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Okay, I'm dividing the GenCon posting up into two posts. You are looking at the games post. The post about general stuff is here.
Warning: there are spoilers in the game section. Most of them probably won't matter to you, because most of these games don't run the same from year to year, but I believe the Dragonquest and 7th Sea games may be the exception, and for all I know the groups could plan to run the same scenarios at other cons later this year even if there will be new ones by Gencon Indy next year. At any rate, I'm using cut-tags per game on it; if you were deep-linked into this, you can go to the day of this post to view the post without the spoilers.
Thursday, 12:30 - Star Trek: Operation Assimilate
This was actually intended to be an adventure called "Back Streets of Rigel VII" but the GM said it scaled poorly to as many players as we had, and asked if we were willing to switch scenarios; we were all cool with that as none of us were playing in the official 'Assimilate' slot later in the weekend.
( This way lie the Star Trek spoilers. )
The system didn't impress me overall, either. Right after the game, I was really hyped about the game, simply because it was the first one of the weekend, but the shiny wore off really quickly. It was fun, but it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been nor as many other things were. It wasn't the least-fun of the weekend but isn't an experience I'd repeat.
Thursday, 5:00 - Graveyard Grins (Revelations)
Scott and I both played in this one. It's a horror game, unsurprisingly; I'd actually played this system last year at Gencon and not realized this was the same system again this year when signing up. I realized as soon as we sat down at the table as several of the available characters were quite familiar to me. I latched on to the same one I played last time, which in retrospect was a mistake; trying something new would have been cooler.
I wouldn't have signed up for this at all if I'd realized the system involved, as I tried it and found it fun but not spectacular last year. This year's offering I was less impressed with than that, even, although it was still okay. This is the "heroes beat it back" style of horror rather than the "doomed man" type (although I'm sure you could still turn it into the latter with the right/wrong decisions...). I think this one could have been an outright fizzle for me, except that everyone was having so much fun it was sort of contagious, and the quotes were excellent, and that kept me in a good enough mood to really enjoy the good points and let go of the moments I wasn't as much into the game.
A very cool scenario premise, however. ( Spoilers here. )
Thursday, 9:30 - D&D Skill-Based
I was curious about what this person thought they had done differently with the D&D system and, after much debating, signed up to find out. Scott was sensibly back at the hotel sleeping, which is really where I should have been. This was good enough that I wasn't wanting to be rude and walk out in the middle, but it wasn't very impressive and I rather wish I hadn't gone. The sleep would have been more valuable.
The GM was a bit "fumbly" - no GM screen and had to refer to the NPCs sheets and his notes a fair bit, but had them in manila folders, so couldn't easily access them (I presume, had he had a GM screen, he might have set them out where he could more easily put his hands on what he needed).
I didn't really see the advantages of his system over the third edition game. It was definitely different; it didn't seem horrible; but I didn't really see the advantages. I mean, you could do the same thing with several other existing systems already anyway....
The scenario wasn't all that impressive, eitehr. ( Spoilers coming! )
He gave the rules free to the best roleplayer of the session, offered them to the rest of us for $4. I have never before been grateful (indifferent, yes, but grateful?) to not be selected as the best roleplayer in a game where such a thing was being considered....
Friday, 12:30 - From Deepest Africa (Fudge)
I've played in Fudge games before. The system neither deeply impresses me, nor annoys me; it works okay and I'm willing to play under it if that's what the GM wants to use, but that's about it. I signed up for this game with the knowledge that I might not enjoy it so much; it was a pulp-fiction-themed game, and I have always disliked pulp fiction. However, I also hated Zelazny's writing and love playing in the Amber setting, so I figured giving it a chance (after grouching about it for so long without trying to play it) was a good idea.
The game suffered, since I was up at 6:30 after a late night the night before. I napped for an hour and a half or so prior to the game and was not entirely awake for the first two hours. That wasn't really a loss, though. Mostly-asleep or mostly-awake, I did not find this game nearly as engaging at the others. I was interested in it only for the sake of "winning" it, not the roleplay or the setting or the (heavily dropped) significant names (of historical and literary figures alike). Some of which I missed. Others would react and I would just blink, having no idea who the person was. I didn't care enough to ask, either.
However, I'm really not sure how much of it was the pulp setting and how much was what I found to be a poor job of GM'ing. Either way, my lack of interest in the game for the plot or the setting or the characters means I shan't repeat this experiment. But the game definitely had other problems than being something that (as it turns out) doesn't interest me as much as I thought it didn't interest me....
