Lessons Learned II

Session 2 was much more challenging than the first session. There were more kids at the table, and attention tended to wander toward bathroom humor. Huh. That sounds like some adult groups I've played with. This session's lessons seem simple, but have a big impact.

And if all else fails, throw hordes of
negative energy squirrel ninjas at 'em.

1) Step up the pacing
I tend to let the game happen, letting the players control things rather than driving the action. With shorter attention spans, I got wandering attention and loss of players down irrelevant ratholes. So I need to push a little harder to keep them focused. Note to self: pay attention and do it faster next time.

Kids play for a living. In order to keep the game more interesting than things they would invent on their own, keep the pace of the action fast and keep them making decisions. Reacting to an immediate threat is easier than deciding a direction to explore.

2) Lean on the rules to maintain order
In order to keep the pacing going, I gave each player a limited time to decide what they were doing before jumping to the next player. I'd come back to check on anyone I skipped so everyone had something to do in a turn. I strongly enforced initiative and only doing one thing per turn to curb the tendency to hog the spotlight.

I think that worked out pretty well once we got into it. I think it took me too long to get to that point. I almost lost them to their own devices and fisticuffs over a glowing staff before they united against a common enemy. I almost lost my patience as I had to shout to make myself heard above the 3 simultaneous conversations happening. I gave them too much space to fill before focusing on the situation at hand.

3) Give information explicitly

Too subtle? Hm. You're right.

Since the party basically marched into a cave full of orcs prepared for war, they were going to be overwhelmed if they decided to stay to the bitter end. I don't know what I was thinking trying to drop hints that there were more coming instead of just telling them "You guessed there were 20 orcs here, but you were wrong. Right now, it sounds more like 50 orcs coming at you, and if you stay you'll be captured or killed."

Lesson learned.

4) Take a break if needed
It's a game. It's supposed to be fun. If there's no fun happening, or if there's no game happening as everyone makes their own fun, take a break and regroup after everyone gets their yayas out.

5) Nobody spent luck points this time
I just realized that they could have spent luck and changed the game significantly. I think they may have still lost in the end, but it would have made the game more interesting. Next game, challenge them more and remind them that they have the power to rewrite the game reality a bit.

This session was a harder game to run, but I had a certain amount of control that I didn't exercise at first. I'm interested in finding out their reaction to retreating from the warband cave instead of standing their ground and thinking they were invincible against any odds. I've got the next game scheduled in April, so stay tuned for more.

Onward and upward!

The Story of the Warband Stronghold

The second session of the RPG for kids happened this past Saturday. We had a new player who couldn't make it last time, bringing the group up to 5 kids between 6 and 8 years old, and the entire group dynamic changed. I feel like I worked extra hard to run this game, and the actual play session was shorter than last time.

Hairfoot Rogue.

Getting Up to Speed
Our new player brought a character sheet for his 8th level Dragonborn Ranger from the game he plays with older kids. Alarm bells went off in my head, and I knew this would be a tougher session to run than last time. I took him aside and talked to him about how this game was different: different rules, no classes, and no dragonborn characters. I offered him the 4 pregens I had left, and he chose the Hairfoot Rogue.

I had him roll Thievery to gather rumors that he could pass on to the rest of the party, and to show him how the mechanics worked. I think he got the mechanics pretty quickly. My daughter wanted to name this session "The Haunted Church", so I gave him a rumor about a roadside church back toward civilization. People went in to pray and many times they didn't come out. We went back to join the rest of the party.

They skipped the church...

Decision Time
The party marched their orc prisoner back to town and handed him off to the magistrate. Yes, there were renewed calls of "kill the prisoner" on the way, and our new rogue decided to play to stereotype and try to loot and steal everything. Sometimes a little RPG experience is dangerous.

Everyone had a chance to reintroduce their characters. Everyone took the same characters they had last time, which avoided the "I want to play the archer this time!" discussion that I feared. Everyone's character slept and got mana and hit points back.

