Tag: Conventions

Introduction
As it happens, it’s a lot easier to drone on and on about the logistics of a convention (see Conventionally Speaking, Part 1) than the games you play at a convention. At least, it’s easier for me. In Part 1, all I had to do was tell you what happened: how I got there, what I saw, what it was like. All of that is extremely subjective, and I can be wildly inaccurate while servicing the needs of the narrative. Nobody can say, “That’s not what really happened!” or “That’s not the order it happened in!”, since nobody was there experiencing it from my point of view.

But now I want to talk about the games I actually played in, games with rules, rules that you people can look up and say, “No, you’re wrong, that’s not the way this game works!” It’s far too easy to share way too much about the game (“Drogonilithuz Smorgle-Borgle, a Zed-Alpha level half-troll splatterpunk elementalyte, played by Ernest K. Bindlehopper, a 26-year old database modulator who was sitting on my right, picked up his scarlet 30-sided dice, shook it four times, rolled a 13, applied his Specialty Convergence, his Tantric Positioning, and his Mortgage Prime Rating, for a total of 27.459, and compared that against the rigger pirate clown clone’s Life Protection Soaking Score, adjusted for the heights of all players at the table, and then…”), or share way too little (“Played cool game it was good I liked it”).

Confronted with these daunting challenges, I elected not to do anything, and time passed and Editor-in-Chief Mr. Chris seethed and silently plotted my death. Unfortunately, my strategy of inaction didn’t make the writing job any easier or more finished, so I’ve elected to apply Nose A to Grindstone B and just write the bloody article. We’ll see if that works.

[editor’s note: Mr. Chris was not seething; he was waiting with +5 patience…]

What Dice Do I Roll?
As I mentioned in Part 1, I had never really played any of these games, and I loved them all. I say “never really played” because I had already dipped my toe into the D&D Next waters, and had, along with countless other gamers, submitted one or two opinions on the whole endeavor. Of course, this was before its Creators had received, processed, and instituted those opinions, resulting in many, many changes to the system. This was my first time playing the fer-realz D&D 5E, which meant that this particular savant (who had been playing Dungeons & Dragons since puberty) was transformed into a total noob, with no clear idea of what was going on, in this or any of the games.

My befuddlement can’t be blamed on the game systems or the Game Masters or the other players or the convention setting or the dice I rolled or even the chair I was sitting in. The reason I never knew what was going on is entirely my own fault. I have grown complacent in my RPG life, resistant to new systems for the single simple sin of being new. Instead of coming to any of these tables with a freshly formatted brain, I tend to view every game through the cloudy filter of GAMES-I-ALREADY-KNOW. This has proven to be a severe disability with every new game I’ve played, including the games below and my other forays into Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, Eclipse Phase, and Death Race Z.

The Games in Common
As different as my three convention games were constructed, there were a few notable and delightful similarities. First of all, there was nary a grid to be found in any of the three. I have been spoiled / ruined by 1” square battle maps, leaving my “theater of the mind” abandoned, rundown, and very dusty. I had actually come to believe that I was unable to play games that lacked a scaled map, a million miniatures, and lots of space counting (“I’m going to move over here… 1, 2, 3—no wait, I’m going to move over here… 1, 2, 3, 4—hold on, I’m going to move over here…”). Playing inside a shared imagination resulted in more vivid memories instead of fewer, as I was forced to picture the settings, and wound up filling in parts that a flat map could never convey: the swish-swash of ocean waves, the sugary aroma of a mug full of honey mead, the agony of my bard’s skin cooking and cracking in roiling fire.

Secondly, all three games featured Game Masters of the “say yes” variety, which means that no matter how ludicrous our character’s plans or plots were, these GMs rolled along with them. To be sure, this was typically a “yes but” situation, allowing us to perform our silly heroics, but with a complication or two thrown in for flavor. If you’ve never heard of this style of gamemastering before, it’s probably because your GM sounds like this: “Can I—?” NO. “What if I—?” NO. “I’d like to—“ NO. I’m about to make a wildly unfounded generalization, so please buckle your seatbelts. I believe these newer games are being specifically created to encourage, if not actively enforce, these “say yes” GMs, and that is a very good thing.

The Games, in Practice

Without question, doubt, or feather torturing, ICONS was my favorite of all three games, and that’s not just because it was run by the guy who freaking wrote it, Steve Kenson (who also, by the way, wrote Mutants & Masterminds). ICONS is a superhero game, requiring a couple 6-sided dice and a great heaving pile of imagination. We five players created our characters right at the table (magnificently randomized, similar to Gamma World but with capes), got a crash course in the way the game runs (roll 1d6, add stuff to it, and beat a target number for success), and were off and playing in about half an hour.

Built right into the body of the game is a mechanic called Qualities, which are three descriptive phrases that define and describe your character. You can call upon these Qualities to accomplish something particularly cool and superhero-ey, but be careful, because the GM can call upon these Qualities as well, to bring a little trouble your way.

