So, I ventured out to GenCon 2011 this year. I’ve been going pretty steadily for a number of years and began running games about 6 years ago. It’s usually a blast, so I signed up to run a lot of stuff. Started out on Wednesday night with a game of Chill, a game of modern horror. Bodies have been coming into the Battle Creek morgue, but the coroner noticed that in each one, one of their internal organs shows no sign of decay. The heroes are sent in to investigate. Notable part of the adventure was that due to a really botched legend lore check, they were convinced that zombies were involved and had a weakness to pepper. So, after a Walmart run, they were throwing it around, trying to load it into shotgun shells, dumping small casks of it over each other. At one point, they even accidentally made zombie pepper soup. I cannot recommend the flavor.
The heroes eventually triumphed, though it almost cost them several of their characters’ lives. Particularly the guy who actually broke free of the villain’s mind control with an incredible roll and then got a really disappointed look on his face. He thought it was more dramatic when he couldn’t escape. Who am I to not give my players what they want? So I had the villain maintain the mind control long enough to gut him like a fish. Other interesting moment was that one of the players was from Michigan as well and had been in a Chill adventure set in Battle Creek, so she knew WAY more about the city than I expected. Turns out, Battle Creek is a popular setting for a modern horror game. Who knew?
7th Sea Tabletop rpg : We were scheduled to run 7 tables, though we only had enough players to do 6 for the weekend split between three judges. Each judge brought their own adventure (or in Jim’s case multiple adventures). My own contribution was two sessions of Ancient Secrets and Salt Air, a mixed group of Explorers and pirates racing to find an ancient artifact of the Church before a villain could. Der Kire, an Eisen ship captain, was one of the game’s highlights. Der Kire refused to allow Der Kire or anyone else to speak of Der Kire with a pronoun, so we had a lot of fun watching Der Kire’s player attempt to fashion dialogue for that. We also had a somewhat reserved and innocent-looking woman give the most filthy description of a distraction attempt I’ve heard in years. Suffice it to say, she managed to distract a dozen Inquisitors from a clear and present target for burning. Finale was a massive combat amidst death traps. Having the hero throw a villain THROUGH several death traps was an great moment.
The adventure was somewhat based on the National Treasure movies, but I made certain the death trap sequences had decayed somewhat over the years (making some of the traps less dangerous). The most amusing part of the second session was the fact that having gotten ahead of the villains, the heroes rushed through the traps, found the artifact and left before the villains arrived. They specifically went out of their way to avoid the villains and simply let the npcs deal with them. Both groups discovered that the Zarabanda (the forbidden dance of Love) is the wrong song to dance to at a very conservative Castillian noble’s home. And both had a discussion/argument over the Porte sorcerer Explorer really wanting to get her hands on the holy artifact and the others…NOT wanting the filthy heretic to have the holy artifact.
Thursday Girl Genius Larp : We’ve been doing 7th Sea Larps for several years now, but this was the first time we branched out. The game was entitled Agatha Heterodyne and the House That Ate People. I ran two slots on Thursday and I think they went well. Though both games ran shorter than I’d expected/wanted, so I’m going to need to work on that next time. I really must apologize to everyone who played the first slot because I was not feeling well. In fact, I scared one of my incredible assistants when she came back to the room to repair a prop and found me sleeping in the corner. That nap really helped out for the second slot. Anyway, both sets of players were really into the game and did a great job untangling the mystery. They were stuck in a locked lab with a bomb counting down. The Sparks and lab assistants worked with the lab materials, the jaegers (really tough constructs) argued over hats, the peasants debated who should be the next count and generally chose sides and everyone tried to reconstruct the mind transfer device. Once the device was reconstructed, it quickly fixed the two who were already mixed up and then people tried to shove Othar’s brain into a box. Seriously. Othar was everyone’s favorite go-to-victim.
The first game went pretty straightforward. Othar’s body was taken by the dead Count, everyone fled the lab as the bomb counted down and Othar’s brain was destroyed. In that particular game, Othar and Agatha as well as several others were incredible. Krosp’s outfit and style were beautiful, particularly the way she hid under tables and batted at legs of passerbys. I’m hoping to find some pictures, but I don’t have any handy.
