ConQuest 2006 Report

         These are my thoughts on the ConQuest 2006 gaming convention. I was in three role-playing events -- because of mild illness and taking care of kids.

• Cruise Control *
• The Haunted Mansion
• Darkest Albion
• Polaris *
• Faery's Tale

Also, I have indirect information on three other "Young Players" events which my wife Liz and/or 10-year-old friend Ellen played in:

• The Younglings Strike Back
• X-Kids: Take A Stand
• The Long Cold Watches of the Night

"Cruise Control"

         This was the fourth in a series of one-shot convention games which I have run, based on my initial playtest of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. It's about a Slayer from 1950s New Jersey reincarnated in modern-day Santa Cruz. I got six players, three of whom had played in previous runs. I outlined the eight character options: which were the six Main Cast (Barb and her "Scooby Gang") along with two Guest Stars. In this case, one was the android duplicate of Barb now dubbed "Brenda". The second was a new rival of Johnny's: any older, cooler kid genius named Vincent Holt. What I got was:

• Jerry Betti had played in the first and previous episodes, each time playing Johnny Archer, Boy Genius.
• Paul Strack had played in the previous episode, and this time again picked the same character, minus half a soul: "Brenda" Dixon, Robotic Duplicate.
• Katie Hooper was a young woman new to me, and opted to play Barb, the titular "Slayerbot" since no one else had expressed an interest.
• J.D. Wikert played Owen Gibson, Popular Surfer Dude after some debate.
• Mike McFarland played Ashley McBay, Gay Vegetarian Wiccan Rich Girl.
• Ken Hooper played Vincent Holt, the "Cool Teen Genius" guest star.

         So the scenario was titled "Cruise Control", set during spring vacation as the kids go on a cruise ship down the California coast to Mexico and back. So, I had two key gimmicks in this scenario wrapped around the guest stars. The first was Brenda. She was a robotic duplicate of Barb -- who didn't have a soul, but had Barb's memories since her reincarnation in the present. The second was Vincent Holt -- who secretly knew the bad guy in the scenario, but didn't want to tell anyone because he was responsible for it.

         My inspiration was from films like "The Thing" and "It! The Terror From Beyond Space". I wanted an isolated setting where they had to deal with terrorizing thing, with a bit of suspicion of each other. In this case, the real evil came from Vincent Holt. He was a cool, popular, and socially-conscious teen genius, who made himself that way by splitting off the geeky, anti-social half of his personality. Naturally, it escaped the confines he put on it.

         The other half of this was Brenda, who was in a sense the red herring. As the soulless duplicate, my original thought was to throw some suspicion her way when things went wrong. However, she was an amusing red herring in the classic "fish out of water" comedy bits. There was enormous fodder for personality clash and teen comedy in this, since Brenda had Barb's memories and would talk about them without regard for people's feelings or privacy.

         I had some rudimentary stats for Vincent's disembodied anti-social half, a map of a cruise ship, character sheets with backgrounds for everyone, and little else. This was a lot of fun, but didn't go quite as smoothly as the other runs that I'd done. I can think of a number of things I could have done differently, but the basic setup was strong. There are always some issues with different groups of players, so in part I can say there is just some luck of the draw in how players get along with a semi-random mix of characters.

1. I started out with a simple mistake. It is essential for the nature of the scenario to have a certain amount of normal interaction on the boat before things start going wrong. I started of with the launch of the cruise and then asked the players what they were up to. Most of the players, I think, had fun with the teen comedy. The Vincent/Johnny competition, Owen and Ashley trying to score with Robin, and Brenda throwing wrenches into the works. However, it would have been punchier if I had instead started a day or two into the cruise and then asked the players where they were and what they had been doing. It would have set expectations much better.
2. Brenda wasn't an object of suspicion as I had originally thought. The other players didn't pick up on accusing her of problems. In part, she wasn't by herself enough such that events could be blamed on her. I could have arranged things better if I wanted this, though it wasn't critical.
3. So, the disembodied anti-social half took over first Owen and then later Ashley. J.D. and Mike each had very different but cool takes on playing it. I wonder that somehow I could have set expectations better to bring their visions of it more in sync. On the other hand, it also worked in a sense of reacting differently in different bodies.
4. I wish I could have done more to draw out Katie during play. Somehow she was somewhat left out of the inter-character dynamics for the most part. I think socially, she was outside the group on two levels: the youngest, and being female. But I should consider that and take extra steps to draw her in.
5. I could have done more with NPCs during the game. I had prepared Johnny's parents, and at the players suggestion made Robin, romantic interest of both Ashley and Owen. However, I think it would have gone better with another suspicious figure would have helped -- someone to add to the mix of Brenda and Vincent.