For example, in our game, one character had the quality “Arrogant son of a god.” When we players were confronted with an obvious danger, we quite naturally hung back, evaluating and considering. The GM suggested that Mr. Arrogance should probably charge straight ahead, so that’s exactly what he did, and by the way, what he HAD to do. A game mechanic that enforces roleplaying, how cool is that?

Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo were booted from Wizards of the Coast during consecutive Christmas layoffs (Tweet in ’08, Heinsoo in ’09), a cheery Wizards’ tradition, and they decided to channel their inner Bender and declare, “We’ll go build our own game, with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the game and the blackjack. Ahh, screw the whole thing!” Only they didn’t screw the whole thing, they actually wrote it, and it’s really good. It’s what happens when two people who are very passionate about different versions of the same game get together without engaging in a stupid slap-fight about “whose is better.”

It has ability scores and classes and races and rolling dice and adding numbers and just enough bits that you’re familiar with that the violently unfamiliar bits—specifically the Icons and Icon Relationships—don’t cause your brain to abruptly leak out of your ears. At least, it didn’t have that effect on anyone else at the table. I had no idea what was going on. I probably should have read some more or asked some questions.

Even so, I experienced enough in the game to 1) have a lot fun, even with a fairly complex character, and 2) want to play again. And again. And again.

It’s immediately clear that the game is a result of its creators playing it and other games, and then asking the one question you’re never supposed to ask: “You know what really sucks about RPGs?” 13th Age is packed with answers to this question, but my two favorite answers are the following:

• Escalation Die. Instead of letting battles drag on endlessly and needlessly in a series of miss-miss-miss-miss-miss-misses, this mechanic makes the characters (and sometimes the monsters, oh no!) more dangerous as the fight progresses. This turned the cleric in our party into an UNSTOPPABLE GODBLADE OF VENGEANCE, which really started to annoy the barbarian.
• Fight in Spirit. You know what’s great? A thrilling, roller-coaster of a battle. You know what’s not great? When this fight happened, your character happened to be at the library reading. As a player, you have to sit there and watch of all your so-called friends have a great time. Jerks. But this “fight in spirit” actually lets you participate! It’s not automatic; you do have to roleplay yourself into the moment, explaining how you’re boosting morale. But you do get to play.

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For a more thorough take on D&D 5E, please see Jonathan Baldwin’s article, “What Comes Next: The Future of D&D,” which has covered many of the things I was already thinking about. Still, I have all this white space, so I probably should say something.

I absolutely love what they’ve done with Advantage / Disadvantage. Someone deserve a kiss full on the lips for coming up with this, though probably from a person more attractive than me. It is one of those rare rules that covers nearly every circumstance, but is single-celled organism simple. If you’re in a good spot (enemy is blinded, you are blessed, DM likes the cut of your jib), you have advantage and so you roll twice and take the better roll. If you’re in a bad spot (sneaking in heavy armor, you’re cursed, DM just found out what you did to his dog), you have disadvantage and so you roll twice and take the worse roll.

While I was initially concerned about the significant shrinkage in numbers across the game (bonuses are down, defenses are down, hit points are way, WAY down), I only recently realized that I had fallen for the trick of the Millionaire Monopoly game, that by adding zeroes to everything increases the enjoyment by an order of magnitude. In fact, it just makes the math harder (“Okay, I rolled an 8, I have a +35, so that’s… wait… uh… okay, 43! Hit! Now I roll six 12-sided dice, add 26, and it’s… hmmm… a really big number.”).

Conclusion
These were three very different games, with very different rules and mechanics, but they resulted in 12 hours of lotza joy, and not a single moment of my checking the time and wondering when we’d be done. I got caught up in the games, in the story and excitement of them, and yes, credit goes to the GMs and to the setting and to my fellow players, but I don’t dare forget about the games themselves. I would recommend each of them. Go, spend money. The creators deserve it. Tell them I sent you. Don’t be surprised if their immediate response is, “Who?”

Lock Up Your Daughters!
A few weeks ago, my wife drove me and my 15-year old daughter, Rachel, to attend the mega-monster-sprawling gaming-anime-cosplay cradle of chaos called ConnectiCon. This would be my third consecutive year, but it was Rachel’s first, and by the way, her first convention of any kind, ever. Through her tween years, she had developed an appreciation for many things nerdy, including anime, manga, and video games. This was the year that she told me, with no room to wiggle, “I’m going to ConnectiCon.”

In fact, she had also made this declaration last year, but it just didn’t happen, because I’m a terrible father and a monstrous human being. But this time, firmly in the center of her teeniness, adamantly convicted that she knew exactly what she wanted and also that she deserved to have it, she made it clear that it would happen, that she would be going, and that she would be wearing a costume.

As I suggested above, ConnectiCon is not a small event. We’re not talking about a bunch of bespectacled buds who take over the multipurpose room at the local motel and play Risk and Munchkin all weekend. No, this is more like many thousands of people, many of them in elaborate costumes from TV, movies, comics, and warped imaginations, swarming all over the city center like nerdy ants over a brownie. This is the crucible into which I was dragging my daughter, or more accurately, into which she was dragging me.