I should note that when I ran this game at Marm dog, it went somewhat differently. The girl playing the evil lab assistant continued playing evil after having the little girl brain swapped back to her. The party decided she must still be the lab assistant, so they swapped her with the Count and then let the bomb blow up the storage unit with the little girl’s brain. That’s right, the 9 year old girl was so evil they let her brain blow up. The fact that she was being played by MY daughter just made it that much odder.
The second session at GenCon was even weirder. The sparks somehow got the idea that the Count’s brain was in the lizards who served as his primary test subjects. (I say somehow, but it happened because one spark kept questioning trained, but unintelligent lizards. “Nod your head if you are the count.” Poor lizard understands “nod your head”, but not the conditional statement.) So Lars and the lizards switched brains, then Othar and Lars swapped brains, then the lizards and Othar, then Dimo (a Jaeger) with the Count and…there were enough more that I had to stop the action at one point and ask who had Dimo’s brain. When no one answered, I knew that he’d been put into the box. Process of Elimination as SCIENCE! Anyway, the sparks sent one of the peasants running off with the bomb (with instructions on how to avoid being killed) so they kept the lab intact and everyone lived. They even put everyone back in the same bodies (except the dead Count who was in the Jaeger, the Jaeger who was in Othar’s body and Othar who was in the box. Poor Othar. Apparently one of the younger players decided that it was VITAL that Othar never read the journal whose pages were scattered about the room and convinced the others of it. So everytime he came close to it, Zeetha decked him. It got bad enough that I had to ask when the wedding would be. I think in addition to the fact that I was more awake, the big help this game was that I had assistants. LOTS of assistants, for which I was duly grateful. I also want to point out more incredible costumes (still no pictures) including Tom and Michael Franklin (members of the Evil Team of Evil). Another odd note, I anticipated that we might get a child or two in this game, but second session included three kids. One was Krosp, one was a lab assistant thief, but the last one got to play a young 12 year old girl with the brain of the ugly mute albino lab assistant and she did it splendidly. Another amusing moment was the way the haberdasher managed to go from a minor merchant to the new Count’s chief aide and a member of the Town Council.
Everyone did a great job, but the most impressive was our long-suffering prop mistress Jenn. She built most of the props, but didn’t anticipate how rough people were going to be with them, so she then got to try to repair them during and between sessions. Carefully people! I brought one box of props/characters/stuff. Jenn brought two more and I took them all home! I walked out of the game thinking that for as well as it all went, Girl Genius is so prop heavy that I wasn’t certain how to do it again. Of course, my wife and one of the other judges both began conspiring and they’ve already come up with a new setting for next year that should be great and have fewer props. So now I’m definitely considering it.
Friday : I had arranged for other judges to cover the tabletop games so I could go hit the halls. I had a lot of fun wandering around, checking out board games and relaxing. Noticed far fewer role playing games in the hall. I did wander by the Plaid Chameleon kids game and laughed because the players looked like 4 munchkins and a troll. After lunch, I went over and played in Nascrag, a d20 tournament with lots of role playing, puzzles and fun. I’ve been a fan of theirs for years and had a good time. What’s not to like when you can kill and eat a little bunny rabbit and then carry the bunny head around as a finger puppet for the rest of the round? (I know, I’m sick and wrong.) We rocked our way through the first round so quickly that I had time to hit the hall a bit more before dinner.
I’ve made it a habit to go out for a good meal and a few drinks before the larp. It just seems to go smoother that way. Kilroy’s had great little pitchers of long island ice teas, so they became my restaurant of choice. After that I picked up my box of props and went to the larp. Jenn and Richard and the prop crew showed up with 2 more boxes of props including a dozen maps and chests and everything to transform the room into a tavern where the Pirate Court was to be held. It looked AWESOME!. Normal delays in handing out characters including WAY too few women. I made the mistake of including the all female pirate crew. Looked great on paper, until I started trying to find enough women to play the characters. Then trying to find men willing to play as women. Finally, trying to figure out which of the characters I could simply jettison.
More on the pirate larp later.
