ConQuest 2005 Report

         These are my thoughts on the ConQuest 2005 gaming convention. I only was in three role-playing events. I spent a while Saturday hanging around the convention. I played a number of games with my five-year-old son Milo in the convention kids room, including Cheapass Games' "Bitin' Off Heads" (which was cool) and "Kids of Catan" (which was not). I chatted a while with Ken Hite and briefly with J of Shifting Forest Storyworks. Two were ones that I was gamemastering, and the last was in a series that I had played in before. So no great discoveries, but some deepened observations.

• Dugway Canyon *
• Split Decision *
• X-File High: Dru's Clues

"Dugway Canyon"

Though I've run many games at conventions and played a number of indie games, this was my first time gamemastering a Forge-style indie game at a convention. It went pretty well in general. I had gamemastered Dogs before with my Harn group, though not extensively. I had prepared only rough notes for this, along with some general game aids.

I had been scheduled to be one of three games in a large room (both GMs I knew from previous years). Luckily one of the games was called off for lack of players, but I still had to share a room with a Savage Worlds game. So noise was a factor. We started a little late, but that's to be expected for a game starting at 6PM on a Friday. I had two players who were pretty gung-ho on indie gaming -- Carl and Jon. Carl was actually more prepared than me in ways: he had bound copies of Jason Mornningstar's online game aids "Wisdom from the Book of Life" and "Names among the Faithful". He also was up on the rules, and corrected me at one or two points. Jon wasn't experienced but he was eager. The other two had no idea what Dogs in the Vineyard was, but were game to try. One of them (Jerry) had played in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer event I had run at a previous convention. The other I hadn't met before.

We were scheduled for six hours, so everyone went through full character generation. Roughly, Jon, Jerry and the other guy made fairly combative types. In response, Carl made a less combative type. The results were:

• Jerry made Brother Jeb, a man with burn scars over his face from having pulled a Steward from a fire.
• Jon made Brother Phineas, a hot-tempered man awkward around women who tended to joke a lot.
• The other guy made Brother Josiah, a tough guy whose history was a succession of those around him dying.
• Carl made Brother Isaac, who was more of a healer.

The accomplishments were:

• Brother Phineas: "My Instructor didn't teach me to curb my temper 1d6"
• Brother Jeb had an attempt which was "I hope my character has learned to accept his disfigurement as a sign of his being 'chosen by God' and not a punishment from God" -- which later translated into the Trait "I'm special in God's eyes 1d6"
• Brother Josiah: "I didn't learn to channel my rage 1d6"
• Brother Isaac: "I saved someone's life 1d6"

So we took a break for a bit after initiations. I made a point of trying to draw in as many of the PC relationships as I could into the town. What I originally had was a basic progression of Pride to Injustice and so forth. However, once I had worked in the relationship characters it was perhaps not so narrowly focused on that. So I soon had a list of 10 NPCs who were involved in the plot, which was a fair amount. As it turned out, the event went over the six hours it was scheduled for. We started at 6PM and went to 12:30 or so. A large part of this was talking to all the NPCs, who all had something to say.

At the start I had my core two characters. The story was basically that there was a prior Steward of the town, and when he died the young new Steward, Nathaniel, found it hard to fill his shoes. Many people went to the old Steward's widow Hester for advice, and Nathaniel set out to undo this. When some kids got sick, he took it on himself to take charge of treatment even though he knew nothing about medicine. Demonic attacks follow that more kids get sick, and Nathaniel has to find a cause he can attack. He theorizes demon worshippers poisoning the water and secretly begins organizing to catch them.

To this, then, I wanted to fit in the relationships of the characters:

• Temperance was a girl who had an eye on Brother Phineas. I cast her as the first victim of the demonic attacks -- she was struck blind.
• We had previously agreed that Hamilton, the Steward whom Brother Jeb had saved from a fire, was the father of Temperance. So he was then the one who had first gone to Nathaniel for help. He had a new young wife and son, his first wife having died in the fire.
• I also put Jeb's ex-fiancé Sally Mae as the next potential victim of the demonic attacks, saying that she was having blackouts and other symptoms of sickness.
• I put Phineas' enemy Azariah, and Isaac's lazy uncle Cuthbert as locals whom Nathaniel had recruited into his campaign to catch the poisoning demon worshippers.