The GM wasn't good at involving players with quieter voices, or uncertain players (I was actually one of the former, not the latter, for once). He tended not to be able to hear (understandably, the room was quite loud), but also only rarely looked around the table to see if anyone else was trying to get his attention. Loud voices drew his attention, and not much else. At one point, I kept trying to say something, and finally the guy sitting between me and the GM signalled the GM (I can't recall if he waved, said something, or tapped him on the shoulder). That really shouldn't have been necessary, IMO....
( Yep, spoilers again! )
Friday, 5:00 - Take Two Aspirin and call me at the Apocalypse (Amber)
I quite like playing in the Amber setting, and with very little clue what I was getting into, looked forward to this. It used a modified version of the Diceless RPG rules, which worked well. ( The rest of this is spoilers in varying degree. )
Friday, 9:30 - Beneath the Idol: Kali Ma!
Argh. This game said "Bring your steady hand." That was the only clue that the action resolution involved jenga. Kid you not. Pull a block from a jenga stack whenever your action is in question. (You could choose not to pull, and automatically fail; you could push the stack over, and succeed but die in the process; or you could pull. If you pulled and the tower fell, you failed and died. If you pulled without toppling it, you succeeded and lived.)
I wouldn't have signed up for it if I had realized that. I don't have the world's best hand-eye coordination and am not especially fond of jenga without having it tie to my character's life. Still, there was a plus side - the character creation was really need. They didn't have any points-based stuff - instead, your "sheet" was a series of leading questions that were handed to you. Your answers created your character. (Questions such as, "You have a criminal past that your teammates don't know about; what did you do, and what physical mark or scar has it left oyu with?") That was really, really cool.
I ended up playing a 15-year-old girl, a bit impulsive and quite athletic. Scott was also present, playing a sailor. And despite the mechanic, the game was fun; the scenario rocked, and the GM was very good at running it and telling stories. But I'll watch out for the "steady hand" line at future cons, and avoid it.
( Spoilers about the nifty plot, this way. )
Saturday, 8:00 - Dragonquest
Scott was in this also; a neat system but not one I feel the need to own. This was very much an introductory adventure, with character creation and all. The first half was a snapshot of a festival day in our village, including contests; my character won two of them.
( It's hard to consider that a spoiler, but the second half is. )
Really simplistic, but fun as such things go and well-suited to introducing new players to the system, at least. I enjoyed it and may play again some con.
Saturday, 12:30 - Courting Murder: Deryni Threat 1
I adore Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series and setting. So this sounded quite fun. It was listed as an RPG. It turned out to be a LARP. Had it been listed as a LARP, correctly, I would not have signed up. I don't like the things.
That would have been my loss. This game was a lot of fun.
( Cut for spam as much as spoilers. This is a growing story and won't run the same again. )
I'll probably play in one or more of these next year. I very nearly acquired generics so that I could play in the one they were running at 9:30, but I'd told Scott I'd come back to the hotel after my last game ended at 9, plus I knew I really wasn't up to a third late night. I still wish I had played in it, but I don't think it would've gone well if I had, honestly.
Saturday, 5:00 - 7th Sea
The triumph of stubbornness. This is another "try what you think you don't like" game, as swashbuckling stuff has never really interested me.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
utsuri told me back when it came out how cool the game was, and I tried to get into it at Gencon last year. And failed. They were full. This year was hard - most "beginning" sessions were full, but I got this one.
This game started off badly, but not in the game sense. At 5:10, we still had no GM, only an apologetic person handling the gaming area who had no idea where the 7th Sea GMs were, despite two schedule sessions (one beginner, one not) in that timeslot. Of course, we also had two people who had never played before, and had bought beginning tickets and been given advanced; a little disorganization always helps. So we had three people for advanced, two of whom couldn't play in it, several for beginning, a bunch of people with generic tickets wanting to play, and not one GM.
They rebalanced us into two groups of 6 each, dismissing the extra generics, and supplied us with GMs - it just took a while. (The advanced folks got to play the beginning adventure instead.) Despite that hideous start, the game itself was grand fun; I'm now buying the two main books and will probably buy supplements but must think some about that. I'll definitely play this again, given the chance.
( Spoiler details this way. )
Sunday, 10:00 - Basari Tournament
No spoilers involved. Board game from Out of the Box publishing. This is an interesting little board game where you try to win on points, themed on gem trading. I enjoyed it enough to buy it; I also lost miserably, since I was just learning it and am not quick on the uptake for strategy. Oh, well. I had fun! I was also out by 11 when it actually ran until 1. Scott and I wandered the con after that, and managed to find the person he was looking for so that he could get GURPS Rogues signed, so that was good.
