Cons
KapCon 2010 – Day 2
Day 2 dawned with me feeling gritty eyed and generally washed out after Day 1. However I showed up to the Games on Demand room as promised, hoping to play rather than facilitate. › Continue reading
KapCon 2010 – the LARP
This year I decided to give the large KapCon LARP another go. My last experience hadn’t been great, mostly due to my inexperience with how LARP worked. This time round however I pestered the GMs a lot more to make sure that I had a very firm grasp of who my character was and how she fit in to the faction she was in. › Continue reading
KapCon 2010 – Day 1
KapCon is over again for another year, and it’s proving a hard task to process back into the real world. I had another great Con with more fantastic moments than I can fit in here. › Continue reading
A Day of Games
Despite the recent lull in blogging things have been pretty busy on the geeking front, not least of which was my desicion to run a small, one day RPG con a couple of months ago. The reasons for this were two fold.
- There are heaps of fantastic small print games out there that I wanted to have an oppertunity to play.
- I thought that the Wellington gaming scene would respond well to an event mid year.
So I stole an idea from New Zealand’s biggest RPG con, KapCon (which is held every January), and based my Day of Games on the Games on Demand room. The deal here is that there are a group of facilitators who each agree to run certain games that they’re really excited about and then people come, vote on which games seem cool and go play. Sounds easy right?
Well as I found out this supposidly easy concept needs (not surprisingly) more organisation that I thought it would. Choosing a date in mid-May which was roughly half way between KapCon and the one of the other main RPG events in Wellington, ConFusion which is held in August was easy. As was picking the old faithful, Turnbull House for a venue. I pimped my idea on the NZRag boards to get people to come and run games and even made fliers to go into the FLGS. I kind of forgot to set up a Facebook event until a few days before but dispite that lapse the day arrived an we had a pretty good turn out, even a guy who was from the US and travelling around NZ. After some discussion I decided to do a slightly different time table. Rather than the traditional 3 hour slot I split the day into two 4 hour slots and four 2 hour slots. This way if you wanted to play in a game that required more set up you’d still get time to play.
This was kind of where my grand idea fell down a little. I had a big white board and session times/lengths all worked out, but I felt there was too much standing around waiting and discussing what would happen next. Also a number of the GMs didn’t get to play in games that they wanted to due to having to run games. So I’ve been thinking about how to smooth out those waits and give everyone the oppertunity to play if they wanted to. So here is what I’m going to do next year, assuming there is interest:
- Get a clear list of games from each GM so other GMs can indicate what they’d also like to play in.
- Set up the whole day’s timetable to begin with so if people finish their session they know where to go next and time isn’t eaten up in the short sessions with arranging things.
In terms of my own Day of Games experience it was good. I ran an awesome game of 3: 16 for three Americans who really got into their roles as Space Marines. Then I “ran” an utterly terrible session of Capes (a game I’d never read, played in or even come across before) which I thought would be an easy supers pick game but confused me and all of the players with it’s unusual conflict mechanic. However I did really like the way characters were generated. Finally I brought out Hot War and actually got to run through game creation. This was my most satisfying game of the day and made me want to play in a multi-session game of this even more.
All in all it was a good day and the comments from others made me think that it could continue to grow in the furture. So I’m thinking that Day of Games will be around for another year yet.
Boardgames and RPGs
I don’t go to cons or spend much time with gamers I’m not already friends with so I can’t say I’ve noticed this but according to two seperate industry figures boardgames are making major roads into RPG circles.
One’s a throw away comment by designer Ken Hite in a con review:
boardgaming boomed this weekend as it seems to be doing all over.
And the other is a longer, more considered piece by Steve Darlington, known for his work on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay line, amongst other things:
In short, for what people want out of an RPG – to move through something like a plot, to have a character of their own design, to make meaningful choices about goals and combat, to roll dice and produce random events, to make choices IN character even if they work against what might be best for winning the game…all of these are being met, more and more, in board games.
(as a side note, Steve’s a fan of this blog)
I’m not sure about this myself, but my experience of boardgames is that they are too directed in their story – one of my signle favourite RPG-things is that the GM can’t predict what the hell the players will do. I don’t miss the box set games of the past – big maps annoy me and I don’t need more crap in my life, just good ideas.
Do any of you feel that there’s an increasing convergence between RPGs and board games?
Things to look forward to in ‘09
With January almost done 2009 is well under way so I thought I’d jot down a list of the things I’m looking forward to this year.
- Receiving, reading and playing Mouse Guard. An RPG of the graphic novels by David Petersen it has had a number of great reviews and as a gaming friend said to me:
“It is one of the most playable RPGs I have come across.”
- Pulling off Day of Games on May 16th. A small one day event here in Wellington with games being offered on the day and people voting for an choosing the game they feel like playing most. More info once I re-do the blog.
