L.A. Con Report

[jburneko]

Hello All,

Well, the latest L.A. Con has come and gone.  Out of the three local cons I have attended in the last year I certainly enjoyed this one the most.  As always happens with cons you run across people with the most interesting play styles and quirks and my purpose in writing this is to share some of my more interesting observations and experiences.

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PART I: Games I Ran

First of all I ran 3 sessions of Sorcerer.  This was a severly scaled down version of the Gothic Fantasy game I ran previously.  I brought four pregenerated characters to the table.  Briefly:

A court jester with a possessor demon hosted inside himself.  The demon's need was to publically ridicule moral corruption.  The character's kicker was that he had just walked in on the Lord and Lord's eldest (18) daughter in a lovers embrace.

A thief with an inconspicuous shadow fey demon that lived in his cloak.  The demon's need was to get people lost in the woods.  The character's kicker was that while looting the lord's castle he has been discovered by the Lord's youngest (16) daugter.  This kicker was made slightly more significant to the character through a bit of character backstory but I won't go in to the details.

A swordswoman with a object demon in the form of a very scary sword.  The demon's need was simply to kill people.  This character's kicker was that her twin sister had regularly corresponded with her but all of a sudden the correspondences had stopped.  The key here is that this character's sister was murdered by Lord Fenris's wife.

Finally, I stole the character that never got played through in my original game.  That is, a noble who is actually married to his passer demon.  The demon's need was to collect wedding rings.  The character's kicker was that he's just fallen in love with Lord Fenris's wife.

When writing these characters I realized that some were stronger than others and over the course of play this bore itself out.

Session one was quite a shock.  The players consisted of just two thirteen year old boys.  I was a bit worried, because frankly it never occured to me that I'd have players so young, since I've never seen anyone younger than 16 or so at this particular con.  So, just to insure that I wouldn't get myself or the con in trouble I toned down the content of the game just a bit.  For example, I removed The Court Jester as a play option since his Kicker is a bit explicit.

The interesting part is that these two kids were cousins.  The first was only familiar with D&D.  The second had never roleplayed AT ALL.   D&D Boy played the theif and Newbie Cousin played the man with the undead bride.

First of all D&D Boy seemed to feel a need to convert everything into D&D terms for him to understand it.  In the end he had decided that his character was the Shadowdancer Prestige class from the DMG and began working from there.  D&D Boy, naturally assumed that the point of play was to aquire the gem mentioned in the Kicker.  Of course when, through the use of his demon's abilities, he had absolutely no problem in aquiring the gem and selling it for a forture within the first fifeteen minutes of play, he looked at me quizically trying to figure out what it was he had missed.

Newbie Cousin on the other hand actually seemed to intuitively understand how the game was supposed to be played but through simple newness and nervousness didn't really know what to do and took a long time deciding what action to take.  BUT when he did comit to a course of action it was usually pretty cool.  When confessing his love to Lady Fenris he even offered that he thought it would be cool if his undead wife overheard it.  I was not pleased when D&D Boy scolded him for being stupid enough to suggest something like that.

After about the first half hour of play I realized I was going to have be really heavy handed about things and I started playing the NPCs far more agressively than I usually do.  Eventually, the game came down to the two characters meeting Gorg in full gargoyle form.  The interesting thing was that Newbie Cousin decided he was there to kill it and D&D Boy decided he was there to bind it.

Gorg severly wounded Newbie Cousin in a bit of a fight.  Gorg then asked D&D Boy to finish Newbie Cousin off as part of the binding deal.  D&D Boy kills Newbie Cousin and adds the little touch that he hands his head over to Gorg.  D&D Boy at this point asks me if I have another character for Newbie Cousin to play.  At this point, I smile and say "Well, frankly I don't think you're going to last much longer yourself?"  At which D&D Boy says, "What do you mean? I'm not even injured."  I then remind D&D Boy about the Humanity rules I covered at the beginning of the game.  We roll dice.  Killing Newbie Cousin brings his Humanity to 1 and trying to Bind Gorg brings his Humanity to 0.  So the game ended with Newbie Cousin dead, D&D Boy Evil, and Gorg laughing all the way to the bank.