         So, not the best episode of the series. In the future, I resolve to pay more attention to social dynamics that get set up with a group of strangers when running a con game.

"The Haunted Mansion"

         I helped run this D&D event in the ConQuest "young persons" room, which had its own track of events. This was my first time running events for purely kids at a convention, though I'd run a few at home. There were several kids I knew there: my son Milo (age 6), and two friends' kids: Zelly (age 7) and Ellen (age 10). I got to the room later than I thought, and wasn't quite ready to start a game. However, it turned out that Scott Bagley was running a D&D game and had an excess of players. To help out, I ran an improvised adventure for a group of five kids -- including Ellen, Milo, and Zelly along with Anthony (who I'd guess was 11) and Nick (who I'd guess was around 9).

         At Scott's suggestion, we had two tables. The first had his Dwarven Forge dungeon set. The second we set up with a big battlemat, and two model ships that he had. I would start out with the ships and play out their approach to the island of the haunted mansion, then halfway through we would switch tables. Scott's players would escape the mansion, while my players would arrive.

         In general, it was rough running a game for a different age range of kids. I started them out on a ship approaching the island when they were attacked by a pirate ship full of skeletons. It was a straight combat, but made fun and colorful by all the pirate trappings. They got along together but it was definitely a strain. Ellen and Anthony plotted together the best strategies and creative tricks for getting past the pirates. They then landed and started up the path when they saw lizard creatures lead by a dragon surrounding them. On the pirate ship, Milo had cast "Animal Friendship" and gotten a monstrous rat as a friend. Through the rest of the game, he was very attached to the rat and got really upset at anyone messing with it. Ellen and the older boy came up with the idea of just buying the dragon off, because their characters (pregens supplied by Scott) had tens of thousands of gold pieces. I made it a little difficult in negotiations, but went with it since they liked it. We then switched tables and started on the dungeon.

         So sifting through the miniatures which I had, I improvised some encounters. They got past a door trap, into a room full of pools. I had a burning skeleton approach them and tell them he was cursed, doomed by the monster that lives beyond, and asked for their help. He told them about a tentacled monster. In the fight past the pools, they used a lot of ingenuity to avoid pools and get at the monster. I particularly liked Ellen & Anthony's casting Water Walking to avoid being dragged under. Unfortunately, Milo misunderstood this and got really mad at Anthony, thinking he was doing something bad to the rat and pinched him -- which was terribly because Anthony was trying to be nice. We got through that room, fought a souped-up Taer, and then wrapped up.

         This was hard for me. While I do well with kids in general, I didn't have a lot of experience. Ellen was disappointed with my lack of preparation, I could tell. The real tough one was trying to keep the 6 and 7 year olds working with the 10 and 11 year olds. I think I did pretty well, but I look forward to doing better next time. Points that I think of:

• The group dynamic problem was tough. Basically, I think I need a stronger turn structure of some sort -- where each player has a real chance in the spotlight rather than just an action.
• I did avoid the bloodthirsty kill-and-loot that's common in these games. It's important to frame it as opportunity rather than a restriction. So, the cursed skeleton asked for their help but there was no attitude of having to do the right thing.
• The spell lists were an enormous time sink. It was paralyzing to the pacing for Ellen and Anthony to sift through their long list of spells.

