Gamex: Memorial Day Weekend, May 28-31

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Gamex: Memorial Day Weekend, May 28-31

Post by devlin1 »

As the glory of Hyphen-Con begins to fade, Gamex is right around the corner.

Important dates:
  • Register your game by May 14
  • Game sign-up opens May 15
  • Preregister for Con by May 24
I don't know what I'm running, exactly -- I want to try out ICONS (with random chargen at the table), and I'll want to do another Leftovers playtest, and tradition dictates I should run something FATE-based, but I don't know right now what that would be. Supers again, maybe?

Who else is in? Before you reply, remember: It's at the Sheraton, not the Rat-isson. Bonus!
Mike Olson
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Post by devlin1 »

Game registration deadline's this Friday! Is anyone but me running anything?

I'm going to run games Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. Not sure what games will go into what time slots, but right now I'm thinking one will be ICONS and two will be Leftovers.
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Post by cczernia »

I'll be there. I already pre-registered so I won't be running anything because I have the worst luck at Gamex with attendance.
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Post by mordraine »

Mike, will you be getting a room at the Mariotte again?

Oh, and I'm thinking of running a '70s/'80s action TV show type game (ala Charlie's Angels and A-Team), using PDQ.
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Post by SpaceMonkey »

I may or may not run stuff. If i do it'll be Hollow Earth Expedition and maybe some Og or something. or Alternity.
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Post by devlin1 »


[quote="cczernia"]I'll be there. I already pre-registered so I won't be running anything because I have the worst luck at Gamex with attendance.[/quote]

Fair enough! Although I'll point out that Doctor Who sure drew plenty of players.


[quote="mordraine"]Mike, will you be getting a room at the Mariotte again?



I believe so, yeah. I'll find out by the end of the week.


[quote]Oh, and I'm thinking of running a '70s/'80s action TV show type game (ala Charlie's Angels and A-Team), using PDQ.[/quote]

Word. I'd guessed you might.


[quote="dnd3eplayer"]I may or may not run stuff. If i do it'll be Hollow Earth Expedition and maybe some Og or something. or Alternity.[/quote][/quote]


I bet [i]HEX[/i] and [i]Alternity[/i] would draw people.



Last week Andy and I talked about coming up with a game so offensive it'd be guaranteed [i]not[/i] to draw players.

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Post by SpaceMonkey »


[quote="devlin1"]


Last week Andy and I talked about coming up with a game so offensive it'd be guaranteed [i]not[/i] to draw players.[/quote]




FATAL/World of Synnibarr mashup? Nah, that would probably draw folks just so they could say they had done it. I'm not sure offensive is what you want to not draw people as much as 'boring'.

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Post by mordraine »

I believe our idea had something to do with being slave owners in the Deep South pre-civil war era.
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Post by jimmy corrigan »


[quote="mordraine"]I believe our idea had something to do with being slave owners in the Deep South pre-civil war era.[/quote]
[url=http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16348&cat=0&page=1][img]http://stone-baby.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/cover.jpg[/img][/url]

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Post by Skyman »

I thought you guys were gonna run theErol Otus game about high school
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Post by devlin1 »


[quote="Skyman"]I thought you guys were gonna run the[url=http://rpg-sandiego.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=10785]Erol Otus game about high school[/url][/quote]

I might've, but it's impossible to find!

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Post by devlin1 »

Well, it's been nearly 40 minutes since pre-reg opened and I still don't have my badge, so... I figure I'm screwed out of getting a pre-reg spot in anything I want to play. That list includes Smallville, Marvel SAGA, WFRP 3E, and DFRPG. Now I gotta sign up on the day like a chump.
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Post by devlin1 »

Well, turns out all that panic was for nothing. I got into everything I wanted to except for Morgan's DFRPG game on Saturday.

Someone's running Gamma World Sunday afternoon!

And I'm running DragonStrike Sunday morning!
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Post by cczernia »


[quote="devlin1"]Well, turns out all that panic was for nothing. I got into everything I wanted to except for Morgan's DFRPG game on Saturday.[/quote]

I got all the games I wanted. But now I noticed that a bunch of new games got posted and I wouldn't mind changing some things but now I'm locked in.



I would have wanted to play in Smallville but it isn't being run on the weekend.