In the end I think both of the kids enjoyed it and they were just kind of overwhelmed by freedom they had to act.  Even D&D Boy said, although he didn't, that he may sign up for a latter session because he wanted to try and do things differently.

The second session was by far the most enjoyable of the three sessions I ran.  It climaxed in a player organized birthday party for one of the lord's daughter which included a Hamlet-esq scene in which The Court Jester mocks the lord's affair with his own daughter.  The game ended with most of the Fenris family, ruined or dead.  The Court Jester simply decided that he would pack up and move on.  The man with the undead bride assassinated Lord Fenris, banished his wife and married Lady Fenris.  The swordswoman ended up dead and the thief ran away with the youngest of the Lord's daughters to live happily ever after with the shadow fey.

From a social/play style point of view the most interesting thing about this was the player who played the swordswoman.  He seemed to keep wanting to rely on his descriptors and demon's need to dictate his course of action such that almost all of my dialog in the course of play with him went like this:

Me: What do you do?
Him: Well, I'm a Trained Soldier, I'm Angry and my Demon's need is to Kill People.
Me: Yes, but what do you do?
Him: Well, I'm a Trained Soldier, I'm Angry and my Demon's need is to Kill People.
Me: I know that.  But given what's going on, what action are you taking?
Him: Hmmm... My demon's need is to kill poeple.
Me: So, are you going to kill someone?
Him: I don't know but my demon's need is to kill people.

Again, I applied the heavy handed GM technique and it all worked out in the end.

The third session isn't really worth talking about in any detail.  It culimanated in the swordswoman killing both Lady Fenris and Gorg.  The man with the undead bride mourned the loss of his true love but ultimately reaffired the "relationship" with his wife by taking the wedding ring from Lady Fenris's dead body and giving it to his wife.  The thief was also involved in this game and he ended up simply fleeing the land never to return.

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Part II: Games I Played

I only played in two sessions this con.  The first was a midnight game of table-top Vampire.  Unfortunately, this game devolved in to that strange style of play I have yet to come to understand.  Basically, we were seven vampires of different clans who ended up getting sent to the future.  And all there was to the game was us wandering around "in character" marvelling at the GMs presentation of what the future of the World of Darkness will be like after all the major conflicts in all the games are resolved.  That's it.  No conflicts.  No quests.  No villains to over come.  Just interacting with random NPCs, wandering around and research to figure out how things got this way.  After four hours the GM said, well, you're all free to make new lives here.  And that was it.  Game over.

Seriously, is this just a con phenomenon and the result of bad GMing?  Or does anyone out there play like this on regular basis.  If so, why?  I'm seriously curious.  At each con, I inevitably end up in a game like this and each time I try to find the "fun" angle and I just can't do it.  What am I missing?

The second game I played in was a game of Everway.  Now this was enjoyable.  Now, my understanding is that Everway tends to be very Star Trek like and this game lived up to that image.  First there was a long period of just pure exploration.  We were learning how this strange new world culturally and politically worked.  But all of this exploration culminated in one very DIFFICULT moral chioce we had to make.  And it was difficult.  I'm still not entirely comfortable with the choice we made and this game will certainly last in my memory for a long time.  

My only disappointment in this game was that we didn't use the system more.  We never once consulted the cards and the GM didn't really ever ask us what our scores were.  On the plus side we did an abrievated version of the character generation processes where we went around the table and made up a brief backstory for our characters using five preassigned vision cards.

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I also manged to finally pick up a copy of The Whispering Vault, but that's neither here nor there.

I hope that was insightful and interesting.

Jesse

[WildElf]

The second session was by far the most enjoyable of the three sessions I ran.  It climaxed in a player organized birthday party for one of the lord's daughter which included a Hamlet-esq scene in which The Court Jester mocks the lord's affair with his own daughter.  The game ended with most of the Fenris family, ruined or dead.  The Court Jester simply decided that he would pack up and move on.  The man with the undead bride assassinated Lord Fenris, banished his wife and married Lady Fenris.  The swordswoman ended up dead and the thief ran away with the youngest of the Lord's daughters to live happily ever after with the shadow fey.

