Origins 2006, Part 2

On to the games, starting with the events I ran.

My Events

Last year I had major problems with my events being oversold. I had to turn people away from 2 of my 4 slots. This year I had just the opposite problem; 2 of my events just barely had enough to go off, despite being sold out. For one I had to coerce a friend into abandoning a later game in order to play mine. I later spoke to the organizer of the Cthulhuthon; their events were generally pretty full. They typically had several people waiting with generics. I think I'm going to try to get my CoC/DG events scheduled in with theirs next year. If nothing else it would be good to have access to the extra players.

Bungle in the Jungle

This is a continuation of last year's Lady Killer story line. Like that story, it's a fairly pulpy or cinematic story with a great deal of creepiness, especially at the end. I did get some some player continuity, with the Sylvia player from last year's second session (the group who spent 45 minutes arguing about where to hide a severed head) reprising the role. One of my favorite moments of that game was when that player recalled a bit of background info he'd made up last year (I encourage players to do that) and incorporated into this year's game. Very cool stuff.

Had an interesting little problem with the 2nd slot of this. One of my players and I spent 10 minutes looking around the room trying to find our table. (Unlike Gencon, GAMA doesn't provide a "map" for each room, they just stick a piece of paper on each table with the table number on it.) Eventually we discovered that a group of bozos had changed the number on the sign for our table. That's bad enough but they LIED about it when we asked if they'd seen the table we were looking for. I understand that GAMA messed up (the table these guys were assigned didn't exist) but you don't fix the problem by taking mine and then lying about it. Lamers.

The combination of table theivery and player recruiting caused that game to not get started until almost 1:30. We still finished easily by 4:45 which amazed the players. A couple of them pointed out that they had NEVER been in a CoC con game that finished at all let alone one that started late and finished on-time. That is why we play test.

Behind Enemy Lines

This is a Delta Green scenario. It's one of the creepiest and most disturbing things I've ever written. It's rated 18+ for very good reasons. For some reason, GAMA listed it at 16+ in the book which caused me great anxiety. My anxiety increased when an obviously under 18 person sat at the table, with a ticket. Turns out he was only 15 and I was forced to refuse him entry to the game. He was pretty cool with it, but the adult who was there with him (looking to get in on generics) was not. He started to raise a fuss and I explained that a) the game was rated for adults and that GAMA would refund the kids' ticket and that b) I had a 15 year-old of my own and wouldn't let him anywhere near this game.

The second session had only 4 players, but 3 of them were people I already knew. One of them had played in my other Cthulhu games, the others I knew from elsewhere. It was a very good session, with lots of inter-group paranoia, exactly as planned. Lori showed up at the end and I asked her to NPC the "Wanda" character. This was good, as she knows how the story is "supposed" to end. (It's a prequel to another story. It doesn't matter if it actually ends in the "correct" manner. But she provided a really cool ending.)

The first session was full including 2 folks on generic tickets. Five of the six players did a really fantastic job. I'd enjoy having them in my game again. The sixth player...

I can't even begin to describe it. I spent most of the game trying to prevent him from interrupting the other players. It was not pleasant. The other players told me later that they really considered having a "friendly fire accident" but didn't want to disrupt my game too much. I'm not sure it could've disrupted it more. I try very, very hard to make sure that all players get an appropriate amount of screen time. This guy made my job tough. I could go on... but I really don't want to relive it. It was really not very pleasant at all.

As much bourbon as you can fit...

What I ended up with was five doubles in a water glass.

After the Thursday session of Behind Enemy Lines we all went to the bar. We were pleased to discover that the Big Bar on 2 is now completely smoke free. Some sort of new city ordinance, I guess. Worked well for us; the bar was way less crowded than in past years.

After my recent DG player trauma I felt that a good stiff drink was in order. I asked the waitress to bring me as much Knob Creek as she was allowed to put in a glass. She came back to the table several times to make sure I really wanted that much and to tell me that it would be an expensive drink. I figured, okay, they'll probably give me a triple. Don't most places have laws about how much alcohol you can serve a single person at once? What I ended up with was five doubles in a water glass. That's a lot of bourbon. A LOT of bourbon. I'd like to say that I finished it all, but there was about 1/2 a shot or so left in the bottom of the glass when I was done. I'm really glad I didn't have any events until 1pm on Friday!

Summary

Apart from one very distracting player -- and even he couldn't ruin the entire session -- things went really well. I got a lot of great performances out of people and that's really all I ask for.

My only concern is that my games weren't as full as I expected them to be. That's particularly annoying after last year when I had to repeatedly turn people away. I'm hoping that I can correct that for next year by working with the Cthulhuthon group.