Play began with them riding into town, going to the Steward's house and finding Hester -- who explained that her husband had died and that Nathaniel was the new Steward. She had critical words of Nathaniel, and they decided to talk to the other people of the town first before talking to Nathaniel. Basically there were a number of scenes of talking to NPCs without much conflict. I won't go through all the scenes, but the conflicts were:

• Temperance, now blind, asks to talk to Brother Phineas privately. He has 1d6 "Can't talk to girls". After brief discussion, we agree that Temperance initiates a conflict: "Does Phineas promise to come back for her?" The player, Jon, was a little reticent himself and seemed well-suited to play the Dog preyed upon by the desperate blind girl. Jon gave after I raised 11 using her Blind 2d10 trait.
• Later, Phineas comes to talk to the sheriff who hated him, Azariah. I say that Azariah doesn't invite him in, and we agree this is a conflict: "Does Azariah invite Brother Phineas into his home." Azariah gives pretty quickly after a bad dice roll -- Carl was curious why I didn't escalate. First, I didn't think I could win, plus it didn't seem that important to me either to the story as a whole or to Azariah as a character, and at that point I could see we were going to run overtime.
• After they questioned Nathaniel, they were suspicious of him but didn't have a clear path of how to get proof. Nathaniel had a plan to search at night for the cultists. The Dogs went on the search instead. They knew whoever was there would be warned, but they hoped to instead tempt the conspirators into ambushing them. I obligingly then had Azariah try to ambush them to stop their investigation. We started a conflict at gunfighting with the stakes of "Does Brother Josiah get shot full o' holes?". This was a big group conflict, where Azariah eventually gave after the Dogs killed one farmhand and wounded Azariah's son.
• There was then a conflict with Brother Josiah saving Brother Jeb, and Brother Isaac saving Brother Phineas. (Isaac had to use his "I saved a man's life 1d6" trait, Phineas' own big excellent 2d8 knife, AND allocate 2d6 relationship dice to do so.)

Overall, I thought it came off pretty well. If I had a critique, I think it went well scene-by-scene, but the story as a whole didn't have as much punch as it could have. On the other hand, I think everyone liked the NPCs, especially Temperance preying on Brother Phineas. On the down side, I at least was dissatisfied with group conflicts. So when I had them ambushed, I had an arbitrary choice of how many guys Azariah had with him. I eventually decided on four guys (i.e. +8d6). Taking on four Dogs, the only way I could challenge them was by giving myself extra dice this way.

There was also a rules issue or two. During the climactic gunfight, Carl attempted to escalate to Non-Physical to get extra dice. I was a little leary of this, but it wasn't defined strictly in the rules. I also felt awkward sometimes when players tried to drag questionable traits into conflicts. I think I only denied this once, but it felt a big arbitrary to me.

• Prepping for DitV at ConQuest (The Forge, Aug 2005)
• [DitV] Dogs at ConQuest 2005 Report (The Forge, Sep 2005)

"Split Decision"

This was the third Buffy game I had done using roughly the same characters. I had originally created the series concept (Fifties Slayer reincarnated in modern-day Santa Cruz) and characters as my test drive of the Buffy system. Since then, I've run three convention games using them. I think it's a good device but it is a little silly, which I generally try to play to.

Explaining my plans in advance, this event was focused on character relationships with a wrapper plot to bring those out. The central device was that the Slayer, Barb, was split into two bodies -- these were the fifties Barb who only knew her early life, and the modern Barb who only remembered since her reincarnation. Also, fifties Barb was straight and modern Barb was closeted gay. After that concept, I knew I wanted a villain from the fifties who created a duplicate Barb body. I settled on making "Dr. Botnik" -- an over-the-top crackpot beatnik who builds robots. I also came up with a guest star -- a male romantic interest for Barb from the fifties.

