Dreamation 2008

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Dreamation 2008 Write Up

The regular convention hotel requested that Dreamation switch to another hotel in the same chain. While I gather that we will be back in the old hotel for DexCon, on the whole, I liked this hotel.

I wasn't sure at first that I'd make it, given that the Dreamation website only had directions to the hotel via Amtrak, which was more expensive than I wanted. Fortunately, there is also a New Jersey Transit train. So, I headed out from my last day at my current job, after a hearty lunch, farewell cake and presents for all of us whose last day it was, and hugs and handshakes all around. I bought my ticket and was on a train and heading out before 5 pm. The train arrived by 5:30, as this was an express.

From the train station, I had jlighton's directions, which were good. It was tricky for me to figure out where the streets he'd named were, as the station configuration confused me, but my first guess was correct, and one of the people I stopped correctly pegged my "Where is Wood Avenue South?" as an X-Y question and asked me where I actually wanted to go. The walk itself was a bit creepy. It wasn't that I felt especially unsafe, just that it was dark in an industrial area, and I couldn't actually see the hotel for several minutes. But, it was where I thought it was supposed to be, and I shambled in. The signage inside the hotel was good, and the staff responded to my queries about how to get to the second floor by offering me both elevator and stair options. The stairs are wide and friendly, as if the hotel's designers planned for people to be able to use them under non-emergency conditions.

So, I got registered and found jlighton to get a key to the hotel room. I think en route I talked to rob_donoghue, and later to Chad Underkoffler, though I may have the timing off. I was, after all, carrying a lot, and sweating a lot in the suddenly warm environment. I do remember that both recognized and had read the book I am currently rereading, John M. Ford's (aka Mike Ford) The Last Hot Time, and that Chad and I durn near had a belated wake for Mike on the spot. And, it turns out that Chad hasn't yet read all the Liavek books, and may have thought there were one or two fewer than there are. I think Chad also is looking for a copy of Scholars of the Night to read, but I'm kinda vague there.

I asked rob-donoghue about when the Dresden rpg is coming out. I want to know, as do several of my friends. Basically, when it's done -- the alpha playtest stage is either done or in progress, and the feedback is being examined and absorbed.

I got every game for which I'd signed up. For Friday, this included the 8 pm Polaris game and the midnight run of Don't Rest Your Head, both of which were great. For both games, we met in the main rpg room and then went up to the third floor and grabbed a small private room. I like that combination of a central meeting point, but a quieter gaming location.

Matt Weber set up the Polaris game. I'm not sure how else to phrase it. I suppose, technically, he's down as the GM, but the game doesn't really have a gm. Or, from another angle, everyone gms for someone.

Polaris was the first of the indie games that really clicked for my group. I'm not talking about mood or tone or theme or theory here -- I'm talking about the basics of knowing how to play the game. Whenever we hit a situation we didn't know how to handle, we opened the book and found the rule covering it, and the rule was clear and unambiguous. But, we have yet to finish our first game.

matt_rah noted that this might be because we're not making enough experience rolls. I think he maybe went too far in the opposite direction, but this was useful for me to see, and, at a convention game, that is the way to err. He also used the author's modification for convention runs of rolling 2d6 instead of one, and taking the lower of the two rolls.

I mentioned one of the few things I dislike about Polaris, the requirement that all characters, except demons, have star names, and said that we'd considered names like X385 and stuff like that. Matt said that the book did list X1, a black hole, and I put that down as my name. Matt and I were across from each other, and Shane and drivingblind were across from each other. I glommed all the character sheets, which means I have to try to write this up.

drcpunk = X1 (and I was actually playing my own gender, for a change)

drivingblind = Antares

matt-rah = Gienah

Shane = Suhail

[Guys, do feel free to add whatever details I'm omitting in my post-con haze.]

X1 was the Voice of the Senate, aka the senate's propagandist. She was secretly the mistress of Achemar, the leader of the senate, and they had an illegitimate daughter, Beid, whom they'd abandoned in the wasteland outside the city of Tallstar. X1 also had a Cloak of Darkness.

Antares was an interesting contrast, as he could open the window of his heart and make his feelings clear to all. He also had a key that could open any lock, while his father, Ras Elased, was the King's Lockmaker.

Gienah was the Warden of Tallstar, and tried to keep the senators safe. He had the Icicle of Vision to aid him in this. He was deeply suspicious of Deneb, a public agitator, and he was haunted by the ghose of his wife, Metsuta.