The joking and disruption kept going. There was confusion about who already knew each other. I explained (twice) that the rogue had been part of the pre-game adventure of killing the dragon, but he had been delayed in town and couldn't investigate the Haunted Guardpost with the rest of them. We got into a metagame discussion about where the rumor about the church came from. It was a struggle to keep everyone's attention, and the Rogue's "I want to rob the rich houses in town" refrain didn't help. It's a village. You're in the richest house in town; it's called the inn, and you're lucky it got two stars.

In the morning, the party saw the magistrate mount a horse and head east toward more civilized lands with his orc prisoner in tow. They also had a decision to make. I gave them the option of checking out the haunted church, or following up on the information the orc prisoner gave about the rest of the orc warband holing up in a cave a few hours' walk past the guardpost. Since they got it in their heads that the orcs may attack sooner rather than later, they chose to check out the warband.

The Approach

...and went for the cave with the orcs.

We went to the map and handwaved the travel time. They saw an orc guard in a stand of trees that masked the cave entrance, just off the road exactly where the orc prisoner had said. The rogue went off ahead, got the drop on the guard, questioned him at daggerpoint ("Wulgash leads here. We will destroy the town, and you will die!"), then slit his throat. Having Rogue 6, skill in Dagger, Interaction, and Thievery, and Exceptional Rogue makes ridiculous numbers much more common.

In looting the body, they only found an orcish sword, which they kept. They found no other guards outside, so they approached the cave entrance. The Druid checked for tracks and counted at least 20 orcs who have been here for at least 2 weeks. The Wizard cast Light on his staff so everyone would be able to see when they went in. The Rogue wanted to zip off ahead (and probably die), and he wanted the Wizard's staff so he could see.

The Rogue wanted to use his Interaction to talk the Wizard out of his staff. I wouldn't allow using a social ability against another PC, especially since the Wizard's player was out of the room at the time. I suggested asking the Wizard for his staff and seeing how that went. There was asking and pleading, then the Rogue got stuck on "stabbing the Wizard in the butt". Time to refocus away from that rathole, as everyone was talking too loudly to hear anyone else anyway.

The Archer looked into the cave with her Incredible Sight, and saw the tunnel take a left after about 30 feet. On the wall opposite the entrance, she saw a half dozen arrow slits. An arrow narrowly missed her, and suddenly all butt-stabbing was forgotten.

The Best Laid Plans End With "Get 'Em!"

How deep is your dungeon?

Everyone piled into the cave and started shooting at the arrow slits or running to the turn to get under cover. About half the party was hit with arrows. The Archer and the Rogue managed to get a dagger and arrow through the slits, but they didn't know how well they did. The Wizard rolled really well with a Firebolt, and the entrance filled with a lovely charred orc smell.

They turned the corner and saw that the tunnel took a right about 30 feet in. At the corner, there were 2 rough curtains covering a section of both walls. One of the boys came up with, "Maybe there's a naked lady behind the curtain!" and suddenly everybody wanted to get to the curtains. At this point I kept going around the table asking what everyone was doing, and fighting to keep everyone quiet until it was their turn. After everyone had their say, I moved all the minis and resolved everything at once. It worked fairly well, I think.

Unfortunately, there was a trap in the hallway. The floor dropped about a foot, and spikes flew out to catch the Warrior, Monk, and Rogue in the shins for a few points of damage each. All but the Rogue fell down - again the high Rogue score saves the day. Four orcs came out from behind one of the curtains, from what looked like a kitchen. They had aprons and meat cleavers and charged the trapped characters. Shouts came from around the corner and further down the tunnel.

The party recovered, and killed half the orcs in one round. Another half dozen came around the corner. The Rogue asked if he could loot the body. I said "Sure, but these two will get free attacks on you. Still want to do it?" He declined. The party heard horns sounding further down the tunnel, and more sounds of orcs arming for battle. The Druid feared his estimate of the number of orcs was woefully low.

The Better Part of Valor

The second dozen got the point across.

