Ones and Zeros: Running a game at a Convention

Running a game at a Convention

July 04, 2003	Gaming
So on the Shadows of Amber board someone asked for ideas about how to run a game at a convention. I've been doing that, off and on, for more than 10 years. I've got lots of ideas. The first of which is "dive in! The water's great!" The rest are in the extended entry below... So here are some general thoughts that aren't specific to Amber and that are in no particular order: You are responsible for making sure 'X' people have fun playing your game. You are one of those 'X' people, make sure you have fun. A Con round is like a piece of software: robustness is determined by how well it reacts to unexpected input. It's easy to have it go well if the players do exactly what you planned for. I want a Con round to have a feel somewhere between an improvisational actor's workshop and a one-act play. I script very loosely and try to have a good idea of the world so that I can improvise as necessary. If I know the characters very well, I can run with an detailed outline. I can run Kobolds Ate My Baby! with a bullet point list now, although I had a much more detailed plot the first time I ran it. Try not to consult the rulebooks or your notes too often, especially if you're the only GM. It stops the game dead and it's hard to restart. Have an idea why the characters might stay together and why they might split up and what you want to do in either case. Unless the group is competing for points against other groups, it doesn't matter if they get off plot. I've run Paranoia sessions that didn't get out of the Briefing Room, but which were a hoot. Even though it doesn't matter if they get off plot, make sure your plot allows for them to re-enter it at several places. If it all falls apart because they killed the milkman in a psychotic episode in the first 15 minutes, then the plot is too fragile. It's important to be able to be interesting for 'x' hours, where 'x' is the length of the slot. It's nice if the game builds towards a climax and a resolution, but it's not always necessary. Make sure that every character is interesting to play. "You're the boss's girlfriend and you love him and do whatever he wants" may not be interesting, especially if the boss is present. Make sure that every character has something that only they can do. It shouldn't be required to complete the scenario, but it should have the potential to affect the story. Be prepared to make things harder or easier if the players are having too tough or too easy a time. Don't be in love with your villain or your plot. Plan for the players to win if they are sharp. No win scenarios are fun in Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia. They're not so fun in Changeling. Unless you're planning on turning the game into a recurring Con Game, be willing to let them resolve things and kill important people. People naturally form hierarchies. If you're not running a scenario of all strangers, then the characters will have some sort of pre-existing relationship. Tell them what it is. It's often interesting to set up a relationship involving NPCs and the players and break it. This lets them naturally determine who is 'leader' without assigning it to someone who might be poor at it. If you don't want to smash it, undercut it. Make sure any character can take a leadership role if that's the player's wish. A Co-GM (or "The Keeper's Thing" as we called hir in Call of Cthulhu) is highly useful. It allows players to split up if they want to without waiting around too much. It also gives the GM someone to play the NPCs. It makes it a lot easier to follow "show, don't tell" if you have a Co. "Show don't tell" is crucial for setting the mood you want. In one Call of Cthulhu round we had a mayor and his wife who showed the church officials that they had the torture equipment in top shape and who were extremely interested in it. If we'd just said so, it wouldn't have had nearly the wig-factor that it did when the wife lovingly explained just what a strappado was and how squassation worked. Plan for different levels of knowledge. You may get players who have never read the books and you may get players who have lots more rules and setting knowledge than you do. Try to figure out from the beginning just how much of a learning curve you've got. This is something you'll have to adjust to the group. If you say "no experience necessary", you should be prepared to get what you asked for. It might be worthwhile to review Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering and have some idea what you will do differently if your group is primarily Tacticians and Power Games when you wrote an adventure that caters to Method Actors and Story Tellers. You can give the players something to help them get into character, like "Smokes when nervous", "laughs a lot", "talks with hands", "chews gum". Don't go overboard, with this. "incessantly quotes Proust" would probably not help most players get in character. Don't be afraid to plan for ambiguity. You can certainly say "you've come to a pair of doors, one on the north wall and the other on the south, what do you do?" You can certainly have in your notes "whichever door they take first, North or South, is the one with the tiger behind it." Likewise, your plot can read "After 1 hour of play, the Justiciar comes back and says that the killer is [whichever player needs more stage-time!]" Have different personality notes for all the minor NPCs. Maybe a quote, but at least a few adjectives. Better if you have a personality based on a character from a book or movie you know well. Try to make sure they seem to be people with lives of their own. Major NPCs, especially antagonists, need to be memorable. Ideally, they should also have some reason for doing whatever it is that the players are opposing. Chekov's Law applies, but the gun that you put on stage in Act One doesn't always need to be fired at the person you expected it to be fired at in Act Three. Consider bizarre failures and bizarre intuitions. What if the Priest realizes that he's the cause of the evil influences in Brutabirra because of his incontrite and therefore unabsolved sins? What if they never follow the key lead and never find the Vampire's back door? You don't need fleshed-out plots, but some idea of the direction in which you might improvise wouldn't be wasted. If the entire game takes place in one scene (Eric's Wake, for instance), consider having events take place after a certain amount of real time has passed. Let them talk to whatever NPCs they want and at Gamestart + [some time], have something happen. After the next interval, do the next thing. If you use this method, be willing to wait for the action if the players are doing something interesting. If you don't use the time method for your plot, consider using it for the climax/resolution. "If the players haven't found the cairn by 30 minutes before the round is required to end, the spirit of the last Bunyip will attack them and then run away, back to the cairn. At that point they get attacked by the Black Spiral Dancers and the endgame is on..." Wow, that was way longer than I meant for it to be.
.:Posted by Michael on July 4, 2003 6:16 PM:.

But yummy!

.:Posted by Arref ( total) on July 5, 2003 12:39 AM:.