I should have written this last week, but I'm a procrastinator. I'm home sick today, so it's a good time to post.

Go-Play Northwest con report.

First of all, I'd like to tell Ping, Tony, and Phil how awesome they are for putting together one of the best cons I know of. I'd like to, but they're deaf now from everyone shouting that at them these last two weeks. Good job, guys, seriously, and also, thanks to all of you who volunteered their time and effort in setting up and teraing down and such. Paul Riddle, especially gets points for getting the beer, someone else kept buying soda too, thanks to you, whoever you were.

The Venue
GPNW happened at the Freehold Theatre in Belltown. It was a little clunky and funky which I liked a lot. It felt clubhousey. The middle room was really echoey, and I avoided it all weekend because of the hearing loss I took away from 8 years of working in a dance club. We could hear the musicfrom Shorty's through the floor friday night, but that's a small price to pay for hot dogs and beer right down a stairway. There was plenty of space, and I espeecially liked the library,it was good for "event" style games. I didn't really have any parking problems though we got a ticket from a lot, but that's because we forgot to go renew our permit at 5pm. I was never at a loss for somewhere to eat, either.

Game set-up, sign-up, roundup, what have you
There were sign up threads on the website which filled quickly, and then these were put on the wall along with other games that people posted at the con. They had signup sheets and spaces to say if a full game had an opening due to circumstance. This worked ok, but what was really cool, was that before every slot the organizers would have gms who needed players say what they were running, and players who needed games were asked to hold up hands and there was a scramble to get everyone who wanted to game into one. No gamer left behind, that is awesome-sauce.

There was a dinner before the first slot on friday night and some people said it was cafeteria-esque and not worth the $17, but I liked it just fine and understood that the extra cost was catering fees, so it was pretty reasonable considering what catering fees can be, plus the mac and cheese was excellent.

Games I played
Montsegur 1244: This is a story game about the siege of Montsegur during the Albergensian heresy, an internal European crusade against a Gnostic sect in southern France. It's diceless, has a set cast of characters, and has a few set rules like not killing off main characters until the very end, and not having both of your characters in the same scene. At the end, everyone has the choice to burn for their faith, recant, or escape into the night. Well, one can escape, and one has to burn. It's an odd game, but the way the material given is presented, it creates a sense of narrative and play. I liked it and would play again.

Prime Time Adventures-Slot Nine/Giggleville: Mickey and I got there in the morning and were wondering what to do. Neither of us had signed up for anything. She suggested we round upfolks for PTA, and I said we should pitch it as a saturday morning cartoon show. What we ended up with was a public access kids show in Detroit with a cast of people who should probably never be allowed children, or television, or children's television. One highlight was a scene of conspiracy between the avante garde cameraman and the sex-addict puppetteer who could only communicate, and hit on people, with her puppet, a particularly aloof squid named Sammy, and another was where the lead singer of the ill-booked special guest band, Pain Lottery, said "Remember, everyone wins the Pain Lottery! Now, who wants cupcakes?" More about this insanity can be found here http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=9727&page=1#Item_7

Beast Hunters: Beast Hunters is a fun little game by Christian Griffen the centers around doing stunts to build up dice for damage strikes. I always enjoy playing it, mostly due to the way it works and how you can extrapolate cool narrative out of the results. This game also was another of Andy Henderson and I's attempts to kill each other with laughter.

Carry: I am a big fan of Nathan Paoletta's game about a squad of Marines during the Vietnam war. It was really nice to have the full 7 players plus myself asGM for this game. We had some really good scenes, and some really powerful portrayals by all involved. I found it interestingthat in smaller games the combat scenes really charge the barracks scenes and here it was the opposite. the dice were really different here too. Lot's more to herd around, so it come up with some interesting things, especially during combat where it was a lot more balanced. I could see a game that size taking much longer to get to endgame, in part because of the dice, but in part because of the increased number of barracks scenes. Good stuff, and everyone walked away happy.

The Upgrade!: The Upgrade! is an example of a Scandinavian Larp tradition known as jeepform. It's an interesting blend of prewritten character information, scenario, larp and improv. We all played couples going to a island to be on a reality TV show where we had to go with a different partner. Now, I hear it can be played as drama, and I can see it, but we had a terrific time playing for laughs. The host/facilitators kept things moving by introducing scenes in the first section, then we did this crazy thing where we all played network guys yelling at each other about how the show was going, which was neat, because we got to talk shit about our characters and talk about what we wanted too see. This was an amazingly good time and had a sort of manic crazy energy that left us all somewhat exhausted. Thanks to Ryan Macklin and Jason Morningstar for running this for us.

Rock'N'Roll Confidential: This is a silly hack of Inspectres we came up with one day when we hadn't really planned anything else. I'm sort of still making things up as i go along, but it's been fun. yopu make up a rock star, some cult of personality, and then create the character as their entourage, reporters, band members, groupies, etc. this time it was a Christian contemporary lead singer. We had some really crazy good characters, especially the reporter from Spin magazine, and the liason from the moral majority who had "hypocracy" as his special ability. We didn't end up with a dead rock star this time, just a Christian contemporary star in a wheelchair.

