DunDraCon 2011

[long time no blog...]

DDC was a real blast this year. There's still the depressing odor (both metaphorically and literally speaking) of the grognard hanging over it, but the games were all enjoyable if not legendary.

Breakfast on Pluto (Eclipse Phase)

Yesterday was February 2011, and you were a college student, trying to score beer money for the three-day weekend. Now it's ten years after the Fall, and you're having breakfast on Pluto...

This was a hot tranny mess of a game, which was appropriate considering the source of the game's title. The characters were modern-day college students that had their minds digitally copied by proto-sleeving technology, with that data ultimately being collected in the age of Eclipse Phase by a fringe "Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Scientological" monastic order based on the Omega Point theories of Frank Tipler. The college students were resurrected at the order's central archives on Pluto by a member of the Order working for egonappers who needed similar brainwaves to pull off an elaborate egonapping of the college students' future selves, all powerful gerontocrats intending to complete a synergistic hive-mind communication technology called CONSENSUS that would be the next step in transhumanity but ultimately fail, dooming the interlocked humanity to widespread economic, political, and psychological meltdown. The characters faced an Exurgent virus among the animatronic robots (the Order had sold out and was turning the place into a nostalgia theme park, and the egonapper-hired monk had come to believe that the Omega Point would be realized through releasing the virus), then (some) got saved by the egonappers, informed of the plan, jacked a farcasting crew on Nova Vegas (my idea for what Las Vegas becomes on Mars, basically Space Reno), and barely completed their plan to egonap the gerontocrats while a neotenic Lost PC gave his genetic mother (one of the gerontocrats) a hysterectomy by Wasp Knife, a Slyph PC went insane and bashed another gerontocrat into goo then collapsed due to mental trauma and was taken advantage of by a delta-forked imbecile mercenary (that he had previously dosed with Hither) in a closet... good times. Unfortunately, in the course of my prepping the game I forgot to learn the rules or develop a proper plot outline. People had fun, no doubt about that, but it was more about being goofy than playing the game. This is the third (maybe even fourth) game in a row I've come away dissatisfied with my GM'ing performance, and I don't think it's a coincidence that those games were all either new systems for me or based on pre-written material. I need to get back to my comfort zone, which means I'll probably be running something like a prop-heavy game of Call of Cthulhu set during the Second World War for Kublacon.

The Flying Misfits (Godlike)

With the formation of the Talent Operations Groups, Section 2 also formed a handful of TOGs specifically made up of flight-capable Talents, hyperskilled pilots and aircrew, and certain specialized Talents whose abilities could support air operations...

A great game by a solid GM that was well-versed in the game mechanics, and had prepared a beautiful set-up of maps, personnel folders, and plane miniatures. Although it was a pretty slim plot (we flew out of our airfield, blew up their airfield and harbor, and returned home), that set-up was so complete and well-executed, and the other players were all so into and fully role-playing their characters, that it was a really nice game. I played a Goldberg Engineer responsible for keeping his experimental plane aloft but not actually flying it or using any of its weapons. It initially sounded like one of the boring roles in Battlestations, but the ability to create all kinds of on-the-spot gadgets to improve the efficiency of the plane made it interesting.

(Altered) Resonance (Call of Cthulhu)

A cabin in a desolate forest. Snow encrusts your boots. Someone screaming in German. A sullen wind moans outside. You can't remember what your mission is. You can't remember anything. Something's gone terribly wrong...

I'm totally stealing a bunch of the way this game was run. The music, which consisted of dark ambient beats mixed with weather sounds and the occasionally creepy touch (like Nazi marching music), was extremely effective. The game started in media res, so was jarring from the get-go. And the rest was just well-executed, which I won't say more about to avoid spoiling anyone who plays it at a later con.

There was a strange moment where the rules for burst fire against multiple targets came up, which was just your regular rules question that the GM quickly and efficiently adjudicated. What made it strange was that I should be fully versed in that particular subject, not just because I've run CoC many times but also because I've discussed just that very rule previously on forums. Yet I couldn't for the life of me remember it correctly in the heat of the game. Between this and my spotty rules-work on running Eclipse Phase, I thinking I'm getting early Alzheimers limited specifically to remembering game rules.