Warning: there are spoilers in the game section. Most of them probably won't matter to you, because most of these games don't run the same from year to year, but I believe the Dragonquest and 7th Sea games may be the exception, and for all I know the groups could plan to run the same scenarios at other cons later this year even if there will be new ones by Gencon Indy next year. At any rate, I'm using cut-tags per game on it; if you were deep-linked into this, you can go to the day of this post to view the post without the spoilers.
Thursday, 12:30 - Star Trek: Operation Assimilate
This was actually intended to be an adventure called "Back Streets of Rigel VII" but the GM said it scaled poorly to as many players as we had, and asked if we were willing to switch scenarios; we were all cool with that as none of us were playing in the official 'Assimilate' slot later in the weekend.
( This way lie the Star Trek spoilers. )
The system didn't impress me overall, either. Right after the game, I was really hyped about the game, simply because it was the first one of the weekend, but the shiny wore off really quickly. It was fun, but it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been nor as many other things were. It wasn't the least-fun of the weekend but isn't an experience I'd repeat.
Thursday, 5:00 - Graveyard Grins (Revelations)
Scott and I both played in this one. It's a horror game, unsurprisingly; I'd actually played this system last year at Gencon and not realized this was the same system again this year when signing up. I realized as soon as we sat down at the table as several of the available characters were quite familiar to me. I latched on to the same one I played last time, which in retrospect was a mistake; trying something new would have been cooler.
I wouldn't have signed up for this at all if I'd realized the system involved, as I tried it and found it fun but not spectacular last year. This year's offering I was less impressed with than that, even, although it was still okay. This is the "heroes beat it back" style of horror rather than the "doomed man" type (although I'm sure you could still turn it into the latter with the right/wrong decisions...). I think this one could have been an outright fizzle for me, except that everyone was having so much fun it was sort of contagious, and the quotes were excellent, and that kept me in a good enough mood to really enjoy the good points and let go of the moments I wasn't as much into the game.
A very cool scenario premise, however. ( Spoilers here. )
Thursday, 9:30 - D&D Skill-Based
I was curious about what this person thought they had done differently with the D&D system and, after much debating, signed up to find out. Scott was sensibly back at the hotel sleeping, which is really where I should have been. This was good enough that I wasn't wanting to be rude and walk out in the middle, but it wasn't very impressive and I rather wish I hadn't gone. The sleep would have been more valuable.
The GM was a bit "fumbly" - no GM screen and had to refer to the NPCs sheets and his notes a fair bit, but had them in manila folders, so couldn't easily access them (I presume, had he had a GM screen, he might have set them out where he could more easily put his hands on what he needed).
I didn't really see the advantages of his system over the third edition game. It was definitely different; it didn't seem horrible; but I didn't really see the advantages. I mean, you could do the same thing with several other existing systems already anyway....
The scenario wasn't all that impressive, eitehr. ( Spoilers coming! )
He gave the rules free to the best roleplayer of the session, offered them to the rest of us for $4. I have never before been grateful (indifferent, yes, but grateful?) to not be selected as the best roleplayer in a game where such a thing was being considered....
Friday, 12:30 - From Deepest Africa (Fudge)
I've played in Fudge games before. The system neither deeply impresses me, nor annoys me; it works okay and I'm willing to play under it if that's what the GM wants to use, but that's about it. I signed up for this game with the knowledge that I might not enjoy it so much; it was a pulp-fiction-themed game, and I have always disliked pulp fiction. However, I also hated Zelazny's writing and love playing in the Amber setting, so I figured giving it a chance (after grouching about it for so long without trying to play it) was a good idea.
The game suffered, since I was up at 6:30 after a late night the night before. I napped for an hour and a half or so prior to the game and was not entirely awake for the first two hours. That wasn't really a loss, though. Mostly-asleep or mostly-awake, I did not find this game nearly as engaging at the others. I was interested in it only for the sake of "winning" it, not the roleplay or the setting or the (heavily dropped) significant names (of historical and literary figures alike). Some of which I missed. Others would react and I would just blink, having no idea who the person was. I didn't care enough to ask, either.
However, I'm really not sure how much of it was the pulp setting and how much was what I found to be a poor job of GM'ing. Either way, my lack of interest in the game for the plot or the setting or the characters means I shan't repeat this experiment. But the game definitely had other problems than being something that (as it turns out) doesn't interest me as much as I thought it didn't interest me....