Nicotine Girls: Sunday afternoon I was invited to join a game of Paul Czega's Nicotine Girls, and I'm really glad I did. It's a game about girls at the lowest rungs of society trying to achieve their hopes and dreams though hope and fear. We played it for sad/funny where the funny scenes were there too make the tragedys even more heartbreaking. Not a game for the weak of heart at all. In an interesting twist one character was such a bad person you wanted her to fail, another you wanted to win something, anything, and another you just knew was destined for failure no matter what. This was a sort of hidden high point of the weekend. Thanks to Joel for running, and Michael and Johnstone for playing.

Combat Diaries: This was another playtest of my game about the Normandy campaign in WWII, and I think it was the last test of the rules. now it's a matter of writing the text and testing those. It was a large game, with seven players two of them Andys. We got through 5 of the seven acts and it was not only an engine for terrific storytelling but it was enormous fun. More here http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=9707&page=1#Item_6 I'm just going to name the players here again because they were so awesome. Paul Riddle, Andi Blija, Andy Henderson, Will Huggins, Hans Otterson, Jeremy Tidwell, and David Drake, you guys rock.

Afterwards we went with about fifteen people to Marrakesh and that was very nice, they were very nice indeed for staying open late for us. I seriously think this should become a tradition if we stay at that venue.

Oh, and here's a link to the "one cool thing" video Jason made while there http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrzNlLE4INc

So, I've agreed to run a GURPS game about the Roman empire for some coworkers, including the shipping guy who's never played any rpg and is physically taking things seriously, my boss*, the only person I know more cynical and dismissive than me, and a really nice guy who might be more their victim than I am.

Seriously, the shipping guy walked around all day "naming" his character.

 "Cockimus Maximus. Pimpius Slapius. Ohhh, how about Smellius Dickus?"

Please kill me. this is not how I envisioned returning to traditional style gaming.

*Is it weird to gm for your boss?

There are a variety of techniques from indie style games that can be laid into a traditional style game, some house rules that can improve play and the involvement of everyone at the table.

Now of course a lot of these have been around for quite a while, and the reason I call them indie techniques is that certain indie games have made extensive use of them and, in many cases, formalized them as hard and fast rule sets.

1. Scene calling: I put this first because it's a nice basic idea. When there's a lull in the story, someplace where there's a lot of wiggle room in the story, open up the table to ideas about scenes. Giving some constraints around this can help inspire good ideas. Asking for scenes without some limits and suggestions can often engender everyone staring at each other in silence, but asking for scenes within that afternoon in game time in or around the market can spark all sorts of ideas.

GM: Well, the duke won't see you until sundown so you have a few hours to spend in or around the market square. Does anybody have an idea for a scene?

Player 1: Well I'd like to practice my juggling and maybe make a few coins.

Player 2: It'd be funny if the local juggler got wind of this and came after him.

Player 1: Hey that's pretty good. Maybe we could get into a juggling competition.

Player 2: Or a fist fight.

GM: So you're juggling to the side of a stall that sells pies and a guy dressed in motley comes storming up and he looks pretty peeved. he announces himself as Jingo the Juggler and says that this is his turf. He's really snotty about it too.

Player 2: I'm there too. is that ok?

GM: Is it?

Player 1: Sure.

Player 2: I suggest they juggle increasing numbers of pies until someone drops one. Loser has to eat the fallen ones.

GM: He accepts. A crowd starts to gather. Who's gonna buy the pies?

Player 1: it was his idea.

Player 2: Damn.

Suggestions and ideas should flow freely and don't be afraid to get more people involved. The trick is to see where to stop talking about the scene and when to start playing it. My general Idea is once you've decided the principal characters (Player 1, Player 2, and Jingo) and have a general idea of the situation (turf issues between entertainers, with a possible contest) then you can drop back into play.

This is interesting, and just what I needed for a project I've been thinking about.
http://catlikecoding.com/dice/

It's a probability generator for dice combinations. Try comparing the results for 1d12+1D8 TO 2D10. I was surprised.

I am a procrastinating dickhole. I know this.

This is a fun show even if I sound like a complete tool. I recorded this at the Indie Hurricaine table at Gamestorm in Vancouver WA in March

In it you will find:
Carl Rigney
Leslie McKeever
Andy Henderson
Gilbert from PDX
Nathaniel Cole
Willem Larsen
socks
$12 or a punch in the face
fortune cookies as a storytelling mechanic
sock puppet dick jokes
and, most importantly if you skip ahead about an hour, Willem discussing a new way to go about the pedagogy of play, me not getting it, and then the lightbulb finally going off over my head. Good stuff, Willem.

http://stabbingcontest.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=476476

Story Games meetup at the Wayward cafe in Greenwood on April 18th at noon.

8570 Greenwood Ave N. E. side of the street
Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 706-3240
 

Looks like there might be some Mouseguard.

My theory is because the game descended from wargames it needed a battlefield, some playing area for the fight to occur.

It might also have something to do with Lord of the Rings.

I'm curious as to your opinions. Go ahead and sound off.