Origins 1994
Write up from my 37th zine.
ORIGINS REPORT: This isn't the con you're looking for.
Or so everyone kept telling me. "You flew all the way out from New York for Origins?" GenCon is more rpg oriented, and might have been a better choice. I had a good time, though.
Stuff I paid for:
Dwarven Halls - the only supplement for Swordbearer (which I also have)
Grimrock Isle - by Triad for CoC
Adventures in Arkham County - for Coc
Prince Valiant
Castle Falkenstein - I got the first copy sold, autographed by Mike Pondsmith
The Shanghai booklet for Masks of Nyarlathtotep - it was a quarter, and I was high from getting CF. Should play move to Shanghai or Gray Dragon Island, I can now carry something smaller than the entire book.
Stuff I got review copies of:
Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads - Cyberpunk
GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade Companion
Pendragon, 4th ed
Pagan Shore (Pendragon)
Book of Shadows (Mage)
I was surprised that people gave me this stuff without making me show some kind of proof that I was telling the truth. Dana Blankenship did take down my name and the magazine I plan to do the review for, but that's about it. Doc says it's cuz I was telling the truth, and maybe cuz I'm female. Of course, Dana and Lisa Pondsmith are women too, and so was the woman who worked the Chaosium booth.
Lisa's Guide to Scamming Free Stuff:
1. Be prepared to take "No" for an answer. If this will wound you, you're in the wrong business.
2. There are other answers than "yes" and "no":
a. We'll send it to your magazine.
Be on good terms with the magazine, and ask the people there for the review copy.
b. Wait until Sunday.
This is so that the company has a chance to actually sell stuff. Doc said that the last day of the con is good for scamming because dealers would often prefer not to cart everything home. However, I flew out at 8am Sunday.
The woman who worked the Chaosium booth gave me Pagan Shore, but asked me to hold off on Pendragon till Sunday. This was on Thursday. By Friday, I had a $3 Chaosium "buck", went back to the booth, and spent some time dithering over what to spend it on. I remembered that Doc was planning to ask for a reviewer's discount on Castle Falkenstein if he couldn't get it for free, so I asked if that would be possible, as I couldn't wait till Sunday and wanted to buy Adventures in Arkham County. To my surprise and delight, she decided to give me the review copy for free.
3. Things to bear in mind if they say "yes":
a. You are honor bound to review the product. This means that you must find time to read it and to write the review.
b. You must cart all of this stuff home. I was rather relieved not to get the Kult products I wanted, as my stack was getting large.
Free stuff I got not as review copies:
1. Paranoia 2nd ed. Some foldout charts were missing from my copy, and the guy at WEG's booth figured it was easier to give me a new copy, especially as I didn't remember which ones they were.
2. A pack of cocaine - er, an MtG booster pack - was included with my prereg stuff.
What I did when I wasn't buying or scamming stuff:
1. Hung out with Doc, Samantha (his roommate), and Patrick Riley. I tried to get info out of Doc so I can jumpstart his pbem. Patrick tried to remember the witty things we were saying. I've forgotten my brillian lines, but I remember one of his: Madame CthulhuPunk can't stand horror movies. (Too true.)
2. Waited for the Dealers' Room to open. Falkenstein arrived early, and when the doors opened, there was a mob of people lining up outside WOTC's booth for MtG, while one lone figure (me) headed for R. Talsorian's booth.
3. Hung out with the Vel and Tammy and their kids, Michael Halse, Michael Hopcroft, Jonathan Tweet, Brian Pugier, and Tony Lee, and missed Mark Goldberg completely.
4. Oh yes - did some gaming. 2 out of 5 were bad, and alas, they were the CoC games.
The Monastery was a nice CoC scenario, but I was looking at my watch every five minutes, waiting to see when it would be over. You know how one player can really ruin things? It's worse when the GM does it. His gm'g skills were fine, but he kept clowning around. I was amused the first time he said "You do X and - Cthulhu gets you! Ha ha! Just kidding." The fifth time, I was annoyed. The tenth, I was ready to strangle him. I got tired of the pedophilic priest jokes. I'd say that all of us, myself included, encouraged/were encouraged by this clowning to some extent. I also suspect that each of the players, if approached separately, would say that they'd as soon the joking had been limited. Naturally, no one said anything, so we must all bear some blame. Still, there was a time limit. Game time = real time, something he never formally mentioned (though I might have guessed), and I resent having the time we need cut by this. It also kills the mood.
Despite all this, the players were all good. Game quote:
Rich philanthropist: I'm drawing my gold watch!
Lawyer: That's not a tax deduction!
The ex-criminal chauffer slipped on his brass knuckles when things got hairy (right at the beginning). Later on, the player discovered that he'd been rolling d6 + 2 for damage when he should have been rolling 2d6 + 2. Rather than complain, he came up with a justification for this:
Player: I only thought I put on the brass knuckles. This time, I really put them on, checking to be sure.
The other CoC game was a 7 hour session, where we made up our pcs on the spot. One guy wanted to be an ex-assassin who went into a killing frenzy when he blew SAN rolls. We convinced him to be ex-FBI instead. I found him annoying, but he wasn't obnoxious as a player.
