labcats | DexCon

Straightjackets Optional boxed our larp on Wednesday. Stephen arrived one bus ahead of Beth, Josh, and me. The three of us had good luck coordinating and getting onto the 6:20 bus from Port Authority, arriving at about 7 pm, though Josh was briefly under the impression that Julian was in the station when he'd actually been at the con since Thursday..

About a minute after we got off the bus, Josh realized his phone was not with him. I called it as he dashed for what we thought was the bus. It wasn't -- the bus had taken off at lightning speed.

We talked to the guy in the office, and he called around. Julian met us about then, and, once we'd discovered Stephen was already there, he and Beth headed for the hotel.

A few minutes later, we were told that the company was pretty sure that it knew where the driver was, but he was in heavy traffic, unable to look for or answer the phone. We left several contact numbers and got a number to call.

Then, we went to the hotel and checked in. Julian met us at the desk, and we all dropped off our stuff in the room. Josh headed for the board game room. Julian headed for a run of Dictionary of Mu I headed for the Indie booth. No Dictionary for sale, alas, and I didn't know that Judd was taking money for pre-orders. I got Shab al-Hiri Roach for Kevin, and Against the Reich and Ganakagok for me. I also met Rob Donoghue, and, once I placed him, we talked about the wonder that is NYC and how difficult it would be to present it properly in an rpg text.

I mentioned Chaosium, but Rob noted that it's easier to present historical New York than present day New York. I asked him what the theme of NYC is. He said that it was cosmopolitanism, which delighted me, since I had come to that conclusion myself.

At some point, I registered for the convention. I chatted with Andrew Zorowitz about the Iron LARP competition. He had participated and found the ingredients harsh, the resource list useless, and the computers supplied lethal to his group's files. They did produce a larp, nevertheless, in addition to all the larps they'd brought with them to run.

I wandered into the indie gaming area (which also had CoC and other traditional rpgs), looking to see if there'd be a pick up game of Ganakagok. I didn't find one. I did see a copy of Don't Rest Your Head and asked where I could get a copy. Turned out I was talking to the author, and he sold me a copy.

Also turned out he was in Dictionary of Mu. Julian showed me his character sheet as I headed out, and I figured he'd have a blast with it. I gather that he did.

Meanwhile, I let Vinny draft me into a larp. It was one of the iron gm larps, so, in retrospect, I'm not sure he should have, as I wasn't availible for the other games.

It was fun. The theme ingredients were facism, childrens' songs, and drugs. All iron gm games for this convention had to use all three elements. The setting was Old MacDonald's farm after the pigs led the revolution. The wolf was on trial for huffing, puffing, and seditious poetry.

The gms had four questions for the players.

1. Do you object to being completely hosed, i.e., doomed to lose?

2. Do you mind mature situations?

3. Do you mind singing or actively want to sing?

4. Do you mind commiting illegal acts? Yes, in character, only.

I played a tailless blind mouse, a good character for my low energy state.

After, I stopped by the staff den. Then, I stopped in to see Stephen and Beth. Their room was 5 floors below ours, and with 1 bed and 1 foldout couch. Note to self: It's easier to get adjoining rooms if one person does the booking. But, this confuses the DexCom hotel when you try to assign multiple names to a room.

The staff den had a cat. Tip: If you are allergic to cats, cuddling up with a friendly cat is not bright, especially when the hotel air is horrid. A hot shower and steam didn't help, nor did the ice Josh brought at my request. Finally, I repeated the steam treatment, then did what I did at the house of a friend who couldn't turn down his air conditioner: I put a wet towel over my head and slept that way.

Saturday morning was our larp, Hot Tub Full of Magic, held in the hotel's hot tub. We had three of our 6 sign ups show, plus two others. All four members of Straightjackets Optional took a role, but the game ran. It ran reasonably well, though it is lighter than I'd realized. The hot tub brought temporary relief to my sinuses.

Josh and I changed, then went to the bus depot. The woman in the office gave us a different number to call. We called when we got back to the hotel. Like the first number, this led to an automated line. Josh called T-Mobile and had his service temporarily suspended.