More orcs turned the corner the next round. Some loved it, yelling "Bring 'em on!" Some realized that there were another few dozen orcs coming around that corner. Some were curious what was behind the other curtain. I kept pulling out orc minis and putting them on the map. Cooler heads prevailed and the party decided to retreat.

The Rogue started thinking about making traps. I told him anything would take time, but he could improvise something. He ran outside the cave and looked for rocks above the cave mouth to hopefully cause some damage and deter pursuit when the orcs came streaming out of the cave.

The Archer took an orc body, still smouldering from the fatal Firebolt hit, dragged it over to the arrow slits and stuffed the corpse's arm into one. The smoke from the body gave the party some cover from the archers behind the wall. In my mind, that was the awesome play of the day, right there.

The Monk used Athletics and Acrobatics to flip over to the other curtain, take a look behind it (a storeroom full of questionable foodstuffs), and jump back to join the party on the way out the door. Everyone else executed a decent fighting withdrawl, giving the Rogue a few rounds to work.

Not quite this, but effective.

The party ran out of the cave, a couple dozen orcs hot on their heels. The Rogue tripped the rockfall, which didn't kill anyone but gave the pursuers pause. The Archer and Wizard dropped a couple before they charged through the trees and lost sight of the cave. The orcs started arguing about whether or not to give chase. The party ran their legs off and escaped.

Back in Dragonville
They made it back to town in the evening to lick their wounds and try to fence their orc sword. Woo. At this point, the game broke up. They were more interested in playing with each other than playing the game, so I let them go. I did mention that the magistrate came back to town that evening and offered the party the use of the guardpost if they wanted to fix it up. So next time, they have more choices about what to do.

Everyone was scattered, trying to be funny, not paying attention to the game, and definitely talking too loudly. They're young, I get that. It was a full moon, which may have had something to do with it. I didn't have as much fun as I did the first time. Keeping everyone on the same page and repeating everything a few times so everyone knew what was happening got old quickly.

I've got some more thoughts and reactions on this session, but I think I'll break those out into another post like I did last time.

Thanks for reading!

Kids RPG: Lessons Learned and Ideas for Next Time

I had many things work well and a few things work not as well in the Kids RPG. Consider this post as notes to myself for next game, though if you get inspired to use something here for your game, I won't stop you.

1) Doing Something Trumps Explaining Anything
This is a no-brainer, but it came back to me loud and clear as we started. Explaining how to hit someone is boring. Rolling to torch an ogre with a fire bolt, even if you have no idea how to do it, is exciting. Which one will kids talk about between now and the next game?

2) Make Simpler Character Sheets
What I had would be appropriate for adult gamers, but the skill list got in the way. So I'll remove them and keep just the relevant trained skills for next time. If I can fit characters on 3x5 cards, I'll do that. The less there is to look at, the better off we'll all be.

3) Prepare, But Be Flexible
Now that they know they can control the world with Luck Points, I expect there will be a run on spending Luck Points next game. I'll need enough structure to get them oriented, since they immediately ran amok with the village name and deciding what to do next, but I'll need to be able to change anything at the drop of a Luck Point.

4) Use Glass Beads As Luck Point Tokens
I found a stash of glass beads that I picked up years ago at a yard sale. I washed them and picked out the mirror-finish ones to use as Luck Points. This gave everyone the visceral feel of receiving something when their die exploded twice, and of spending something when making changes to the story. I will do this again, though I may need more beads if I have a full table.

5) Stay Flexible With Initiative
I had visions of using the Marvel "act, then decide who goes next" initiative system. I'm not sure they're ready for that yet, so I'll keep with going around and getting everyone's move, then ordering it as logically as possible, rolling dice to break ties. It seemed to work fairly well last time without too many interruptions, so we'll stick with next time.