As the player of the Jester in that game, I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed that session the most, Jesse.

That was my first time playing Sorcerer (aside making a character for an aborted game).  I certainly had a blast.  That was, by a wide margin, the best game I played at the con. Though I only played one other game that wasn't cancelled that day, so that comparison doesn't mean much, it was quite fun.  My favorite part was meeting with the Lord, getting possessed by the demon, and then skirting the limits of prudent speech afterwards.

You mentioned that you've run the scenario at least a few times before.  If I see S&S on the next year's con's list, would it likely be the same scenario?

It's good to see a few people trying to put in some variety into the convention list of games, aside from the overwhelming choices of D&D and GURPS.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse!

I've been missing you at the Forge lately, so it's good to see you back.

Regarding the Sorcerer play, I dunno what to say beyond "Thanks," and deputizing you as one of the Prime Sorc Demon GM Dudes.

Since I avoid the kind of play that you experienced in the Vampire game, I guess I just spread my hands and say, "It's a mystery to me too." Sounds like the priority is Setting Exploration, sub-class Future Look, with some Character Exploration being the province of the players.

As for Everway, I'm interested in the non-cards play you describe. It's interesting ... both Everway and Amber have pretty formal Karma-based systems as the "essential" foundation for resolution, but in actual play, it seems as if Drama is used not only as an override but as a replacement. (Actually, I'm over-stating this a bit - in Amber, the Karma system really is the foundation, whereas in Everway, the group is encouraged to synthesize Karma, Drama, and Fortune to taste.)

Since I think the Fortune deck is one of the neater aspects of Everway, it's sort of a bummer to see it jettisoned.

WildElf, welcome to the Forge, and I'm glad you enjoyed Sorcerer. If you have any questions or other interests about the game, drop by the Adept Press forum.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

You mentioned that you've run the scenario at least a few times before.  If I see S&S on the next year's con's list, would it likely be the same scenario?

I'm glad you enjoyed the game.  When I refer to running the scenario in the past, I refer mainly to the expanded version I ran with my own players, the session I ran prior to the one you played in, and some light playtesting I did with a couple of my players to just gather some various ideas about where the four characters might go.

When it comes to the actual con, I try not to repeat myself, either in game or scenario.  However, since I'm very much discovering that I prefer to GM over play, I'm considering running four sessions of games instead of three and making Sorcerer a staple.  That is, I'll run 2 sessions of Sorcerer, plus 2 sessions of some other game that I'll swap out every con.

My overall goal is try and build a reputation as a reliably fun and entertaining GM.  However, I think swaping games every con is working a bit to my detriment since people seem to be used to a GM sticking primarily to one game, maybe two at most.  So, I figure if I have one game that I DO always play plus a set of rotating games people are more likely to remember who I am.

Jesse

[jburneko]

As for Everway, I'm interested in the non-cards play you describe. It's interesting ... both Everway and Amber have pretty formal Karma-based systems as the "essential" foundation for resolution, but in actual play, it seems as if Drama is used not only as an override but as a replacement. (Actually, I'm over-stating this a bit - in Amber, the Karma system really is the foundation, whereas in Everway, the group is encouraged to synthesize Karma, Drama, and Fortune to taste.)

It's interesting that you mention both Everway and Amber because running Amber LARPs is what this particular GM usually does and is well known at the con for.  I've even played in them.  I got the distinct impression from the two games that I played under her as a GM, and a couple of In Nomine games I played with her as a player that she really sees "System" as only being necessary to arbitrate life and death situations.

Her Amber LARPs are pretty much built on inter-character conflict and so the focus of the game is mostly the players first wandering around getting to know people, then there's usually a period were aliances are formed and the whole thing climaxes in some kind of decision that has to be made based on who we trust, who we think is lying.  The game I played in was a Throne War game wrapped in a murder mystery.

