Another One Bites The Dust

[orikes]

And another GenCon has been laid to rest.

When I went to Origins in June, I was in a pretty miserable state of mine and almost expected to have a horrible time at the con. I was quite happily proven wrong and had a blast. With this GenCon, I was stressed leading up to it (problems with pixilated asses and concerns about money), but the moment I hit the road with my friend Scott, things were good.



TRAVELIN' FOOL

Indianapolis is about nine-and-a-half hours away from here. It's a pretty brutal drive to do it all in one go, and I am not made of strong enough stuff to do it and be a functioning human being upon arrival. This is mostly because of the whacked schedule I work. Leaving at any time on Wednesday to get there in time to do anything would mean that I got no sleep at all. So, instead, Scott and I left on Tuesday and drove about halfway there before stopping for the night.

I like doing it this way. A five hour drive is no big deal at all, but doubling that is rough as was proved by our ride home last night. Doug, another friend, was going to be meeting us there and riding back with us, so we had three people to trade ride duties with. The issue with this is that we'd all just spent four or five days running around like crazy people not getting very much sleep. Scott did the first hour of the drive and then begged to have someone else drive. He promptly passed out in the back. Doug took over the helm and we went for about two or three more hours before I took over from him. This was about halfway between Columbus and Cleveland. I made it to New York before I had to beg someone to take over. Doug tried to take over again, but at this point it was past 2am and his driving was scaring the crap out of me. When we made it to our Thruway exit, I took over driving since he was going to put us in a ditch. After dropping Scott off, Doug and I got back to my house just after 4am. Doug crashed on the couch and I passed out in my bed. My heavenly, heavenly bed.

The other travel fiasco involved our friend Angela. She's a gamer friend from this area who moved out to the west coast after finishing up school to be a doctor. Last year she missed her plane to GenCon and arrived later than we'd hoped. This year, Doug was headed out to the west coast to visit some friends and was going to be flying to Indy for the con. We decided it would be a great idea if they booked their flight out together so he could make sure Angela made it to the plane on time. We underestimated her talents. She still missed the flight!

She finally made it into Indy in time to join us for dinner on Thursday. As a side note, she did make it to her flight home on time, but as far as I am aware, this is only the second time in her life she's caught a plane on time. :)

SLEEPING, OR LACK THEREOF

Last year, we stayed at the Westin which was lovely. The beds were just amazing and even with a room full of snoring people, I was able to get some good sleep. I wasn't able to get us into the Westin this year, though, so we ended up at the Hyatt. I didn't realize how much difference there was between a full bed and a queen bed until this experience. The Hyatt only has full sized beds. They also weren't quite as comfortable as the Westin's.

This probably wouldn't have matter as much if one of our other roommates didn't snore like a freight train. Most of us snore. Except for Doug, who is unnaturally still and quiet when he sleeps. Kevin, though, can wake the dead. I think the most sleep I got on any night was probably four hours. At the most.

It didn't help that the cleaning staff seemed determine to abandon our hotel room. The only time we got our beds made was after I called down and complained that no one had come up to clean our room on Thursday. On Friday we had to call down and get towels, and on Saturday they cleaned the bathroom, but didn't touch the beds. I ended up complaining and getting a discount on the bill, but still.

ROLEPLAYING FOR THE WIN

Thursday, I didn't get any roleplaying games in, which is an astonishing thing for me. I'm all about the RPGs, so not having one scheduled on a particular day should be a traumatic thing for me. Somehow, I survived this.

Part of the problem was that I didn't pre-register for events in time. I got a few in, but not enough to really fill out my schedule. Scott and I did hit the registration area on Wednesday, but that didn't help too much. Most of what I wanted was full, and I only was able to squeeze in two more events (one of which got canceled anyway). This meant I was going to rely on generic tickets and people not showing up to their games.

Friday, I tried to get to a Shadowrun game at 10am. Unfortunately, fate was against me. I'm not a fast walker and I had no idea where the place was it was being held. When I finally found my way into the location and found the games, they were all full. Having winded myself getting there, I disconsolately flopped down on a couch out in the hallway.

While sitting there, someone I'd met at Origins wandered by. I didn't remember his name, but I was feeling outgoing enough to say hi. During the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I wasn't having much luck finding games to get into. It turns out that he was coordinating all the Cortex games being run at that particular moment, and he knew there were a few seats available. So, it turned out only a question of which setting I wanted to play – Battle Star Galactica, Firefly, or Supernatural.

I was all over the Supernatural game and it turned out to be a great choice. The GM was a trip and a half and had us cracking up the entire time with a bag lady NPC named 'Martini Donna'. The game also contained the best out-of-context line I've heard in a while ("So you're standing there hip deep in Alvin...").

I'll definitely be picking up the setting book when they come out with it this fall.

There were also two great sessions of Four Colours Al Fresco run by Kevin. It's a very odd system and I don't know that I'd enjoy a long running campaign in it, but for semi-connected convention one-shots, I love them.

THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

My worst RPG experience of the whole con, though, was the Shadowrun tournament. The caveat here is that 'worst' is a relative term. I did enjoy myself, it's just that the second half was incredibly frustrating.

I really like the folks that run Shadowrun for Catalyst Labs, so I like to get into as many of their games as I can. This year the only one I could squeeze into was the tournament itself. The tournament is always a little bit more challenging and less forgiving, but it's still been fun. Last year my team came in second, and at Origins, my team also came in second.