6) Let Them Think Fairly
I may have overstepped my purview as GM last time a couple of times, but then again I'm dealing with 6-8 year olds. I stepped in when one of the youngest players wanted to kill the orc that surrendered, and I suggested that they take him back to the village to face justice. I also gave some structure to the treasure division process. They were tired after 2 hours of gaming, so I can understand things getting a little heated while divvying loot. I kept asking, "Do you think that's fair?" and I think they caught on after the first few times. Part of me wants to step back and let them sort it out, but part of me fears a Lord of the Flies solution which wouldn't be good for anyone. I'll keep an eye on myself in these situations and make the best calls I can.

7) Don't Make It Too Easy
Yes, I fudged exactly once. I didn't want to kill my daughter's character during the second round of combat, so I'll plead guilty to that one. Once that luck point was spent to give the orcs clubs instead of swords (losing the +2 for skill and a point of base damage), the combat really turned in the party's favor. I'll need to get a little creative with challenges for next time. This adventure was a complete muckle in 3 acts, and I think that worked for a first adventure. I'll need to ride the Wizard's player to keep track of Mana spent, letting him decide between flashy and pragmatic. There's more to balance here, so suffice to say I'll try some new approaches next time to challenge them, and maybe work a little more toward non-combat intrigue.

Anything you've discovered that you can add to this list?

PAX East: Goals Checklist

I had a few goals for PAX East. Nothing major, but I had a mental checklist of stuff I wanted to do. I didn't want to hold myself to much more than one scheduled event per day, and a major part of congoing is meeting people.

In the spirit of geekiness, I decided to score myself on how well I met my goals at PAX East this year.

Seriously, don't you
consider this art?

Getting Books Signed: 100%
I brought exactly two game books for signatures, and I took care of both. I nabbed Jeremy Keller on Saturday and he signed my Kickstarter copy of Technoir for me. And I had to leave Fred Hicks alone for a few minutes with Don't Rest Your Head, but I have now witnessed how to sign a book with creativity and intent. I may have brought something for Steve Jackson to sign had he been in attendance this year. Other than that, I'm totally satisfied with how the fanboy portion of my con went.

View from the panel stage.

Speaking at the Panel: 100%
I had to limit myself to only 100% here, since this experience kicked ass. We had 7 people on stage, most of whom had never met in person before. We had a few points where we talked over each other, but by and large we took turns and continually added to everyone else's comments. I think the audience got a great deal of useful advice and information, and I met some very cool people both on and off stage. I'm already planning pitches for panels next year.

Playing Games: 80%
I didn't play as much as I wanted to play. Part of that came from leaving so early. I wanted to break out Car Wars: The Card Game and I never ended up doing that, so I docked myself some points there. I did play a game that I had never heard of before (Cards Against Humanity) and a game that I wanted to try out (Lords of Waterdeep), so a few bonus points there. I didn't win, but winning isn't the point. Playing with friends old and new is.

Lords of Waterdeep.

Brent's game of OD&D entertained the heck out of me. The first encounter against 5 stirges ended in a TPK. We couldn't roll to save our lives. With the second party we owned the rest of the dungeon. Looting the fallen bodies of the first party helped, as did the assistance of Trapfinder, our hireling. And rolling a cask of oil down the stairs and lighting up the huge spider below totally made the game for me. Win.

Meeting People and Networking: 90%
I had a few people to catch up with, including the Gamer Assembly folk and several people I've met on Google Plus. I missed exactly 2 people out of a list of roughly 20, so there's the rationale for the score. I had no expectations of handing out piles of business cards, as I tend to want deeper communication than the speed dating of traditional networking events. But I am thrilled to have put a few cards in the hands of independent game designers. We'll see if anything tangible comes of those contacts in the months to come.

Everyone pictured has
a love of gaming in common.

Hanging With Friends: 100%
Here's where PAX scored big. With all the kids and work and day-to-day responsibilities of life, we need a weekend to tell the world exactly where to go. I've got the best friends on the planet. We stayed up talking until 2AM while the cutthroat game of Dominion unraveled at the table behind us. Being invited into games when you've never met before, or only met once or twice, can't be beat. I felt a sense of instant belonging. I could have stayed in the Tabletop area all weekend, drifting from table to table and just making new friends who all share the strong desire to play games. Just hanging out at PAX brings out the magic in the community.

