Friday
Five of the Things Not To Do for a Convention Game
After the usual prowl through the exhibition hall I went to the first of my two events for the evening. I had some high expectations of the event, and nearly every one were violated.
When I read the event description it sounded like something I very much wanted to play. The event description itself said “… a dull routine of waiting and watching your kindred screw up on the evening news? Join the team that cleans up after the saps. BYOC 9–13 generation.” What I expected was something about an élite team that cleans up Masquerade violations, and I came with a character that would fit into that idea. I would very soon find out that I had been greatly mislead.
The GMs first mistake was in taking three more people than the eight he had originally allowed for. Remember what I had said earlier about eight players being too much for any but the really good GMs to handle? The difficulty grows with each additional player. Eleven players were way too many. And I think the players (but, unfortunately, not the GM) all knew it: after we took a short break halfway through the event, four of the eleven didn’t return.
The GMs second mistake was in basing it on his own campaign. That in itself was not a mistake, except he made some drastic changes in the WW established universe. Now having the common universe may or may not be a good thing, but if you’re going to run something that you don’t want to spend time on explaining in the short time period of a convention game, or you don’t want to surprise your players, then a common universe is the way to go. The changes that we discovered were very significant: either we had to have the GM explain things that took valuable playing time, or we were surprised. Neither were very much fun.
The third mistake was in allowing one of the players in his established campaign to be in the event. That gave that player an unfair advantage on the others, because 1) he was much more experienced (14 dice on an attack? Get real!) than the others and 2)knew things that the others did not. That led into the fourth mistake, which was in not putting any kind of restrictions on the BYOC characters. Thus we got some really gross, almost Monty Haul type characters, which my beginning character could not compete with.
The fifth mistake was that the GM had entirely misadvertised the event. What I had expected was that the characters would be members of an élite enforcement squad whose responsibility was to prevent the normal humans from discovering the vampires exist, acting within the Camarilla, the major vampire organization. Instead, what the characters had been invited to do was to form an alternative organization to the established vampire communities, something that my character would not have been interested in, which (as designed) she would have considered a gross violation of her personal ethics. The power level of the game suddenly went from relatively low-level (local, or regional at best) to national, with a corresponding increase in the level of power of the characters, both player and non-player. This I was not expecting and was not really prepared for.
Five mistakes already, and we’re hardly even started. Don’t worry, it gets worse.
Five minutes into the organizational meeting, the door flies open, and standing in the doorway is a man who draws two Colt revolvers and proceeds to shoot everyone in the room. Without reloading. Multiple times. Several times a round. For at least two rounds. With a 50/50 chance of hitting on each character every time, doing enough damage to almost knock out a vampire on every attack, and incapacitate on two attacks.
Conventional firearms had little effect on him, which was most of us had: it took mêlée weapons to damage him, but even that didn’t slow him down. When one vampire used a claymore (sword, not the explosive) on him, what he got in return was having both of his eyes blown out. When the gunman had mysteriously achieved his objective, he backed out of the room and disappeared. We tried to follow, but the building above had been set on fire. We had to leave using the help of a Mage associate of another NPC.
We found out later how he had managed it: he was half-Faerie (but since the GM didn’t like the way Changelings were designed by WW he changed them, too) and the place was not our meeting room but a construct in Faerie we had been diverted to. The sole purpose of the whole encounter was to trap the soul of the main organizer (an NPC), but the collateral damage was way over the top. The GM later explained that the gunman was created to counter another over the top PC in his campaign: he could have accomplished the objective, however, with a lot less destruction and accompanying player frustration.
Mistake number six: this was power gaming at its worst. It also lead to GM mistake number seven, leaving the players with the feeling that they were being led around instead of having any real say in their own destiny.
I think by that time several of the players, most especially the ones who had been unable to do anything against the gunman, were sensing that they were not going to have any fun playing any longer. The GMs reliance on his own campaign’s player for hints was beginning to annoy people, too, I think. By this time I had already decided that the game was a botch. The only reasons I was sticking around myself was a) to see what the GM would do wrong again, and b) to see where he was going with it.
The intermediate scenes were largely explanatory, since the plot had become nothing like what the event description had stated. It was now a search & rescue mission for the NPC’s soul. And that soul was in Faerie. So we had to go hunting for it, along with about a dozen or so NPCs. (Like we really needed them? Fortunately they were summarily dismissed before the big showdown so they didn’t really affect the ultimate decision, but just having them appear in the first place was annoying.)
The big showdown was at the Faerie equivalent of Ayers Rock in Australia, the homeland of the gunman. After the almost requisite verbal confrontation it settled down to another firefight, this time with the gunman only using one pistol, which was actually an extension of himself rendering him impossible to disarm. In the course of the action, three of the player were catapulted (literally) over Ayers Rock to discover where the captive soul was being held: in a black ship hovering over a lake of fire.
Now I’ve been reading Sandman and Books of Magic, so I recognized the ship from recent issues of BoM as the ship that collects the teind, or payment from Faerie to Hell. This was the first (and only) actual pleasant moment of the game.
The problem turned out to be that Oberon of Faerie had wanted the stolen soul in payment for releasing the gunman, who had been banished to Faerie earlier in the campaign. Thus the others back at Ayers Rock had to prevent the gunman from severing the silver cord that bound the soul to her body.
On the other side of Ayers Rock, Satan was annoyed that Oberon had expanded Faerie against Hell without his knowledge, and he wanted the land back. All it took was for a player to say “It’s yours.” and the battle was over. We were all banished from Faerie, and for bargaining with Satan, ultimately damned.
Aside from the use of the material from BoM, I was definitely unimpressed with the GM. The entire scenario was a botch, and I certainly think that I didn’t not get my money’s worth for playing.
That said, let’s review the mistakes:
- GM mistake one: limit the number of players, especially if you’ve advertised it for a limited number. Know your limitations: most GMs cannot handle a large crowd. Eleven is a large crowd. This GM could not handle it.
- GM mistake two: if you’re going to seriously change the established WW universe, then prepare people ahead of time, especially if you’re allowing them to bring their own characters. Otherwise use common ground and common knowledge.
- GM mistake three: don’t ever give even the appearance of favoritism. Allowing one of your own players into the game gave him an unwelcome advantage over the others.
- GM mistake four: establish some kind of limits for characters if you allow players to bring their own. Otherwise you have a varying level of ability, which only leads to the stronger (or more gross) characters dominating the scenario, to the detriment of the other players.
- GM mistake five: don’t mislead people about the event. The expectation of the scenario and the actual thing were two distinct things in this case. If I had known what the real scenario was going to be like I wouldn’t have considered playing it in the first place.
- GM mistake six: power gaming. I hate power gaming. I realize some people get off on it, but I didn’t care to be caught up in it. Let people know ahead of time, either explicitly or implicitly, that the scenario is going to be high powered, with more emphasis on the number of dice being rolled than roleplaying.
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