Convention Games

[Keith Senkowski]

Hey,

So I will be running my very first scheduled convention game (4 hours) at Dreamation '05 and I'm a bit concerned.  I've never run a Con game outside of small demos and I'm not sure what to expect.  I've played in both good and bad ones before, but it has been a while.  I'm looking for some do/don't type of information here.

To give you a bit of a lowdown of what I have planned, it is supposed to be a cross between a murder mystery and Alien (the first one).  I was thinking of having the premade characters all be strangers and maybe having one be the bad guy...

Keith

[Brennan Taylor]

Here are some tips from my experience:

1. A convention scenario needs some very clear, explicit goals for the players to wrap their minds around. You typically have a grab-bag of people who have never gamed together, and they need firm direction to get everyone moving.

2. Pre-working motivations, relationships, and Bangs into the characters from the beginning is a good technique. Anything you mention on the sheet should have direct, planned relevance in the session. There isn't any prep or long-term development, so don't include stuff that isn't going to be important within those four hours.

3. I suggest giving your characters some good strong roleplaying hooks that are easy to understand and portray. As trite as they seem, if a con character embodies a cliche it usually works really well. The player instantly knows how to portray the character, and broad role-playing like this is generally well-received at the table.

4. Keep the game moving. Once you begin, keep things coming at a rapid clip. Folks at a con are gaming all weekend, and making the session active and intense will make it memorable. That's what you want if you are trying to sell a game.