SteveCon V - hi octaNe

[GB Steve]

I'm organising SteveCon V in London on, or about October 28th. Since SteveCon III, I've decided that I'll feature an indie game as my game of the Con to run.

Last time it was Starchildren (The Exiles will rise again!) and this time it's going to be octaNe. I've just got hold of a print copy and I'm real excited about the game.

Whilst I'm off practicing my Reverend Horton Heat songs, does anyone have any pointers about running the game as I've not done it before?

If you want to come to the Con, keep an eye on the RPG.net forums for posts about time and place. I know it's the bad place but if you just get what you want and don't look anyone in the eye, you should be alright.

Cheers!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Steve,

Bad place, schmad place. I just spent pages talking GNS over there. Perfectly lovely place.

Anyway, about SteveCon, here are my thoughts on octaNe: go pure gonzo on atmosphere and consider eliminating the GM role. Hazard dice, after all, are just Plot Points looked at from the other direction ... That way, you get a multiple-input escalation session.

Best,
Ron

[GB Steve]

Bad place, schmad place. I just spent pages talking GNS over there. Perfectly lovely place.

Fair enough, the joke's wearing a bit thin.

Anyway, about SteveCon, here are my thoughts on octaNe: go pure gonzo on atmosphere and consider eliminating the GM role. Hazard dice, after all, are just Plot Points looked at from the other direction ... That way, you get a multiple-input escalation session.

Gonzo is good, although I'm a bit worried about going all out in my first session with a new game. Presumably if there is no GM then the game is driven forwards by concerns of the characters.

Usually in a four hour game I'll write the characters and hand them out more or less randomly, with a little concern for player wishes. But I assume that you're expecting everyone to create their own.

I suppose if I set the initial scene, such as "The Klancy gang has just stolen your holy idol, a finger of the true King" or "It's the Decennial Shangri-L.A. to Lust Vegas race, time to head out on the free way", that might work, but I'm a bit worried that more freedom than that might make it hard to get any cohesion in the game.

What's your take on this?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Steve,

That's a good point, but maybe a kind of ... I dunno, "semi-GM" approach might work. I'm thinking of what happens with Universalis when I introduce it to people for the first time. Everyone gets to chime in with all sorts of stuff in the usual Universalis way, what people (all theory-like) might call "Extreme Director Stance," and that stuff. But one person really does represent the rules and often refers to them or helps other people see what their rules-options are. And if anyone seems to need any clarification for whether it's OK to bring the mutant lizards swarming in about right now, this person provides it for them.

Hell - you don't even have to tell them that there's no GM. Just make it possible to them to inflict Hazards upon one another, and use Plot Point yourself for a single "NPC" (who obviously, by the rules, is now your PC).

I like the idea of presenting a very rich situation, like the race. That gives everyone a chance to make up a character and to introduce wild stuff from any direction relative to the race. But the "stolen finger" idea presupposes that the characters are all together-as-one, sort of a team who is now missing their precious finger. What about saying, "The King's finger has been stolen from the so-and-so group?" Then people can make up characters who are involved in any way, up to and including the thief.

Since in octaNE, people have essentially full power to bring in or do anything during their narrations, it seems to me that the more "convergence" upon a single point, the better - which is to say, very different from "let's all go in one direction." Think of it as a big colorful dog-pile rather than a goal-directed A to B deal.

But all that's just my musing, and given that octaNe is so wide open in topic, the real watchword is, float your boat and help the others do that too.

Best,
Ron