Suhail passed himself off as a great hero, and had a PR man of his own. I don't recall the guy's name, and it was erased from the sheet. NB: This is why I don't think names should ever be erased from the sheet, as they're still a part of the character's history, but that's a side point.

X1 extolled the praises of the senate, but had to deal with people speaking against Achemar. They tried to attack him. She protected him, but in so doing, slew some of the people. Almach, the husband of a woman she slew, came to her and asked who would take care of his children. Would she allow him and his children to move into her home?

She agreed, and, somehow, Almach knew that there was another child who should be there, X1's own child. He pressed her to search for the child with him. They found Beid, the child, and brought her back to the city, despite X1's forboding (which, I explained, was merely her ability to hear the background music, not anything mechanically significant).

Suhail's man sang his praises, speaking of how Antares had slaughtered a hundred demons singlehandedly. This story was contradicted by the badly disfigured Tyl, who had somehow survived the incident and knew the truth of Suhail's behavior. I think the people believed Suhail, while the senate belived Tyl. But, Suhail's lover, Kuma, helped Suhail become a senator. But, he was a thoroughly corrupt senator, buying and selling votes. This was to point out the corruption of the entire senate.

Gienah arrested Deneb, but had to release him, for Deneb was innocent of treachery. Yet, Gienah was sure that he was guilty of something. Indeed, his dead wife told him that Deneb spoke secretly with their young daughter, Casseiopeia. Casseiopeia tried to deny this, but was unwilling to lie outright, so she said that she had not spoken with Deneb, but admitted that he had spoken with her. Gienah showed Cassiopeia how the Icicle of Vision worked, and Cassiopeia grew power hungry and began to use it secretly.

Antares was told of a demon, and he slew it, freeing the people it had captured. But, he had to slay it with a deonic item. The people understood why he had done this, but nevertheless, they banished him, his father, his wife, their children, and his little sister from Tallstar.

Almach came to X1, telling her that Beid had slain his son, Zaurak, and needed to be destroyed, for she was a demon. X1 agreed, and went to speak to Beid, who thanked her mother for bringing her to the city where she could play with children. When X1 told her that she had killed Almach's son, Beid brought the boy back from the dead, with demonic power. Almach was terrified of both children and wanted them both slain. X1 told the children that they had to leave, and, as soon as they turned their backs, she cut off both their heads. Almach was horrified. Despite X1's protests that she had done everything he had asked of her, he left, taking his daughter, Vega, with him. He went to Achemar, telling him of X1's deeds, and Achemar arrested her. She told him her side of the story, and he arrested Almach, but was still angry that X1 had brought Beid to the city and then slain her, when he had made it clear that he wanted Beid alive, but exiled. Beid's voice whispered in X1's ear, asking who would care for Vega if Vega's father were arrested. X1 asked Achemar this, but he didn't care. Furious, X1 slew him, but then immediately repented the deed, and used the power Beid had given her to bring Achemar back to life. He was even more horrifed. X1 and Almach were brought to trial. Almach was found innocent, while X1 was banished from the city.

This is about when the other players decided that X1 was the scariest character there. I hadn't intended to make her so Medea-like, but that was how it happened. Like Medea, X1 had tried to do everything the man she was trying to please wanted, but it had all gone wrong. She still thought Achemar was a great man, but she intended to have her revenge on Almach.

Meanwhile, Antares lived in an igloo in the waste land. His wife, Lyra, lived in a separate igloo, and saw Sarim, a knight from the city, but chastely only. Nevertheless, the two plotted to kill Antares. He learned of this.

Suhail watched Kuma's interest turn to Tyl, and Kuma told Suhail it was time for him to leave her home, for she was going to marry Tyl. This he did. Lyra came to him, begging that she and her children and her husband's sister, Rana, be permitted to return to Tallstar, for they had done nothing wrong. She did not want Antares to return, and, indeed, she wanted to be released from her vows to Antares. Suhail managed to get her what she wanted, and the two were married on the same day as Tyl, for Suhail could not bear his rival to be wed before him. The senators had to chose which wedding to attend. I believe Tyl was killed that evening, by partisans of Suhail, though Suhail did not command this. Suhail's wife wept that a day intended to bring peace instead brought strife, and the senate agreed that it was time to have a king again. So, they crowned Suhail, who had been being groomed for the job.

