The Inevitable Self Indulgent Debrief
It’s been a long and awesome week. Here are some thoughts that have stuck with me about the games I was part of:
Friday
Montsegur 1244 was the first go, and it was a pre-con game at the space. I’d never run it before but I’d read it. Got all strong players at the table, but I’d never actually played with most of them (Ara Kooser, Nathan Paoletta, Eric Mersmann and Phil Lewis were all new; Jason Corley I had met and played with previously). It’s a “set a scene and go” type game, which I’m iffy about if I don’t know who I’m playing with, and sure enough we had a lot of first-act fumbling around in the dark while we figured out characters and hot lines of conflict and relationships.
It was a really affecting game (I was an emotional wreck afterward and I suspect Ara was as well) and I don’t know that I’ve got the stomach for it a second time for a while. There’s a lot of emotionally manipulative stuff baked into the course of play, but there are also lots of pressure release valves built in as well — if you don’t want to dwell on your dead child, hey it’s the Holy Grail lolwhut? But fucking everyone was all yahhhhhh tragedy let’s dump more sads on Paul! And they did, and it was great, and it’ll be a while before I set myself up for that again. Hell of a session headed into what I feared would be three straight days of events just like that.
The palate cleanser was running Mutant: Year Zero that night. Phil Lewis, MadJay Brown, Eric Mersmann and Ara Kooser jumped into the pseudo-playbook thing, did up a relationship map off the choices, doodled up their Ark and I drew and improvised off the Threats to the Ark deck. The whole setup was 90ish minutes, which I think is not unusual for this kind of con game. It was ridiculously fun and high energy and certainly the “funnest” game of the con. Watching the players jump up and down and scream when the dice didn’t murder them outright with radiation The Rot out in the Zone was infectious and energizing and fun. I had a very hard time winding down that night!
This was the first time I’d tried MYZ as a one-shot and it’s definitely going on my short list of go-to one-shots. You have to leave a lot out, just like Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World, both of which somehow work just fine at conventions. My one challenge, which turned out to be very easy, was to make sure they got a taste of both the in-the-Ark political/interpersonal acrimony, as well as the in-the-Zone procedural grind. I just love that shit. I looooove how they inform each other. Fun, easy to run, a+++++ would Mutant again. Hell, I even tried to organize a side game to continue where we left off.
Saturday
Started with Dog Eat Dog with Derrick Kapchinsky facilitating/offering and Daniel Lofton and Isaac Milner and I at the table. My first game with all of them, although Daniel and Isaac and I had had a chance to meet and talk beforehand. I knew the basic shape of the game from an earlier read-through and I was curious to see how it played out. I think at least some of me wanted to dismiss it outright as a message game, about which I have many complex feels I’ll unpack at some point.
Well so DED is a message game, but it’s well executed for the most part. It does what it says on the tin: the occupation, even if well-meaning, is doing irreparable harm to the locals, and the locals will either let themselves lose everything or will die defending it. So it’s kind of on-the-nose that way but, yeah, it offers pretty solid play. Not much guidance on how to really juice it, make it hot. I feel like it’s the kind of game I could come back to with a better idea of how it works, and facilitate toward harder choices in the scenes as well as the “rules you put yourself under” bit that the locals do.
Middle game was me running Tenra Bansho Zero. It was not a good event for me, despite knowing I’m my own harshest critic. C- effort. There was some heavy lifting involved with teaching the game as well as pulling players along (MadJay Brown, Derrick Kapchinsky and Nicholas Hopkins were completely fine; I don’t have names on the other two). But I just couldn’t seem to get the engine revving. Some poor prep on my part, as well as having not run the thing in a couple years. Sorry playas! Even rockstars have off concerts.
Last game of Saturday was Cartel, run by Mark Diaz Truman with Isaac Milner and his (very funny, slightly bonkers) wife Jenny/Jenni/Jeni…however you spell it, and Katherine Fackrell. It’s a late-stage beta, and it kind of feels that way, but it was a fun time. I’m still thinking analytical thoughts about it because it feels like it is reeeeeally close to what I’d consider great. Having a hell of a time putting my finger on where I’d do things different.
So our session was fun, for sure, but also sort of asymmetrically fun. I chose to play El Narco, and proceeded to pick all the very safe options. So hey, yeah, he’s in a pretty safe spot. (But should a playbook even have a “safe” build?) Kind of a passive role, lots of delegation and very occasionally yelling at underlings, but mostly chilling at the pool being a sweet old grandpa. Who occasionally orders hits on his enemies.
I also wonder if Mark ran Cartel kind of in uh…demo mode, if you know what I mean. I feel like there’s a lot of room to really escalate the brutality and shocking audacity…among friends, at a home game, no fucking recording for later podcasting, etc etc. Anyway, successful and a good time, especially at midnight.
Sunday
One event and it was fucking killer: Sagas of the Icelanders with Stras Acimovic, MadJay Brown, Kit La Touche, Marissa Kelly and Justin, one of Magpie’s posse but not once did I dial in his last name. WHO ARE YOU JUSTIN I WANT TO PLUSSSSS.