AGGREGATED TOTAL: 94%
PAX East kicks it. Hard. I made some friends, shook hands with some potential business contacts, played some games, experienced new things, talked until my throat was raw, had some books signed, and left with the sadness that endings always cause. It was huge and loud and tiring, but I always felt at home.

I can't wait for next year.

PAX East: Saturday Retrospective

Saturday was my last day of PAX East, sad to say. Family trumps con, and sickness trumps family. More on that later.

A view across the expo hall.
It was early, so the crowd was thin.

I got rolling for 10AM and dropped my bag in the car, then hit the hall. I floated around the expo hall for a bit. I realized that the Chessex booth is the penny candy store for gamers - so many small shiny treasures for short money, and you can't possibly eat just one.

I got in line for the Campaign Doctors panel and schmoozed for a bit. IRCing and talking to Tresi who was right next to me in line was surreal and laughably sad in a film-noir-mime sort of way. But then again, living in the future is awesome.

And of course E tweets that she's giving away Think Geek freebies as soon as the panel opens up. I drop my stuff and run over to grab something for my daughter and sneak back in just after the panel intros. For the record, it was a China Sackboy, which she immediately categorized somewhere between Lego and Polly Pocket.

Generic Advice #11:
"Secure that shit, Hudson."

The panel rocked. I re-met a few audience members who went to our panel the previous night. This panel was shorter than ours, but the questions and answers were very similar so I guess we all know a little something about this RPG thing. Or at least we've learned the same lessons even though they were born of very different experiences. Universal truths in RPGs will resurface in another article over here, I'm sure.

I chatted up the panelists and handed out a few cards. Luke says he's always looking for editors, so here's hoping he didn't lose my card. I'll be sending out electronic thank yous in the next day or two to follow up. Once again, the same crew of Enforcers was working in Merman. It was good to have a second chance to hang out with those guys.

After that, I hit the expo hall for a bit. I met up with Ben and Rob, but Becky was working too hard for me to introduce myself. Margaret Weis just came back to her booth, so I seized the lull and had a fanboy moment with Jeremy Keller when he signed my copy of Technoir. Win!

After that, I could feel the fatigue building so I decided to find a table. Only problem was there were no tables in the Tabletop Free Play areas. So I did the next best thing. I watched a demo of Race To Adventure (a very cool game based on the Spirit of the Century RPG which will be kickstarting next month), then hit up Fred Hicks to sign the copy of Don't Rest Your Head that he gave me last year.

Sign your books like
you MEAN it, people!

If you have the chance to have Fred sign a copy of Don't Rest Your Head, do so. It is the creative yardstick against which I will hold against all future signings.

Fred and Rob Donoghue (both co-Presidents of Evil Hat Productions) invited me to play Lords of Waterdeep. It was on my "strong maybe" list to demo, so I stuck around. And in a true knife-twist, Rob screwed me out of 20 victory points just before my last move. Nicely played. It wouldn't have made a difference in the final tally as I was still fairly far behind from figuring out where to focus my efforts in the game, but it would have possibly gotten me up to third instead of fourth. Fun game, and a great discussion afterward. Rob, I'd love to see the Building Upgrade tweak, as I think that'll tighten things up.

I found this sign on the wall
in the Kickstarter room.
That's class, pure & simple.

I walked up to the Kickstarter room, but it was half-empty. Only the electronic games folk were there. And Cards Against Humanity was sold out, much to Dan's chagrin.

I hit my wall. The exhaustion caught up with me, and I decided to head home around 6, far earlier than I wanted to. Had I the energy there would have been games aplenty, including Car Wars: The Card Game that I had promised to a few people. Sorry about the early bail everyone, but my body had had enough.

And it turns out, what I thought was allergies turned out to be a cold. On Sunday I cracked my way through The Hallelujah Chorus once and skipped he second service. My mother bailed on brunch for the same reason, and nobody wanted to get my grandparents sick, so I crashed in the afternoon.

