Chicago EN World Game Day: The Aftermath! :)

[mgrasso]

I am sad that I missed this Games Day, but also happy I did not pass this creeping crud on to anyone else. I believe my girlfriend is currently incubating a strain of said crud, so I've got enough guilt to last me a while.

Anyway, I'll be there next time with two games, guaranteed, unless a spring fever overtakes me.

Mike

 

[William Ronald]

I had a blast!

I would like to thank Joshua Dyal for running the games I was in. I had a great deal of fun in both events.

It was good seeing everyone, and I am looking forward to the next gameday.

 

[Desdichado]

What the heck am I typing this for? Why am I not asleep? Anyhow, thanks for everyone who played in my games -- I'll have some more detailed feedback later today sometime; like after I get up again.

 

[Sharraunna]

Thank you again, Matt, for putting this together and running Synnibarr. Nazriel has already begun reading the copy you gave us, so I may have to reserve my thanks for that until I see if his brain dribbles out of his ears. Most of all, though, thank you for saying I have "a legendary tolerance for bad movies." I've never been legendary before...

Thank you to Joshua Dyal for running the Duchess' Tea Party. It was great to finally play a barbarian AND chase an evil monkey for hours AND encourage the death of the duchess' daughter.

Goth Queen? The goths wouldn't have me.

~~Sharraunna

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Goth Queen? The goths wouldn't have me.

~~Sharraunna

Well, I guess it's all relative. You're the Goth Queen of the Chicago Gamedays. As far as Goth goes, you're Goth-er than me, Nazriel, & Painfully, anyway!

 

[Desdichado]

Anyway, here's some more detailed commentary about the two games I ran.

• Duchess' Tea Party: What can I say; this was a bit of an experiment, and the good folks who signed up got to "playtest" the concept of mixing "How to Host a Murder" with D&D. All in all, I think the concept was quite successful, and I had a good time running it. I also had a good time watching it; in theory, I have merely to set the game up and then watch and enjoy as the players run with the concepts of their characters for a big portion of the game. Although portions of the plot I concocted were pretty flimsy, i.e., why the PCs were in danger of being killed by these demons when they already hadn't been, it seemed to go fairly well anyway. Poor William Ronald got somewhat the short end of the stick, in that his character and KnowTheToe's character had a deep rivalry that he didn't understand until the end of the game. He also was nearly killed by an imp (although what do you expect from a wizard with no real directly offense-oriented spells who decides to investigate a church pretty much by himself?) and had to bear the brunt of the Duchess' daughter's ruse. It was gratifying as a DM to see the look on his face when he "rescued" her, attempted to cast a protection from evil spell around her, and then lost the spell as she stabbed him in the back and broke his concentration (as well as his heart.) I did learn a bit from the playtest though, and I think there's a few things I could do to really tighten the concept up. I went out of my way to make extra characters, but with no one to play them, the secrets that they both had and knew about others, didn't really make enough of an appearance. I thought I could roleplay all that with three characters plus everything else, but in reality, some of that stuff dropped off the table. I think for this type of game I not only need a character for every player, but also a player for every character. Also, I think the transition from "roleplaying the tea party" to "trying to banish Dagon back to Hell" was a bit too abrupt -- some other fishy business would have ratcheted up the tension in the game and also allowed the built-in rivalries between the characters to show up more. Anyway, the concept was a success -- I'll definately run "The Duchess' Tea Party Strikes Back" at some point in the future with new characters, a new scenario and the improvements that I could see needed making.
  
  
• Dark^oMatter d20: Exit 23: This one was a bit more straight-forward in theory, although it had it's share of surprises too (especially when the entire group almost blew themselves up. Who's idea was it to pump gas on an open flame at a truck stop again?) Because the "Exit 23" is a bit on the short side, I gave some prior thought to more stuff I could add to it, but the group absolutely refused to follow up on the plot hooks I dropped to go there; at the end I made a last desperate bid to show that something really interesting was going on in that direction, and it backfired badly and actually scared the players away from it! They truly played up the Dark^oMatter feeling of paranoia quite well. Because of this, I had to do a bit of juggling and winging it, which is fine, but it just so happened that after a pretty good, tense game, the ending felt contrived, lame and anticlimactic. There was some great roleplaying here, though, especially from the characters with a somewhat err... more lax view on certain legal matters and their interaction with the PC state trooper. I had to laugh, to at some of the antics of the characters too. In addition to the aforementioned close thing with the entire group blowing themselves to cinders, shadowlight's character was in negative numbers three times, William Ronald's was (I believe) twice, and Trev's character was at -9 before finally being stabilized. The characters actually killed the three Hoffman Institute men, who might otherwise have recruited them, and at the end they were recruited instead by the shadowy Department-7 government agency at the end of the game. They also forgot about the grease fire they set in the remains of the MacDonalds at the truckstop, so their handcuffed and unconscious prisoner succumbed to the flame, and the characters themselves came really close to blowing themselves up a second time. One of the players, and I can't remember which one, pointed out that they were playing Dark^oMatter as if it were Feng Shui which I thought an apt comparison. I'd definately run this again sometime too; we had a great time with it.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

The Dark*Matter d20 game was indeed more like a Feng Shui game at times--not that it was a bad thing, mind you! I felt that most of the characters made a fairly decent transition to d20 Moden from Alternity, and of course the adventure was just top notch. We had some excellent roleplayers in the group, and it was just a blast to be a part of the game. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of the Cthulhu sanity rules thrown in, but too much would detract from the ass-kicking we could do I suppose. Joshua, thanks for running a top-notch game and finally giving me a gaming experience with d20 modern!

 

[Desdichado]

Yes, the Sanity rules should have been used more often; to be honest with you, I kinda forgot about them somewhat. If this were a more long-term campaign, they probably would have been used more. I would be more interested in the Cthulhu-style magic and psychic powers for Dark^oMatter rather than actually making Sanity checks often, so I wouldn't be likely to have characters routinely going insane in Dark^oMatter as they do in Cthulhu, though.

But I guess that's a moot point, really. Although I'm excited about the prospect of running (or playing) something very much like this back at home in the near future.

And, a professor with a penchant for investigating the paranormal, and who carries around a katana -- that occured to us very late at night as we were wrapping up the characters, and it was just too cool a concept to pass up for a one-shot even if it does tend to encourage Feng Shui-ifying any game. Also, I should point out, the PCGen files for d20 Modern are a bit quirky to say the least. If you use it, be sure and look over your character sheets very carefully to make sure you don't have some weirdness that you don't expect. We didn't do that, and didn't notice that PCGen gave everyone all kinds of strange weapon proficiencies, as well as 17 action points!

 

[Desdichado]

She also had the first memorable quotation of the day: "I throw a tea cup at the monkey."

Ah, yes... that was a memorable moment. I can't remember who it was a few minutes later that threw a tea cup at Dagon, Warden of the Stygian Depths, First Lieutenant to Levistus, Lord of the Fifth Circle of Hell. That was pretty good too...

And did I mention the -1 To Hit roll cdsaint made in the Dark^oMatter game? Boy, I really wished I had winged some on-the-fly critical fumble roll on that one. It generated a good quote or two, though. I think my favorite was "Try rolling down the window before you shoot through it next time."

 

[shadowlight]

Ah, yes... that was a memorable moment. I can't remember who it was a few minutes later that threw a tea cup at Dagon, Warden of the Stygian Depths, First Lieutenant to Levistus, Lord of the Fifth Circle of Hell. That was pretty good too...

Come on... I thought it was a silver tea cup!!
They can't all be homeruns!