Convention Game Survival Tips

My first convention game is coming up soon, and I have a shiney, new, dungeon crawl drawn up for it (the convention theme is "old school," so there you go), as well as pre-generated characters.

But since no plan survives first contact, what contingencies should I be preparing for? How does the convention table differ from the dinner table?

I ran a home-made convention game of Gamma World using D&D 3.5 rules. I let the players customize their characters by picking their own feats. I had no idea what Cleave would do to an ambush of two melee and two (slow-to-react) archers. Even after I "sent reinforcements" to the NPCs, the PCs went through what was intended to be a delaying action in about 5 min IRL. They turned the reinforcements into pincushions from a distance by winning initiative. They made it to the pirates' ship before it could even untie from the dock!

If you've ever played in an LFR Battle Interactive, where most tables are fitted together from groups of ones-and-twos, you have more idea than you think of 'what to expect'.

Of course, with strangers be welcoming and polite. Also be firm: make sure you act and speak as the person in charge. The players will be turning to you to resolve disagreements or restrain over-boisterous behavior. Ask if anybody has a rulebook handy, so they can do look-ups (just in case). If somebody has more experience with the rules than the others, ask them to 'shepherd' the other players. This means you share out the load a bit and can make whatever changes are needed to your module on-the-fly (which nobody but you can get done).

1) Make sure you run your entire session.
As a player at conventions I can't tell you how many times I've signed up for a 4 hr game, only to find it done 90-120 minutes in. (and not due to a TPK) Sometimes it's because the person running it just doesn't have enough material for a 4hr stretch. Mostly it's been because they really didn't want to be running a game for whatever reason at that moment.
Either way it's really annoying & wastes the time of anyone who signed up. Because when your game runs way short, it's not like the playetrs can just go hop into another one....
So don't be that DM.

2) Be prepared & ready to play. That means having read the adventure your going to run. Once again, I can't tell you how many times I've seen the exact opposite of this. Even with people who're running their own stuff!
Again, don't be that DM.

I’ll certainly agree with ccs that timing is important. If you run over, you might have to just handwave the last part away, people might have to outright leave the table to get to their next event, or then be stuck scrambling to get there when it does end. That being said, I don’t always mind when I get out 30-45 minutes early from a game. For me, that means more time to get something to eat, or some time at the dealer’s room.

Players will show up with a range of experience with whichever system you’re running. Ken St. Andre, when running Tunnels & Trolls, has a wonderful ability to explain things as they are happening, rather than stopping the game to do so.

Remember character names. Players respond better to “Folgar the dwarf,” than “Hey you.” If they give you little details and you can work them into the adventure, just a little, that makes a big impact. In general, when you can make the PCs feel like they are the stars of the adventure, rather than the third group that’s gone through it today, that is awesome.

Above all, people are looking to have fun. Focus on that and bringing the game world to life, and the rest will follow.

Pretty much no matter what you do, the one thing you can't control - even though you probably think you can - is pacing.

You could run the same adventure at the same convention for five different groups of players and they will take five vastly different amounts of time to play through it. Some groups tend toward being cautious (or even cowardly, I've seen this!) and want to plan everything; others will just gonzo in and hope for the best. Most tables are a mix.

The cautious ones can make a four-hour adventure take all day and half the night. The gonzo ones will be done in an hour, either having beaten the module or TPKed themselves in the attempt.

Dice and luck can also play a part. Some groups might by random chance sail through a trap, for example, and never even know it was there; while others might find it (or trigger it!) and then get stuck on it for half an hour or more.

So all you can do is have a decent adventure prepared (which it sounds like you do) and hope for the best.

Good luck!

Lanefan

ccs said:

2) Be prepared & ready to play. That means having read the adventure your going to run. Once again, I can't tell you how many times I've seen the exact opposite of this. Even with people who're running their own stuff!
Again, don't be that DM.

