NOTE: This is NOT a rant. But it IS a ramble. Read only if you have time to kill.

I had NO idea where to put this topic, but since it involves "play", I put it here. There's no "Mad props for indies games" forum, so I'll have to make do here.

Trinoc-Con 2002. Raleigh, NC.

Been there all three days. Played a total of two games, ran one game myself, and ran a discussion panel on SF RPGs.

I did a lot of thinking about games that weekend. A lot about a lot of things. RPGs (my biggest "mental hobby") in my life and my future. Whether I should (or even can) try to publish my own game or not. That sort of thing. I also kept my eyes on the other gaming tables.

My first game of Sorcerer folded- It was early Friday afternoon, and only the hardcore RPG folks were there. Most were RPGA members playing "Living D&D" sessions, advancing their favorite characters at another convention. Couldn't get anyone to sign up. This happened at 75% of the tables that period, so I'm not bitter. I saw some folks running 7th Sea (a big gaming group from Greensboro who run an area "Living 7th Sea" kind of thing). I gave that a shot. Two hours for two of us to make characters, 2 hours of adventure.

Interesting system. I remember the effort the other dude put into spreading his 100 chargen points around. The GM and other player were showing him how, using the core book and splats, he could make his "Spanish" character more effective at what he wanted to do. Drop the whole "Noble" thing and "Scholarly Past" bit. You can load up more on skills and combat powers that way. That sort of thing.

I ran through character creation in about 10 minutes. I found it a little tedious to go through and spread those points around, but I tossed them in a way that let me create the kind of guy I wanted. I picked shit out of the book that sounded cool without looking at the "abilities" that they affected. After about the third time I politely refused to edit my character to make him better at something, the GM just sat back and let me spend those points around. I could tell he was picking out the "wasted areas" of my sheet. Could have been more acrobatic or attractive if I didn't make my Russain mercenary into an armchair scholar. Could have been better at my sword if I didn't take that background as a recognized military hero.

Oh well. I don't remember the details of the adventure anyway. The rules had some REALLY cool twists, but it came off to me as D&D with some nifty rules stapled to its ass. No offense to the GM, he really knew his stuff. Still, I don't recall that much about it. We grabbed some sort of artifact in a cave and sold it to someone else.

When we were poring over characters, in a silent moment, I overheard a quick rules argument from the other table ("clarification", actually- Just the GM and player tossing justifications about before they reached a conclusion some minute or two later). They were arguing about how Attacks of Opportunity would come into play for a player action in that round of combat. 4 people, not really excitedly, were kinda slumped in their chairs as the GM and the player had the exchange. Miniatures on the table, little cups and stuff simulating terrain and the like. One of the players, a little girl, was using a stick to measure distances, so that on her next round (when it would come after the argument, a few minutes later- Each of which consisted of a player saying "I fire" ... "I shoot"...etc) she could get the modifiers to hit right.

It took me a few minutes to realize they were playing Star Wars. STAR. F*CKING. WARS. Attack of the Very Bored Looking Clones, perhaps.

Anyway, the 7th Sea adventure was over. I had fun, for a new game and all. Still couldn't quite grasp the damage system, though. I realized a couple hours later that I couldn't remember the names of any of the characters, or why we were doing what we did.

I remember _EVERYTHING_ about the game of Dread I played with Rafael and the three folks he got to play (their game was cancelled). Incredible game? Dunno, haven't gotten my copy to read through yet. Incredible concept, though. And it got my mind racing like I had sucked coke through a funnel and grabbed an electric fence at the same time. I made my character in FOUR MINUTES, and I can still tell you his name, what his past was, why he became a disciple, and everything that happened in the adventure, especially the bits he took part in.

The next morning, I ran a game of heavily modified Sorcerer (like Urge meets Mad Max) with 4 strangers. I was a little nervous, having never played through a full session of Sorcerer before, and never having ran this game. I _guess_ I did well, as the people playing in the game (a woman who hadn't played RPGs for 10 years, a friend of (Dread's) Rafael's, a college Freshman and one of the guys running the 7th Sea games stopped the action no fewer than four times to tell me how cool this game was, to get more info on Sorcerer and Urge, and to ask me more about the background of the world. I was exhausted when it ended, but it was so satisfying to hear their compliments again when the game ended. Hadn't felt a people-sponsored rush like that since I was a techno DJ in the "Rave Capital" of the midwest back in college.

