Recalling Thursday Night

First thing that happened when I got to the con hall floor, I was recognized by a guy I met at NerdNYC’s recess event, and he was about to start a game — and so I finally got a chance to check out Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard, which was a really good time, and while it took a little bit to grok how the resolution and escalation system worked, it went very well owing to the high quality GM’ing from Kit LaTouche. Thanks Kit!

We finished up just in time for my hyper-exclusive party. Yea, like I get invited to those. I did go to a private party that was mostly focused on podcasters meeting each other with food and drinks and space to hang out.

Later on I went out to visit some of my Fear the Boot forums buddies at an open gaming space, where I got to catch up with a lot of geographically disparate friends and then play Jeremy Keller’s new game Technoir. The game runs very smoothly, and while I haven’t had the chance to read through it yet, my experience was VERY promising. Our only real problem was that we as PCs weren’t quite behaving in genre, and so our contacts/”friends” wouldn’t just tell us what was going on. Blame the fact that the game started at midnight.

Friday Morning

Friday morning I took the opportunity to briefly skim through the dealer’s room before my appearance on This Just In from GenCon. I had donated some money to help fund their goal of bringing GenCon to those who couldn’t come, and they had me come on to co-host with guests J.R. Blackwell (Shelter in Place), and Ryan Sturm (How to Play podcast, The Dice Tower blog, and a new podcast on game design called Ludology). I’m very excited to check out both Ryan and J.R.’s various projects further when I have some more time.

After lunch I went back to the most-excellent Games on Demand space, where awesome hardworking GMs ran anything and everything as pick-up games for players who were there to play. Definitely worth the $2 generic ticket, and my thanks go out to everyone running the space, running games, and the players for showing what I hope ends up being massive support of Games on Demand. I caught my first actual game of Daniel Solis’ Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and immediately afterwards facilitated a game of Jason Morningstar’s Fiasco.

I had to leave that game halfway through to go meet my ENnies dream dates, Jeff Tidball and Will Hindmarch from Gameplaywright Press. Part of the deal was that I got to claim credit for Jeff’s ridiculous mustache, which quickly led to the following photo of Ken Hite and Jeff hamming up the 70s cop show theme. Hanging out with these guys was a hoot – see below:

Ken Hite and Jeff Tidball as 70s Cops Skitch and Grissom. THEY FIGHT CRIME!
Photo credit: AtomicOvermind

Actually attending the ennies awards ceremony was nice, I got to meet a ton of awesome people during the cocktail hour and had a great time twittering back and forth with Jeff and Will; but I wouldn’t call the actual awards ceremony one of the must-see events of the show if you don’t have anything at stake. We followed up the actual ceremony with a quick recording session – now available as Episode 30.

To begin closing my evening out, I went to the Burning Wheel Social, hosted by Luke Crane and Peter Adkison, hung out a while, played a prototype of a game called Ninja Clans by this guy Jurgen, and took a photo of Peter in his hilarious new outfit.

As it got later, and I got closer to closing my night out, I went back to the Embassy Suites and found people including Steve Segedy, Daniel Perez, and Ryan Macklin chilling in the lobby chatting over beverages. Games were brought up, and I mentioned that I had Feed the Birds with me. We got in a 3-player game of half-asleep/half-drunk FtB before crashing and it was extremely well received. The last new rules tweak I just made actually works really well, too! (Jenn and Aron – I owe you two some errata.)

So far so good. I’ll write up Saturday and Sunday soon.

This last weekend saw my second trip to Dexcon, held in Morristown, NJ every summer. It’s run by the same group that puts out Dreammation (and coming this fall: Metatopia) and seemed to me this year to be an extremely live-action heavy con. In fact that’s most of what I played this weekend.

I didn’t mean to, after all, I swore off larping ages ago when it started taking up far too much of my life. Several people had recently recommended jeepform[1] games to me, when offering direction for my game Hyperreality; but I hadn’t gotten a chance to play any. And then there they were, two different jeepform games being offered.