The first night of the tournament went pretty well. We struggled a bit to figure out what we were supposed to do, but so did pretty much every other table in the tournament. Eventually we figured it out and we got out pretty clean. The second night, though, was an abysmal failure. My team was pretty much wiped out by 9pm. We were supposed to go to 11pm.

Part of this was definitely my team's fault. We barreled into the next part of the adventure without taking ANY cautions whatsoever. It was pretty dumb of us and we screwed the pooch. On the other hand, there were some major failings on the part of the scenario's writer and the GMs.

First, a major factor was that there are two different versions of Chinese – Mandarin and Cantonese. If this was going to be a major factor, my character's sheet should have clarified WHICH version she spoke. Her sheet said she spoke Chinese, so I figured we were all set. Also, when we requested linguisofts (programs to teach you a language really quickly) for the rest of the team, it should have been pointed out to us by the first night's GM that we needed to clarify WHICH version we wanted. That was a bit frustrating.

Second, the GM on the second night did NOT give us enough clues to tells us that we'd screwed up. My character is a trained social manipulator. She's all about reading people and getting them to tell her what she needs and doing what she wants. If the Red Dragon Claw Triad is out to get us and has told the locals to let them know if we're seen in the neighborhood, there should be SOME sort of readable reaction in the crowd that would clue my character into there being something wrong. People would have been scared to talk to her and it should have been a HUGE sign.

Also, he had us walk straight into an ambush where one of our people got a successful perception check. The scene the GM described didn't give us, the players, a clue that it was a dangerous situation, but these were skilled and experienced Shadowrunners, so they should have been clued into there being a problem.

I stayed afterwards and talked to the GM a bit about it. He agreed that he probably should have clued us in a little more and I agreed that my team did make some stupid mistakes, but it was still a pretty frustrating experience. We weren't the only table to end early like that, so I'm guessing others ran into issues too. Still. *sigh*

I AM NOT A WEREWOLF

The most amazing thing about the whole con was a game that I scoffed at last year. When we attended GenCon last year, Scott was raving about a game he'd played called 'Are You A Werewwolf?' I adore Scott, but he doesn't always explain things coherently, so his description of the game didn't really interest me in any way. Still, he'd stay up all night playing this game. He did the same thing when we were at Origins.

On Wednesday, we were looking for something to do. We found some folks playing board games and learned a whacked out version of Uno, but that only lasted a little while. As we were looking for something else to do, we stumbled upon a newly forming game of Werewolf. Reluctantly, I relented and told Scott I'd play it once, but then I was going back up to the hotel room.

Four hours later, I was still there playing it and I was completely and utterly addicted.

The game is utterly simple in design. A game starts with an odd number of players seated in a circle. Thirteen seems to be the ideal number. One person acts as moderator and deals everyone seated in the circle a card. The card tells you whether you are a villager, a werewolf, or the seer. You NEVER reveal what is on your card to anyone unless you're dead.

Night begins and everyone goes to sleep. The players put their head down and close their eyes while tapping their leg with one hand. This may seem silly, but you need the regular noise to distract players from what the moderator or what the secret werewolves or seer might be doing. The moderator has the werewolves wake up so they can identify one another (there are usually two). They are sent back to sleep, and then the moderator wakes up the seer, so they know who they are. Everyone then wakes up with some mutilated cow in the middle of the town square, so they know they have werewolves in town.

Each day (round), the villagers must choose someone to lynch. All you have to go on is the behavior of the people around you. The first couple of rounds are usually just chaos and people get lynched for random or silly things. Being too loud, wearing a red shirt, answering their cell phone, etc. Once the village reaches a majority on who to lynch, the moderator takes that person's card and reveals who the village lynched. Everyone is sent back to sleep.

Now, the werewolves wake up and choose their first victim. This is all done silently so as not to reveal who they are. Once they're done, they're sent back to sleep and the seer wakes up. They can point to one person and have the moderator give thumbs up or thumbs down on whether or not that person is a werewolf. They go back to sleep, then the town wakes up to discover who has been mauled by werewolves. Now the villagers need to figure out who is a werewolf all over again.

It's simple in execution and design, and incredibly complex in play. The best time of the game is after the first three or four rounds and you're down to 9 or 7 people. Then it starts getting tricky. So many factors can come into play. Is someone acting odd? Did you hear something unusual while asleep? Did someone misspeak and give a clue? Is that person being vocal because they're a seer or are they a werewolf trying to deflect attention away from them?

I played this every night for several hours and I had an absolute blast. The dynamic of each group was dependant upon the players in it, and it was really interesting watching people get into the psychological interpretations of behavior and attitude. I will probably write another entry where I blather on about specific games of werewolf, but I've probably talked for too long now already.

TO SUM UP

It was a good time. There was good food (Indy has an awesome number of great restaurants right downtown), good people, good laughs, and good games. I wish I could have gotten in some additional RPGs, but ultimately I enjoyed everything I did.

The question now is whether or not we go back next year. On the way up, Scott and I were both commenting on the fact that it's pretty expensive to go to these big cons, so we should probably choose one. Origins is probably better on the game end of things, though GenCon has more going on overall. Origins wins, though, for being a bit cheaper.

Now that it's over and I'm home, though, I don't even want to think about missing it next year. So, I'm back at step one. I wish I could just win the lottery and be able to go to these whenever I want. :)

Comments

[docnerd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but after the response I got after the last chapter, now it's like, man, do I gotta pull that out every time now?