On the Eve of the Election (Call of Cthulhu)

People's Candidate Eve McClusky, of the Pointe District, has been reported missing by friends and family prior to important mid-term elections for city council. The police have no leads, City Hall is calling for an investigation, and the press smells a cover-up. Is it murder or something else? Investigators must delve in to the mystery facing one of the city's favorite daughters, before time runs out.

I've often wondered what a truly Lovecraftian CoC game would be like. Rather than (often artificial) notions about characters being unarmed or incompetent, I think it should include rambling descriptions of architecture inconsequential to the plot. While there weren't any gambrel roofs in this game, the GM had set up a whole lot of detail in this investigative saga about a missing politician and the corrupt powers that would rather see her remain missing. All that detail meant that the GM's city felt like a real place, but it also slowed the pace of the game down to a crawl, made worse by the fact that there were eight players in the game and we were encouraged to split up. I (and half of the players) spent a whole two hours doing nothing but eating con pizza while I waited for my character to do something as the other investigated one site. But it was fun, mostly because we just laughed our ass off at each other's absurdities, both in and out of character.

I didn't get into any of my choices for an afternoon game, and there wasn't anything on the schedule I wanted to play in the evening. I took the opportunity to attend the Chaosium seminar (and later made what I thought would be minor post on the subject but has now been plastered on the front page of Yog-Sothoth.com), where I kinda sorta broached the subject of my taking up the moribund Black Chamber project.

There was a Pendragon game on Monday that I could have driven back for, but I decided I'd rather spend the day relaxing with my wife. Like I said, DDC was solid this year, even though I only played in three games besides the game I ran.

DunDraCon 2010

After this year's DunDraCon, I've come to the conclusion that it, in terms of good role-playing experiences, DDC is the worst of the three gaming conventions in the Bay Area. DunDraCon still sounds better than what I've heard of non-Bay Area cons, which seems to be fixed to 4-hour game slots in communal rooms rather than the local standard of 6-8 hour slots in individual rooms. And I plan to go next year. I've just realized that, for this and every other year I've attended, the games I've played at DunDraCon tend to be mediocre.

Once again, I almost didn't attend the convention. I was sick (so much so that my doctor sent me to the ER the previous week) and still have something (possibly a fatty liver) as of yet undiagnosed, but on the second day of the con, I was feeling well enough to go. So I only played in four games, and was never feeling 100% solid throughout the entire con, and that could be considered a factor in why I had such a mediocre experience... except that I've had a lot of mediocre experiences at past DunDraCons.

DunDraCon has a reputation as the premier RPG convention in the Bay Area, as it's the oldest, not just in Northern California but on the West Coast as a whole. It has more RPGs than KublaCon, which is considered more of a general gaming convention as it equally focuses on card, board, and miniature gaming. It also has more RPGs and number of attendees than PacifiCon, which has been an almost ad-hoc affair over the last few years. Nevertheless, PacifiCon has such fewer players that it's easy to get into your game of choice, and there's more of a feeling of "can do" attitude (or least, lowered expectations) that I almost always have a good time there. KublaCon is just always a great time: the hotel is gorgeous, the atmosphere feels vibrant as everyone is getting their game on with so many choices (even if there are less RPGs), and the slate of RPGs tends to be more varied than the usual Call of Cthulhu, Hero, and endless iterations of Dungeons & Dragons that make up most of DunDraCon's schedule.