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Lanefan said:

The cautious ones can make a four-hour adventure take all day and half the night. The gonzo ones will be done in an hour, either having beaten the module or TPKed themselves in the attempt.

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Yikes. I just lost some expectations for the games I might drop into after running mine!

I tend to overplan my sessions, and even when I cut back on the planning to save myself personal time, I still ended up having too much material prepared. So there's that. But you guys reminded me of another GM's maxim: "because, PCs."

I can probably adjust for over-achieving PCs by using a Call of Duty rule: if the PCs can't see an area, it can spawn bad guys.

Under-achievers typically benefit from a little NPC push here and there, so I might have to write one into the plot.

How many encounters (risky situations) do you typically go through in a 4-hour-max session?

I think there is a vast difference in player skill across groups so an unknown group is very hard to DM. Thanks for taking up the challenge and furthering the hobby.

You could (I'd never do this in a real campaign) prepare all the encounters in advance at beginniner, medium, elite skill levels. Then when that first encounter on beginner goes way too easy you up the next one to medium and so on. You might choose your starting difficulty only after talking with the group and assessing their skill level. If they seem good but struggle against the medium challenge then lower the next to beginner.

Obviously all three levels have to be designed thematically to make sense in the adventure. Wargames do this all the time though through what-if's. So if the group needs help, you can say some of the guards got called away to make the encounter simpler. If you really care you can add all of that. It is extra work but not a ton.

If you can, run it with friends before you take it out on the road. Observe the pacing, see what ideas they come up with, get some feedback on how they feel about it.

Have a couple of extra pre-gens to spare, both for variety and as backups if someone manages to be particularly creative at getting their character into trouble in the first encounter.

Have some visual aids to hand, maybe images and names of major NPCs as you introduce them, and maps or landscape images for scene-setting. You don't need to go full battlemap, but you're going to be running for a bunch of people who don't know each other, some of whom may be pretty wiped out (either from travelling if it's the first day, or late nights if it isn't), in a noisy convention hall where they may not catch your every word. Anything they can grab onto in order to visualise the game is going to help keep their head in your setting.

Be prepared to respond if someone suddenly comes up with an out-of-left-field idea that circumvents a situation - or if they completely fail to puzzle their way out of what you thought was a straightforward set-up. If either you or they are becoming flummoxed by an unexpected turn of events and things are in danger of stalling, that's a good time to suggest a pee break, and come back to the table with a fresh perspective.

Ultimately, at a convention you can't pick your players. You hope that they all signed up because your game sounded really cool to them, but sometimes you'll get the ones who just put their name down because your game had a slot free and they didn't want to sit around doing nothing for four hours. Do your best to entertain them and deliver the experience they're looking for, but know that they're also responsible for their own fun, and you won't always click with everyone. If the majority of your players walked away smiling, or still talking about the game, take the win.

I generally prefer con games which provide pre-generated characters. Pre-gens are, when competently written, roughly equal with each other. Sometimes each pre-gen character has short notes on how that character gets along with each other member of the team; this helps clarify each character's personality, and prompts intra-party roleplaying. (With luck, that becomes witty banter.)

Convention adventures often have a low-stakes, relatively-easy encounter in the first hour. This can reveal any misconceptions among the players, or incompatible play styles, so you can address them after that encounter. Better to nip problems in the bud, than to discover them during the climactic final battle with the BBEG.

Riley37 said:

Sometimes each pre-gen character has short notes on how that character gets along with each other member of the team; this helps clarify each character's personality, and prompts intra-party roleplaying. (With luck, that becomes witty banter.)

Convention adventures often have a low-stakes, relatively-easy encounter in the first hour.

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Sound advice. I wrote some relationships into the background, but probably undid all that work when designing the pre-gens' flaws. For what it's worth, the BBEG isn't the final encounter. It's when the PCs have to reconcile their disparate goals. Which, and I'm going to call it right now, the players will give up on and call defeating the BBEG a job-well-done.

Writing in that low-stakes, softball encounter as we speak...