For various personal reasons that I won't go into, this was by far the worst Gencon of all time. Take every bad session I've had, add a radioactive turd on top and it still doesn't even come close. But let me try and salvage some memories from it that don't make me want to eat broken glass.
Bob's GM Seminars
I was in a general funk throughout these, so I can't really fairly assess myself. I would say it was probably a poor performance overall, but who knows. I'll give myself a passing grade but nothing to be proud of.
Grade: C
The Laundry
This is an RPG based on one of my favorite fiction series, informally known as The Laundry. The books follow the tales of Bob Howard - IT Guy and new field agent for the department of Her Majesty's government that handles things that man was not meant to know. Great old ones, vampires, aliens, sinister soul easting spirits living in the body of an unassuming old Englishman. You know, that kind of thing.
System: Its basically Call of Cthulhu 6th. If you like it you already know. Percentages and lots of room for dead ends. Not the best IMHO.
Scenario: Setup was a typical horror-ish mystery, but things went off the rails quickly when the group came up with a plan that more or less circumvented the entire story plan. I want to give a shout out to the GM, whose name I dont remember, who rolled with this like a pro.
Eclipse Phase
Through the Breach
Don't remember the scenario here, but I do remember the system. It was card based, and what I liked about it was that you would have a hand full of cards, and those would be your dice rolls. You got to pick what cards you would play, so in essence you could see a bit into the future, and plan accordingly because YOU decided when you were going to have shit luck. And you'd know when it's coming too. I liked that quite a bit.
Notable Moments: Rather than just say "ok we can't do that because it messes up the planned adventure" she instead said - "OK. I did not expect that it really would shortcut our session. Can you guys give me 10-15 minutes so I can adapt, and we can keep playing for the full session?" This is the mark of a great GM.
Grade: B+ (I still have some heartburn with the Call of Cthulhu 6th ed. system this is built on)
Special Evaluation for the GM: A+
Empty Epsilon
An alternative to Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, its kind of the same thing, but open source. Torpedoes are much more realistic and don't exactly home in like perfect guided missiles. I'd say overall its a more challenging game, mechanically, than Artemis. I enjoyed it, but I think the steeper learning curve than Artemis could be a turn off to many people.
Special Evaluation for the GM: A+
Empty Epsilon
An alternative to Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, its kind of the same thing, but open source. Torpedoes are much more realistic and don't exactly home in like perfect guided missiles. I'd say overall its a more challenging game, mechanically, than Artemis. I enjoyed it, but I think the steeper learning curve than Artemis could be a turn off to many people.
Grade: B
Eclipse Phase
As I said in the introduction to this report card, the year was a general shitburger for me personally, and memories are not particularly consistent. If I remember correctly, we played some kind of espionage heist type thing in a tall domed facility on the surface of Mars maybe? I do remember having a good time though. Had consistently good experiences with the sessions and GMs that have run Eclipse Phase at Gencon
Assumed Grade: A
Trail of Cthulhu
One I'd been wanting to play with another GM for years. I'd run it myself for a bit, and find it to be a very cool way of doing mystery games. Add in Lovecraftian mysteries and I'm in. No dead ends like CoC. Characters always feel useful and don't flat out fail to learn things because of bad dice and incompetent skill levels. It's more than just being "better" though. Its how the game works. The general idea is that if you're a doctor, and you investigate a body, you WILL find a medical clue if it's there. Because you should. You're a damned doctor, and this is a medical mystery. If you want to spend even more effort on it and use your precious investigation points, you might get a 'bonus' or bigger info from the clue.
Trail of Cthulhu
One I'd been wanting to play with another GM for years. I'd run it myself for a bit, and find it to be a very cool way of doing mystery games. Add in Lovecraftian mysteries and I'm in. No dead ends like CoC. Characters always feel useful and don't flat out fail to learn things because of bad dice and incompetent skill levels. It's more than just being "better" though. Its how the game works. The general idea is that if you're a doctor, and you investigate a body, you WILL find a medical clue if it's there. Because you should. You're a damned doctor, and this is a medical mystery. If you want to spend even more effort on it and use your precious investigation points, you might get a 'bonus' or bigger info from the clue.