I've only been to four gaming conventions: GenCon, GenCon, GenCon and Trinoc-Con. That's about 30+ convention games I've played. These two were hands-down the best.

If I played D&D or Star Wars with any of the GMs (well, not so much the GMs as the other players) there, the con would have sucked for me. Period. I couldn't bring myself to run D&D again, unless I used Dread's "Cool Rule", as well as stuck about 5 other mechanics into the game to make it more to my tastes. Same with the other games I own and love, like BESM, Aberrant and Tribe 8.

I stuck to Indies games, action-packed products of luuuve, and it really did make all the difference. Kicked my ass into further developing my game. Made me go home, look at my gaming shelf, and start clearing another 3/4 of a shelf to put up on eBay (the fourth such "culling" to happen since I got back from Japan almost two years ago). Got me into focus... somehow... with what RPG-ing means to me, and what I'm going to do about it in the future.

There's no going back to normal RPGs for me. Especially not for conventions. I'm an Indies Man now, and all future games, my own, indies, or "regular off-the-shelf" RPGs will never be the same.

That's all. Maybe some of you have had experiences like this.

-Andy

Edit: BTW, expect Actual Play writeups of the Dread game and my "Kyuseisha"/Sorcerer game this week sometime.

Edit Edit: Didn't mean to sound like I'm dissing D&D too much. I grew up on it. I can still run it and get into it. But NOT "as is", not anymore. Which is all I can expect to see at a Con game.

Andy,

Cool post. Sounds great, and I totally empathize with you. Not that people sitting around looking bored is necessarily a bad thing; if they like it, more power to 'em, but it aint my thing (anymore).

I would have loved to have seen your Sorcerer session. Something about the game provokes people to say things like "this is the best game ever", even when you feel like you've done a half-assed job. And you always feel drained afterwards, thinking that a nice bout of catatonia - just for a day or two - would do you good. But then everyone wants you to run it again right away, and it becomes a viscious cycle. Strange, strange game.

- Scott

(eagerly awaiting Dread...perhaps it'll be here today)

Hi Andy,

I've had the same experience, and I want to focus on the organizational, convention aspects in my post. I think that the traditional idea of a big, signed-up, get-enough-people model is going to favor games with a lot of setting-recognition + title-recognition, not games that necessarily are going to be the most fun.

The more I think about it, the more I'm determined to change the way that (some) people are going to experience con play, with this past GenCon's Forge booth being the foundation. A bunch of small tables, with a few people around them (and yeah, a couple of times they bloated, but that's OK as a factor of demand); people observably having fun playing a variety of games across these tables; other people hangin' out and willing to chat and sell.

In other words, blend the commerce with the play, and have the play be as-nearly-spontaneous as possible in con terms. Few if any sign-ups, no sense of "gotta get six people or I fold" - instead, "When I get three people, we go!" without a deadline. And have lots of games be associated with this activity, not a whole ton of isolated games who happen to be occupying the same space.

As for your comments about play, I agree. The very same things happened around our off-booth play at GenCon and Origins - we were leapin' around with The Riddle of Steel, and I'd look over at a [name withheld] game with everyone kind of slumping and glazed-looking, and I'd look away because it was too painful.

I look back on hours and years spent with certain games and say, "OK, that's what we did, and I must have wanted to do it, but I've changed, now." What's especially interesting is that now I think I'm more diverse as a role-player than I was before, not less.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ron,

Since you've given this a lot more thought than I have, how might one get players for the lesser known games when one isn't inside a cavernous huckster arena?

Here's the set up at the local L.A. con: Sign up tables at the lobby level, and then a gazillion rooms rented out for individual games.

The seperate rooms are great for actually playing, but bad for drawing new folks just walking by.

Any thoughts? Anybody?

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote: The seperate rooms are great for actually playing, but bad for drawing new folks just walking by.

Ummm,

Thanks, Mike. I guess.

You should know that not only do I know how to make a spectacle of myself in costume, but I've also done it naked. This I don't need more pointers on.

I was looking for more organized methods to the madness. Ron seems to have an eye for that.

Thanks for the reply though.