As I said the Everway game was a long period of pure exploration with no real conflicts, obstacles or challenges.  It was just us exploring the world to understand how it ticked.  Then, basically, through the introduction of an NPC and a conflict caused by that NPC we were asked to pass judement on that world.  I got the distinct impression that she was only willing to draw a card from the fate deck should our choice have been to attack the NPC and her cohorts.  Where as, I would have drawn a card regardless of what solution we attempted to implement.

Jesse

[Balbinus]

Re the Vampire game.  I think it's courageous (and generous) of Ron to try to find some way of categorising it but I have never yet met anyone who enjoyed that kind of thing.

What I think it is is a kind of bad narrativism.  Not narrativism in the sense commonly used here but a kind of awful storytelling gm who thinks that narrativism consists of narrating all your cool ideas to the players, who are essentially an audience.  The point of play is to appreciate the coolness of the GM's world.  Storyitelling in that the GM tells a story and the players listen.

IMO it's dysfunctional and bad GMing.  Nothing more, nothing less.  There is nothing for the players to do because if they could act, they could change things and the GM's world is too cool to change.  It's a GM power trip.

One of the reasons so many people loathe (and I use that word intentionally) narrativism is that many people out there think that this kind of game is what narrativism is about.  Play through one GM power trip where nothing you do has any meaning, where you are utterly deprotagonised, have it explained to you that this was a more sophisticated "narrativist" game and it's no surprise you have kneejerk hostility next time you hear the term.

It's why I strongly dislike the term "storyteller" game.  It implies a teller of the story and an audience.  That is just not remotely what narrativism is about.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Max,

Speaking personally and experientially, I agree with you in full. However, too many people have protested to me that versions of this sort of play do exist in which they have fun, for me to map my own experiences onto the whole.

Best,
Ron

[Balbinus]

Well, if some enjoy it fair enough.  However, my suspicion is that they are few and far enough between as to make it a dangerous play style to use with random players at a con.  At least not without some kind of upfront statement about the nature of the likely gaming experience.

As an aside, one of the joys of not being important enough to have my words seized upon and quoted as some kind of holy writ is that I can sometimes just say "look, that's just bad GMing".  Whether correct or not, I can at least be sure I won't see my comment in quotes six months down the line so as to show how elitist I am.  It's kind of like the freedom against status thing I refer to in my connectedness thread...

[Mike Holmes]

Serendipitously, Marco has posted one of his game transcripts. The style of play that they seem to encourage amongst his group (players and designers) is exactly this "participationist" mode. He points out, for example that there was one "fork" or important decision in the entire game, and that the choice was not really real as the players were completely unaware of the potential consequences. Such play is a perfect example of what were talking about.

I too, do not get this style. But looking at it, I think that it's much like playing a CRPG. You get a bit Immersed, but have no real decision making ability. In the end, you get the planned story. Looking at it like that, I see why some would play that way.

Still, I must say that it seems like a waste of potential. RPGs can be much more interactive, and I think that's a good thing. But see Marco's notes at the end of the post on what he sees as the downside of increased interactivity.

Mike

[GreatWolf]

This "participationist" style of play makes some sense to me, as I do run some games in this way.  For instance, my approach to Unknown Armies tends to be in this direction.  However, there are still techniques that can be used (at least, that I use) that makes this style of gaming satisfying for my players.

First, I mold my story around the characters, not the other way around.  One of the biggest pitfalls of this style of play is the attempt to squeeze characters into a pregenerated story.  When I'm running this style of game, I do no campaign prep until after character generation is completed, with the exception of negotiating the general mood and style of the game with my players.

Example:  I am about to begin running an Unknown Armies campaign with my wife.  The first step that I took was discussing our desires for the campaign.  We established the power level of the game (global, in this case) and then determined character types appropriate to that power level.  From there, I took her ideas, ran them through a UA filter, and gave her some options.  Eventually, we negotiated to a game about an Avatar of the True King who is the leader of a street gang in a housing project.  We also determined the overall theme of the game, which is the cleansing, preservation, and expansion of the King's "Realm".  In other words, Crystal's character is going to be the leader that brings her people into a new golden age, overcoming crime, drugs, poverty, etc.  Or at least that's what she is aiming at.

