ConQuest 2004 Report

         These are my thoughts on the ConQuest 2004 gaming convention. This was my second year of going to ConQuest. It was in a fancier looking hotel out by the airport compared to the previous year. Organization was good but not great, overall. Attendance was poor, however, or so it seemed to me. The events I attended were:

• Slay Around the Clock *
• Batman: Punishment
• Brawny Thews * (cancelled)
• X-File High: Mission Kim Possible
• Nine Tenths of the Law

"Slay Around the Clock"

This was the Buffy RPG event which I GMed, a fairly straightforward adaptation of background from the film "The Blob". However, put in the new context it had a number of interesting twists. I have more on it on my Slayerbot series page.

"Batman: Punishment"

This was a game run using a variant of the Basic Roleplaying system (i.e. Call of Cthulhu), which was the standard system for the GM. I ended up playing Batman. The system had some wrinkles to it, but it basically worked well. The scenario had a rather striking contrast, I thought, between the first have which was very much police procedural mystery -- and the second half which was more true superheroics. When we eventually figured out what was happening, it turned out that the Punisher had come into town set upon killing the Joker. So now Batman had to deal with both of them. There was some cool role-playing of the confrontation between Batman and the Punisher, which was clearly a big part of the scenario in Joe's mind, and I think everyone was please that it came across well.

For some of the scenario, I felt a bit constricted as I was played a very taciturn hero of few words. The first half for me didn't have a great payoff, since the solution to the mystery was superheroic and thus felt like it came out of nowhere to me. Joe did a good job of briefing everyone on the current background for Batman, but the Punisher as a character came out of left field to me. However, there were plenty of other cool things in the scenario.

"Brawny Thews"

This was going to be another run of the Conan OGL game which I had run at KublaCon 2004. However, unfortunately only one player showed up: Joe Borrelli (GM of my previous event), so we decided to skip it.

"X-File High: Mission Kim Possible"

X-File High is a series of events using the HERO System about members of the O.N.I. (Occult Netherworld Investigations) Club at an unusual high school. I had played in Greg's X-File High event last ConQuest and it was my favorite game, I think. This year mostly lived up to that, although he was underprepared due to a computer crash (or something) which left him without any character sheets. This one adapted material from the cartoon show "Kim Possible", which I wasn't familiar with but which was clear enough with only a bit of explanation.

The adventure had important NPCs (Kim and her sidekick Ron) but managed to keep the focus on our PCs as the ones in the spotlight. I was playing the theater geek master of disguise, which I played up. The NPC Kim and her companions had been transformed into dogs along with other people around the town, whom we eventually rescued and worked out how to transform back. For the finale, I disguised ourselves as Kim and her sidekick Ron, thus confusing the enemy into thinking their plan was already defeated. In general, a very good game due in no small part to a GM who improvises well.

"Nine-tenths of the Law"

This was an Angel RPG event, where the PCs were a group of investigators working out of San Francisco. It was an ongoing mystery which turned out to be a piece of music which makes people commit suicide and return as zombies. It was a pretty good mystery scenario, I think, combined with a fairly interesting cast of characters.

At the start, the GM explained that the player characters were gender-neutral. I offhand commented that one of them had a history as a professional boxer, and thus didn't seem neutral to me. The GM Patrick pointed out that wasn't so, that one could have a female boxer. Taking him up on that, I played that character out as an African-American female boxer from a rough neighborhood. By deduction, luck, and probably some reading of the GM's body language, we latched onto an early clue in the mystery and thus cut short some of the mystery. My character and one other listened to a mysterious suicide's music thinking there might be a clue there. My partner then tried to kill herself and made a fair attempt. However, there was still plenty to fill out the event from there as we tried to track down the remaining people who had copies of the song in time.

Original Thoughts

Based on the program, these were the games that I was first thinking about in the schedule:

Friday Afternoon/Evening (signup 2PM - 7PM)

x) 5005 The Isle of a Privateers Worth  [7th Sea]
     2PM   (4 hrs)  Bob Johnston
x) 5006 Learning to Fly  [Tri-Stat]
     4PM   (8 hrs)  Greg Eichner - who ran L5R at KublaCon
3) 5015 Surprise Party!!!  [Orpheus]
     6PM   (8 hrs)  Kevan Forbes
4) 5102 Von Trapped  [Chill]
     8PM   (4 hrs)  Robert Lionheart
5) 5103 Invasion from Beyond  [Champions 5th]
     8PM   (6 hrs)  Scott Barlow
6) 5105 Anicka Mihalik's BESM Game  [BESM]
     8PM   (6 hrs)  Ryan Walton - ran GI Joe D20 last DunDraCon

Saturday Morning/Afternoon (signup 2PM - 7PM morning or 9AM - 11AM afternoon)
*) 5312 Slay Around the Clock  [Buffy]
     2PM   (6 hrs)  John Kim

Saturday Evening (signup 2PM - 4:30PM)
*) 5422 Batman: Punishment  [BRP Homebrew]
     8PM   (6 hrs)   Joe Borrelli

Sunday Morning/Afternoon
*) 5601 Brawny Thews  [Conan RPG]
    12PM   (6 hrs)   John Kim

Sunday Evening  (signup 2PM - 4:30PM)
1) 5705 Nocturnum: Chapter 1, Snowflake Valley  [Cthulhu D20]
     6PM   (8 hrs)   Jerry Betti
*) 5723 X-File High: Mission Kim Possible  [Hero]
     8PM   (6 hrs)   Greg Haslam

Monday Morning
1) 5803 A Dish Served Cold  [Adventure!]
     9AM   (8 hrs)   Chris Y. Gaoiran
*) 5806 Nine-tenths of the Law   [Angel RPG]
     9AM   (8 hrs)   Patrick Riley