After rolling up our characters, justifying some odd results (a grad student with a $65,000 income [he fasttalked his way into a grant]), coming up with unpleasant stuff in our past, at the gm's request - and it was never used - we created connections. My ex-athlete had the grad student as a TA, the DMV weirdo (great character! Wish I'd been as inventive as that player) was on a BBS with the grad student and the hacker, and so on. Then and only then did the gm mention that we should have some investigative background. Grr.
There was much trouble getting the group together. This is often a player's fault, but I tried to help. My character called the grad student for help with homework. The grad student was the main link to the plot. The DMV guy got in on his own, via his weirdness, but I had to wait - the TA figured he'd get fired if he took a student investigating and she got killed, so he didn't talk near me. We did have a backup plan - the rich guy threw a party and wanted fab babes. My Appearance was 15, so the TA (who'd been invited by the hacker who'd been invited by the rich guy) invited me. It worked, but 2 or 3 of us had little to do for an hour or so, which is a pain in a convention run. This is why pregenerated characters are useful. You get connections plus whatever background you want. I suspect the GM wanted us to come up with the special unpleasant incidents, though, but he never used them.
Some details bored me:
Hacker: My skill is 95. I look for X facts.
GM: How do you look? Where do you search?
Sheesh, that's what a skill roll's for. But I'd never play a hacker, and this guy didn't seem to mind. Problem: The rest of us had little to do while he, the gm, and the guy who played the grad student fussed over the details.
The premise was that a doctor who worked with children who had sleep disorders had been killed after removing one such child, Jacob, from the hospital. We soon located him, despite some fiercely protective cats. One was killed, and the grad student began dissecting it to see if it had rabies (it scratched one of the pcs).
Me: Can I watch?
Grad Student: That's right, you have that bio test. Now, this is a spleen...
The best bit was when the DMV guy saw his cat curled up on the kid's lap.
DMV Weirdo: No one pets my cat like that!
The kid, who'd finally started to talk, clammed up. Out of character, we quickly figured out his story. He was real powerful in the Dreamlands, and Bast liked him. The final twist the gm planned (we never got that far) was to have Jacob beg us to kill him. He was a freak and a narcoleptic in the real world, but had power in dreams.
One guy said his character wouldn't do it, but wouldn't stop anyone else from doing it. My character wouldn't allow it. After all, none of us knew from Dreamlands. Killing a 15 year old just because he's a narcoleptic is a bit extreme. I also know a woman who's narcoleptic, so I know that one can have a full life with the disease.
Once we found Jacob, the rich guy got a call, congratulating him for finding the kid and threatening to be in touch. At least, we took that as a threat. The gm later explained that the caller had killed the doctor for the major villain, but was trying to undermine said villain in anyway he could, and that's why he made the phone call.
This was totally unclear. That call freaked us all, and when an ambulance with a freezer unit which some of us were tailing took the road that led to where the rest of us were staying, I panicked, and convinced everyone to move Jacob to my pc's house. I also had the hacker remove my name from a list of terminal patients undergoing Unspeakable Experiments after he'd added it.
GM: I had such plans for that!
Me: You said I can't go into the hospital till tomorrow. If I'm still alive by then, he can put me back on the list. Till then, I don't want to make it easier for Them to disappear me!
I also had the prophetic insight that by the next day (game time) our plans would be irrelevant.
What was going on? A rich, illuminati-level guy was dying of AIDS. He'd discovered the dreamworld and was draining patients of POW so he could take the place over, and recognized that Jacob was the key. He also controlled the sheriff, who was part of a family of ghouls. The grad student and hacker were dealing with them, while the FBI guy and I broke into the hospital, and the session ended. The player of the rich guy was mostly out of things by then, feeling as disgruntled as I did.
The description of the event said: "stressing character development and subtle investigating". Only the DMV guy had the first down. As for the last, a hospital break-in and cemetary shoot-out aren't my idea of subtle!
The Kult session was a little better. It was part 1 of a 2 parter, and 2 sesssions of 6 people would be run with 3 of each advancing to the Sunday final. 3 of us were unavailable, so that worked out. For best roleplaying, the gm figured we were all good, so he rolled a d6. Somehow, I don't feel bad about losing to a random die roll. The guy who won did a good job.
The gm handed out character sheets which were on index cards. Then he took us to his hotel room, dimmed the lights, lit a candle, which he put on the tv next to a skull, and put cds from Night Breed and Hellraiser II on. Then he pulled each of us aside to explain our dark secrets and answer rule questions. I think he should have done that before moving to the hotel room, or waited to hand out the characters till we got to the hotel room. Better still, use a full sheet, and put the dark secrets in the extra space.