Saturday was a lot less eventful. I showed up and ran my second session of Ancient Secrets and Salt Air. I went from there to Nascrag and had another good round. Crawled through the hall a bit and bought my wife a present. (Her 29th birthday is coming up.) From there it was back to NASCRAG for round 3 which was quite short and the Award ceremony. Happily took fourth place! Especially since two of the teams (Evil Team of Evil who played in the Girl Genius Larp and Imperfect Echo who played both LARPs AND made most of the props!) who beat me were good friends and incredible role players. I knew that if I wanted to place near the top all I needed to do was kneecap those two teams, but I just didn’t have the heart. Stayed way too long drinking and chatting with the NASCRAG crew. By the end of the day, my voice had completely disappeared and left this ugly croaking sound in its place.
Sunday. Dear lord. Running games on Sunday is so self-destructive that we should offer counseling sessions to the gms who do it. One of my judges fell through, so I showed up to run the game. Had to borrow an adventure from Marcie since I had only prepped to run my own game for Thursday+Saturday and I’d thrown out my notes Saturday night. Thankfully, Marcie is a complete trooper and showed up as well. She ran the game while I helped with some of the voices (all of whom talked kinda croaky). It was interesting because I’d never seen Marcie run a game. She’s only been doing it for a short while and only does it at GenCon so I enjoyed the opportunity. Then I had to rush off to the OTHER game, the one I was actually supposed to be running. Plaid Chameleon Presents, the only non-sold out game we had for the con. I had hoped to run board games for a dozen people as well as the Battle of Richebeau (the championships of the 7th Sea CCG). Well, we only had three people for board games and one to play 7th Sea. That was the bad news. The good news is that we had a good game of 7th Sea and the other players enjoyed all three board games they tried. Ice Warz (combat figure skating), LARP the card game and Architect (featuring architects hired out of the asylum). I’m hoping to actually print up a few of these games and sell them, so this was partly an attempt to playtest them a last time. From there, it was back to the hall, browse a bit more and then head home. Really weird to try to talk on the way home about how cool GenCon was when you sound like a dehydrated frog.
The Pirate Court Larp. Wow. I’ve been running larps for a couple years, but there’s just something really cool about getting 50 people together, many in costume and seeing what happens. This year, I was pressed for time and just skipped a costume for myself. Even worse, a quick cold/allergies had trashed my voice already so everything I said came out as a croak. Thankfully the liquor and the adrenaline kicked it and it went great. The setup was that the Pirate Lords, the most powerful and respected pirate captains in the world, got together to barter and conduct business. Of course, they didn’t realize that one of the pirates has sold them out and had told the Vendel merchant marines where to find the Pirate Court. The Vendel were scheduled to attack at the end of the evening.
The Sea Hounds were a mostly heroic group led by Reggie Wilcox. Biggest plot was that Reggie wanted to elect a new pirate lord so there’d be enough Pirate Lords to demote Reis from their midst. He got so close and then a Pirate Lord died. Then he got so close again and just ran out of time. Another of his crew was a greedy and superstitious pirate whose gold stash had been stolen.
Gosse’s Gentlemen were another heroic group led by Melinda Gosse. She wanted to be a Pirate Lord and help demote Reis, but she got distracted by her first mate/husband who had been enchanted to want to divorce her. The two love birds worked through some of their issues, but it looked like communication was still a bit of an issue. One of their crew was a ladies man who was suspected of being the infamous Lefty Jack, a serial killer who preyed upon women. Gosse sailed off with Rosamonde du Montaigne.
The Sisterhood was a group of all female pirates led by Rosa Maria de Barcino, secretly a former noblewoman disgraced by Gosse’s Gentlemen years ago when they kidnapped her to ensure her fiance didn’t kill her after marrying her. She had mostly realized the Gosse were actually good guys, but still wanted to make them suffer. Gotta love vengeful pirates. Sadly, the Sisterhood ran into the problem of having an all female crew, so when we didn’t get as many women as I’d planned, they lost a few crew.
First mate Red was also running the sailing contest which consisted of a race involving tying knots. I told Red that she could determine the winner however she liked. Of course, a suspicious man would note that her husband won the contest. The fact that her husband and the runner up were both former boy scouts…or that her husband is an actual sailor who finished a serious race across Lake Michigan a few weeks ago…well, what’s the fun of that?