The cold explains the exhaustion, and I'm still recovering after having it for a week. I apologize if I infected anyone. Extra apologies to Tresi - that'll learn you to hand me your new iPad and explain FreeMarket to me. Next year I'm thinking of making a T-Shirt saying "PAX Pox: Patient Zero" and if I'm not sick I'll fake sneeze my way through the con. And then I thought why not turn it into a viral con game? I'll check with Charley and Mark to see if there's anything written down about the Zombie viral game from that long-past Intercon.

I thought I would tack on a list of con goals here, but I think I'll separate it out into another post to make it easier to keep score. And I've got a more philosophical PAX post coming after that. Stay tuned.

Getting The Band Back Together.

So I just ran my first game of D&D 3.5 in Adris in about 5 years. I was a little nervous going into it - all the "What if I lost my GM mojo?" fears battled in my head. I shouldn't have worried - it was just like putting on the comfiest, rattiest T-Shirt I own. It's nice to know that my GM skills haven't atrophied much at all, and that the players are just as into the game now as the last time we played.

We had 5 hours to work with, and we hired our nanny to handle the kids (three 5-year-olds, and one at 19 months). The first half of the game was reading through character sheets and catching up with what the heck is going on to figure out what to do next. They decided to go for the Black Cube, so they did what research they could and tracked it down to the Astral Plane using both the directional ability of the cubes to find each other and an augmented Find The Path spell. So they Plane Shifted the next morning after gorging themselves on chicken at Martha's. They also found a small shrine set up next to the 10' section of wall they called into existence with Major Creation on Adril's grant of land. They also found a column of cavalry heading east, assumedly to help fight off the goblins the next morning.

One Plane Shift later and they hit the Astral Plane with its endless swirling grey mist. They went that-a-way toward the cube. Eventually they saw a lump of land floating in the void. They got closer and discovered a castle on a piece of land. It had 3 boats moored around the base, so they decided to teleport under one of the boats. As luck would have it, it was a drow ship that could carry about a hundred troops across the trackless void. They found two other makes of ship, and it wasn't long before they discovered humans and githyanki running around.

They spotted a tunnel further "down" under the castle, so Team Sneaky (Mei and Kelsik) went invisible and took out the two guards. A lockpicking and brief scuffle with 4 more guards brought them into a room with a corridor leading out to a central shaft going up and down. They went up toward the castle and the cube. Asalia scouted ahead with her bound crystal shard, and found a large room filled with three camps of troops: 30 drow, 30 githyanki, and 20 humans.

They teleported further up the shaft to avoid the carnage and loss of surprise. At the top of the shaft they found a courtyard with even more troops hanging out. They triangulated their detection spells and figured out which balcony use. Pandora altered her appearance to look like a drow soldier, and Team Sneaky followed her invisibly up to the balcony and through the door. Inside they found the quartermaster's office, bustling with 10 drow and 2 githyanki. 2 drow sentries floated by a closed door in the ceiling. Detections pointed through the ceiling door, so they decided to engage.

The room had 4 doors and the ceiling door. Each could be barred from the inside, so Team Sneaky did just that. Pandora shoved a drow out the door to the courtyard, and everyone barred their doors as the rest of the party teleported into the room. After the surprise round and one round of carnage, the party owned the room and contemplated the ceiling door. They're on a clock now since everyone in the courtyard now knows there's something odd happening in that room...

And we decided to pick it up next time.

One thing I noticed tonight: only two offensive spells were cast the whole night. There was a lightning ball in the guard room when they first entered the room in the basement, and a wall of fire to clear out the guards by the ceiling door. Magic flew around thick and furious, but it was mostly divination, teleportation, and sneaky stuff like invisibility. This group has no aversion to blowing things up, but I found it interesting that more magical air time was given to avoiding combat than dominating combat.

Let's see if they can recover the Black Cube this time, or will it slip through their fingers again?

PAX East, Friday quick thoughts.

Traffic on the Pike sucks. I knew that, but I ended up getting to the hall around 10:30.

