Con Man II: Playing at Conventions

This series is an extremely subjective report about gaming conventions. Despite the temptation to be second person dictatorial (“You must, you should, you shall”), I’m going to keep this first person apologetic (“I did, I think, I was”), because I really can’t tell you what your convention time will or should be. In part 2, I explore playing at conventions.

If anyone makes the mistake of mentioning conventions in my immediate vicinity (close burst 5), I will blather on endlessly about signing up for games you’ve never played before. There isn’t a better time to try the new and unfamiliar, since the convention GM will almost certainly have experience, and the players will come with bulging Bags of Enthusiasm. There is a greater sense of “we’re all in this together,” a greater degree of patience and willingness to handhold, attributable to the very real money that was spent to come to this convention and play these games.

Contrast this attitude with Meetup.com or jump-in games, where the participants are more likely to want to get this game going, to reach the destination, or to continue the ongoing series without distractions like, “How do I pilot the spaceship?” or “Which one’s the 12-sided die?” Inside the convention, people are excited to show off the game they love, the thrills, the wonder, the purest joys. Outside the convention, people are focused on stealing away a few hours from their crazy-busy week to reach a goal, defeat the enemies, improve their characters, and revel in successes and rewards.

When planning for the games I would play, I took this all to heart, signing up for as many brand new games as I could, with the expectation that I would soak up as much glittery shininess that the convention had to offer. I did manage to forget a small bit of knowledge that’s extremely important to my sanity: they call it a comfort zone for a reason. Jumping from new game to new game to new game, surrounded by strangers and bursting with questions, can be damaging to the ego.

I get sick of never knowing what the heck is going on, never knowing what to do or how to do it, constantly asking the same fundamental questions. This had nothing to do with the reactions from other players, who were always helpful and easygoing and frequently as ignorant as I was. It was a quintessential “It’s not you, it’s me” situation. I don’t like feeling persistently stupid. Call it a character flaw.

From the games I actually attended, here are some mini-reviews and titanically important take-aways, which I must remember for future conventions.

Change Happens

The Elms Boardroom

A month before the convention, the DM and players in my not-so-regular local game gave me the rundown of World of Darkness, and it sounded like something I’d really enjoy. So, after check-in, I hurried up to an extravagantly fancy boardroom called The Elms and enjoyed some quality alone time. It can be pretty tense, sitting by yourself when you should be playing, wondering if you’re in the wrong room, or on the wrong floor, or maybe even at the wrong hotel. I didn’t want to go out investigating, understanding the sitcom trope of everyone showing up the moment I left.

After some time, Jason and Sarah came in, both of them looking forward to the game but showing little hope in it happening, as the registration line downstairs was still long, messy, and not moving. Chances were excellent that the GM (or Storyteller) was still standing in that line, realizing that his game was done and gone, and acknowledging that he’d just have to move on with his life. After some time chatting, Jason stormed downstairs to express his outrage, Sarah laid her aching head down on the table, and I reluctantly snuck away. As it happened, the game had been canceled, but nobody bothered to tell me.

Given that conventions are constructed from people of all ages and maturities, they are extremely fluid, and can change instantaneously. Yes, I’m entitled to Super-Adorable points for hanging with a game that had clearly gone toes up, but I wind up losing just as many Efficiency points for sitting foolishly in a mostly empty room. After the first lonely fifteen or twenty minutes, I could have (and should have) walked the halls and poked into rooms, looking to worm my way into another game that had started at noon.

Scary Roleplaying

I had previously played Call of Cthulhu exactly once, and remember being mostly lost and acting off the cuff: “I’ll toss my Blackberry to the solider and shout, ‘If I die, get this to my newspaper!’ Then I’ll run off after my brother… um… can I do that?” It’s a game that’s all about roleplaying, since combat often ends with character deaths and player tears. I guess you’re not really expected to draw your .38 and engage the Nameless Horror.

In this game, we players were given multi-page, tiny-font backgrounds, and our histories, goals, and motivations were drawn in opposition to each other, making us as much of the antagonists as the tentacled monstrosity tearing through the rift in reality. I found it to be entirely overwhelming, and more than a little daunting to play this fully realized character that I just laid my hands and eyes on. I’m not denying that my roleplaying muscles have atrophied quite a bit, which left me shaken and silent for much of the game. I had a few moments of thrilling action, but mostly I was an audience to the other players being heroic and brilliant.

Going forward, I’m going to have to carefully consider my game choices, since tactical roll playing fits more with my sensibilities these days. I can thrill at the successful hits, the high damage, the amazing leaps, but I may need to work on those acting muscles before taking on true roleplaying again.

Not Every Game

From 10 PM to midnight-and-then-some, I played a demo of a game called Eclipse Phase, masterfully run by writer/designer Jack Graham, who was smart, articulate, clever, and had amazing hair. For this hard science fiction game, we found ourselves in one of the hotel suites with low lights, droopy eyelids, and a cast of thousands, clutching laminated character sheets and trying to figure out why something or other happened.

The story was immensely complicated but not nearly as complicated as the game, which plays like Call of Cthulhu designed by an acid-dropping Stephen Hawking and transcribed by a crazy person. The character sheet had 8 million tiny numbers written all over it, dark print on a dark background in a dark room, and I spent most of the game with no real idea what was going on. When the action really got going, I was completely lost.

It seemed like everyone else in the room knew what to do and how to do it, and this was after we’d all established that nobody had ever played it before. Every time the GM turned his attention back to me with a mildly judgmental, “Okay, what do you do?”, I stared at my character, looked around the dim room helplessly, and made soft gulping noises until he moved on.

The simple truth is, I’m not going to love every game I play. It’s a hard fact for me to accept, since I’m paying to be here, and I want to get my money’s worth. Still, I can’t know a game isn’t for me unless I play it, and at least it was only a 2-hour session that I lost. Maybe it was the setting, or maybe it was the hour, or maybe it was the game, or maybe it was just me, but this game simply didn’t ring my bells, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Conclusion

Hopefully, I’ll be better equipped to take on my next convention, with the correct degree of expectation and a clear understanding of what I love and what I… don’t love so much. Hate seems like such an ugly word. If I spend the interim exercising my roleplaying muscles and taking other games around the block, I’ll be in good shape to have a good time, and that’s why I go to conventions.