It’s now past 1 am…The atrium below is almost empty. Just a few stragglers wandering off to bed. The hotel is quiet. And I am tired. The kind of tired that comes after a well run event, when the papers are recycled, and debrief is over, and all the adrenaline drains out. And all that is left is the knowledge that you were on your feet for 5 hours, running around frantically.
At first, it looked a little dicey, but in the end, after a few emergency interventions, including an announcement made in the “Meet the Guest” event, we acquired 9 players for “A Reunion at Katmeers.” And so we ran the game, and it was great. It was definitely a little touch and go for a while, and that led to some inevitable, but ultimately unnecessary fretting on our part.
We had a group of fairly experienced players, which was a cool change from Baycon, where I’ve always run almost exclusively with newbies. Most everyone loved their characters, which is always a great relief since we are casting pretty much blind. We have like a five minute group conversation to size up each player and figure out who we want to cast them as.
For those of you who have previously played this game, the outcome was [spoilers; highlight to read] a rather unusual, but not wholly unexpected one. Morgiana got all 3 paragons and wished for the ability to talk to ghosts. At which point, she discovered that Drew was not in fact dead, and that Quinn was a liar. Then, tragically, the player had to leave game. It did make for one hell of an exit scene though. After that, it was pretty much all over. Both the Minister and Lionel called in the Aurors and arrested most everyone. Ariadne’s necromancy research mostly came out in game, but not that she had actually raised Drew. Iris kept ahold of the crystal, and no one ever suspected she had the shard. In the end, the paragons were scattered, and the shard remains.
Overall, the players had fun – apparently enough fun to be excited about the LARP I’m running tomorrow (with the help of my co-writer). Which is promising for a number of reasons. One being it is a bigger game. Two, it doesn’t scale down to fewer player well. Three, we are scheduled half against the biggest event of the con, so getting people will be tough. I’m optimistic.
As a more general summary, I’d call the first day of Con a success. I had some great conversations with gamers and game writers, and little by little, Convolution is starting to feel like home. It’s nice to have familiar faces in Gaming, and Prog Ops. Getting a room was definitely the right call though. It really is important to have somewhere to retreat to at the end of the day, or randomly in the middle of the day, and have somewhere secure to stash my stuff.
Speaking of rooms, I’m not sure if there just aren’t any parties tonight, or if Convolution just throws really tame parties, or if I’m actually up later than most of the other con goers, because it is quiet. I was worried when I realized I’d forgotten my earplugs, and even more worried when I learned my room was on the 3rd floor, but it looks like tonight at least, I will sleep well. And hopefully I won’t sleep through the 10am panel on RPG Gamemastery.
Musings of a Larping Cat 