... Holy crap, that hall is friggin' huge.
I did a quick walk through and drooled on the custom gamer tables - I really like the Valet model and I think I can make it fit in the office - and broke through to the other side. I followed the big banner for Tabletop Gaming and came around the wall.

... Holy crap, =this= hall is friggin' huge.
And it's filled with empty tables and a few stalls hawking games. Great place to set up shop and meet people. I gamed with Quinn, Lucas, Ben, Dan, Keith, Todd, Jeremy, and Joe. Zombie Dice, Car Wars the card game, Small World, and Ascension are all really cool.

Poked around and saw the huge lines upstairs for the panels. Might try that today, but having more fun just gaming.

Today I'll shoot for a game of Beans. That should be happy in a con setting. I'm just having fun surfing the crowd and putting faces with twitter IDs. I feel a little weird about finding people and introducing myself - online peripheral conversations don't provide much to hang a real-life conversation off of... But the coolness of the people I've seen makes the awkwardness worth it.

Still need to shower and head over to the hall. I'm not stressing over being in lines - it's too much fun letting the situation drive what I end up doing.

So far, so good.

More later.

After-Action Report: Iron GM as Player

For those of you who weren't following along, I didn't get to compete in the Iron GM competition on Saturday. Since I decided to go after pre-reg was closed, I registered for the con Saturday morning as a walk-in. By then, 10 GMs had already signed up, and I was one of 2 walk-ins on the wait list hoping for more players to show up. My bad on that one - next year I'll pre-reg for sure.

So I loitered around the Iron GM stage hoping for a registered GM to suddenly develop an acute allergic reaction to room service and not show. No such luck. I got pressed into service as a minion and got rewarded with some free picks off the prize table, which was primarily White Wolf's World of Darkness and Exalted books. I fetched T-Shirts (and scored one for myself), I handled paperwork and release forms, I lined the GMs up and handed the intro cards over to Lou for the introductions. I slipped into stage manager mode and did whatever needed to be done - mostly GM wrangling.

That gave me some insight into the GM pool. Our 12 potential GMs were from upstate NY, NH, CT, MA, and RI. Most boasted over 20 years of gaming experience (Old Sk00lers Unite!). All were male. T-shirt sizes were predominantly XL, though they ranged from L to XXXXL (too bad they only printed XXXL shirts). Math jokes abounded around years of experience, and there were 2 references to the age of dirt.

The question "Why will you win Iron GM?" separated the men from the boys, which for the most part played out during the competition. About half were complete jokes ("I already paid the players" or "So that guy won't beat me again"), but the other half were introspective and downright philosophical. "Because someone has to win" struck me as very Zen and very accurate, even though it was a joke. "Because stories must be told" hit the nail on the head (thank you @brickk).

That's the point. We tell stories. More than that, we set the stage and let the players tell the story of their PCs. And that takes trust and faith, especially in a convention setting.

First gut-level impressions: Bleedin' Hell, those speakers blew my eardrums out. Table 2 sat directly in front of one of the speakers. I can understand calling attention to the event, but when there's a line of gamers saying they can't hear themselves think, I think that gets more negative publicity than the positive curiosity. They recorded a Total Confusion-specific song, which probably had some pretty cool lyrics if I could comprehend them over the bassline and mental shutdown from overall volume.

Second impressions: Ceremony works, but keep it moving and have enough helpers available to direct your GMs. Eye candy works for Vegas, but the whole fantasy chick awarding Mardi Gras beads made of dice on a natural 20 didn't really make sense to our table. That didn't stop one of the other players (older than me, BTW) from faking a 20 just to get a closer look at their costumes. And it certainly didn't stop me from grabbing some necklaces for my daughter.

With the GMs announced and tables chosen at random, the GMs offered their tables different systems if they wanted - mostly Pathfinder, but one D&D 4 and one FUDGE variant were offered, both shot down. We ended up with 9 D&D 3.5 and 1 Pathfinder table. From that point until the start of play, for the entire hour of prep time the GMs could only say 3 words to the players. Written notes worked, pantomime was funny, but only 3 words spoken. I think that rule would have hurt since I'm a very collaborative GM and I was looking forward to character creation with the players.

