DexCon 8 Actual Play thread

[Robert Bohl]

Herewith I will present what I intend to be brief passes at each of the games I played at DexCon 8.

Thursday:

Capes:  My very first gaming experience of the con was my first shot at Capes.  I played a juvenile speedster/hotshot named Spaz and Judd played a steam-powered robot named Coggsley dealing with a stretchy guy named Rubberface who was robbing a bank.  I mostly got to do THINGS, while Judd mostly got to play on his emotions.  It was fun.

In Nomine:  This was like an Ebola inoculation shot.  It was the worst session of role playing in my entire life, but it made everything after seem like candy-cane fireworks rolled in honey butter.  Of course, like any inoculation, you suffer from simmering, low-level aftereffects.  At dinner after In Nomine I could swear that the dinner conversation around me consisted of many hushed whispers of the phrase, "hot sauce."  I am loathe to go into this more, lest I upset Judd and bore everyone else.  And as much as I am loathe to, I am also sickly compelled to.  Oh, and I won a book off this session.  eBay here I come.

Ganakagok:  I was pretty iffy about this at first (the setting description didn't grab me), but the GM was the author and like other GM/authors whose games I've had the pleasure of playing in, he really brought his enthusiasm to bear.  It was like he was a robot running on "enthusiasm for my game" and it was really electrifying.  The game was fun and I really enjoyed the Inuit-tarot-card mechanic as a scene framing device.  The way the text was consistently relevant to the situation at hand also reinforced my idea that tarot cards, I Ching, astrology, etc., work because if you word anything vaguely enough, you'll be able to find meaning in it.

Friday:

Pretender:  Very cool.  I played a demon possessing a pretty teenage girl who played a heavy metal record backwards.  The three characters' backgrounds and histories were seamlessly joined by Michael Miller into one storyline.  One of the things I really liked about this system was that you could change your character sheet anytime you wanted if everyone agreed.

Discernment:  This was a freaking awesome game.  Judd was the subject and I was the Gamma Investigator.  It's sort of like Scruples plus Dark City.  It was also one of two games that had a very "party game" feel, even though it was undeniably a role-playing game.

Sorcerer/Dictionary of Mu:  I didn't actually play this, I watched it.  But that was the better option, considering the game I was scheduled to play in was being run by the guy who ran In Nomine and one of the players was the most annoying player in the game.  I had played this scenario before, and it was very interesting to see how it went with other players.  It was also cool to see Judd mold and alter the game, and to quiz him afterward on the reasons he had for doing things the way he did this time, as opposed to last time I played it.

CyberGeneration:  We played a scenario called Napkin Girl.  There were things I really liked about this game and there were things I really disliked.  I played a character that really grabbed my imagination--a futuristic skate-punk with the power to turn his lower legs and lower arms into T-1000 liquid metal.  There were a few other splats that were pretty cool, although some of them (like the one I played) were directly ripped off of other science fiction (YT from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash in the case of the BoardPunks).  It was a world that I found kind of interesting with some character choices I liked.

Now for the down-side.  The GM was energetic and enthusiastic, but he was lacking a few skills I consider to be kind of important.  Judd's character was doing cool shit but it was stuff that separated him from the rest of the group.  The GM didn't use cutting effectively, leaving Judd a lot of nothing-time.  As a GM, one of my favorite "powers" is choosing when to cut from one thing to another to heighten tension.  Also, when people wanted to do cool shit, but there was some perfectly good reason why it couldn't happen as it was, he didn't make an effort to make it work.  "Sorry, you're 5 feet too far away to do that cool stunt thing."  I feel he probably should've offered an option on how these things could have been done.

Another problem was the scenario itself.  Napkin Girl was a T-1000 person like my character who had had her T-1000 bits snipped off.  She was in a coma.  She was a hot 17 year old Asian girl in bra and panties.  And a coma.  We were all teenage boys who had evidently never seen a girl before and we had to carry her unconscious body around.  Everyone that did was required to make what another friend of mine described as a "resist boner check".  If we weren't running for our lives, we'd suddenly become aroused by her.  I decided at that moment that my character was gay and tried to figure out a way I could hold her, and then make it clear to the table and the PCs that I was far more interested in a comatose boy.  There's also some creepiness to it being an unconscious hot girl that you're constantly tempted to hump.  And it was underlined by one of the medics that got sent to us by our cell leaders being described as a pedophile.

Saturday:

Burning Wheel/A Matter of Trade:  My first actual play of Burning Wheel (I've made about 4 characters before this but never played any), this scenario appears to have been designed to highlight the battle of wits dynamic.  I played a tough-guy priest who was also a bit of a scuzzball.  This was probably my favorite game of the weekend.  The best part:  My character failing a Circles test and finding that the only guy that could get us in to see an important NPC was a kid I used to bully while in seminary.  I hate bullies in real life, and to find myself playing one was both disconcerting and immensely gratifying.  I thought, "Yes, this guy absolutely would have done this."  I love the compromise mechanic in the battle of wits.  Tor was also very good about explaining what rules he was using and privately elaborating on them with me if he had the time while other people were working.