This is when drivingblind won the game and the convention. When the ice crown was brought for Suhail, he stipulated that it turn red with the frozen blood of all of the people who had died in Suhail's rise to power. This is when Shane said, "But only if Fred Hicks shuts the fuck up for the rest of the game." As this was not actually desirable, he settled for having the senate believe Suhail's spin, that the crown was red with the blood of the demons Suhail would slay.

Antares, alone on the ice, would not give up the key to his father, saying that it was intended to balance his father's power as royal locksmith. His father left and returned with an armed force from the city to take the key, but Antares would not give it to them, and it was lost to both sides, in the ice. As a punishment assignment from King Suhail, Antares was appointed the leader of an expedition to the Mistaken to slay the demons who lived there.

Gienah arrested Muliphene, the leader of the opposition faction in the senate, consigning him to the ice dungeons. He wanted to arrest Deneb as well, but King Suhail told him to ask Deneb to become a senator instead. Gienah did this, impressed by the king's wisdom.

X1 stole Vega, the daughter of Almach. Almach went after them, and brought his daughter home, despite X1's accusation that he was a coward and Vega's desire to help X1 fight demons. Vega slew Achemar (whom I had temporarily conflated with Suhail, as Shane played both), as he had not cared what became of her, and then returned to X1, bringing along other children from the house where children whose parents were absent were kept. X1 led her children's crusade to join Antares's campaign against the demons, to his concern, chagrin, and bafflement. Unable to dissuade X1, he impressed upon her that she and the children were under his command. Then, demons attacked, carrying away the children. X1 followed, but had to use a winged demon steed to do so, and saw her daughter, Beid, waiting on the lip of a deep chasm.

When Suhail heard about all of this, he decided that he'd better lead the army himself, since everything kept going wrong. Queen Lyra begged him to stay, but he would not listen. When he left, she was slain by Kuma's assassins. Suhail's PR man waited until they were a day from Tallstar, then told Suhail that they could go back and lie, as they always had. Furious, the king slew the man.

Gienah rode with the king, but got separated from the main army. He came across the Solaris Knight, who told him that the king's army could not win, and that he brought greetings from Casseiopeia, Gienah's daughter. He warned Gienah that all was not well in Tallstar. Enraged, Gienah slew the Solaris knight, though he knew that the knight's spirit would find another dwelling place. Gienah contacted Casseopeia, who assured him that all was well, and that the people were unified. This calmed Gienah for a time, but he soon realized that what Casseopeia claimed was unlikely. So, he returned to the city and learned of the queen's death. He took Casseopeia to the king and told him the news, begging that the king would punish him, not his daughter, for it was Gienah's fault for giving Casseopeia a responsibility for which she was not ready.

Meanwhile, Antares came to a great wall of ice with a lock in it. As he no longer had the great key, he opened the door of his heart, and the force of his despair began to crack the lock, allowing the demons to emerge from within. Both the demons and the king's knights were filled with Antares's despair. Most of the knights fled, slaying demons as they went.

King Suhail reproached Antares, for, if Antares had not acted as he did, Lyra would not be Suhail's, but she would be alive. Antares replied that if Suhail had listened to Lyra, she would be both alive and Suhail's. Furious, the king withdrew, leading his army back to the city for a final stand against the demons, while Antares became a star of despair.

X1 went to Beid, who thanked her for bringing all the children for her to play with. The children were dropped gently by the demons, and they started to run away, but Beid sang to them, and they stopped, enchanted. Beid told X1 that she had to leave Tallstar, which was crumbling from within, and come to Beid's city, in the chasm, a city which would never crumble. But, the knights of Tallstar would try to kill them all, so Beid wanted X1 to lead an army of demons against Tallstar. X1, now thoroughly corrupted by the demons, agreed.

Gienah prayed to hear his wife's ghost advise him, but instead heard the voice of the Frost Maiden, the consort of the Solaris Knight. She appeared to him, saying that he had slain her consort. Who now would be her lord? I hadn't planned to, but I seemed to do a lot of echoing of what Matt had done to X1.

Gienah argued that the Solaris Knight wasn't really dead, which was, in a sense, true. On the other hand, the Solaris Knight who was the lord of this Frost Maiden was dead. Gienah asked if Casseopeia would be all right if he became the Frost Maiden's new lord. She said that she would raise Casseiopeia to be the new Frost Maiden. Gienah rejected this and the Frost Maiden, stabbing her to death. Casseiopeia, enraged, killed Gienah.

For X1, Beid was the Frost Maiden, but X1 became the Frost Maiden to King Suhail when their armies met at Tallstar.

