Gencon 2018 Report Card

Gencon 2018 - The Friend-ening

Gencon 2018 marked the return of me attending Gencon with a group of friends. Some friends joined me this year for the pilgrimage to nerd Mecca. I had rented an AirBnB with 2 bedrooms for the trip. As the organizer, I got one of the rooms, some others had the other room with the bunk beds (BUNK BEDS!!!!!! ZOMG) and the others piled into the living room on the sofa, etc. We shared an Uber/Lyft in and out each day and it worked out pretty well.

I learned from Gencon's past and didn't try to signed up for a whole bunch of events with my group, knowing how restrictive, (not to mention difficult it is) it can be to coordinate things together. So I limited myself to a small number. We planned to do Firefly, the RPG, Kobolds Ate My Baby: Fury Road, and a session of Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator. More on these later on.

GM 101
There's been such demand for intro GMing seminars lately that I decided to run this one twice. Had a great audience for both. A few people even asked me to game with them, so I invited them to come to Games On Demand, where I would be doing my GMing for the con. Lots of questions asked, answers shared, experiences shared among the group, and best of all, people telling me they now felt less anxious about running their first games. Mission Accomplished!

InSpectres
I ran a whole bunch of this at GoD. I love it each and every time. Great groups each time. I had an old man moment in one session though where a younger kid (please remind me to up the age-limits on my games) named his character Hulk - to which I asked, Hogan or Marvel, and he said "who?" Meaning he had no idea who Hulk Hogan was. At least the other players at the table had a laugh with me on it, and didn't leave me feeling completely old in the cold.

A group from the earlier GM101 class showed up for one of these sessions, and they were a joy to game with. Ran into them at Weber Grill the next day, where they sent me over a dessert as a thank you. Thats the biggest compliment I could get I think. Very much appreciated.
I LOVE running this game for people at Cons
Grade: A

Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator
Had been looking forward to this one a lot. Our group was just about large enough to run an entire ship on our own, and we signed up to play on the "jumbo bridge" a full scale setup, with podiums for each station rather than just laptops on a table. But when we got there, there was a huge mixup. On top of it all one of our players had forgotten his ticket at the apartment. Which ended up not being such a huge deal since we weren't able to play on the big bridge anyways, as it had been double booked and already seated for the slot.

To the organizers' credit they handled the situation well - offered to refund our event tickets, and give us 2 hours of play time on one of the laptop-on-a-table bridges to fill our time. Turned out to be a great session. Was nice to play with these guys, as they are my "home crew". When we do Artemis at home, this is who plays. Although we play at home, its still cool to play 'out' together.
Grade: B+

Kobolds Ate My Baby: Fury Road
This event was the highlight of the Con this year. We had a feeling it was going to be epic before we even showed up for it, just on the title alone. Kobolds Ate my Baby + Mad Max Fury Road? YESPLEASE! We were joined by a couple of other players and received our pre-game briefing. We would be kobolds in the vein of warboys from the movie. King Torg (ALL HAIL KING TORG!!!) would be the analog to Immortan Joe. A slimy human was trying to run off and escape with a nice tasty pile of babies, and we must stop them!!!!!

The GM explained to us the variant rules for this session, namely the process of being WITNESSED! Upon taking an action, a player may yell "WITNESS ME!!!" and the other players must respond with "WITNESS!!". This entitles the witnessed kobold to a 3 dice bonus on their skill check, but must immediately make a death save, at an increased difficulty of course.

Oh, and the GM literally had a deep pile of character sheets for us to write up new kobolds in a pinch for when we would inevitably die.

Fast forward a bit into the session, and my friend Matt decides to jump from our kobold war-mobile onto the tanker truck. Seeing this as a pivotal moment, he yells "WITNESS ME!!" and we all cheer him on "WITNESS!!".  He fails his death save and wipes out, but in a twist of fate his death is described as "False Witness!" and he does not die, and instead lies on in humiliation.

The Next round he again tries, in hopes of redeeming himself - "WITNESS ME!!" and we all rejoice in his madness - "WITNESS!!!". Another failed death save and tragic failure.



AND ANOTHER FALSE WITNESS!. He is again denied a glorious war filled death into Valhalla, shiny and chrome. We're laughing more at him now than we were with him. But the fight goes on. And his turn comes up once more. Seeing no other choice than the path fate had put him onto he yells "WITNESS ME!!!!" - and in response to the plea for witness unto Valhalla erupts the sound of....nothing. Crickets. Not a peep from the table. Alan (another friend) and I look over at Matt, our arms crossed shaking our heads in disappointment at his repeated failures. And then the laughter erupts. Man, that sequence alone was worth twice the price of admission!. What a great session. Havent had that much fun in quite a while.
Grade: A++

Firefly
This one rapidly filled up my "fuck this game" checklist for convention games before it even started. 8 players at the table? NOPE. That exceeds my max quota by 2. GM present and on time? NOPE. Strike two. GM Shows up and doesn't have the materials for their session? BOOM. Bob's out. I apologized to my friends for bailing, but this was too much too soon on my shit-game-o-meter, and I had to skedaddle. Dont recall exactly where I went after that, but it was most likely Games on Demand, to play something. Might have been Axon Punk.

I later heard from that friend that the session did indeed turn out to be a complete shitshow. Maybe I can get a quote from him about it.


Axon Punk
I played the part of a hacker who had become an AI and lived that way so long, they no longer identified as human. Just as an "it" called Corporal Kittens. It taunted "the man" endlessly and used RATM as soundtrack for the crew's exploits against the authority. Not sure how I feel about the system. It seemed a little clunky, but I had fun all the same.
Grade: B


Zoetrope
A very interesting game of Time Cops - using a custom card deck to mark points on the timeline, which can then be moved around as we bounce around, messing with our own timeline, creating save points, redo's, etc. Trying to explain your way out of your own paradoxes is a very entertaining thing. I think everyone had a great time with this, I certainly did.
Grade: A