Once character creation is done, then I can begin planning.  Part of my prep work is making sure that I understand the decision-making processes of the characters and the players.  In this way, I can provide real choices to the characters while simultaneously being able to predict what they will do.

Example:  my previous UA chronicle centered on an odyssey across America by a maternity nurse and a teenaged foster child, as they fled Philadelphia, attempted to evade the forces that were pursuing them and try to deliver a child to someone in Seattle.  This child was handed to the nurse as she was walking home from work.  A woman ran up to her, handed her the child, ran off, and was gunned down by men in a white van.  I knew that my wife (playing the nurse) would not abandon the child.  I also had contingency plans in place so that, when she called the police, the white van showed up first.  The character made a reasonable choice, which I negated without stretching the bounds of reality.

Later on, the teenager was being held prisoner by an insane artist, and the nurse was offered assistance by an enemy dipsomancer in exchange for the child.  Again, I knew that the nurse would never give over the child, so I was presenting a dilemma.  However, if she turned down the offer of help, I had another character in place who would also assist.

Finally, I never force someone to follow my plot.  Figuratively speaking, I carve channels to make certain choices much easier, and 95% of the time, my players follow them.  However, if the players choose to deviate, I let them.  I scrap my plot and improvise a new one.

Example:  somewhere in South Dakota, my players figured out that the people in Seattle weren't going to take care of the baby, either.  They were fleeing from all sorts of people who wanted to use the child, but they were fleeing towards people who wanted to use the child.  This was unacceptable, so they pulled off the interstate and drove out into the badlands.  They were going to find someplace to live and raise this child all by themselves.  Obviously, this deviated from the script.  However, I wasn't about to make them get on track with my plan.  Instead, I ended gaming for the night (we were at the end of the episode anyways) and confessed that I'd need to improvise a bit for the next session.  By next session, though, I was ready.  I even managed to transfer the essence of my planned climax from Seattle to the middle of South Dakota, thus allowing for the same punch.  

In my players' opinion, the entire chronicle was the best that I had run to date.

So it is possible to have very satisfying play in this style.  However, I would definitely not recommend trying this in a convention setting.  It only works for me because I know my players and can carve subtle channels for action that go where the players would probably go anyways.  Without this knowledge, all that is left is blatant railroading or desperate improvisation.  Neither are very good options.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Mike Holmes]

What you describe is more standard, open-ended, Sim, Seth. Participationists not only cannot make decisions, they are never really presented with any when it's being done "correctly". As in the vampire example, the GM leads the characters about. You get a lot of this sort of thing:

GM: there is a big door leading out of the black featureless room. What do you do?

Players: Um, we go out the door.

Complete and out in the open GM direction of the action.

See some of the published adventures on the JAGS site for examples. In one (the belltower) it repeatedly tells the GM what happens after the PCs do what the adventure says they should do. For example, the adventure includes "Player cards" that instruct the player to have the character to do certain things at certain times: "The purpose of the cards is to have the Players drive the campaign witout knowing it's structure". It then goes on to suggest that this is an improvement on, essentially, having NPCs introduce certain information. Because without such information the story will not go forward as there is no way that it can be recreated if the players are allowed to drive it at all. Or so I interperet it.

Lots of Cthulhu adventures are written like this, though not quite to this extreme.

Again, I am given to understand that this is a sought after goal of these players, and as such it is presumably a valid goal. Just not my cup of tea, and, I think, very different from more "middle of the road" Sim like Seth describes.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Y'know, participationism is a lot like avant garde theatre groups that do a lot of audience participation. The audience gets to play along, but has no control at all of where the show is going.