X1: For the children!

King Suhail: For the city!

Alas, King Suhail could not prevail. But, the Frost Maiden did not slay him, leaving him to watch the city crumble around him. King Suhail went to his tower and did not speak to anyone for the rest of his days.

I forget exactly who said this or when: You ask way too fucking much -- though you did ask nicely.

But that was long ago, and there is no one now who remembers it.

The midnight game of Don't Rest Your Head was run by John Farish. The players were me, jlighton, and two other guys whose names I am blanking on. John wanred me that this was very different from "Crossroad Blues" which he'd run last year, but that was fine. He seems to be going down a path similar to the one Todd Furler walks, where he runs games that might perhaps be considered the rpg equivalent of Pre-Raphaelite. There's a strong gm presence, but one that knows to let the players choose their PCs' fates, and a tight scenario that may be very typical of the game or very experimental, but which is both self contained and satisfying. I don't want to say any more about that, though I do wonder what would have happened if the PCs had not fought against their initial situation. I'm not sure if this is at all likely, but I wonder. I may do a write up of that, at some point.

By now, of course, it was 4 am. jlighton and I crashed out, and managed to get up and out in time to make the 9 am game of "Complete Mafia for Sorcerer". Alas, John didn't make it -- as I'd guessed, he overslept. I picked up In a Wicked Age and Roanoke and took a nap. As it turned out, there wasn't really anything more I felt the urge to buy, which is just as well, given I'm between jobs.

At 2 pm, I utterly failed to locate Kevin Meares's Shattered Dreams game. This one did go off, despite Kevin's materials not being there. I had assumed -- as had everyone I asked -- that this game would start in the main rpg room, so I did not double check the Big Board. Naturally, the Big Board gave the actual location of the game, I think room 209A.

As I did not know that, I joined Chad Underkoffler's demo of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, which has a lovely setting. Joshua Newman, Remi Treuer, Mark (whose last name I'm blanking on), and I proceeded to break the system by doing an amusing player vs player duel, as two PCs tried to rob the other two. After the first minute of this, Chad said that while he'd had an idea of where to take this, what we had was more interesting. Mark's and Remi's character fought a physical duel with swords and magic, while Joshua's and my character fought the first duel of wits that Chad had seen. His PC crushed mine, despite my PC's maneuvering his into a pile of cowshit.

Joshua's PC: You have just been defeated by a man standing in cowshit. Would you like a drink?

How can one refuse such a stylish offer? As my PC was being robbed, he wryly noted it was the most expensive drink he'd ever had.

My last game of the evening was Remi's Primetime Adventure game, a miniseries, rather than a single episode of a show. This ran from 8 pm to about 1 am, with three players leaving for midnight games. It was an interesting, sprawling, chaotic game, with some lovely moments, as well as a couple of things I thought could have been better. But, we may be hitting some of the limitations of the convention one-shot setting. I've noticed that each time I've played PtA at a convention, the gm has been more authoritative than I would have been in his place. In at least one case, I know that was because we had 90 minutes to play. Here, we had 7 players plus the gm, and I know how quickly that can bog down.

As expected, I slept too late to get into any morning games, and I wasn't signed up for afternoon games. So, for the first time, I attended the Indie Roundtable, where budding game designers discuss their games and the issues they're dealing with, and they get asked questions and perhaps answers to the questions that plague them. Unsurprisingly, some of this advice could probably be translated to a couple of the larps I'm working on. rob-donoghue said that larps aren't really about doing, but about talking to the other players, and he may well be right.

So, I'm going to crash now. I may try to expand the write up for Polaris (adding who played which npcs), and perhaps do one for the Don't Rest Your Head and PtA games.

Comments

[chadu.livejournal.com]

Friended. ;)

CU

[chadu.livejournal.com]

Chad and I durn near had a belated wake for Mike on the spot.

I will always regret I never met in in the flesh. Always.

And, it turns out that Chad hasn't yet read all the Liavek books, and may have thought there were one or two fewer than there are. I think Chad also is looking for a copy of Scholars of the Night to read, but I'm kinda vague there.

I've read the first Liavek book, and have all of the others except Spells of Binding.

And yes, I am looking for SotN.

As I did not know that, I joined Chad Underkoffler's demo of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, which has a lovely setting. Joshua Newman, Remi Treuer, Mark (whose last name I'm blanking on),

Causey.

and I proceeded to break the system by doing an amusing player vs player duel, as two PCs tried to rob the other two.