Christopher

Mike Holmes wrote:

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
If you have to be in a room, step out into the hall, and accost passersby. Wave signs. Shout at the top of your lungs. Whatever you can make work.

Yeah, I admit that we got people to play Dread when I told Raf that he should go over and nab three people at a table of an obviously cancelled game.

They had so much fun that they came back for the next and final session.

Afterwards (I spoke to one of the three the next morning) they realized that if it weren't for Dread (or alternately, Rafael mosey-ing over to them to drag them into a game they'd never even heard of) the convention would have been a bust.

So there you go. Drag folks in!

Personally, I'd be put off by Ren-faire costumed pirate grognards accosting me to play anything, as I'm much more timid. I'd go for the humble and sincere approach.

Y'know: Hands clasped; "Say, if you folks are free, we're playing a game over here and we could always use a few more folks... Would you be interested?"

That sort of thing.

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
You should know that not only do I know how to make a spectacle of myself in costume, but I've also done it naked. This I don't need more pointers on.

Hey Ron,

The more I think about it, the more I'm determined to change the way that (some) people are going to experience con play, with this past GenCon's Forge booth being the foundation.

At GenCon, in the dealer room, I played Sorcerer for a half hour, Dust Devils for an hour, Riddle of Steel for an hour, Universalis for an hour, etc. It was a lotta lotta fun. But, y'know...those games all felt like demos...in pretty much the same way that hors d'oevres feel like appetizers.

Personally, I'm not interested in a consensual preferencing of half- to one-hour demo style games entirely at the expense of more substantive, and in my mind, exponentially more rewarding three-hour games. To me, the dealer room stuff serves a different purpose. For someone with narrativist interests, the convention is a fantastic chance to have some substantive games in a concentrated environment of like-minded individuals that I don't often otherwise have a chance to experience. Can we clarify just how much of the con experience we're planning to change?

I'd actually like to see people hooking up electronically, using conference calling and stuff to have discussions and chargen pre-convention in preparation for after-hours games. It seems to me the place for the spontaneous stuff is during the day, and after-hours stuff calls for a different kind of effort to reconstruct the experience.

Paul

Paul Czege wrote: It was a lotta lotta fun. But, y'know...those games all felt like demos...in pretty much the same way that hors d'oevres feel like appetizers.

Andy Kitkowski wrote: Personally, I'd be put off by Ren-faire costumed pirate grognards accosting me to play anything, as I'm much more timid. I'd go for the humble and sincere approach.

Y'know: Hands clasped; "Say, if you folks are free, we're playing a game over here and we could always use a few more folks... Would you be interested?"

That sort of thing.

eogan wrote: Depends on the game, doesn't it?

jrients wrote:

eogan wrote: Depends on the game, doesn't it?

I don't know. I'll have to agree with Andy on this one. Me dressing up in an eyepatch and saying "Arr matey!" a lot may be viewed as enthusiam. Or it may be viewed as just another fatass fruiting it up at the con.

eogan wrote: Isn't there a nicer way to say that? :(

quot;jrients']Yes there is. Sorry bout that. I was not trying to offend.

Did you give them a shilling?

contracycle wrote: Did you give them a shilling?

Andy, I hear ya.

I went to Gen Con UK and the organised game was so putrid that I really, really am not going to play anymore Raven/RPGA games. That and Steve Darlington (snide aside) remember him, he actually finishes his articles(/snide aside) wanting to run a game tempted me into organising SteveCon 2002.

It took 8 days to organise and we had about 15 players. We used a Yahoo group and RPGnet to get everyone together. We played Dying Earth, Buffy, Delta Green, Starchildren and Original D&D.

All the games were written by the DMs and if I'd had enough time I'd have surely squeezed in a game of Donjon.

And it was a blast. I'm doing it again in February, SteveCon 2 will be no bigger and no better.

Do Your Own Con, it's not hard.

Cheers,
Steve

GB Steve wrote: And it was a blast. I'm doing it again in February, SteveCon 2 will be no bigger and no better.

Do Your Own Con, it's not hard.

Hey Andy, if you know people in the DC area, you might want to consider contacting NoVaG (Northern VA Gamers). They're mostly wargamers of the paper map and cardboard counter variety, but they set up small local cons in the area frequently and may be able to give you some tips.