Whereas KublaCon always feels fresh and new, DunDraCon always feels stale and old. Although the systems may change (often though they don't) gamemasters at DDC tend to run the same kind of games with the same kind of standards for the same kind of players they have, year-in and year-out. Whereas at KublaCon and PacifiCon, I've played in games where the GM put a strong effort to create a compelling story, cool handouts, or run a new kind of system, at DunDraCon, GM's tend to run something just good enough to fill 6-8 hours. DunDraCon also feels choked to death with mouth-breathing, neck-bearded, morbidly obese grognards; and while I myself may fit some or all of those descriptors, I don't wallow in it. The players at DunDraCon are often more likely to want to joke around at the table than to get into their characters and role-play out a story, whereas I often run into players at Kubla or PacifiCon that really try to create an exceptional experience. DunDraCon feels to me like it's become comfortable in its own mediocrity, and it shows in the quality of the games and gamers it attracts.

As for this year's games...

Tales of the Singing Skull: The Clipper (Call of Cthuhu)
We played actual passengers onboard the Hawaii Clipper, which disappeared in 1938. My character was a Chinese-American restaurateur bringing 3 million dollars to the army of Chiang Kai-shek. Since I was the only character expecting trouble, I was the only one armed when three black-clad "ninjas" armed with submachine guns burst into the lounge in mid-flight, took over the plane, and started killing everyone onboard once they found the two American scientists they were looking for. One of those scientists was the only PC not be killed (in the first five minutes of the game!), and then we were all resurrected by the Singing Skull, a skull packed in cargo containing the spirit of an ancient Italian sorcerer compelling us to take back the plane and bring him to Ponape where his "friends" were waiting to take him home. The "friends" ended up being Deep Ones, who we allied with so as to take over a Japanese patrol boat. The Deep Ones sacrificed the Japanese to power the ritual which sent the sorcerer home, while we tried to make for Wake Island with the captured patrol boat. As a Japanese destroyer barreled down on us, the Singing Skull returned to ancient Rome, causing everyone who had been resurrected to die, and the sole surviving PC got picked up by the U.S. Navy.

The Dirty Half-Dozen (Millennium's End)
The characters were American military convicts during World War II, assigned to blow up the air defenses and steal the experimental plans of a Nazi V-3 rocket facility. Completely ill-equipped and unprepared for the mission, we parachuted into occupied France, killed a bunch of guards at a checkpoint, killed more Germans who came down the road, and then, because the GM felt we were moving too slowly, got fast-forwarded to the secret Nazi base. After a rushed plan to ambush a couple of trucks with noisy explosives, and then infiltrate the base in our own (flaming) truck, most of us successfully got onto the base and started blowing up the anti-aircraft emplacements when the Nazis suddenly fired off six V-3 rockets that spun around and turned into cyborg "Iron Men." The Iron Men then proceeded to kill us all with great ease.

The Fight for Gailea (Star Wars Saga)
My character was a heavy weapons expert on a three-man Rebel squad assigned to disable the sensor station for the Imperial anti-aircraft defenses, then wreck havoc on the local garrison to keep the enemies' attention away from the other teams (a group of spies capturing the corrupt planetary governor, a team of local revolutionaries inspiring a popular uprising at the palace, and squadron of fighter-bombers). We pretty easily took out the station, and then, with a quad laser on the roof, we knocked out many of the AA guns themselves, as well as the communications array the Imperials were using to jam everyone's communications. This drew the attention of the elite 501st Legion, who we fought off long enough till the starfighter pilots could drop a danger-close bombing run on us and wipe them out. Then we were attacked by two "dark troopers" who nearly killed us before we whittled down their shields and cut them down. After posing with the corpses and broadcasting the footage over an open channel (still trying to draw the enemy's attention), we met up with a Jedi (a PC shuttling between the tables) and fought our way into the garrison, where she commandeered a vehicle to infiltrate a Star Destroyer now sitting over the city. With nothing else to do, we blew up the garrison, took control of an AT-AT, then blew it up to finally just end the game and wait for the other tables to finish.

Project ACORN (All Flesh Must Be Eaten)
As the last game of the con, I didn't take the time to write out a synopsis of what happened, which basically boiled down to black ops spies shooting zombies on a cruise ship.

So that was my DunDraCon for 2010. Like I said, I'll go next year, but with significantly lowered expectations.