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Post by mcellis »

If you email Mike Fryer the head of RPGs he might be able to change some of your games, that's one of the real problems with the Strategicon sign up system especially when they add a slew of new games on the second day of sign up.
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Post by devlin1 »


[quote="mcellis"]If you email Mike Fryer the head of RPGs he might be able to change some of your games, that's one of the real problems with the Strategicon sign up system especially when they add a slew of new games on the second day of sign up.[/quote]

Part of the problem is last-minute submissions (like mine), but another, equally important problem is that Mike Fryer was away from his computer all day Friday, so nobody even [i]saw [/i]those last-minute submissions until Saturday morning.



A lot of those last-minute games are pretty attractive, too. I'm seriously considering skipping that Smallville game to play something else.

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Post by cczernia »


[quote="devlin1"]
A lot of those last-minute games are pretty attractive, too. I'm seriously considering skipping that Smallville game to play something else.[/quote]


I know. I was checking the events listing right up to about 11am on Saturday and a bunch of those games hadn't been posted.

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Post by devlin1 »

Hrm. I currently have no one signed up for Leftovers on Friday night. Worse, actually -- I had one person signed up, but apparently they changed their mind, probably as a result of all the last-minute games that showed up later.

So... I'm thinking of ditching it and running ICONS in that spot instead. What do people think? Would that be a bitch move? Would bowing to public sentiment make me a sell-out? Or is it just a practical response to avoid a potentially empty table?
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Post by jimmy corrigan »

i'll be out of town when gamex is going down, but if you ask me, i say run leftovers anyway on the off chance that someone shows. you never know. and at the very least run it for s.d. hotel-roommates.
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Post by devlin1 »


[quote="jimmy corrigan"]i'll be out of town when gamex is going down, but if you ask me, i say run leftovers anyway on the off chance that someone shows. you never know. [/quote]
And if no one does, I'm free to play Dragon Age! It's just dealing with the gamble of having, like, two players show up, or three. That's enough that I wouldn't want to call it, but maybe not enough for a proper game. I dunno.


[quote]and at the very least run it for s.d. hotel-roommates.[/quote]
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Post by jimmy corrigan »


[quote="devlin1"]And if no one does, I'm free to play Dragon Age! It's just dealing with the gamble of having, like, two players show up, or three. That's enough that I wouldn't want to call it, but maybe not enough for a proper game.[/quote]hm. if two or three people show up, the mark of a good showman would be to gm the fuck out of that game, imho. you also thereby secure two to three possible future fans/customers for your game! also, sub-optimal playtesting is better than none.
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Post by devlin1 »


[quote="jimmy corrigan"]hm. if two or three people show up, the mark of a good showman would be to gm the fuck out of that game, imho. [/quote]
I don't have, like, quality control when it comes to GMing. I run a game, and whatever it's like, that's what it's like. A smaller group gets more individual spotlight time, which is good, but there's a certain point at which the proposed scenario just isn't feasible with so few people.


[quote]you also thereby secure two to three possible future fans/customers for your game! [/quote]
This is the more important part, yes.


[quote]also, sub-optimal playtesting is better than none.[/quote]
It's [i]all[/i] sub-optimal playtesting, really, so no worries there.



That is, I'm not sure anyone but me has done any real "stress testing" of the system -- trying to break it, or make a tweaked-out character. Then again, I've seen some pretty tweaked-out characters, but they haven't really bothered me, so maybe it's just that my standards are super-low when it comes to game balance. Like, Desmond made a character at Hyphen-Con who was almost impossible to kill, but I just went, "Wow, she's really tough" and kept going, whereas I probably should've said, like, "Wow, she's [i]too[/i] tough -- that's a problem."

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Post by jimmy corrigan »


[quote="devlin1"]I don't have, like, quality control when it comes to GMing. I run a game, and whatever it's like, that's what it's like.[/quote]
yeah, i get what you're saying. but i may have not explained my point clearly. i'm not saying that you should like gm [i]better[/i] if a small number show up, but rather run it as well as you would if a full table showed up. which i think you're saying you'd do anyway.



so, yeah. run leftovers.

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Post by devlin1 »

Woo! Gamex!