Something Screwy
There is an indisputable law in the universe that says, “No matter how carefully you plan, something will go gonad-crushingly wrong at a convention.” It could be something fairly small like, “I can’t believe I forgot my dice.” Or it could be something less-small like, “What do you mean you have no record of me registering for the convention?” Whether small or large, whether a minor inconvenience or incontrovertible proof of a Prankster God, it will always happen.

For me, it was a hotel reservation that went missing.

This goes back several months when the convention’s pre-registration first opened, and there was a strong indication that there would be Thursday activities. Being the obsessive lunatic that I am, I immediately booked my hotel for Wednesday to Sunday, with plans of arriving bright and early at the convention Thursday morning.

As time went by, it became irritatingly clear that the activities planned for Thursday were as follows:

1. Pick up badges at 6 PM
2. Leave

Because I had booked my hotel through a travel site, I couldn’t just cancel Wednesday night. So I called the hotel and asked if it was okay for me to come in on Thursday instead of Wednesday. They said yes, but I wouldn’t get a refund for Wednesday because of the travel site booking. I said I wanted to be sure they wouldn’t cancel my reservation if I didn’t come on Wednesday. They said that wouldn’t be a problem, and suggested I call the week of the reservation to remind them. I did. They made a note of it. Everything was perfectly fine until Rachel and I arrive on Thursday afternoon.

“Sorry,” the front desk regretfully told me. “When you didn’t come in yesterday, we canceled your reservation. And now our hotel’s completely full. And because of that travel site, you won’t get a refund.”

The front desk did eventually sort me out, finding me a room and apologizing profusely, but that was after an interval long enough for me to spin up into a vortex of rage and panic, and consider all sorts of absurd alternatives: I’ll stay with friends, I’ll stay with strangers, I’ll sleep on the streets, I’ll rent another room at another hotel several miles from the convention and pay five times as much. The point isn’t that I got my hotel room, but rather that it was the bit that went wrong. For one tiny eternity, my stress, already hovering in the sweaty panic zone because of the impending convention, had spiked up into, “I can’t feel my legs, what’s this pain in my chest, why does this ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME, DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!!!” Not a great place to be, emotionally speaking.

Cosplay, Cosplay, Everywhere
For a microscopic sample of the costumes at ConnectiCon, take a look at a blog I created with my daughter: Rachel @ Connecticon 2014.

Occasionally, it felt like I was the only person not in costume. These people were everywhere, all over the convention center, in and through the hotel, out and about in the city. A life-sized Oscar statuette, a crowd of varied Doctor Who incarnations, a John Stewart Green Lantern with gleaming green eyes, uncountable Spider-men and Batmen and Deadpools and Wolverines, armies of Browncoats, and representatives from every video game ever imagined, most of which I didn’t recognize.

Actually, I didn’t recognize a lot of characters or costumes there. It started to frustrate Rachel. “Who’s that?” I would say, and she would roll her eyes, and say, “That’s [multisyllabic] from [incomprehensible],” and I would ask, “What is that, an anime?” And she would only shake her head.

It’s the oldest I’ve ever felt at a convention, and this is coming from someone who’s really quite old. On the other hand, it felt kind of wonderful, knowing that Rachel knew all of these characters. It felt like coolness by association, like I knew somebody who knew people, somebody who could get me past the bouncer and into the club, somebody who would be recognized upon entering and told, “Your table is right over here.” Of course, this is Gaming Convention Coolness, not, Real World Coolness. I’ll never have that, no matter who I know.

Speaking of costumes I didn’t recognize, Rachel went as Yuki Cross from the manga and anime, Vampire Knight. Rachel’s outfit was perfect, which is what happens when you buy it online. This is a despicable sin in the world of cosplayers, where you are expected to create everything from scratch. I kept suggesting that she tell people that she worked with her mother and grandmother to make it, which is technically true—her mother located it on eBay and her grandmother fitted it using needle and thread. Unfortunately, Rachel learned honesty at some point in her life (it certainly wasn’t from me), and refused to massage the truth even a little.

It turns out that this was the perfect costume, not so obvious that she was lost in a crowd of clones, and not so obscure that she was ignored out of fear of ignorance: “So what are you supposed to be?” The right people reacted in exactly the right way, with delirious enthusiasm: “Oh, I LOVE Vampire Knight!” They’d come charging over from across the convention hall, calling her character name: “Yuki! Yuki! Yuki!” They’d beg for her picture. They’d gush over her costume. Rachel was simultaneously pleased and overwhelmed, though she did get better at striking poses for the pictures.

For the record, nobody asked for my picture.

Accruing Experience Points
I knew that this would be a different sort of convention for me, attending with my daughter. She was not interested in roleplaying games or sitting quietly for four hours while I enjoyed them. We worked out a compromise where she would head back to the safety of the hotel room while I played a couple games here and there, and then on Sunday, she agreed to play one game with me.

I’ll go into more detail about the games in Part 2, but let me say here that they were all new to me, and I loved them all.