gen con 2018 summary

And Gen Con is done!

Thankfully Ann was feeling better by Friday afternoon, so after dinner we played in two Games on Demand events, from 8:00 -10:00 and 10:00 - midnight. We played Ross Cowman's BFF with Ross himself and 3 delightful strangers. It's a lovely game, with beautiful art, neither of which was a surprise. We also played The Final Girl, which the GM/facilitator billed as "Murder Party," in which we would create a D-grade horror film. It was a rough gaming experience for us since our own personal styles and tastes were at odds with the other players at the table, but what can you do? It was only two-hours, and it gave us a lot to talk about and analyze on the trip home. Gaming style is one of those things I'm not aware of until it is contrasted with someone else's.

Saturday morning I GM'd my first con game, Paul Riddle's excellent Undying. My only point of anxiety was that the game was set in London in 1940 during the blitz, and I wasn't familiar enough with the city to have ideas for hunting grounds on hand or good detailed descriptions of scene locations. I ended up looking at a lot of maps and reading up on neighborhoods, printing out pictures of war-torn London and other details so we could all be on the same descriptive page. The game went pretty much perfectly. The players were all in great creative shape and they leaned into their playbooks' status moves, trying to navigate the political landscape to come out on top. We had our climactic scene in the dead princep's lair with a 50+ blood-token-fueled blood ritual that brought her desiccated corpse back from the dead/undead to take vengeance on her killer. Three of the four players managed to trigger their status moves to become patricians, but it was clearly going to be a tense situation between them and the existing power structure. The fourth character had clearly backed the wrong horse, but not so openly that his fate was sealed. He would take a setback but be alive to fight another day. It was an exciting ending that suggested all kinds of possibilities for future play, and everyone left wanting more. I couldn't ask for anything more. (The picture is of the R-map from this game.)

Saturday afternoon was spent playing games with our son and partaking in an MtG chaos draft (in which you are given three random packs taken from sets from the last 5 years or so ). Ann won it, so Orie was delighted to turn those prize winnings into more packs for drafting at our local game store next Friday.

This morning was my second game of Undying, and it was . . . fine. Three players showed up, which for a Sunday morning is a pretty good win. The scenario was called "Undying: The Awakening" (set in Chicago during the World's Fair in 1893), and one woman thought she had signed up for Mage: The Awakening. Whoops. She decided to play, but her enthusiasm was certainly muted. Once play got underway, it was clear that two of the players did not like each others' style, but they forged on uncomplainingly. None of the players really leaned into their status moves, and I think my construction of the conflict didn't give them enough of a third side to maneuver to, all of which resulted in the play being rather reactive, responding to NPCs more than purusing anything proactively. We still managed to have an exciting climactic scene with shotguns to faces and near-deaths. All three said they enjoyed themselves, and I believe that was mostly true. I can say with confidence that none of them had a bad time? I think?

I hit the dealer's floor one last time to pick up a couple of items my son planned on getting (but he was too tired this morning to join me), and then dragged my exhausted ass home.

It was a great weekend. I'm really looking forward to sleeping tonight.