The Brotherhood are a powerful group of prisoners turned pirates led by Pirate Lord Carlos Altenar. He was strongly involved in smuggling fate witches out of Vodacce and helped arrange it even though one of his contacts managed to fall overboard, hit her head and get eaten by a shark. Sad fate for the characters that don’t have a female to play them. Altenar had a hostage (Rosamonde du Montaigne) because he caught her meeting with one of his men and didn’t realize the crewman (Max) was actually a traitor conspiring against him. Max was also the winner of the Gunnery contest held during the Court using a nerf gun converted into a cannon.
The Inquisition ship were some of the most hated pirates there and one of the few crews to not escape the island when the Vendel attacked. They got lucky when a pirate showed up with a holy artifact in hand. They walked up and said, “you should give that to us.” He shrugged, handed it over and asked for a job. They hired him on the spot. They didn’t even seem to mind when they found out he was working for another pirate crew as well. Of course, the artifact would occasionally give the “holy” crew carrying it signs that certain people were sorcerers. The Inquisition were also notable for buying one of the hostages (a Montaigne nobleman) present tonight and declaring their intention to burn him at the stake. That sent me on a huge chase to track down who sold him to whom and why? I’d seen the noble walking around free as a bird a little while ago, but it turned out that his captor took off his chains BUT said he was still a prisoner, then put the chains back on and sold him. After stalling the Inquisition for half an hour while I got it straight in my head and seeing if anyone would try to stop them…they took him outside and set him on fire. The heroic pirates finally turned up for the roast, so the Inquisition got tired of playing around and just stabbed him. The best part was that one of the Inquisitors had to leave at the point, so I handed the dead noble that character sheet and he got to be reincarnated as one of the people who just killed him. The heroic pirates didn’t take all of this well, so they started spreading rumors that the Inquisition captain was really a sorcerer. It was odd having a dozen people walk up and ask if that rumor was true when I (as the writer) had never even heard of it.
The Inn – The Espada Sangrienta was a small inn on an isolated tropical island where the Pirate Court was held. Of course, the entire staff had their own secrets. The innkeep was a fence and retired pirate, one wench was a skilled swordswoman (with the most interesting chalkboard), the other was a master criminal. The criminal partnered with the OTHER fence on the island into an officer of the Pirate Court and convinced the Pirate Lords to make HIM an officer of the Pirate Court. So she became a master criminal behind the scenes.
The Fate Witch – The Pirate Court had its own sorcerer, a former fate witch turned Sea Witch who enchanted the entire gathering to give a lethal black spot to anyone who caused violence outside the dueling circle. (Doesn’t include hostages like the poor dead Montaigne fop.) She also had a fear of a woman who had already escaped a black spot, so she was lying to people to get them to kill her. “Sure. That poor defenseless man is the serial killer named Lefty Jack. Absolutely.”
The Vestenmanjavenar Raiders was a band of Viking raiders who wanted to destroy their mercantile cousins the Vendel. Led by Griss Hallisdottir (who mysteriously turned male), they were actually trying to begin peace talks. That went…poorly.
The Vendel were represented by Jorund Guttormson and they were here to try to make a deal. Specifically, he had a fleet of Vendel ships out of the harbor. The thought was that he’d make a deal to release certain crews IF they promised to stop being pirates AND if they let the Vendel destroy the worst of the worst (primarily the Crimson Rogers). Unfortunately, Jorund focused on other matters and didn’t manage to actually get around to telling ANYONE that the Vendel fleet was outside. Matters finally came to a head when Jorund and Griss went into the dueling circle to fight to the death. There had been a couple other minor fights prior to this and I let CheekyAmazon officiate them, but for a duel to the death between the Vestenmanjavenar and Vendel leaders, I stepped in. Statistically, Jorund was doomed. Sadly, statistics have no place in role playing. Jorund managed to tie Griss for the first two exchanges and then crushed Griss with a massive blow. Griss dies (destroying the Pirate Lord plan to elect another captain to the rank of Pirate Lord). Then one of the other Vestenmanjavenar stepped in and kills Jorund (who still had not told anyone about the fleet outside).