"Darkest Albion"

         This was a larp event which I got to a few minutes late due to kid handling. I also hadn't had dinner, which was an issue. The basic scenario was: a bunch of diplomats are on an airship headed to England/Albion on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, in an alternate reality with elves, dwarves, and magic. There were 25 players -- one was missing, but someone called a friend as a replacement to have all characters filled. Most of the players had played in previous games. The larp organizers had a formal procedure for characters. They called out people's names and formally assigned them a character, handing the player an envelope with the character sheet and any necessary props. Players were not supposed to open the envelope until everyone had been assigned characters. They then broke for forty minutes or so, at which point the game started.

         I was assigned the part of the French diplomat, Henri DuBatiste. He was a fairly ordinary diplomat in most ways save being an elf with some magical talent. He had strong connections to his attache, his liaison, and a weak one to the other diplomats. His goalswere to avert the Franco-Prussian War, protect his personal interests, screw over Spain, and get a commitment from his attache whom he had been unsuccessfully wooing. The other parts included the other diplomats, the airship captain and other officials, and a scattering of other passengers. There also turned out to be a surprise NPC -- a player dressed in an elaborate clockwork man costume who came out of a big box as a surprise.

         The mechanics use rock-paper-scissors together with stats on a three-step scale. Matching stats means to retry ties, a 1-point lead means that you win ties, and a 2-point lead means that you simply win. There were various special abilities. For example, I had the power of "Aura Perception" which allowed me to declare a contest with another player, then force them to tell me two of five questions. However, in practice this was terrible, because using an aggressive and time-consuming power like this on another player inevitably ticked them off. So it was worse than useless for negotiations. I used it on a suspicious passenger (Bobby the professor's manservant) at one point, and the player insisted on waiting several minutes for an organizer to come and adjudicate the power.

         I spent much of the first half of the game trying to negotiate for my position. I went back and forth with four other diplomats, and also conferring with my attache and liaison. My attache was a woman I had been unsuccessfully trying to woo, and was played by a girl, Autumn, who had played in my Buffy game last year. However, the formal stage of negotiations was at first delayed (by GM request) and then cancelled. I came to realize that the negotiations were overshadowed by the other activity going on, which I didn't have any real knowledge of. The public centerpiece was that the clockwork man was developing consciousness and talking to various people.

         There was an extended debrief as we found out what was going on, as each player explained their character. Apparently there were several plots going on, which in the end resulted in the airship being destroyed by a nuclear explosion -- with a small set escaping by powerful magic. The professor who built the clockwork man was secretly a terrorist doctor. Three of the characters were a team of ex-pirates who were plotting revenge and eventually stole the ship. Five or so of the people were members of a secret society called the Delphians who were opposed to such plots, but could not find proof to stop them. The key, though, was Lord Volkrin Hesse -- who was secretly also known as Baron Sunday, the only half-elf in the history of the world, and by changing the airship's course to over Stonehenge became "the most powerful sorcerer in the world". This was followed by a vote for best player.

         In the debriefing, I summarized my role by saying I was doomed from the start. My character's primary goal was to avert the Franco-Prussian war, which was flatly impossible. His secondary was to woo his attache Gigi, who turned out to be gay. More generally, I'd say that most of the characters were completely overshadowed by the events of Baron Sunday and his gang -- and any goals they pursued were vaporized by an atomic bomb they didn't even know existed or could exist. In short, I found this to be something of a letdown.

"Polaris"

         I had scheduled a 9AM event of Polaris. However, sadly only one player showed up (Bay Chang). We chatted about Polaris and other indie games some, and went down to look for other people to play, but didn't come across anyone. So I cancelled the event. I hadn't really concentrated on gathering players for this event, since it only took three or four players maximum.

"The Younglings Strike Back"

I wasn't around for this, but my wife Liz played this along with Ellen. It went pretty well, I think.