The secret ingredients came next. Weretiger, Winter Storm, and Wounded Pride all needed to appear in the adventure. Interesting mix, but fairly easy to pull together in a myriad of ways. We had minimal guidance on character creation, but we pulled together a party of 9th level characters. We had a halfling druid riding his snow leopard companion, an elven rogue without a tongue, a half-orc cleric, a dwarven transmuter with a mighty 4 charisma, and a human bard who tended to show her 17-Charisma-based-*ahem*-"assets" to get her way.

Now here's the part that sticks in my craw: I introduced the party to the GM because he never asked about races, classes, or levels. He gave us "above 5th, balanced party please" in a note, but he never checked with us to make sure we didn't make a thieves' guild like we talked about. In retrospect, this baffled me the most about our GM, but it made a certain amount of sense that he didn't care given the game he ran for us.

The character intros were handwaved with "You're all orphans and you're doing a job for your adoptive father, the Lord of Spring." Works for me. The scenario seemed straightforward as well: "I got drunk with the Lady of Winter and she swiped the seeds of spring from me so spring will never come - can you get them back and not let anyone know?" In 15 minutes we were off to the adventure.

Or so we thought. We got in touch with the jealous sister for help in exchange for the Lady of Winter's throne. We journeyed overland to the town outside the ice castle, encountering a single winter wolf one night. A baleful polymorph into a bunny and a healthy throttling by the half-orc ended that encounter in half a round.

Once in town, our activities centered around the smoke shop and the troop of pre-pubescent female weretigers known as the Grrl Scouts. Yes, they sold cookies, which the Lady of Winter loved. We got the weretigers hooked on catnip and their guardians playing with the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, bought a pile of cookies, and headed back to the smoke shop to deal with the forgetful, perpetually stoned shopkeeper. Stoners can be frustrating in real life. To play that frustration out in a game that's supposed to be fun just didn't work. Decent joke, but overplayed.

We eventually got polymorphed into Grrl Scouts to gain entrance to the Ice Castle. We treated the cookies with a potion of gaseous form and a healthy supply of special herbs, making the Lady of Winter compliant and gaseous. We got the idea to put her gaseousness into any container we could find, thus separating her into tiny bits, and when the effect wore off, her sister could ascend to the throne and clean the mess in the throne room.

We did a little dungeon crawl to recover the seeds of spring, then needed to escape through the ice. Summon Nature's Ally to the rescue - fire worm tunneled through the ice and gave us our escape hatch. We rode the ice flume out into the chasm/moat around the castle and almost died slamming into the opposite wall. The druid managed to get an Entangle off to keep the party from falling to certain death.

I was surprised by the two very brief combats presenting near zero risk to the characters. I think the ice chute of death was cool and completely character-driven to boot. And the idea of weretiger Grrl Scouts was simply inspired.

The rules stretched like taffy to support the story, the table talk was raunchy ("I ain't eatin' that rabbit after the druid injected it with his special sauce."), at points we cracked jokes more than we gamed, and I had a great time.

The scoring dragged a little, and many players lost interest while their score cards were tabulated on stage. Of the 4 GMs that I eyeballed as possible winners before the competition, I picked 2 of the top 3. I didn't ask, but I hope the GMs got some feedback based on the score cards. It's never a good thing to waste an opportunity to learn about yourself.

In short, I'm really looking forward to being on the other side of the GM screen next year.

And I've had some thoughts about smaller, game store based competitions to be used as fundraisers for contenders. Not sure if that idea has any legs, but I'm planning on picking brains via email, and we'll see what falls out.

I'm not sure I would do anything differently. It was my first experience at Iron GM. Heck, it was the first con I've been to since I did ops at Intercon C, I think. I would have liked to see some WotC books and/or a few indie games on the prize table, but that can change in future years.

Now onward to PAX!