Dogs in the Vineyard/Bridal Falls:  Judd ran this great session of DitV for me.  This is the single most successful run on this game I ever had.  I knew the rules a lot better this time, and I had a lot of fun.  It was a little disappointing that I never got to use what my character was good at, but it was still pretty cool that I was a badass made to kill who never even saw a gun get drawn at any point during the session.  This was a contender for Best Game of the Week for me, too.

Burning Wheel/The Heist:  Another fun game of Burning Wheel, this time run by Luke.  I wanted to play a stunty, agile character but didn't wind up getting one.  That was okay though because I got to play a union boss for the first time ever, and man was it fun.  While I did have fun, two things made it a little less fun for me than it was for most people.  One, I prefer smaller games, and this one was huge.  I like things to be a little more structured and clear.  Two, I tend to prefer games where you work together in-character, or at least there's one person you can lean on and work with.  In this one you couldn't trust anyone (and I was no better).  But all that said, it was a really fun game.

Primetime Adventures:  I liked this a lot as well.  Ben ran it, and ran the hell out of it.  It's a great idea and I'd love to see it played over a longer time.  I'd also like to see a version of it where it's Movie Adventures, where you do a one-shot and create a film.  One of the things this game was best at, which I found a lot in this entire weekend, is being very open to players suggesting things to other players.  "What if this happened?" was mechanically encouraged, enabled and rewarded and made for a lot of fun play.  We created a show cast with normal-looking actors (a la The Office or Freaks & Geeks) who were the lower-level functionaries (janitor, intern, secretary, file clerk, etc.) at a facility that engaged in time-travel research.  It was a dramedy called Overtime.  Complaint:  Too much technobabble crept into the "show".  Concern:  Shows created by this game could wind up with too many moving parts (e.g., "It's a workplace sitcom reality show within a show comeback special with vampires."), but that's probably kept a lid on by a good Producer, and that wasn't a problem we had at the table.

Sunday:

I (via my cellphone randomly shutting off on me) fuck up and fail to get to the con on time for Ben's Polaris game.  I feel horrible because Ben was a nice guy, I wanted to try his game, and Judd was looking forward to this game more than anything this weekend.

Burning Wheel/The Gift:  A great scenario, also run by Luke.  I was constantly awed by the sheer might of two of the other PCs, but once I got over that, I found my sea-legs and really enjoyed it.  This game had what most of the other games this weekend were lacking for me--really good in-game cooperation between two characters.  Judd and I worked well together, strategizing both in-game and out-of-game and I was very happy with the compromise we came up with in the battle of wits with the elves.

This was a great con for me.  Can't wait for Gen Con now.

[Judd]

Rob,

You are totally punking out here.  This isn't any of the fascinating and critical stuff you had to say in the car.

Talk about your problem with The Gift as you saw it.

How about enjoying a system even though it doesn't necessarily help you play.  I feel that you are far less picky than I am and I'd like you to talk about that.

I am only on the computer for a half hour, twice a day, so I'll respond tomorrow or later tonight.

Judd

[Michael S. Miller]

Pretender:  Very cool.  I played a demon possessing a pretty teenage girl who played a heavy metal record backwards.  The three characters' backgrounds and histories were seamlessly joined by Michael Miller into one storyline.  One of the things I really liked about this system was that you could change your character sheet anytime you wanted if everyone agreed.

Actually, I'm pretty sure all I did was say: "Because this is scheduled for only two hours, it'd really help if each of you overlapped either your enemy or your connection with one of the other players." You guys did the rest. Judd and Steve created teh foul necromancer, and I believe you decided he was your host's dad.

[Robert Bohl]

Actually, I'm pretty sure all I did was say: "Because this is scheduled for only two hours, it'd really help if each of you overlapped either your enemy or your connection with one of the other players." You guys did the rest. Judd and Steve created teh foul necromancer, and I believe you decided he was your host's dad.

That's true.  However, you came up with the very cool idea that the Construct was created to house my demon.  That was the "oh wow" plot moment for me.

[Robert Bohl]

By the way, for those disappointed by my brevity here, once work cools down a little I will try and be much more explicit and gloves-off.

[Bill_White]

Hey Rob -- Over in the Dexcon post-mortem thread, you said

I've noticed a lot of games seem to have a players-take-a-turn thing that I'm not totally cool with.  Each player takes a turn, then the next player does, and so on.  In the extreme, the entire game can be this kind of turn-based thing.  The upside is that most of the time, people can play inside of other peoples' turns, but there's something about the lockstep nature of it that rubs me wrong.

When you get around to it, I'd be interested in hearing how severe a problem you thought this was in Ganakagok.

Thanks,

Bill