And THANK YOU!!!

Joshua's PC: You have just been defeated by a man standing in cowshit. Would you like a drink?

How can one refuse such a stylish offer? As my PC was being robbed, he wryly noted it was the most expensive drink he'd ever had.

I love you guys.

CU

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Do you have Festival Week, the final book in the Liavek cycle?

Glad to be of service in the playtest!

[chadu.livejournal.com]

I have it, just haven't read it. I wanna get SoB before I rest 'em all.

CU

[carpe_noir.livejournal.com]

Scholars via Amazon Marketplace. $4

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0812502140/

There's been some other JMF talk at various places
http://evesalexandria.typepad.com/eves_alexandria/2008/01/it-is-in-the-na.html
http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/203516.html
http://community.livejournal.com/nemesis_draco/
http://rachelmanija.livejournal.com/377903.html

[chadu.livejournal.com]

I will seriously check these out REAL SOON NOWS.

Thank you!

CU

[(Anonymous)]

From one fan to another, my pleasure!

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Also, Elise pointed me to http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/126/John-M-Ford-The-Last-Hot-Time-page01.html (http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/126/John-M-Ford-The-Last-Hot-Time-page01.html).

If you look at comment #37, on the 2nd page, can you tell me how to get behind the "hidden"? I've tried highlighting and viewing source code, neither of which seemed to work.

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

Great writeups. Thanks!

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Sure!

[adamdray.livejournal.com]

Dammit, I just made the connection. I saw you there, and your name looked familiar, but didn't connect you to this journal. Someone else on my friends list mentioned you and I figured it out. I'm sorry I didn't say hi.

I think I saw you coddling a stuffed animal at one point. Was that in-character or was your game especially troubling? =)

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had the stuffed elephant. Picked him up at Heathrow in 2005, as we decided to do the insanity of London-NYC-Indianapolis for GenCon.

It wasn't in character. We had a RIF at work, so my last day was Friday, and mnemex had a Conflikt with Dreamation -- that is, he'd committed to Conflikt, the west coast filking convention that we didn't realize was the same weekend -- so I figured I wanted something to coddle, and all of my Cthulhu stuffies hadn't figured out which one of them should do Dreamation, so I brought the elephant. Just as well -- my bags were full to begin with, and then I added more food and got a couple of small-but-heavy presents from work.

I meant to make your 10 am demo if I were conscious on Sunday, but I so wasn't.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

None of which had much to do with X1, I suspect -- I think that was my Lit background kicking in. I had a class on Women in Literature, and I did a short paper on Euripides's Medea. My original intent was to talk about how she broke the rules of society. But, the more I worked on the paper, the more I realized I had to change the thesis. She followed the rules of her society; she just took them to extremes.

[lesingesavant.livejournal.com]

Friended.

I'd be interested to hear more about the authoritativeness of the Producer in PTA. I'll admit, I was partially pushing hard because of the large group, and partially because we had so many players who were unfamiliar with PTA/Story Games. Thanks again for playing so well and patiently.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

At GenCon Indy 2007, Tony Lower-Bausch was running PTA "at speed" for a bunch of us at Games On Demand. We had 90 minutes before some of us had to be elsewhere, so Tony was very authoritative, with our blessing. We all agreed he should pile on combats fast, think, and hard, tossing as many chips into the pot as possible. We didn't finish the game, but it was a blast, marred only by my non-stop sneezing about halfway through. We were playing on the 2nd floor balcony of the Hyatt, and the lobby below was being torn up for the hotel's renovations.

For the second, you need to take into account that I'm probably a bit of a wuss for the kind of hard core pushing that gets associated with indie gaming. Ben Lehman ran the first game of Polaris I ever played, and it was an excellent game. This was the Overtime session. In the first scene, he insisted on a conflict when none of the players, including those who were involved in the conflict, actually wanted one. Now, no harm done, and the player on the losing end did a fine job, but basically, the gm decided he wanted one of the PCs to lose his temper, and beat heavily with the gm stick to make it happen. This is not something I would have done, it is not something I think was in any way necessary, but I don't think it was a problem.

I'm going to see if I can write up the PTA miniseries for Alarums & Excursions. If I do, shall I run it by you?

[lesingesavant.livejournal.com]

Please do! I'm interested.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've got a somewhat messy write up of the PTA game, with the stuff I'd have done differently at the beginning. Is there an eddress I should send it to?

[lesingesavant.livejournal.com]

mondango AT yahoo dot com will work.