I got seven players for the event. One player (Julie) signed up but walked out prior to the game start. For the others, I had a mix of six fairly typical twenty-to-thirty-something gamer guys and a teenage girl. What I got was:

• Paul took "modern" Barb. He had some misunderstandings about the facts of the background at first, but after a slow startup period he was pretty good as the modern Barb. The relationships with the girls didn't take hold, but he had great interactions with fifties Barb.
• Fifties Barb was played by (I think) Jesse. He was a bit over-the-top but still serious in this one, playing a relatively submissive and proper girl. A interesting take was that in the written backgrounds I had defined Barb and Steve as having unexpressed romantic tensions. However, Erik as Steve announced himself as Barb's boyfriend and Jesse went along with it.
• Steve Brant, the mystical bad boy from the fifties was played by (I think) Erik. Steve and Fifties Barb were an amusing critique of a dysfunctional sexist relationoship.
• Autumn played Tori -- the dangerous, promiscuous, vampire-hating goth chick who was secretly in love with Barb. She worked pretty well, I think, playing out a hatred of Steve.
• Jerry, who had played in both of my prior Slayerbot games, played Johnny the fourteen-year-old inventor. He was pretty comfortable with his niche as tech master. He had his moments in the spotlight and enjoyed himself, but didn't play a central role in the story.
• Jon -- who had played in my Dogs in the Vineyard game -- played Ashley, the "Gay Vegetarian Wiccan Rich Girl". He said that he had trouble with the character. Her main relationshops were as ex-girlfriend of Tori -- which Jon felt uncomfortable playing since Autumn was a teenage girl -- and with Owen, whose player also wasn't very comfortable.
• Owen the "Popular Surfer Dude" was played by (I believe) Simon. He had trouble with the character. He initially latched onto "The Dude" being the protagonist from The Big Lebowski. I emphasized the differences, but that was still the center of vision, I think. In retrospect, this was a serious problem since the characters were almost opposites. Lebowski was a sluggish older detective whereas this character was an athletic but clueless teenage hunk. He never used his popularity or athletics, and at some point attempted to use his Notice skill and was surprised.

The plot went pretty well. By design, the external plot per se was not the point. There was some good use of the "Plot Twist" mechanic by several players, including Jon who spent that Ashley knew a real psychic who could diagnose what happened to Barb's soul. The logic was simple, and the PCs were able to proceed reasonably. Notable bits: they initially called Dr. Botnik by cell phone, and while ranting against him, Fifties Barb said:

Barb: ...while you go ahead and make your army of robot vampires or whatever.
Botnik: Hold the phone. Say that again.
Barb: What? Army of robot vampires?
Botnik: I've got to take that down. It's happening... visionary, even.

As I predicted, only a few relationships actually panned out. Fifties Barb and Steve had a simple but amusing dysfunctional relationship. The two Barbs had excellent clashes. And Tori and Steve had a good hatred/rivalry. The others didn't really pan out, but I set up a lot of relationships with exactly the view that few would work out.

• Prepping for Buffy at ConQuest (The Forge, Aug 2005)
• Report on Buffy at ConQuest 2005 (The Forge, Sep 2005)

"X-File High: Dru's Clues"

This was part of a series of events using roughly the same characters. I had played in two previous events of the "X-File High" series: once at ConQuest 2003 and once at ConQuest 2004. So it was a safe bet for me. It was pretty fun as usual. The GM almost entirely ignored the HERO System per se and simply went for freeform using 3d6 rolls. (I have played good games which actually used the HERO System, but this wasn't one of them.)

One interesting point was that there were originally premade named characters. These were then replaced by premade archetypes like "Jock", "Kitsune", "Goth Boy/Girl", "Martial Artist", and so forth. We would pick a character sheet, and give it a gender and name. However, the character sheets often reflected the original characters. i.e. The "Prom King/Queen" was pretty clearly designed to fit the female stereotypes. On the other hand, this made it an interesting twist to intentionally allow for role reversals. In this game, one of the players went with the Jock archetype and specified a female softball player. I took the "Goth Boy/Girl" -- who got undefined vampire powers for one minute when he drank blood. I named him "Lex Tevski" and specified him as the over-the-top stereotype of a modern gothboy who wore heavy eyeliner and tight androgynous clothes. I didn't say the word but made it very clear that he was bisexual.

There was first a separate first-act plot of dealing with a vampire giant snake. This then dovetailed into the main plot, which had the loose theme of "Blue's Clues". The PC's were charged with finding three items as part of a scavenger hunt, and after various escapades in getting them, we had to figure out from the three clues what the vampire Drusilla wanted with them. So each of the three was a minor quest to itself -- one from the basement of a sorcerer's house, one from a museum, and one from a vampire party.

There was a bit of tension between the fairly specific character-as-written on the HERO System sheet and the fairly loose character-as-imagined during play. Personally, I slightly preferred the premade characters. However, I realize that not all players enjoy the challenge of taking a predefined character. For the most part, though, play went smoothly.