On the blog side, our convention games category features two excellent guest posts on con games.

As you could obviously tell, I am not a combat oriented GM. I prefer to let the players decide the action.

Any tips you could give would be greatly appreciated, either from you or any of the others who post here. I only found your site by accident, and lo and behold, a critique of the worst game I have ever been involved with.

Thanks again for the advice. I look forward to any other.

I got the impression you were an experienced GM (a vibe mainly based on your having run SG-99 events before, and seeming to be an old GURPS hand), but knowing that you’re relatively new to the craft definitely gives me a different perspective.

Ironically enough, if you’re interested in getting tips and advice about GMing — specific to con games, as well as more general — you’ve come to a great place to find them.

Off the cuff, my one (unsolicited) suggestion would be to mention up front that you’re new to GMing, and that you didn’t get time to playtest the adventure. With that kind of lead-in, while people might initially be thrown off (“If he didn’t playtest it, why am I here?”), they might also be more inclined to cut you some slack and take things in stride. It certainly would have helped me.

Again, thank you for posting here, and thank you for the apology. It was a bad game, not the end of the world — and I hope it won’t discourage you from taking stock, regrouping and coming back to the table.

Yes, it was dreadful, even from my standpoint. I was ashamed. I was overly ambitious with the idea I had and then completely lost control of the game.

So, I want to apologize for your bad experience. My only defenses are a) I am a relatively inexperienced GM (who’d a thunk?) and b)this game could not be play tested as my other two Stargate games were. I can tell you that immediately after your session on Thursday, I went back and, with my two other friends (far more experienced GMs), completely re-wrote the adventure. I hope for the better.

Again, I apologize for the bad experience.

Thank you for allowing me to post this apology.

http://akaihyo.livejournal.com/94734.html

Sorry I missed catching up with you and the seminar though. Maybe next year.

John: Sure, I can pony up some details on the three sucktacular games. (There’s a bit more background along with the photos, too, if you haven’t checked those out.)

I’m going to try and answer Streamweaver’s question in the process (good question, BTW).

Railroading was a common theme for all three. The GM for SG-99 was okay, and we had some choices in where to go — but they really didn’t matter. One of us was going to get killed and reanimated no matter what. That’s not necessarily a poor choice for a con event — time is limited, after all — but when the adventure is boring, it stands out.

My favorite part was that he offered that player two choices about how to handle it, and complained repeatedly afterwards that the player had chosen the “wrong one.” So…why was there a choice at all?

Add in the hackneyed plot — we were all inside a VR simulation gone bad — and it turned out very poorly. On the plus side, it only took two hours.

“Undeath Before Dishonor” had so many lowlights that it’s hard to know where to start. We had to tweak our characters without knowing what was coming up, which is always a bad idea at con games. We got zero character background (zero!) and minimal instruction on what to do.

Blundering around, we found out that the GM could only do two NPCs: 1) growling, over-the-top evil guy, and 2) flamboyant gay guy. The latter reached the point of actually being offensive — it was not a loving characterization in any way.

He also brought one die to the game: a d6 with a little face on each side (frowny, neutral, happy, etc.). That was what he rolled for most things, and this was d20.

Speaking to Streamweaver’s point, we all got bad vibes when we sat down. But we didn’t want to jump to comclusions, so we gave it a chance. After an hour, it was clearly an unsalvageable game. We did what we could with what we had, and when we realized it was pointless, I tried to derail the game.

“Escape!” was a lot like “Undeath,” in that we also had to tweak characters with no knowledge of what to expect. I was playing a pilot, and WEG Star Wars has 5 or 6 piloting skills. I asked which ones I might want to focus on, and the GM didn’t want to give me any details.

So I picked four of them, but forget that in SW repulsorlifts are more common than hovers — and wouldn’t you know, all the piloting we needed to do was with repulsorlift craft?

For an hour, literally every roll — including near-max rolls for our skill levels — had the same results: Imperials damage our vehicles, we get herded towards more Imperials. It was clear that we were supposed to get captured — so why not just start us out captured, and give us an extra hour to do something fun?

We always sit down with a pretty neutral slate, but with games like these it’s not hard to see that you’re in for a trainwreck. Flaws are fine, but when they outnumber the positives there’s no point in sticking around. I’ll play my ass off if it’s worthwhile, but it would have been a waste of time in all three of these games.

Jeff: All four of us loved playing HEX, and I wound up picking up a copy. You guys really nailed how to start fresh: It’s a solid game, it’s got several unique elements, the book is beautiful and competitively priced, it’s an underused genre, the event was excellent, your booth was fun, everyone pitching it was friendly — seriously, good stuff across the board. My only suggestion would be to sell some cheaper style point chips — they rocked, but they cost too much.

I’d love to stay in touch, and if you need a dependable freelancer I hope you’ll drop me a line.

Also, it was a real pleasure having you and the rest of the gang play in my game. You guys were great! Let’s stay in touch and hopefully hook up again next year (if not sooner).

The Dragonfire wood tile booth made me drool like no other at origins. I was thinking of hauling my laptop down and having them etch something on the cover of it. Lord would I love to have a laser etcher.

The Zuca was pretty hot too. I was talking to the daughter of the lady who created it at origins. It was built for one of her children whohad walking problems due to a disease. It was supposed to be a way to carry his books and still be able to sit down when he needed. They built it strong and tough too. That thing could withstand some serious beatings.

Thanks for the info on new GMing aids, they look interesting.

GamerChick: With a bit of work, I could dig up who the GMs of Terror were, but without some sort of database to dump that into it’d just be a fart in a hurricane.

Phil is working on notes for the seminar, although I don’t know exactly what he has in mind. I would be more than happy to chat with you about GMing anytime, feel free to drop me a line.

Scott: I think it was just bad luck. Getting random events produced some great results too, so it’s hard to pin it on that.

My standards have certainly changed, and that’s part of it. These would have been bad events no matter when they’d soiled my personal gaming timeline, but unlike my early years at GenCon I put up with a lot less shit these days.

More years of gaming has also meant more amazing gaming experiences to weight the crap against.

Abulia: Nah, it was only nominally a Stargate game. It really could have been anything. SG-4 may yet ride again.

Frank: I was in “Ooooh, shiny!” mode when I found the Dragon Fire booth with the tiles. Apart from getting the vague impression that their prices were good, I didn’t do anything useful. Hopefully their website will get fleshed out before too long.

Bento: Sweet — thanks!