Hello,

Hey guys, this is all well and good, and I am an enthusiastic advocate for "build your own mini-con" activity - but let's all check out that opening post and get this thread back on-topic.

My post to Andy concerned how con play militated against the kind of experiences he was talking about, but it seems to have spawned way more thread-jacking than I'd anticipated. I'd like to keep the focus on Andy's point.

Best,
Ron

Ah hell, scratch that. We're on topic, and Andy seems OK with it.

Andy, #1 and #2 are enthusiastically under way already. "Apartment cons" pre-date the Forge and are highly encouraged; one might even say that some gaming groups resemble an ongoing con more than they do a traditional group. DemonCon, an activity of a campus gaming group, began last June; the last two years of Origins and GenCon represent a kind of "con within a con" for playing creator-owned games, most especially the gonzo play at the booth, but also the longer games that went on in the evenings.

The more of all this stuff, the better. Organize it yourselves, get hockey jersies or what-have-you to back it all up, do it, and f'God's sake, advertise and promote the hell out of it before it happens.

I'm not too interested in #3, myself. The Forge is a site, not an organization, and its policies walk a tricky line between Ron's Stuff and everyone-at-the-Forge stuff. (I didn't ask for things to be like that, but that's how it's played out over time.) Who'd give the award? Me? Or would it be a big vote-y thing? If anyone can suggest a painless solution to these issues, I'd like to hear it.

Best,
Ron

Back to the topic (again, though, if someone could provide me direction as to which topic to post those three ideas above on, I'd be much obliged. You could even PM me.):
Edit: Nevermind. Thanks Ron.

What are the issues that we need to deal with if we want people to try new games at cons?

I'm just going to throw out ideas here. Many aren't rooted in anything but observation. If I look like my observations are incorrect, feel free to call me on it.

1) Con goers are adventurous in the first place, for they plopped down the cash to go to the con in the first place. Even the most enthusiastic conventioner knows that some cons are going to be a bust, even if they stick to one game they know and love.

2) There's a lot of people who go to try new games, whether it be Board, Card, Clix or RPG... these days, it seems to be in this order as well ;)

3) Still, though, a large number of people just want to stick with the games they know, and are looking to play in variants of that system, or various adventures for that system: C.I.P., the number of alternative D&D games that go down.

4) Indie games, as I noted in the original post, are often a blast once you start playing them. However, especially for the ones that don't have a lot of standard rules to them (You can easily imagine the following: "Huh? Where are the Skills and Attributes? And what's "Cover"?), it's hard to get people in that first time because they're very different to what they're used to.

Again, what can we do to get more people involved?

Great suggestions up to this point.

I again like the idea of an organized "Indies Union", with a display table at local cons (and jersies. Sorry.), as well as running games. This not only shows indies games as more than just random lone whackos with untested home rules, it also gives a name to The Cause, as it were. Get people at least hearing about other games out there.

More thoughts?

Oh, on topic #3 (Indies Awards), I'll drag this one over to RPG Theory.
HERE'S THE LINK, IF YOU'RE INTERESTED:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=36483#36483

-Andy

Andy Kitkowski wrote: I remember _EVERYTHING_ about the game of Dread I played with Rafael and the three folks he got to play (their game was cancelled). Incredible game? Dunno, haven't gotten my copy to read through yet. Incredible concept, though. And it got my mind racing like I had sucked coke through a funnel and grabbed an electric fence at the same time. I made my character in FOUR MINUTES, and I can still tell you his name, what his past was, why he became a disciple, and everything that happened in the adventure, especially the bits he took part in.

Andy Kitkowski wrote: There's no going back to normal RPGs for me. Especially not for conventions. I'm an Indies Man now, and all future games, my own, indies, or "regular off-the-shelf" RPGs will never be the same.

Hi guys,

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back.

Other people clarified my concern about being to "big" in grabbing people for a game. My style for a Sorcerer game's going to probably be soft and moody, so coming on like a carnival barker's probably going to send the wrong signal and attract the wrong crew.

However, the idea of demos in an open gaming area and then full sessions later makes a lot of sense for me. At one of the three big L.A. cons, demos on a Friday night or Saturday morning would spread by word of mouth for actual play the rest of the con. That's a model I want to give more thought to.

Also, an apartment-con sounds tempting. Calling planet Jesse...?

Christopher