Mike

[Marco]

Serendipitously, Marco has posted one of his game transcripts. The style of play that they seem to encourage amongst his group (players and designers) is exactly this "participationist" mode. He points out, for example that there was one "fork" or important decision in the entire game, and that the choice was not really real as the players were completely unaware of the potential consequences. Such play is a perfect example of what were talking about.

Still, I must say that it seems like a waste of potential. RPGs can be much more interactive, and I think that's a good thing. But see Marco's notes at the end of the post on what he sees as the downside of increased interactivity.

Mike

It's interesting that you have a comprehension of what I wrote but a complete misunderstanding of what was going on. I'm not surprised--your experience with The Belltower (my first attempt at transcribing a game I ran to a module) *does* read as a rail-roaded attempt.

What it really is, is a write-up of a game with an attempt to portray the series of events the way that they occurred when I ran it. It was in many ways a failure (but it's the one we consistently get good feedback on so go figure).

In the write of this weekend's game, you refer to one major decision: which world we decided to live in.

The entire game asked the question: are you willing to risk death for a sane universe and in the end the answer was "yes." So we turned our backs on the very-real-to-our characters incoming nuclear bombers and walked into a cafe to finish our meal.

We had tons of information but no complete certanties. For one thing the structure of the game was clear (in the Dr's world the artist PC was mildly sick--in the commander's world she was dying). The difference between certanties about the game world and the effect of any action and the uncertanity is the difference between telling a story and participating in one.

The uncertainty was what generated dramatic tension: if the GM had said "turn your backs and live in a sane world, go to the shelter and live in a nightmare reality" it wouldn't have been much choice--we really had to put our lives on the line for what we believed in. If I'd been playing a different game and I was a different person, I think this would be called "answering the premise."

There were other crucial decisons (outlined in the story: whether to leave Manhattan ... whether to hold the gallery show, etc.) Any of these would have had a major effect. The GM had ideas for how to handle many of these--does that make it a choose your own adventure game?

Our play did have an impact on events: My first contact with Gothe (the major antagonist) was when I, on a hunch, searched the NPC's phone list and found his number making the crucial connection. There was no roll for that--true, eventually Gothe would have come looking for me--but I got to him on our terms--not his (and with the NPC who was a good ally and potential hostage aganst him).

So over all I felt pretty protagonized and I think the transcript reads that way. But again, I understand you don't see it that way.

I suspect that the non-story based sim you're talking about occurrs when the GM isn't acting much as an author and the players aren't either. While that can be fun, it isn't my preferred mode of gaming (I could liken it to a book based on a hack and slash D&D game).

-Marco

[WildElf]

My overall goal is try and build a reputation as a reliably fun and entertaining GM.  However, I think swaping games every con is working a bit to my detriment since people seem to be used to a GM sticking primarily to one game, maybe two at most.  So, I figure if I have one game that I DO always play plus a set of rotating games people are more likely to remember who I am.

Admittedly, I have very little con experience, the recommendations I was getting from guys who I game with was based solely on the merits of the GM running the game over the system or setting being run.  So as far as I am concerned, and the few gamers I know, a good GM will get kudos regardless of running one game all the time or a variety.  But we might be a bit rare, since we do like to play a variety of games.  So I say as long as you're having fun with your selection, then go for it!

And thanks for the warm welcome, Ron.

-Eric

[Marco]

Y'know, participationism is a lot like avant garde theatre groups that do a lot of audience participation. The audience gets to play along, but has no control at all of where the show is going.

Mike

It sounds almost like you're advocating playing with the doctrines of staticism and equality.

Staticism: the technique whereby to avoid de-protagonizing PC's nothing in the world moves besides them. NPC's will not act on time-lines nor will events happen on a "clock."

Equality: the model of play where, to avoid de-protagonizing PC's any course of action is as likely to succeed as the player(s) decides it is. This insures that the GM will not deprotagongize a player due to thinking his idea won't work.

I don't know if you agree with the above but it sounds like the model for Universalis (in which there is no GM and no time-line external to the players and the players decide how likely a course of action is to work). A valid and possibly fun form of play ... but not my thing most of the time.

-Marco