It's funny -- we were talking last night about what our favorite game of the weekend was, and apart from Marvel SAGA I really didn't have one that jumped out at me. I didn't not enjoy my own games, but they also didn't feel like my best games of the con. Leftovers was good and all, but I felt like I spent the whole game keeping an eye on two players who just weren't on the same page as I was tonally. I really wanted to like Icons* more, but the railroady adventure and some occasionally clunky system bits got in the way.

Morgan's after-hours Venture Brothers "game" was very funny, but it was mostly an excuse to get a bunch of Venture Brothers fans around a table and improv an episode. At least we rolled dice now and then. If it weren't for that it would've been completely... freeform. *shudder*



*I'm declaring a moratorium on putting that in all-caps.
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Post by mcellis »

How was the Marvel SAGA game was there anything in the system that was neat or of value for porting over to other games?
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Post by devlin1 »


[quote="mcellis"]How was the Marvel SAGA game was there anything in the system that was neat or of value for porting over to other games?[/quote]

I don't really think so. Mechanically, it's pretty distinct from anything else I've played, what with the card-based mechanics and all. I [i]did[/i] come home and write out a preliminary non-Marvel version of it using an ordinary deck of playing cards, though, just to get the idea down on paper.



BTW, I liked your DF game a lot, so don't get me wrong. In terms of system, though, it was so familiarly FATE that I didn't really get a sense of the DFRPG as its own thing. Probably would've felt more mechanically distinct if I'd been a wizard in the vein of Harry rather than the I-can-throw-magic-around-all-day-and-it's-no-big-deal guy. And any game that gives me the chance to bed Chris can't be bad, really. The Chris and Mike Show, indeed!

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Post by mcellis »

Well I'm glad you had a good time with Dresden. Honestly it totally is FATE there isn't a whole lot that's mechanically different, really it's more of an expansion of the FATE system to allow some new and interesting subsystems and effects. Also a powers system that goes above and beyond Stunts, that you might want to take a look at.

Also I totally failed to make people understand how powerful their characters were magically in that game. Just about every character in that game was at least magically equal to Harry Dresden in the first few books, and Harry is ridiculously overpowered as a starting character. You weren't Earth's sorcerers supreme or anything, but you all had mucho mojo.

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Post by devlin1 »


I didn't really get a chance to see anyone else's character, but considering Kay was able to cut off that vampire's arm... yeah, I'd imagine everyone else was comparably bad-ass. Surprisingly little magic going on in that game, actually. Or maybe I was just so into myself I didn't notice. I dunno. I did use Glamours a lot, and my Seelie and Unseelie magic, but it didn't feel like everyone else was comparably magicky.


[quote="mcellis"]Dude these are Uniforms! What's your excuse?[/quote]
"Try eating a [i]vegetable[/i] once in a while!"



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Post by cczernia »


[quote="mcellis"]
Also I totally failed to make people understand how powerful their characters were magically in that game. Just about every character in that game was at least magically equal to Harry Dresden in the first few books, and Harry is ridiculously overpowered as a starting character. You weren't Earth's sorcerers supreme or anything, but you all had mucho mojo. [/quote]


The characters in you second game "Doom of Damacles" didn't seem that much more powerful than the characters in you first game "Minor Talents". Maybe the FATE points balance everything out but they seemed on par.

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Post by mcellis »

Mike,

I've been told I must run Venture Brothers again but the next time I run it there must be a game there, rather then an excuse to improv an episode.

Chris,

Well almost all the Characters in Doom of Damocles have some powerful magic as well as being fairly bad ass physically. Whereas the Minor Talents are just that Minor Talents though they are fairly powerful minor talents they still don't have the levels of magical muscle to throw around.

And as I was saying I think the fact that you didn't see much of a difference was my fault, I didn't make it clear that the Doom characters were armed with the Magical equivalents of rocket launchers and machine guns while the minor talents maybe had the Magical equivalent of knives and pistols.

I was talking to Dan Sherer who played the Crippled R&D Enchanter in the second run through of the Doom game and I was explaining his level of power and all of the bad ass magic he could have been using, and he was like "Wow, I didn't know I could do any of that! If I'd known I would have made different choices in the game." So again my bad, I'm going to be putting together cheat sheets that will hopefully spell that out to people, as well as making it clear at the table.

Morgan.
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