Origins 2007, Part 1

I've been back from Origins for just over a week and dying to write about it. Having a house full of teenagers (2 is a full-house, especially if you're not used to it) kept my too busy to write about Origins. They're gone now, and I've got time to collect my thoughts.

Before the Con

I normally spend a great portion of my Origins writeup ranting about how bad things were compared to the year before. This year I managed to bypass most of the ugliness by running all of my events as part of the Cthulhuthon sponsored by Shoggoth.net. Huge difference for me. (I still didn't have a badge entered in the system when events went on sale, but I was ready for that.) I barely had to deal with the Origins machine at all. Very, very painless for me. I only wish I'd done it sooner.

Hotel

We stayed in the Hyatt as always. I would have preferred the Drury but it wasn't available. The stay was pretty smooth apart from the torrential downpour that started just before we arrived at checkin. At checkout they offered a "pack and return" service where they got our car from valet parking, packed it, and returned it back to valet. Very nifty, as checkout was at noon and I had a game from 12-4.

My Games

I'm still not sure how it happened, but I ended up running six slots this year. It was exhausting and I don't think I'll try it again next year. To make things worse, I had terrible writer's block. Usually my scenarios come pretty easily; not this year. (I also don't think I'll try writing three new games for a single con again. Bad move.)

Three's Company

This is a third installment in my "Kappa Sigma" series following 2005's "Lady Killer" and 2006's "Bungle in the Jungle." The PC's are students at Miskatonic University in the late 1920's. The male PC's are members of a fraternity; the females are their girlfriends, siblings, etc. Both of the previous games were very well received and so was this one. This game was a little outside my comfort zone in terms of style; it's a lot heavier on investigation than the stuff I usually write. The playtest went well so I was feeling pretty good about it.

This was my first slot, 8pm Wed night. I had all six tickets show up, and 2 on generics as well. Four of the players were people I knew from other games and elsewhere -- excellent players all. The other players were also quite good. The story moved right along, even with players splitting up and investigating in smaller groups. (I especially liked Duke looking through MU yearbooks for someone named "Sam Hain.") At one point I was feeling a little stuck and had to take a brief timeout; there was something that the Big Bad needed to do and couldn't because of the way the PC's and NPC's were arranged. I solved it eventually and things got really interesting from there. Before I knew it the game was over -- just how I like it.

By the time the 2nd session rolled around (Sat 6pm) I was completely wiped out. When pre-reg closed there were exactly 0 tickets sold and I was really hoping that it would stay that way. No luck -- all six tickets were sold and showed up. I would've taken one more, but the others waiting were couples and didn't want to split. I lucked out in casting this, as the player I gave Sylvia to turned out to be a French teacher. (In the opening scene Sylvia is tutoring a French class. How's that for luck?) Memorable moments include Sylvia doing a little dance to distract the bad guys and the best portrayal of Jimmy (the dumb jock character) I've ever seen. I really hope that guy was acting. The players kept me moving, which was good; I would never have made it through it weren't for mega doses of caffeine.

Strange Aeons, Stranger Tides

I got the idea for this scenario last winter while reading the Tim Powers pirate/voodoo/magic/historical novel "On Stranger Tides." (It's back in print. Buy it and read it.) It was the last of the three scenarios that I wrote and, to be honest, I was really concerned that it wasn't up to my usual standards. For example -- I didn't have time to find individual pictures for all the characters, and some of their ages (as printed on their character sheets) where just plain wrong. Also, I ddin't have time to playtest, something that I always try to do.

To compound things, the first session was at 8am Thursday. Not sure what made me want to do that. Probably won't do it again; I'm really not a morning person. In any event, my table was full (6 tickets, 2 generics) and the players seemed to have a blast. The part I was most concerned about (a trek through the mountains where creepy things start happening) turned out to be one of the best parts -- the players were really kinda wigged out over it. In the end everything worked out, even if my zombie pirate crew couldn't hit the broadside of a frigate at 10 paces.

The second run of this was from 12-4 on Sunday. Recall that I was really dragging the night before. Then know that I spent the next four hours drinking and shooting the breeze with various groups of people. No rest for the wicked. Sunday's game was even better as I beefed up the stats for my undead crew and was able to do a little damage to the characters. In one round two characters -- standing right next to each other in a longboat, fleeing deep ones -- each rolled 00 on their pistol rolls. Friendly fire, followed by one going overboard and being eaten by a deep one shark hybrid. Yum! Good stuff.

Delta Green: Funeral for a Friend

This story started out as a DG version of "The Big Chill" and evolved into something completely different in the last couple weeks before the con. I'm really glad I had the chance to playtest this one as the opening was totally busted. Easily fixed in time for the con, though.

I spent a great deal of time trying to come up with a 7th character for this game. I just couldn't do it -- it's two DG cells attending the funeral of a fallen comrade and looking for weirdness. I toyed with a bunch of ideas and eventually decided to just leave it alone. So. My table is full (seeing a trend here yet?) and I've passed out briefing materials. Another guy shows up and asks if this is the DG game and if he can get in it, saying that it's been a long time since he played and that he'd really love to play again. I explain how it's full, couldn't come up with a 7th player, blah, blah, blah. Then I look at his badge and see that it's Shane Ivey, one of the founders of Arc Dream (responsible for bringing the "DG: Eyes Only" books back into print) among other things. So... I scrabbled out a character for him to play, came up with a thin excuse for him being involved, and asked him to play along. He was very cool about it, even if his character did meet an untimely death. Speaking of which, my dice were on FIRE this game. I'm usually a pretty mild keeper, but the end of this scenario calls for being brutal. And I was. And it was good.

This particular group investigated exhaustively during the first portion of the scenario. Where the playtest group took about 1/2 an hour to go through their briefing and preliminaries this group took almost 2 hours! It was a major challenge to get things turned back around and back on schedule. (Oh, and the playtest took almost 5 hours instead of four.) In the end, I think everyone had a good time. (Not sure about one of the players -- he didn't really seem to get inside his character much.)

The second run of this was Friday at 1pm. I had six players and I think that it was 2 groups -- one couple who knew each other and a group of four that knew each other. They fell somewhere between the previous 2 groups on the amount of prelim work. The showdown here was pretty brutal, lots of permanent mental and physical damage.

Continued...

More later on games I played in, the dealer room, the con in general and more.