The session ran till 12:15 am officially, and one guy had to leave by then (the same one who was the DMV weirdo the next day), but the rest of us stayed till 1am. We didn't get as far as he'd anticipated, and part of that was because we did a lot of tactical planning since 5 of us were a mercenary unit hired to guard a child. The guy who was the DMV person wasn't thrilled with the scenario, but I enjoyed it. I agree with whoever said the pacing was off, and I think the gm should have had some kind of climactic ending (maybe he did and we didn't reach it). Are double sessions done as prelude and adventure or as 2 linked but semi-separate adventures? I prefer the latter.
I wanted to see how the Kult rules work in action. I still don't know. We did very little die rolling. I approve. I'm not thrilled with gaming in the dark, as seeing handouts is useful, but more candles or flashlights would help. The music made me edgy, but it was loud, and I was glad when it was over. Despite much planning and little action, I wasn't bored!
Quote of the game: You're a pc too. You can do what you want. (said to the one player whose pc wasn't a mercenary. He wasn't sure his character was allowed in the library)
Ignorance is a precious commodity in gaming. I'd read the rules for Kult before playing. The gm reminded me that my pc knew nothing of the background. I didn't try to use that knowledge, but when he described a creature, my brain automatically tried to figure out which thing from the rules it was. Sigh.
2 of us were given surreal experiences, then told that we -knew- they were dreams. This will not motivate characters if players deal fairly. Very frustrating.
The real winner of the con for me was Castle Falkenstein. I will likely do a review of it next time. If I ever run it, I'll use OTE's system. Jonathan, rightly, takes this as a compliment for OTE. It is also a complement for CF. The system is so close to OTE that it's easy to convert.
The first game was supposed to be BYOC, but the game hadn't even arrived at the con! The gm passed a xerox of the game around, along with character sheets which weren't in the book, but were good enough they should have been. They copied the book's description of the archetypes, added blank lines and a drawing, and took up half a sheet of paper.
We got only halfway through the scenario, getting carried away with the role-playing aspect. We ended at a good breakpoint, so no one was dissatisfied. Time to make up characters = 1 hour. That's with extra folks joining ever 10 minutes or so, and with passing the rules around. Not bad.
The characters were Michael Halifax, secret agent; Lady Agatha Smythe, aristocrat (a woman who's working on Comme il Faut, the players' guide); Vicomte Pomfrey, ditto (he and the woman playing Agatha discussed the various permutations of the aristocratic name, and I urged her to put it in the players' guide); Mara Ashbrook, wizard (me); Carl Stranton, Chicago Calculation Engineer (Patrick Riley); and Hanz Zarkoff, some kind of technologist. Our mission was to find out what was going on in Lost Christabelle, a backwater village in Cornwall.
Pomfrey: What season is it?
GM: Spring.
Pomfrey: Oh, bless you!
GM: I didn't want to make it too difficult.
Pomfrey was contacted by a fellow aristocrat he'd been avoiding, and given 6 train tickets and told to bring help. The GM had assigned ties to the pcs, avoiding the problem of the CoC game, and we had a reason to get together - we were summoned.
Pomfrey: I have my footman take a message to Lady Agatha, informing her that I simply must show up at one of those dreary social events, and my great aunt's pearls simply must be worn.
(short digression on just who delivers messages)
Lady Agatha: I send him a note informing him that I will be on time for brunch.
(laughter)
Me: Huh?
Patrick: That means brunch doesn't start till she gets there, because she's on time for it.
Aristocratic dialogue:
Lady Agatha: Ah, perhaps if -
Pomfrey (understanding completely): Yes, of course!
Mara (utterly bewildered at this telepathy): How do you do that?
Lady Agatha (kindly): Breeding.
Another bit of dialogue:
Lady Agatha: I take it that you are not unskilled in the magical arts?
Mara: I am part of an order, yes.
Lady Agatha: Yes, I thought you might be a wizard, and, judging from your lack of pretension, a beginning one.
I'm still not sure if that's a compliment or an insult.
The second demo was held in the dealers' room, with a 3D village. I was a pixie, trying to defend the local castle against attack. Another woman was a cousin of a friend of the lord of the castle. A younger gamer joined us later, deciding to play a dragonlord, a perfect choice for him. It didn't unbalance anything and made him happy with a high powered pc.
There was an airship waiting to attack, but it couldn't get through until the ground troops destroyed an Invention that kept airships outside a certain radius. I decided to create an illusion of lots of men fighting on our side, with a whole fleet of airships.
I'd totally forgot about the Device. My pc had just been shot, so it was logical. The gm determined that the ground troops were too freaked to pick up on the contradiction, but the airship realized it was an illusion. This was good, because otherwise it would have attacked. The dragon dealt with the airship, and I decided to make the other pc's cousin fall in love with her.
The Castle Falkenstein LARP was magnificent. The petit fours and tea sandwiches alone were worth the price of admission. There were dance cards. Almost everyone made an attempt at costum, to Mike Pondsmith's delight. The gms simplified the already simple mechanics and gave us pcs with straightforward, easy to get into goals. It also helped that the game was 4 hours. There were some minor nuisances which would've become major annoyances if the game went on longer. It would've been nice if there'd been a debriefing session. I think they'll be running this again at Gencon, so I won't write it up just yet. Note: putting sharp, triangular things in one's bra hurts!