The first game was called Previous Occupants. The general plot is a story of two couples separated by some number of years (but played simultaneously) that turns into a ghost story as relationship issues are dealt with and played out by having a pair of two players and characters share the same physical body. This ain’t your high-level Vampire dominate power. The combination of the privacy of the space we set aside to play, the intensity of the serious dramatic issues, and all the player’s high level of buy-in left me shaking by the end. Like I said… intense.

I also played a Game of Thrones larp, a game of Fiasco, ran some demos of Ghost Pirates and Happy Birthday Robot, and “Project: Ninja Panda Taco” by Jenn of the Jennisodes. (definitely play this one if you get a chance).

Finally towards the end of the con, I was hanging out at the IPR table with Darren Watts and the Indie Roundtable discussion ended up coming to us; it was great to hear about people’s ideas and plans and to be able to offer feedback on their ideas. It really helped clarify for me the role that I want Dice + Food + Lodging to play in the community, and I’ll post and talk more about this later — but the summary is that it should be a stepping stone for creative ambitions within the gaming community.

All in all, it felt like a very successful con for me – I had a great time and will definitely be back next summer with a little more planning in place.

[1] A quick aside: jeepform games are a scandinavian tradition of what they refer to as “tabletop” games; which differ drastically from our definition. They are played as small-scale live-action games with only a little bit of the loosest preparation. And they frequently aim to induce “bleed,” that is the crossover of character emotions to the player and vice versa. These games are very intense, extremely personal, and to my mind extremely rewarding. Visit http://www.jeepen.org for more information.

Dreamation 2011 was awesome!

Despite a somewhat rocky start, where I booked my game reservations before my con badge, my hotel reservations less than a week ahead of time, and a quick shot back to my office to pick up the ashcans that I had printed but forgot to pack; I made it out to Morristown late Thursday night and immediately found Daniel Solis and Miss Jennisodes herself in the hotel lobby. Bedtime was imminent, but I managed to demo a 3-player Feed the Birds game before ending the night.

Friday I played in stellar games, probably the single best day’s lineup at a con I’ve ever had.

It started off with Jenn’s excellent Fiasco playset: “Quest for the Golden Panda,” set in mythic China. We told awesome wuxia action and revenge stories.

Second game: Epidiah Ravachol’s Swords without Master, a swords and Sorcery game in the style of Fafhrd & Grey Mouser, or Conan the Barbarian. We had tons of fun playing displaced earth-people from wildly different parts of the timestream, and freed a dead goddess from the musical imprisonment of the Pale Ones.

Finally, Misspent Youth with Rob Bohl, who modeled his adventure off the story “The Hunger Games.” Our Taoist Insurgents fought the power, got imprisoned, and a few of us were forced to sell out to help start the revolution. My personal highlight was utterly shocking Rob when I sold out my Outrage to Wrath.

I also introduced my first ashcan setting, HYPERREALITY, which is a Reality TV Gameshow setting that runs with the InSpectres ruleset. Download it and check it out!

Friday night was spent awake way too long hanging out with lots of great folks in the hotel lobby playing Zombie Dice and Feed the Birds before going to a diner at… what was it, 3am? Burger… Bed…

Saturday, I spent the morning hanging out at the indie games bazaar and got to see my friend Jeff Himmelman before I had to run back to the city to go to Stoudt Brewery’s Winterfest. Had a good time, but wish I’d been gaming.

Sunday morning I got a little extra sleep, and made my way back to Morristown for the wrap-up, where I manned the indie games bazaar while nearly all of the designers went to the Indie Games Roundtable… I’m a little sorry I missed it, but on the other hand, I’d already been talking to them nearly the entire time I was there anyway.

Finally, I grabbed some lunch with excellent NYC folks and took the train back home to an Oscars party in progress. It was an amazing weekend full of things I love, and I only wish I had that a little more frequently.