This scenario had us all as guests at a bar, in which I think, we were all transforming into fish men. I could be misremembering this a bunch. But the part of the game that stood out was the completely unbearable player at the table who just HAD to make sure that every one of us knew that at nearly every turn, her character was getting drunk. Beyond obnoxious, and really wrecked the game for us. We left shortly thereafter. Our "fuck this game" - o - meter got pegged.
Sorry folks, but when your got a precious few 80 hours or so at the con, please don't waste them on a game you aren't enjoying. I probably could have handled it more tactfully and the better idea would have been to address the player and GM about it, but like I said. It was so bad I went from 0 to fuck it quite quickly.
Grade: B+ (GM and execution), F (general experience)
Through the Breach
Don't remember the scenario here, but I do remember the system. It was card based, and what I liked about it was that you would have a hand full of cards, and those would be your dice rolls. You got to pick what cards you would play, so in essence you could see a bit into the future, and plan accordingly because YOU decided when you were going to have shit luck. And you'd know when it's coming too. I liked that quite a bit.
It's based in the Wyrd Miniatures' Malifaux world, and was fairly focused on the tactical aspect of it, but plenty of room to role play if you want it. I don't think the system provides a whole lot of mechanical incentive for it, but either way I enjoyed myself a good bit.
Grade: A-
RealmWorks 101
RealmWorks 101
Not a game but rather a seminar on the features of RealmWorks by Lone Wolf Studios. It was (and technically still is, though its rather dead) a very rich campaign manager, with nearly endless ways to organize data, maps, plot points, help to track whats been revealed and what's still a secret, relationships between characters, npc, locations, storylines, etc. Its like a wiki but not. Like Obsidian but not.
I believe that some clunkiness on its part lead to its downfall, but its still out there, and I use it from time to time. Its a tough decision whether to use it, or Obsidian. Realmworks is a heavy client though, and only runs on windows. I'm a Mac guy. (Judge me/Sue me/Fight me!)
Theres things about RW that I like more than Obsidian, and vice versa.
Grade: A
DemonHunters
Its DEMONHUNTERS!!!! This was the first time I'd ever played what was to become one of my favorite convention games of all time. I run it at every convention I go to in which I GM. The game system for Demonhunters is an incredibly well done and elegant blend of Cortex and Fate. Two of my most favorite game systems for getting out of the way while enhancing and encouraging narrative play. Its hard to say exactly why this particular blend works so well, it just does. If Fate Core and the Cortex Hacker's Guide had a baby inside of the Emergency Room of a Dark Comedy Hospital, Demonhunters is what you would have. Just trust me, its that good.
DemonHunters
Its DEMONHUNTERS!!!! This was the first time I'd ever played what was to become one of my favorite convention games of all time. I run it at every convention I go to in which I GM. The game system for Demonhunters is an incredibly well done and elegant blend of Cortex and Fate. Two of my most favorite game systems for getting out of the way while enhancing and encouraging narrative play. Its hard to say exactly why this particular blend works so well, it just does. If Fate Core and the Cortex Hacker's Guide had a baby inside of the Emergency Room of a Dark Comedy Hospital, Demonhunters is what you would have. Just trust me, its that good.
As far as the scenario goes, I only recall that we were fighting the ghosts of a pirate ship, captained by the infamous "Arr MeHearties". That was the ghosts name. Brilliant. I love the tongue in cheek dark humor of this game. You should go immediately find and play this game. Its an absolute treasure.
Summary
Summary
As I mentioned, this year was a steaming dumpster fire. I want to sincerely thank my friend who went with me to this year's con for his friendship and support. I haven't got a fucking clue how I'd have made it back home without him. You know who you are.
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