- As Nick mentioned in a previous post Green Ronin have announced that A Song of Ice and Fire rpg has been approved and is on it’s way to the printers. I ran through the quick-start adventure back in July’08 and really liked what they had done. The core book is due out in March so I’ll be doing a write up once I get my hands on it.
- Writing my Buffy: the Vampire Slayer RPG scenario series, The Slayer Chronicals.
- Playing in my new Buffy game (there seems to be a theme), Fall. It’s a great group of people and I think will be heaps of fun. I’ll do a write up on our first mini-session soon.
- Dollhouse starting on TV in the US.
I think that’s it for now. I’ll be back at certain points to see how these things all pan out.
Play reports from KapCon ‘09
I had three sessions at this year’s Con where I got to play rather than GM and I’d decided quite early on that I’d like to spend the majority of those sessions in the Games on Demand rooms. In the end I had two sessions with the GoD guys and also played in a Buffy game, which turned out to be quite an inspiration.
So the games were:
- Mountain Witch – a game of Ronin in a mythical Japan fighting to the top of Mt Fuji in order to destroy the Mountain Witch.
- Not our Future – a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game set in the modern day around a group of misfits.
- My Life with Master – where all the players are the minions of some crazed ‘Master’ figure who makes them do many odd and morally questionable acts.
KapCon ‘09 Report – Day 2
The second day of the con was my big GM day. I was running in two of the three rounds and wasn’t sure I’d stick around for the final one.
With out further ado it was time for A.C.O.R.N. again. This time I’d made some timing changes and decided to make the start a bit different. And it rocked! The players were fantastic and totally jumped feet first into the craziness. I think it was helped by the fact that everyone had a chance to really get into the RP vibe by this stage. Svend deserves special mention once again for his awesomeness as the jock with an inflated sense of his own ego. A few key moments:
- I will never hear “One way or Another” by Blondie without smiling ever again. Thanks Svend!
- Paul the techie, played awesomely by Bryn, while looking at security footage in the middle of the dance floor totally brushes off a Geek Groupie. Even though she thought geeks were “Sooo hot! Right now.”
Next round I ran Project Breather for the fourth and I think final time. It went well, though I found it difficult to capture the creepy, claustrophobic feeling that I was going for. Once again though the players made the characters their own and I only wish that we hadn’t run so short on time at the end. I have to say that none of the other groups who have played through this scenario with me so far have been quite so trusting. I do still feel a little bad about poisoning one of the characters, though the player assured me it was ok!
I also just realised that I forgot to write down everyone’s names but special mention must go to Herbet Jenkins player for so playing the upper class prat so well. Also to Samantha Askew’s player, you guys really captured the characters. So thank you.
My final game of the con was another go of My Life with Master, which deserves a post all of it’s own.
All in all a great con which has left me feeling ever more fond of the great group of people who make up the Wellington RPG community. I’m also brimming with ideas that I can’t wait to get on paper.
Thanks again to the organisers for just being awesome, Simon, Dan and Malcolm for running such great games and all the people who signed up for and enjoyed the games I ran.
KapCon ‘09 Report – Day 1
It’s taken all day but I finally feel that I have reached a point where I can coherently think back on my weekend of fun filled craziness that is part and parcel with KapCon.
KapCon (for those who have no idea what I’m on about) is New Zealand’s largest con. It takes place over two days and attracts over 100 people from around the country and even The World. It is a really approachable and friendly con with 6 rounds of table top games scheduled, plus a board game room, RPGA games and a LARP on the Saturday night.
I had decided that this year I’d branch out and see what it was like to run three games. That way I’d have three sessions to play in and three to run, a nice even split. I’ll have separate actual play threads for the games I played in and will talk about the game I ran on day 1 here.
First round dawned and I was running my comedic spy scenario A.C.O.R.N. and it went well. The players got into their characters easily enough and seemed to be having fun with the ‘anything goes’ nature of the scenario. I however wasn’t overly happy with some of it still and decided later to change a few key elements. Fraser as a bad ass marine in a cowboy hat totting 2 sub-machine guns made a great image.
The rest of the day was taken up with me finally getting to play Mountain Witch (through Games on Demand) and playing the Slayer in a Buffy game.
I had decided to not take part in the LARP this year and have to say I was very happy with my decision when I was home at a good hour with plenty of time to unwind.
Run a Game at KapCon!!
KapCon is New Zealand’s biggest RPG convention and happens here in Wellington every January. It is two packed days of games and if you’re in the area, and interested it is well worth coming to. However there seems to be a bit of reluctance for people to GM games. So I’m going to do my bit to help pimp the idea.
I’m running three games. Derby of the Damned, Project Breather and A.C.O.R.N.. All of these are written up over at the site. Also to get more back ground nip over the The NZRag boards.