Okay, so I play on running Dirty Secrets at a con here in February but I'm uncertain what to do.  The book says a Short Story should take 2 to 4 hours to play but our game was closer to 5 due to our inexperience with the game.  Now that I'm experienced I'm sure I could present the game in more organized layers saving on setup time. 

Con slots are 4 hours.  I'm sure I could get through a Short Story in that time but Novella is a better beginnings game and I doubt I'll have expert Dirty Secrets players showing up.  So I'm looking for advice:

1) Play the Short Story.

2) Play the Novella and just be upfront that you might not be able to finish it.

3) Bite the bullet and reserve a six hour slot and play a Novella hoping the extended time slot won't scare people off.

Josh suggested skipping the setup phase and just come with characters and basic situation prepped but I'm not sure that's such a good idea.

Thoughts?

Jesse

Preface:  I’ve run Dirty Secrets at exactly one con, and that was Forge Midwest, where it was playtested.  So, my thoughts here are based on that one run.

Despite what my ego desperately wants to believe, I’m going to guess that, even by February, there won’t be a critical mass of Dirty Secrets fans who will just be lining up to play with other people at a con.  Rather, my guess is that the players will mostly be composed of folks who read about it in the con program and thought it sounded interesting, or maybe some who read about it on the Internet.  So, are there really that many people that would devote six hours at a con to an obscure game that they’ve never played?  Probably not, I’m thinking.  And, starting a story, especially a detective story, without actually finishing it is a hard pill to swallow.

So, Short Story it is.  So then, how to overcome the difficulties of the Short Story in the con setting?

I think that the key is selecting a good Investigator player and a good first Authority.

I’m thinking that you should not play the Investigator unless it’s absolutely necessary.  You will need to facilitate the game, and that will take up too much of your attention.  Rather, I think that you should be the first Authority.  This means that you sit to the left of whoever is the Investigator.  This puts you in a good position to give the story a good start, which will help everyone else, plus you get to model how to be an Authority to the other players at the table.

For the Investigator, you want to choose someone who is already familiar with the genre and who is willing to be in the hot seat for the duration of the game.  Just ask around the table and see if anyone jumps up to take the role.  Then, rearrange seating to make sure that you’re sitting in the right place.

Be sure to state that you are facilitating the game, and don’t be afraid to offer advice to players who seem like they are struggling.  The game encourages this behavior anyways; you’re just going to pursue it aggressively.  You’ll want to track the gamestate yourself, in addition to the Investigator’s Notebook, so you can point out possible narrative threads that are available to be pursued.

You have a leg up on my con game, since your convention is local.  Therefore, you’ll have a shared setting.  In our game, we didn’t have a shared setting, so we chose New York City, which was home to one of the players, mostly because it was iconic.

Our game was around two hours long, if I recall correctly, although I was pushing pretty hard to make sure that we completed the game in good time.

That all being said, if you think that you can attract players to a Novella-length game, I do believe it to be a more forgiving story length for beginners.  But, honestly, if I were going to run Dirty Secrets at a con again, I’d probably do it just like I outlined above.

By the way, thank you very much for running the game at the con.  I appreciate it!

Your thoughts are very much in line with my own.  I was already planning on claiming first Authority.  However, there's a trend starting at our con where people "running" an event don't actually play.  Instead they observe, rulebook in hand, explaining procedures and offering advice to those who are playing.  The buzz word around here for that is "facilitating."  I'm not very keen on this approach as sometimes the con is the only place I get to play certain games that I'm very passionate about that my friends and family are not.

If you were able to push a Short Story to wrap up in two hours, that makes me wonder if I could push a Novella to wrap up in four.

Something I forgot to mention was that at these local cons we have a 7pm slot and midnight slot.  I have observed that there are some who are still up for play past midnight but then kind of regret the three or four am result of playing a midnight game.  If I put a six hour Dirty Secrets game in the 7pm slot it might provide an attractive option for those who don't want to go home at eleven but don't want to be up until three either.

Just more to think about.

Jesse

Well, I definitely think that you'll need someone in that facilitator role, especially because it's a GMless game.  (Well, sort of.  You know what I mean.)  But that doesn't mean that the facilitator couldn't play.

And maybe you could get a Novella to wrap in four hours.  This group took about 5 hours for their first run of Dirty Secrets, which was Novella-length, but Jocelyn mentions that he could have done it in four with more experience.

So, another data point.