Highmoon's Ponderings

After trying for almost a week to find a time when we could get together online to play something, Tuesday night we finally managed to do it. Four of us jumped on Skype and ended up playing a short game of Fiasco: a roleplaying game of powerful ambitions and poor impulse control (aka The Coen Brothers RPG, as it has been described sometimes). The game has received some stellar reviews and great word-of-mouth recommendations, so it’s one I’ve been wanting to try out. That it can play out entirely in a couple of hours also made it very attractive to our rag-tag band of busy online gamers. At some point during the last year I learned of a Fiasco playset (think of it as a setting sketch) called Gen Con: The Worst Four Days in Gaming, and that’s the one I proposed we play.

We did . It was awesome. It went a bit slow, since of the four players, two of us had not played Fiasco (Rob and myself) and two had (Rich and JJ). We decided to roll our own characters and connections instead of using the suggested ones provided in the playset. The almost-45-minutes we spent doing this felt like its own little game-within-a-game and we laughed as much as we did once we actually started playing. We played two rounds of scenes. Each player, on their turn, gets to either frame the scene and let the other players choose the outcome, or lets the other players set the scene and he chooses the outcome. We had a good mix of the two options, which created some funny moments. Whoever chooses an outcome for the scene, picks either a white die (things turn out well) or a black die (things turn out poorly) from a dice pool rolled at the start of play. When we finished, there was only one white die on the table, the rest having been chosen to be poor resolutions to the scenes in question, all simply because poor resolutions make for funny moments and problems for the characters. And really, that’s what this is all about, making the characters’ lives hell for our amusement.

The Gen Con playset turns out some bizarre situations that oddly enough feel like they’d be right at home in the real Gen Con! I think it captures the weirdness of Gen Con well, while adding the slapstick crime element to the mix in a perfect fashion. Seriously, you’ve probably never thought of Gen Con this way, but it isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibilities that some of the stories that can emerge from this playset could really happen during the best four days in gaming. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse, to be honest.

I could write a recap of the events that transpired but that’d be like telling you about my character and our adventure: it’s only interesting if you were there. I can, however, offer you a glimpse of the madness that went on.

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This first playtest for the rough first draft of the vampire game was indeed played at Gen Con 2010. Let just state it up front, in case you want to move on to other things: it was a disaster; the kind of good disaster you want a playtest to be, but a disaster nonetheless. If that’s all you wanted to know, then you’re free to go do groceries or whatever else you had planned; if you want to read more, you are a masochist, but in that case, just go on.

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As I write this it’s been a week since Gen Con Indy 2010 opened on Thursday, August 5. I’ve been back for a few days and have had time to process all that happened to me at the show, so here goes, my review of the best four days in gaming, 2010 edition.

The City

I don’t cease to be amazed at the reception 30,000 + gamers get in this midwestern city every year. And every year I see it grow. Banners welcoming Gen Con line the streets, and about 90% of the local businesses roll out some sort of welcome for the con, be it a simple window cling to full-on embracing of the magnificent nerdery with themed menus and drinks or Gen Con-specific specials. It shouldn’t be a surprise, really, when you consider that the estimated Gen Con economic windfall for Indianapolis this year was $27 million. Still, the welcome feels honest, which is rather nice.

The Con

I heard last year was a subdued one due to the bad economy, but boy, was that not the case in 2010! The entire downtown area was busy from Wednesday till Monday when I flew back, and the convention center itself was rarely, if ever, a calm place. There was palpable excitement in the hallways and hotels and on the street. And when those Exhibit Hall doors opened on Thursday, what everyone saw was a flurry of activity that contributed to record-breaking sales for pretty much every vendor I spoke to. The Gen Con LLC team continue to improve their craft of running this massive pop-up city and keep making the experience a great one for us attendees. A special thanks goes out to the Press Room team, because we of the gaming media can be a tetchy and annoying bunch and you always found a way to help us out (my only suggestion: please enforce that the Press Room is a quiet-zone; I was recording an audio interview there at one point and we had to shush down others that were there ourselves). Also thanks to Rio Grande Games for the free Wi-Fi in the convention center (I found it annoying that the coverage excluded the Exhibit Hall, though I understand it).

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In less than 24 hours I head to Indianapolis for that yearly gathering of awesome we call Gen Con. Though Highmoon Games will not “officially” be exhibiting anything, I (why, that would be me, Daniel M. Perez) will be there nonetheless, which means that Highmoon Games is there as well.

I’ll be working with Rogue Games for the duration of the con; you can find us at booth #1539. Drop by, say hi, and check out the great games the Rogues have for you, like Colonial Gothic, Thousand Suns and Shadow, Sword & Spell – Basic.

Aside from that, I will be wandering the hall and enjoying myself to no end. Oh yes, and running games. I’m running two games in particular that are of interest to fans of Highmoon Games:

• ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying – I’m doing a short and fun scenario for Adamant Entertainment’s superhero game, ICONS, Friday 8/6 from 3-6 PM, in which the villainous RULES LAWYER must be stopped before he erases all games from existence. Who can help? Enter THE CONVENTIONEERS! I still have player slots available for this game; if you are interested, see this post and leave a comment.

  Check out the cover:

• I’m also doing a playtest of the vampire roleplaying game I have been working on, working title: When The Fall… This one will be Saturday night.

These are both projects that will eventually see release through Highmoon Games, so keep an eye out.

Catch you at Gen Con!

As I prepare to leave for Gen Con, I whipped up a simple character sheet to use for the playtest of When The Fall…

It’s incredibly bare bones right now, containing only the stats I have outlined here in previous posts. The main statistic is the Humanity/Beast scale, front and center. To the left are the Blessings of Humanity, where a player writes his Joys and Sorrows; to the right are the Curses of the Beast, where the vampiric powers are recorded. At the bottom is Willpower, grounding everything in reality.

The spaces at the bottom are for recording Consequences taken during conflicts, and I may have other uses for them if I can organize my thoughts in time before the game (guess what I’ll be doing during my flight to Indianapolis).

I’m going with a dice mechanic of a total dice pool of 10, with players choosing how many dice they commit to any action up to that number, with minimum Humanity/Beast dice based on the trait they are using, whether a Joy/Sorrow or a Vampiric Power. Target number will start at 7 and be adjusted during gameplay as needed, with 2 successes needed for any Easy task.

I haven’t written yet about Feeding, but very quickly, I’ll be using that as a scene option that a player can call for. After framing the scene and roleplaying the action, dice are rolled: if successful, Willpower is entirely refreshed if the vampire kills the victim (which triggers a Humanity check), 2 points are refreshed if the victim is left alive (which triggers a Frenzy check as the Beast does not like to be denied). These checks are rolled with the character’s Humanity or Beast dice respectively, and they need to score more successes than they have current Willpower points to not succumb to the Beast.

I’m both excited and nervous to run this game on Saturday night. I’ll be sure to write about the experience after I return from the convention.

I’m going to be running a game of ICONS at Gen Con, and I got line artists Dan Houser to do some art for the game.

What’s it about? Read on!

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