So, the Online Summer Con is over. I think the game I was in Sunday evening closed out the event, since we went about 30 minutes over the end time (and the new semester started yesterday so I was introducing my courses on not enough sleep). I wasn't involved in the start, though, since I didn't play anything Friday evening.
The games I was in were all really fun, although the three I was a player in all had different styles.
Saturday morning, my friend Justin ran a Monster of the Week/Jinkies! mix game (both are PbtA games, so he used MotW on his side, but we used Jinkies! playbooks for our PCs). It was called The Coffin Nails, and was a mystery game.
I played Jimmy Switzer, a college dropout and loner (The Tough One playbook). A player with the online nickname Mildew played Cal Whitmore, the local newspaper editor (The Leader playbook). A third player named Kojak played Antoine Pier, the university librarian (The Smart One playbook). We made our PCs before the game.
The mystery involved a pair of researchers at the local university trying to cover up a failed insomnia experiment that led to people acting violently. There was also a ghost involved. We managed to solve the mystery, but unfortunately, not in time to stop the researchers from getting away and getting a lucrative contract with a defense contractor.
It was a fun, goofy game, with us mostly laughing our way through the tense moments our PCs found themselves in.
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Saturday afternoon, I was in a Mothership game run by Michael (first time meeting him). He ran a module called Gradient Descent that Justin told me was pretty good. And it was. It was also a mystery game, but with more action and also very much a Philip K. Dick style mindfuck. Sorry, some spoilers in this game description follow.
I played Mifune, a Marine. Michelle played Blaise, a Scientist (botany specialty). LP played Emmanuel, a Teamster (pilot). Carly played Bianca, a Scientist (surgeon). Kinsella played Amirah "CIB", also a marine. CIB stood for "Cast Iron Bitch" and she really played that up! We also made these PCs before the game started.
The jumping off point was that we were going to an abandoned space station to loot it, but just as we board, we get knocked out and wake up in a trash heap deep in the station. We've got some good loot, and need to get to the top of the station where our hired ship is waiting for us, but the station AI thinks we're all androids and its property so we can't leave.
We managed to get to our ship in time, without loss of PC life (we lost an android friend we picked up along the way), but one PC was suspected to be an android replicant and our crazy Russian pilot wouldn't let her board. So that PC volunteered to stay and the rest of us got away...but with lingering doubts about whether or not we had also been replaced and didn't know it, or if the one we left behind was actually human or not (there was evidence that she WAS human, but also evidence that she'd been replaced).
This game was fast paced, tense at times, very funny at times, and required some lateral thinking along with some gung-ho bravado.
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Sunday afternoon was the game I ran, Into the Dragon's Den. I had revamped an old dungeon from 20 years ago, and used my TS&R rules but with BECMI style race-as-class demi-humans. This was a fairly straight dungeon crawl, with a variety of challenges to exploration, combat, and puzzles but the party bypassed quite a few of the puzzle type encounters (which is totally fine, I made quite a few paths through the dungeon).
Richard (my CoC Keeper friend) played Grimsteel the Dwarf. Ian (who plays in Richard's CoC game and I met IRL in Seoul last week in the Perils and Princesses game) played Peralay the Elf. Kinsella (CIB in the Mothership game) played Aleena the Cleric. Zen played Morgan Ironwolf the Fighter. Ren played Ismene the Thief. Yes, these were pre-gens I made, and yes, I stole names and art from the BX, BECMI, and other TSR books for the pre-gens. The players had selected their PCs before the game started.
I gave each PC a different set of rumors, including rumors about the various ways into the dungeon. The town wanted them to either slay Kelek the Wizard or Grimflame the Dragon (or maybe both). They decided to try the wizard, and started exploring the most difficult way in first, but then decided to move to the easiest way in. They found a hidden passage in the first room which led them to Warduke (Kelek's captain) who they defeated, then up to find Kelek who they also just managed to defeat without losing any lives. They also found Kelek's stash of anti-dragon magic items along the way, so maybe I'll see if these players want to have a second go at it and try their luck with the dragon some day.
We went over time, because no one wanted to stop until Kelek was dead. I think everyone had fun. I definitely had a great time running it.
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Sunday evening, I was again a player in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game, run by Marley. This was the first time I've had a chance to play DCC, and it did not disappoint. Marley's DMing style was a bit different, though. She had us pick pre-gens at the start of the game, asking us each to run two or maybe three. We all picked two, then she asked if anyone wanted to run three. I said why not, and picked a third. Then two other players picked third PCs...so we kinda had too many PCs in the game. Should have kept my mouth shut, maybe.
I played a Thief named Jinx, a Magic-User named Alexy, and a Fighter named Torgo. I didn't write down all the other PCs names/classes, but Dee played a Dwarf and a Thief. Zen (Morgan Ironwolf in my game) played a Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief. Gheist played a Dwarf, a Cleric, and an Elf. Marley had a bit of characterization to each PC for us to use, but we got to pick names for ourselves.
The adventure we were sent on was that a bunch of low-level losers were sent to stop a world-ending bad guy from destroying the world by solving the mystery of the dungeon. The dungeon itself was a big puzzle, and we spent way too much time in the second room with the primary puzzle, trying to figure it out, before Marley clued us in that the rest of the dungeon had clues to solve the primary puzzle. Of course, we failed to stop the demon thing from emerging, and almost all of the PCs died in one hilarious way or another.
Marley's DMing style was interesting. After a very exposition heavy start, she just sat back and waited for us players to do something once we got plopped into the dungeon. And she had an assumption of incompetence for our PCs. For example, if we wanted to light a torch, we had to roll to see if our PC knew how to do that. It was interesting. Very different from the assumption of competence I give PCs in games I run. It did suit the game style, though, were we were supposed to be in over our heads, and likely going to fail anyway.
As I mentioned, this game also went about 30 minutes over the limit since we all wanted to see how the last few PCs would die or escape screaming from the dungeon. My PCs all died.
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Final thoughts? Next time, I will probably DM more and play less. And not the late night slot on a night before I need to go to work the next day. It was fun to try one game I had never tried before (DCC), and to get to play a few games I had played before but in different styles. And Justin, Scott and I will probably be meeting soon to plan a face to face Busan game convention. Since I'll be one of the organizers, I'll also probably run a game or two but likely not play in anything, so I can be available to manage things at times when Scott and Justin run or play something.