"Faery's tale"

         With Polaris cancelled, I had a little more time to prepare for my second young persons game. I had been debating running either John Wick's Cat or Faery's Tale, and I went with the latter in part due to support. There were two introductory modules: a "Jack in the Beanstalk" in the core book, and a downloadable module "Tournament of the Fey". Neither of these appealed to me, so I mostly improvised. I wasn't on the schedule, but I talked to the kid's room organizer that morning. I added the game to the schedule posted on a whiteboard at the door, put up the Faery's Tale poster beside it, and put out a sign-up sheet. Besides my son Milo and his friend Zelly, I got three players. We went through character creation -- I gave the book to the older kids to pick their qualities, while the younger kids filled out a character sheet from the pregenerated characters. The players and their characters were:

• Zelly played a pregenerated character -- a pixie named Willow, whom she renamed Sandy two-thirds of the way through.
• Milo played the pregenerated character -- a sprite named Flynn who flew about on his bumblebee companion.
• An older boy Erik (age 10 or 11) created a pixie character named Zimble, who had a sidekick of a miniature ice dragon named "Frosty".
• Erik's younger sister Kate (age maybe 8 or so) played a pre-generated character Gimlock, except that she substituted out his "Seer" gift for "Sidekick" and also took a miniature dragon -- a flame dragon named "Flame".
• Nick (maybe 9?) created a brownie named Elfrica, who lived in a ruined castle. The details here took a lot of negotiation. I explained that brownies lived with humans, and had household magic which meant magic affecting human artifacts. It seemed like he wasn't quite sure what he wanted, and we went around in circles a bit.

         With the miniature dragons established as Gimlock and Zimble's sidekicks, I decided that the adventure was going to be about saving a full-size dragon from a group of rough dragon hunters. This was, of course, a deliberate dig at D&D. They found the camp of the dragon hunters, and then the others distracted them by talking the horses and letting them go to run around -- while Elfrica invisibly stole all their arrows. The dogs and the horses were both mistreated by the group, and they helped them by getting them some nice food. There was also a family (two parents and a young son) who tended the supply train, and I noted that after the horses got loose, one of the dragon hunters went and slapped the kid for not having tied them right.

         I should note about the system. Nick was the type to narrate a lot about what was happening, which annoyed Kate in particular, who insisted that he couldn't just say whatever he liked. Here the system was of use, in that I explained that Nick could narrate but that he had to pay with Essence Points. I had brought a bunch of crystals which I handed out as Essence Points -- and I gave them out, for example, to Kate and Eric when they helped out the dogs and horses.

         After this, they went to see the dragon, and found that he had been poisoned by the dragon hunters -- who had dumped some toxin into the nearby stream. I said that they could cure it, but they needed a sample of the poison to brew the antidote. Now, at this point I think Nick said that he wanted to have run across the poison before, and could get a sample from the stream which was poisoned. I charged Essence for this. However, this was pushing it -- it seemed that if they paid enough Essence they could do anything. But they brewed up a potion with the sample and cured the dragon.

         The last bit was dealing with the dragon's attack. So, playing the dragon, he said that he was going to eat the horses first so that the people could ride away to escape. The kids naturally cried out at this, and got the dragon to agree not to hurt the horses or the family with the supply wagon if they would first make sure that the horses escaped. So they slipped in, sabataged further the dragon hunter's equipment, and let the horses loose. I then narrated briefly how the dragon attacked the dragon hunters, stopping only at the last minute to leave the wagoneer's family alone. They then got a Boon (one of FT's reward systems) from the dragon.

         I was rather proud of this, mainly because it was an adventure that had a lot of action -- but it was all about helping people, and none of the PCs ever attacked anyone. It was a bit of a tough sell in the first place getting Erik and Kate sold on this, but it went well. Milo and Zelly were difficult to engage, but still liked it.

"X-Kids: Take A Stand"

This was a run which was set in the background of the third X-Men movie ("X-Men: The Last Stand"). It had pregenerated characters of various of the X-Men figures left behind in the movie. Liz and Ellen played in it, and it went well, though I got the impression of some problems from adapting a canonical story into an RPG.

"The Long Cold Watches of the Night"

I didn't play in this, but the 10-year-old daughter of a friend played an elven cleric in this one, and was thrilled. It was set in Greyhawk's "Theocracy of the Pale", which had an oppression human-only religion of the god Pholtus. She was mostly ignored as an elf. The adventure apparently involved battling a bunch of undead, as well as a cannibal priest of Pholtus -- whose outrages were detailed in diary handouts. There was some risk of eating human flesh in this -- I'm not sure how that was handled given the young age group.

The really catchy part of it for her, though, was having an official character registered in the Living Greyhawk system.