What Makes a Convention Game Great?

[barsoomcore]

Well, I'm not contrasting "Pregen vs questionnaire filled out ahead of time" like we did - I'm looking at "Pregen vs questionnaire handed out at the table"... for when you haven't had a chance to send questionnaires out early..

Oh, I see. Well then. Er.

Shut up.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Jody, shoot me a copy via email. Maybe I can help.

Ack. I missed that. It would have helped tremendously. Maybe before the next gameday I'll take you up on the offer, although I'd love to have you play this scenario someday, too.

 

[Piratecat]

I'll bump this thread now that GenCon is on the (distant!) horizon - the subject has come up recently.

 

[Psion]

I'll bump this thread now that *Long Island and DC Gamedays are* on the (*not so*distant!) horizon - the subject has come up recently.

Fixed.

 

[Piratecat]

Well fixed. I'm writing a Dread game for the NH Game Day, and with PAX East just finished this has come back up again.

I'm not sure if I said it up-thread, but I'm leaning more and more that villains have style. What makes them cool? In any given fight, pick one foe who deserves a name, and go to town describing him. This falls in to the old Feng Shui theory of "nameless mooks vs. named villains", and it's a trick I like a lot. The foe you name is the one the players are going to remember after the game, and that's the one you build story hooks around.

 

[amysrevenge]

In a related but slightly different direction, there are several bare minimums that must be there for a successful game. The inclusion of these is certainly not enough to guarantee success, but the exclusion of these is probably enough to guarantee a fail.

1) Be ready to start on time.

2) Finish on time (or even a tiny bit early if you can mange it).

3) Keep the pace up. A home game can afford to have slow periods, but a convention game has have a start, a middle, and an end all within the alloted slot.

4) Minimize (without necessarily eliminating) OT chat and OOC banter. This is a very fine balance, different for every group, and is especially hard to find with strangers whose tastes you might not know that well. Gets easier with practice. Again, in a home game if you end up spending a whole night talking about Star Wars expanded universe characters during your D&D game, you can just pick up the game next week. At a con, you have to get to the game.

 

[JediSoth]

Well fixed. I'm writing a Dread game for the NH Game Day, and with PAX East just finished this has come back up again.

I'm not sure if I said it up-thread, but I'm leaning more and more that villains have style. What makes them cool? In any given fight, pick one foe who deserves a name, and go to town describing him. This falls in to the old Feng Shui theory of "nameless mooks vs. named villains", and it's a trick I like a lot. The foe you name is the one the players are going to remember after the game, and that's the one you build story hooks around.

And sometimes, villains (such as the Shafttrooper in my Star Wars game last Gen Con*) will become legendary through the ineptitude of the PCs.

*Shafttrooper was the name lovingly bestowed upon one lone Blizzard-Force Snowtrooper assault Echo Base. Of his entire squad, he survived longer than anyone else. And by survived, I mean the PCs fought for probably 45 real-time minutes to take him down (with grenades, blasters, and melee). Not because he was tough (he was just a cookie-cutter snowtrooper), but because every time they attacked this guy, they rolled poorly. By the time they finally "killed" him, they greatly respected his "survival skills." He was one bad mutha.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

By the time they finally "killed" him, they greatly respected his "survival skills." He was one bad mutha.

You shoulda leveled him up in mid-combat.

Generally speaking (yes, there are memorable exceptions), a GM who cares enough to run his own convention game will have the tools to make it fun. I've always found that the players are the big X-factor. If you get a table where one player insists on hogging the GM's attention with irrelevant "wacky" "roleplaying," you're doomed. On the other hand, if you get a table where players are capable of roleplaying -- in pairs or sub-groups -- without disrupting the thrust of the game otherwise, it's really something special.

 

[Rel]

I missed this thread in the past. I don't intend to miss any further updates for lack of being subscribed.