Vinny asked how things were, and we asked if he were overbooking larps. He assured us that the overbooking was deliberate. We touched base briefly with Kat and Michael Miller, then wandered to the dealers' room. I did a bit of shopping, then went to the CoC White Mice session "Christmas in Kingsport". It wasn't quite what I expected, but it was everything I'd hoped for.

Someone teased the gm about running a traditional railroading game, and he agreed that this was exactly what he planned to do. I'd call it scripted, but not railroaded. Regardless, I want a copy of the scenario. Hopefully, it will be published. My two favorite lines:

Santa needs a reindeer.

[This caused the author of the scenario to say, "Oh boy has this scenario gone off the tracks." He was wrong.]

Shhh! I'm on the phone!

Both lines were delivered by the same guy, who was really good. Everyone was on for that session. And, I could run it as an Everway scenario, I bet.

I hooked up with Josh for the dinner break. We rationed ourselves as requested in the staff den, and I heard a bit about a couple of the other larps from Josh, his friend Bruce, and Stephen.

Then we dropped by the indie party for some really good chili and spicey rice. After that, we headed back to the room and zonked out for about half an hour. This probably helped with my 2 evening games.

The first was Judd's 1st Quest. It wasn't until I started trying to get people's names there that I noticed the badge typo game. Not one of DexCon's brightest ideas.

Normally, I keep my notes and charcter sheet, but I gave most of what I had to Judd. I can probably still do a write up. It was a blast, and I have a better understanding of the mechanics of the game and the parent game, The Shadows of Yesterday, on which it is based. I still don't Get this Bringing Down the Pain. Oh, I used it, and didn't need to Get It for that. I just rolled the number of dice I was told to roll and recognized that my PC was getting thoroughly defeated.

I like both the system and the way it is abstracted into an ubersystem to create the kind of YA fantasy I really like. I'd love to try running a playtest. If I can figure out the Pain bit, this looks like it's crunchy enough for my players to have fun gaming the system -- and this is one of those games wise enough to make that a feature, not a bug -- but simple enough for my tastes, and good at providing mechanical incentives for the feel that people playing the game are likely to want.

I felt a bit dimwitted, but this can actually be a feature. About the third hour in, I created a banner which meant that my PC got experience for not understanding things and other people got experience either for explaining stuff to her or confusing her. Pretty cool.

We all agreed that we could keep going after the end time, but some of us had midnight games, so we created a dramatically appropriate final sequence of each PC facing an appropriate obstacle. I went over to Oscar Rios' table for a game of classic CoC. At his suggestion, we moved to a table just outside the indie rpg room. Much quieter.

Five minutes later, I was glad I hadn't decided to drop the game and that 1st Quest had raised my energy enough to keep me conscious and active. This game was far more traditional than the earlier one, but just as good. It was an odd combination of knowing pretty clearly where the session was going, enjoying the ride, and enjoying the flavor. We had a lot of fun playing up the beginnings of jazz era NYC.

There was an interesting tension between wanting to protect the mcguffin and knowing that the mcguffin had to vanish for the adventure to happen. There was also an odd tension between realism and fiction. China Mieville had something to say about that, and his take on it was paraphrased and discussed on Making Light. I read that after the convention.

At the time, it became a running joke.

Oscar: You can accept monsters in the sewer, but bot this?

Later:

Lisa: Must. Resist. Urge to look up 830 East 34th on pda to see if it exists.

Oscar: Monsters in the sewer.

About halfway through, he told us that we had all the information we were going to get. It was an investigation game, right?

This probably makes the game sound rigid and straightjacketed. It wasn't. Mythos presence was low, and you could get a workable scenario without it, though I think it works better with.

So, we had a blast, and were at the mercy of the dice. Oscar ran combat differently than I or the afternoon gms did. We allow dodge rolls on all attacks without penalizing other actions like, say, an attack in the same round. In other words, dodging is automatic. Oscar allowed one action, period. If you attacked, you didn't get a dodge that round and vice versa.