The Vendel characters were able to rejoin their forces outside while the Vestenmanjavenar were left to the command of the traitor who had sold them out to the Vendel already. The Vestenmanjavenar ship was the second ship that sank that night.
The crew of the Drake was another pirate ship present. They were a generally heroic lot captained by Connor Lynch, a former member of Gosse’s Gentleman and the one who kidnapped Rosa Maria de Barcino. This was the crew of pirates who had captured a decadent Montaigne fop and then sold him off to the Vodaccean merchant Vincenzo de Tonelli (who promptly sold him to the Inquisition for a profit).
They were also notable because Jacob Faust was seeking the serial killer Lefty Jack. Faust had a few clues including the fact that he knew a particular ship had been present at several of the killings. He even thought to look at the ship log books that some characters had. Unfortunately, he did NOT deduce that the only ship present at all of the murders he knew about (and all the ones that other people knew about) was actually his own. Nor did he realize that the only witness to a mysterious hook handed sailor killing women in scattered ports was the REAL killer. SHE made up the story to cover her own tracks. Maureen Leveque slipped away without being discovered, partly because everyone thought she was so nice and friendly. Maybe because she got out her aggressions killing everyone she felt jealous towards?
Another interesting aspect was that Vincent Rochester was administering the challenge on navigation. Rochester (like the other judges) was told that he could select in-character the winner in any fashion he chose. Turns out he had a rivalry with another of the pirates, so the winning navigator managed to challenge Rochester’s rival to fisticuffs in the dueling circle and beat the tar out of him. Violence for the win!
The Crimson Rogers were the most notorious and evil band of cut-throats, thieves and killers in the world. Led by the infamous Reis, most people feared them. But few people outside the crew realized that Reis had actually died nine months ago. He had been replaced by his bosun, a weaselly villain named Gaucher. As writer, I set up every character to respect Reis and want to destroy the imposter. So, imagine my surprise when I got to this crew during the wrap-up and discovered they’d decided to hold an INTERVENTION! I had to ask them to repeat it because I couldn’t believe my ears. They decided that they really didn’t mind Gaucher being in charge if he would just tone down the whole torturing his own crew thing. I spent a lot of the evening just shaking my head and muttering “intervention”. Another notable development was the cargo of gunpowder these fine sailors sold to the Inquisition ship. This made certain that the Inquisition blew up at the first volley from the Vendel.
There was another notable pirate crew present, though the ship was not actually here. One of the big plots of the game was that many of the sailors present were former members of the Venture captained by Mordekai. Mordekai died years ago, but he left a buried treasure behind. EVERY member of his crew had seen the maps to the treasure he just left lying around, but it was only when they got together that they realized the maps meant NOTHING. It was the borders around the maps which spelled out a message when they were carefully laid on top of each other.
Did I mention the prop people yet? The prop people were so incredible this year that I cannot stop praising them. They brought the maps, all the stuff for the tavern (which they ran as the inn staff), and the sign for the inn (which was actually Mordekai’s long lost mystical chest). THEN they served drinks up until someone mentioned Vodacceans and poison and everyone refused to drink. And then started serving drinks again when people realized they were dying of dehydration. The prop people even showed up early to dress the room so I could focus on more important things like having another drink. Suffice it to say, I could not do this without them and they deserve all your praise.
Another group that deserves praise is the talented group of game masters who joins me every year. Jim, Bill, Marcie and CheekyAmazon all showed up and ran a magnificent game despite not having read much of the adventure before the game began. (not that they could have since I didn’t finish writing it until Tuesday night.) And of course, my lovely, talented and patient wife who puts up with me and my moaning about how I hate the larp mostly without stabbing me. The amount of effort, time and mental anguish involved in writing a 50 person larp every year is insanely large. The ego-stroking applause, the exuberant gratitude of the players and the sheer joy of seeing the whole thing fall into place are the only reasons that I would ever do this. I remember thinking “this won’t be too tough” when I sat down to write the first one. A month later, I had an inkling of the depths of my folly. Now I actually go into it knowing how hard it is, but the players and their damn enthusiasm keep dragging me back in. For that, I can only say, I love you all.
I’ve posted a few other thoughts plus pictures from Gen Con 2011 on the Plaid Chameleon Facebook page. Stop on by and check it out.