It was my second go at one-shotting it and once again it was magical and awesome. Marissa played the Man, Kit played the Woman, Justin was the Seidkona, Stras was the Shield Maiden (third time IIRC and completely dialed) and Jay was the Huscarl. There are so very many killer apps inside SotI but the first and most useful one is how the relationship map plays out. Jay discovered my most powerful super-sekret awesome GMing tech, which is a big, visible, theatrical relationship map in the middle of the table. So many boxes! So many lines! Oh hey here’s some room for an actual map as well! It’s my very favorite thing to do, everyone should do it.
I know the game is magic when the successes and failures all come so easy. You know what I mean? I’m totally ready to high-five and celebrate the hot successes, I’m ready with good ideas on the 7-9s, and the 6- moves feel inevitable. That’s exactly how our game felt. I was also so very lucky that Kit and Stras had lots of Icelandic historic stuff in their heads, and that was incredibly useful. Thank you thank you for being on-the-spot with the weregeld angle.
Final analysis: SotI had the most solid collaborative-storymaking outcome, MYZ was the most deliriously fun, and Montsegur was the most personal experience.
Last Thoughts
I’ve never done a con where GMs/facilitators/alpha nerds pitch games to a live audience. It’s interesting! And I feel like I’m especially suited to it. So it was fun and flattering to be the belle of the ball, with players having to actually resort to their priority system to get seats. It also gave me squirmy feels when someone couldn’t fill a table. We’re all grownups I suppose, but all sympathy to those folks.
The facility was good. I’m all about the private room play spaces, although I wish the tables were bigger and the beds were gone, Big Bad Con style, but whatevs, wishes/fishes/horses. I could not deal with the central shared play area, though, and apologies to Derrick and eveyrone else who came in contact with my pretty pretty princess tendencies (noise, smell, vibe, feng shui, I can feel the pea under this mattress etc.).
I know Mark, Marissa and others are talking about a change in time, and I’m on board with that. I hated having to choose between this and Big Bad Con the previous weekend. Embarrassment of riches and all that.
The hosts were uniformly gracious, helpful, friendly and awesome. I cannot say enough good things about all of them.
So. Yeah. Sign me up, I’m in again.
Justin Rogers
THANK YOU.
I’m really glad you and MadJay Brown were able to make the trip! Mutant Year Zero has been acquired. So many parts of that game are squarely in my gaming sweet spot!
It would indeed have been nice to have some bigger tables. And the acoustics in that main room were not conducive to running multiple games at once.
I actually sat near the door on Sunday morning and got drowned out by the table by the window (even though they weren’t talking all that loud), so we moved out by the hot tub. I was like “That’s what he was talking about!” That’s a little rough for the space – we had hoped a number of tables could run there.
Have you done a full write-up of what you’ve done to make MYZ a one-shot? If not, you should. I’d love to see that.
Hard floor, high ceiling, booming GM voices.
When I’ve been in rooms where multiple tables worked, there’s always been carpet, sometimes there are soft fabric screens to set up, and either the ceilings were low and tiled or waaaaaaay high where you just kind of end up with mumbling echoes.
Lowell Francis Honestly you just leave out the Ark stuff. That’s it. Go ahead and distribute the starting points, but they won’t matter because they’ll still be first-level across the board. And make sure you can contrive a reason to be both in and out of the Ark at some point.
Out in the Zone, just randomize it. If I wanted to speed things up, I might generate like…six zones. Or use that online tool that does it. I could have saved time if all the critter/phenomenon stats were already in place.
Great playing with you! ^_^ Hopefully we’ll get to play more games together next time.
Stras Acimovic I want in on Atlas Reckoning.
It’ll be at Metatopia, and if not – Origins and NMxC next year! ^_^
I actually liked the more organic way you just rolled for zone interactions on demand. It appealed to my Red Box heart. 🙂
Actually I did too. Kind of enjoyed the on-the-spotness of that, rather than noodling on my setup in advance. Different improvisational energy for sure.
Coolio! Thanks.
Sad to have missed out on MYZ. It was the game from your poll that I picked. Next time!
It was rad playing with you (and, y’know, chatting and whatnot as well).
I think the different amounts of emotional impact from Montsegur is a really interesting thing. We talked about it later, but I know I was much more in a director stance and actually didn’t have a whole lot of bleed from my character(s); I still really enjoyed the game, but in a way that I would love to play again now that I know how it rolls, not in way that made go “whew, that’s enough”.
That’s a really good point. I may actually be able to hold my play at arm’s length the next time, rather than having the bleed sneak up on me.
Montsegur, you sneaky bastard.
Yah , I too was directing things. There’s a lot of rough edges and it is showing it’s age a bit.
I missed having you at BBC, but I’m really happy you got to have a great time at New Mexicon.
Quick notes on Sagas: I whiffed on dates, tho’: Commonwealth was 930, settlement was ~870, I blended them into 970. Whoops.
Also, double checked, and Freyr and Ástríðr would totally have been done for incest; “close kin” went out to second cousins. Good thing only the creepy seiðkona knew about that!
Also, thank you for running such a great game of it!
Oooh yeah, MYZ is an eeeasy sell. I wish I got kickbacks.