The climax was a tense gun battle, with the remaining parties rolling miss after miss, until, with his laat remaining bullet, the good guy blew away the opposition.

In both CoC scenarios, I liked the design of the character sheet. Nearly all stats and skills were on the side with the What Your Character Knows bit. I do wish defaults were listed on that side as well, as that was literally the only thing I remember anyone looking up on the other side.

I got some sleep, again with the wet towel treatment. Josh and I woke in time to check out on time, and we decided not to check our bags.

I went to my 2 pm Sorcerer game. Apparently, there had been 8 signups for a 4 player game, I guess with 4 alternates. Of these, two showed up, myself and Dave Demast. We were joined by a third, which made the game a lot more viable. After the first twenty minutes, I suggested we move outside, and this worked well.

The characters were pregens, as is usual for a convention, but not necessarily a given for Sorcerer. Depending on how you look at it, I played the lightweight, the detective, or Fifth Business aka the catalyst.

To my mild surprise, this game actually awarded prize points. The gm didn't want to make a fiat ruling, and we all agreed that voting would be painful. Voting for oneself is something I doubt any of us would have done, so it came down to hairsplitting between 2 fine roleplayers. I made my usual suggestion: dice off. Someone else asked if we should dice off regular style or Sorcerer style. We compromised, sort of. I rolled a d10. The guy who played the kid rolled a d20. Dave rolled a d30. It was all done as 1-10, and I got the high roll. Mind, the prize booth had closed at least 15 minutes earlier.

I don't know whom I would have voted for. The guy who played the kid, Lowell, I think, did a bang up job as the picked on kid who could now do some serious payback. He played the kid beautifully, with the right combination of stubborness, growing horror, and a lack of foresight. Most folks would be sorely tempted to play the kid as being as smart as they were, but he avoided that temptation, deliberately letting the kid's lies begin to unravel as they got more tangled and the pressure mounted.

Dave, on the other hand, played an old tormented priest who was horrified by what he and his demon had done, and trying to steel himself to do something about this. I had the pleasure of playing with, as opposed to gming for, Dave, and got to pry his character's secrets from him, which is another way of saying give Dave the opportunity to reveal his character's tortured state of mind.

And, when kid and priest met, the gm and I watched in astonishment as the conversation veered to a discussion of Martians and War of the Worlds that had us alternately laughing and on the edge of our seats.

It was a messier conversation than would be found in a good book or movie, with the occasional false note or slow spot. It was messier than much of 1st Quest, where some scenes were framed without trying to come up with exact dialogue. Both types of scene have their place, but I admit to a preference for using actual dialogue and what I consider heavier roleplay. It is messy, but the payoff is often worth it.

Comparing to my 11 session game, it was obviously tighter, and it had a firm definition of Humanity. I do note that only the kid had to make Humanity loss rolls, and the priest got a Humanity gain roll for a banishment.

I asked the gm for a copy of the scenario. He sent it to me with the caveat that the scenario was pretty much just the character sheets. Perfectly true.

After the game, Josh, Dave, and I headed for the bus depot. The woman working there confirmed that Josh had the right number from the other woman. She gave him a new extension. Trouble was, mobile phones were a bit wonky in the somewhat underground area, and then the bus came. I bundled as aboard it, a bit panicked.

Once aboard, Josh called the new extension. Yes, they had his phone, at the New Brunswick terminal, in the other direction. They'd tried to call us, with no luck. Yes, we could pick it up. They talked to the driver and we stayed on the bus until it arrived at Port Authority. Then, we said goodbye to Dave and stayed on the bus until it turned around and went to Mew Brunswick. We retrieved Josh's phone and confirmed that they had tried to call Josh's phone, likely after it was out of power, not mine, to reach us.

We waited in the airconditioned office which had a bathroom and an outlet where Josh charged his phone as I read Gaiman's introductions to Lewis and Dunsany. After about half an hour, we got on a bus to Port Authority and got home from there, tired, but with all our phones.