The GM wasn't good at involving players with quieter voices, or uncertain players (I was actually one of the former, not the latter, for once). He tended not to be able to hear (understandably, the room was quite loud), but also only rarely looked around the table to see if anyone else was trying to get his attention. Loud voices drew his attention, and not much else. At one point, I kept trying to say something, and finally the guy sitting between me and the GM signalled the GM (I can't recall if he waved, said something, or tapped him on the shoulder). That really shouldn't have been necessary, IMO....
( Yep, spoilers again! )
Friday, 5:00 - Take Two Aspirin and call me at the Apocalypse (Amber)
I quite like playing in the Amber setting, and with very little clue what I was getting into, looked forward to this. It used a modified version of the Diceless RPG rules, which worked well. ( The rest of this is spoilers in varying degree. )
Friday, 9:30 - Beneath the Idol: Kali Ma!
Argh. This game said "Bring your steady hand." That was the only clue that the action resolution involved jenga. Kid you not. Pull a block from a jenga stack whenever your action is in question. (You could choose not to pull, and automatically fail; you could push the stack over, and succeed but die in the process; or you could pull. If you pulled and the tower fell, you failed and died. If you pulled without toppling it, you succeeded and lived.)
I wouldn't have signed up for it if I had realized that. I don't have the world's best hand-eye coordination and am not especially fond of jenga without having it tie to my character's life. Still, there was a plus side - the character creation was really need. They didn't have any points-based stuff - instead, your "sheet" was a series of leading questions that were handed to you. Your answers created your character. (Questions such as, "You have a criminal past that your teammates don't know about; what did you do, and what physical mark or scar has it left oyu with?") That was really, really cool.
I ended up playing a 15-year-old girl, a bit impulsive and quite athletic. Scott was also present, playing a sailor. And despite the mechanic, the game was fun; the scenario rocked, and the GM was very good at running it and telling stories. But I'll watch out for the "steady hand" line at future cons, and avoid it.
( Spoilers about the nifty plot, this way. )
Saturday, 8:00 - Dragonquest
Scott was in this also; a neat system but not one I feel the need to own. This was very much an introductory adventure, with character creation and all. The first half was a snapshot of a festival day in our village, including contests; my character won two of them.
( It's hard to consider that a spoiler, but the second half is. )
Really simplistic, but fun as such things go and well-suited to introducing new players to the system, at least. I enjoyed it and may play again some con.
Saturday, 12:30 - Courting Murder: Deryni Threat 1
I adore Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series and setting. So this sounded quite fun. It was listed as an RPG. It turned out to be a LARP. Had it been listed as a LARP, correctly, I would not have signed up. I don't like the things.
That would have been my loss. This game was a lot of fun.
( Cut for spam as much as spoilers. This is a growing story and won't run the same again. )
I'll probably play in one or more of these next year. I very nearly acquired generics so that I could play in the one they were running at 9:30, but I'd told Scott I'd come back to the hotel after my last game ended at 9, plus I knew I really wasn't up to a third late night. I still wish I had played in it, but I don't think it would've gone well if I had, honestly.
Saturday, 5:00 - 7th Sea
The triumph of stubbornness. This is another "try what you think you don't like" game, as swashbuckling stuff has never really interested me.
utsuri told me back when it came out how cool the game was, and I tried to get into it at Gencon last year. And failed. They were full. This year was hard - most "beginning" sessions were full, but I got this one.This game started off badly, but not in the game sense. At 5:10, we still had no GM, only an apologetic person handling the gaming area who had no idea where the 7th Sea GMs were, despite two schedule sessions (one beginner, one not) in that timeslot. Of course, we also had two people who had never played before, and had bought beginning tickets and been given advanced; a little disorganization always helps. So we had three people for advanced, two of whom couldn't play in it, several for beginning, a bunch of people with generic tickets wanting to play, and not one GM.
They rebalanced us into two groups of 6 each, dismissing the extra generics, and supplied us with GMs - it just took a while. (The advanced folks got to play the beginning adventure instead.) Despite that hideous start, the game itself was grand fun; I'm now buying the two main books and will probably buy supplements but must think some about that. I'll definitely play this again, given the chance.
( Spoiler details this way. )
Sunday, 10:00 - Basari Tournament
No spoilers involved. Board game from Out of the Box publishing. This is an interesting little board game where you try to win on points, themed on gem trading. I enjoyed it enough to buy it; I also lost miserably, since I was just learning it and am not quick on the uptake for strategy. Oh, well. I had fun! I was also out by 11 when it actually ran until 1. Scott and I wandered the con after that, and managed to find the person he was looking for so that he could get GURPS Rogues signed, so that was good.
