Cons And The Psuedo-Campaign

[jburneko]

There's a rather strange phenomenon I've noticed at my con that I don't know if it's local to this con or if it happens at other cons.  That phenomenon is what I call the pseudo-campaign.  Let me explain.

Any con that's been around regularly for sufficient length has probably developed cliques.  That's just a phenomenon of mass social interactions.  But now imagine that not only are there cliques but that those cliques seem to be using their open con events as a kind of extention of their regular campaign play.

It works like this.  You show up to an event.  The GM pulls pregen characters from what appears to be a stock pile of canon characters and as he puts each on the table he launches into a lengthy explination of that character's past exploits that do not sound like backstory but rather actual play accounts.  As certain points are highlighted two or three of the other players smile and nod knowingly.

As play progressess there are instances where the other players are occassionally engage in fond remenising about what happened the last time that character was in a similar situation.  They may even ofter the newbie advice on how to play the character they've chosen because they know the character better.

Two things I want to make clear.  The "regulars" are not necessarily playing their own characters from a regular campaign.  They are merely intimately familiar with the canon of characters the GM pulls from.  The second thing is that they are not trying to be exclusive.  They are genuinely friendly and helpful to new players, it's just clear that they know A LOT about these characters.

First, has anyone ever encoutered this kind of con play?

Second, is there a use for this structure of play beyond the cliquey-social ones?

Here's my idea.

I was thinking about games that are really best suited to long term play and are hard to demonstrate in a single session.  Games like InSpectres, Trollbabe and The Riddle of Steel.  If we can't actually do long term play in a con environment what if we could attempt to at least capture the sense of momentum and motion these games provide by using a pseudo-campaign structure.  Trollbabe and The Riddle of Steel are most suited to this idea because they actually track character developement with meaninful words (Relationships and SAs) that have game play impact rather than just numbers and second-hand stories.  From here on, I'll use Trollbabe as an example.

So, let's say I'm running three sessions of Trollbabe at a local con.  In the first session I actually have the players go through character creation.  Then we play through a single story.  Presumably over the course of that story the players fool around with assigning and using relationships.  Great.

Now, we come to the second session.  Instead of going through character creation again simply use the characters from the first session.  As you put each on the table to choose from, you can make brief, focused comments of the key relationships for that character.  And again you play, and again the relationships come into play, get added to and change.

Repeat for the third session.

One thing to keep in mind is that this isn't a REAL campaign so continuity issues should go out the window.  If the Trollbabe has Evil Vizier written down as a relationship and in the first game the Trollbabe had wild sex with the vizier then don't freak out if the new player in the second session uses the vizier like a controling father figure.  The point is to capture the sense of motion not actually have the big picture makes sense.

One way to partially aleviate this, and give the new players some creative tools to work with, might be brief (no more than two or three sentences) anotations of each of the relationships written up between the sessions.

What do you think?

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse,

That's an interesting idea. I guess my main question is, how informed are the players of each session regarding the process? One feature of the informal version of this that you describe, as you mentioned, is that some players in the group are in on it. In at least some cases, either the behavior of the "insider" players or the sense of the new person that this character has a past-play history can have a marginalizing effect. The person could well feel under some obligation to "play the character right," which is relatively counter to the spirit of the games that you're thinking of.

Any thoughts on that issue? I don't have an easy answer; to some extent, the continuing-play provides a lesson that the player is supposed to be receiving ("this game is built to enrich itself session by session"), yet the constraining effect of being handed This Guy to Play, who has an actual play history, some of which is on the sheet, is definitely a serious problem in con play, especially for this sort of game.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Ron,

Good Questions.

1) I don't think the "insider" element is something that, in this case, wouldn't be deliberately fostered.  I think, however, that if successful, this method MAY generate an insider crowd as people who decide they like the game and like the GM return again and again.

At that point I don't know what to do.  If it gets too bad, it might be prudent to switch games and start a new game.  At that point those who were loyal to the game may wander away to other things although those loyal to the GM may stick around through anything.

One thing to consider is that the "insider" element may NOT be as bad a thing.  Assuming these people like the game enough to actually get what it's about and how it's played then perhaps the interferance and overstepping of bounds with how newbies play the characters won't be as bad.  In fact, "insiders" may serve as good examples of the style of play these games are meant to foster.

2) Having players be concerned with getting the character "right" may be the bigger problem.  Although, I'm a bit biased because I've actually witnessed this problem in action for Sorcerer.

Me: What are you doing?
Him: Well, I'm a Trained Soldier, I'm Vengefull and my Demon's Need is To Kill People.
Me: Yeah, so what are you doing?
Him: Well, I'm a Trained Soldier, I'm Vengefull and my Demon's Need is To Kill People.

ARGH!

Sorry, just had to revisit that memory.  But unlike Sorcerer where it's tempting to read Score Descripters LIKE personality traits, Trollbabe, if I'm remembering correctly doesn't have any actual descriptors like that.  All they would see is a brief list of past experiences.  Then again if, you get players like my friend Patrick, who's a bit of determinist and would probably argue something along these lines: "Oh, she once killed a priest?  Ah well then obviously she thinks like THIS."  *blink, blink* I really don't get people who base their character's actions on such reasoning.

The Riddle of Steel on the other hand MIGHT suffer from this problem more so, but that could be solved by creating pregen starting characters that have deliberately contradicting SAs, although by the end of the first session they may no longer BE contradicting so we're back to square one.

So, I'm not really sure HOW to solve this problem except really good Poker-Face GMing where you really try to limit the cues, comments and suggestions away from what appear to be leading pieces of information.

Jesse

[Valamir]

I think this would be PERFECT for Inspectres and I heartily recommend we try it at Gen Con.  Start with a start up franchise and a bunch of Interview and call hooks.  Each time the game is demoed use the same franchise and the next hook on the list.  If the demoers try to take a few notes after each demo you'd wind up with a pretty complete history of an actual Franchise and how it evolved over several sessions of play.

Might be interesting to try Universalis this way too.  Mike, I know you've been running an Indie netgames with mix and match players.  How difficult is it to bring people up to speed on where the story's gone so far.  Might be fun to schedule a time for a particular demo (perhaps once each of the 4 days) which continues from the day before.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I just wanted to chime in and say this is a very interesting concept. I run con games (and one-shots) much like this now, as I write the scenario as if it's the last session in a campaign, setting up all sorts of pre-game stuff in order to drive things to a conclusion in the one-shot. Having players do this for me might be a great idea.

[Mike Holmes]

Heh, I've encountered scads of this. The best example I can think of are the "What the Puck? - Productions" group, and other similar gangs like this. Lots of Demo teams seem to be like this.

The "What the Puck" people do CoC, and the characters are obviously ones that they've played a lot. When a game starts, they fill in the empty spots with people from their crew who are hanging about. These folks often make comments like, "Who are you playing?...Oh, she's a total bitch." Usually this is fine, but at a certain point in-jokes and such can really interrupt play. I had a GM stop play and relate an  anecdote about one of the characters once. It was funny, I admit, but there's a definite slipperuy slope. I always want to say that it's not very professional to do that, just before I remember that it's a recreation, not a job.

Anyhow, could this be channeled? Sure. I'd ask players which way they'd prefer to play before a demo. But I think that you'd get plenty of takers.

Actually, the Universalis thing hasn't really been stress tested, yet, as it's only seen two (three?) sessions, and the player base did not vary greatly. I hope to test it more rigorously soon (come by and play one and all). That said, I'm sure it'll work great (but then, I would). :-)

Mike

[Bob McNamee]

I'm all for it, Mike!