GenCon 2007’s Lessons for Convention GMs

Learning from both sides of the screen is one of my maxims for GMs, and it was in the back of my mind throughout this year’s GenCon.

My group played in six events, and while we didn’t always agree on how they went, we tended to at least be in the same ballpark. By my count, we had three good games, two bad ones and one so-so one — all of which suggested some GMing tips specific to convention events.

I’ve never run a convention game, but I’ve played in a lot of them. In the 2006 TT post How to GM a Good Convention Game (from a Player’s POV), I identified nine general characteristics of a good con game — this time around, I’d like to do a quick case study of nine specific successes and failures.

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GMing Products at GenCon 2007

Following on the heels of yesterday’s post about Treasure Tables at GenCon, I’d like to share some of the cool stuff for GMs I saw (and bought!) at this year’s GenCon. (Pictured here is Kenzer & Company’s limited edition B.A. Felton bust (from “Knights of the Dinner Table”), which I’ll be using as my GMing mascot.)

Unlike last year, when I didn’t take pictures of any of the goodies I wrote about, this year I remembered to take at least a few photos.

Let’s dive into three GMing products that were new at this year’s con: Dr. Wizard’s Patented Elevation Indicator, the Dragonfire airship and Campaign Coins.

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TT at GenCon 2007: ENnies, Seminar, Meetup

This is the first of three GenCon-related posts this week, covering the ENnies, the Mastering Your GM-Fu seminar and the TT meetup at the Ram on Saturday afternoon.

The next two posts will be about GMing products at GenCon (Wednesday) and GMing lessons I learned as a player over the course of six events at this year’s con (Thursday).

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When a Campaign Drifts, Return to Dock

Have you ever started running a campaign and discovered that, for one reason or another, it’s no longer the game you wanted it to be?

I’m not talking about games that your players take in unexpected directions — those rock. I’m thinking of the ones that somehow drift into bad territory, becoming boring, disappointing your players or otherwise not living up to expectations.

I’ve run at least two: one that veered off course after a few sessions, but was still fairly fun (and ended due to out-of-game considerations), and one that died after the first session due to my own mistakes (it was awful).

What they had in common, though, was that both of them could have been salvaged — if I’d only put on my pink shirt, sat down with my players and said, “You know, this isn’t turning out so well — and it’s my fault. I’d like to go back to what I thought would make this an awesome game, and give it another shot. If it’s still no good, we’ll call it — but if you’re up for another session or two, I’d like to see if I can pull it out.”

The boat was adrift, but I’m sure I could have brought it back to the dock — and even if that still didn’t do the trick, at least I would have tried. Based on my experience, the moral of the story is not to give up on games that go astray. See what your players think, listen to suggestions if they provide them, do a little brainstorming about how to start rocking again, and get to it.

And if you need a hand, don’t hesitate to stop by our GMing forums — we’ll be happy to help.

(I got back from GenCon last night — details to follow! I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, so I may not be around much today. TT should be back to normal tomorrow. — Martin

Starship Tiles, Clever NPC Prep and the Obvious

Three great links from the GMing community:

• Behind the Screen: Listen to your players…: Dante of the new site Stupid Ranger posted this little gem about paying attention to what your players say at the table. Sounds obvious, right? Well, it is — but in a good way. Since getting feedback from your players can be…difficult…at times, it’s easy to forget that at other times, that feedback is right out there in the open.

• eFuture Tiles: Galactic Transport: I’ve always admired Skeleton Key Games’s badass minis-scale tiles, but none of them have ever grabbed me quite like these. If I was running a sci-fi game that used minis or counters, I’d pick up this PDF in a heartbeat. It presents 30 modular tiles that can be configured in a variety of ways to create different spaceship deck plans — and in a clever touch, the set includes 10 alternate tiles with cargo on them. (Via Gaming Report.)

• Interrogate Your NPCs — Follow Up: Linnaeus of My Play has posted the third article in his “Interrogate Your NPCs” series, and it’s just as good as the previous two (Whys and Hows and NPCs Need to be Needy). Here’s the teaser: “Instead of wasting hours preparing for a hundred alternatives that won’t happen, how does preparing for just two key ones sound?”

(I’m at GenCon from Wednesday, August 15th through Sunday, August 19th — two trips in a row makes for a busy month! As before, there will be a new post every day, but I won’t be able to respond to comments or reply to emails. I’ll be back with a full report next week — have a good time without me! — Martin

Heroes: The RPG and Converting Properties into Games

With our Stargate SG-4 campaign all wrapped up, my group’s been kicking around ideas for our next game. It looks like I’ll be GMing (w00t!), and one of the ideas that came up was Heroes: The RPG. I’ve never converted a property (book, movie, TV show, etc.) into game form before, so I’m curious how I’d go about it if that’s the concept we wind up going with.

I can’t be the only GM who has wondered about this, so I figured it’d make sense to gather tips on this general topic from GMs who have tackled it before. We’ve talked about GMing a licensed property RPG and Lost: The RPG previously here on TT, but this is a bit of a different spin on the topic.

In my group’s specific case, we’ve answered two big questions:

• System: White Wolf’s new World of Darkness rules, which are fairly light, rather flexible and seem like they would capture the show pretty well. We’re also all familiar with them, which is a plus.

• Powers: One of the guys in my group came up with a brilliant idea: each PC gets a single X-dot power from any nWoD book (Vampire, Werewolf, etc.) that feels appropriate. “X” would be determined after flipping through the books together — it might be • •, • • •, etc.

If we run with the Heroes idea, I’d feel pretty comfortable giving it a shot with just the baseline we’ve already established. More broadly, though, what should all GMs tackling this conversion process (for any property, to any system) take into consideration?

(I’m at GenCon from Wednesday, August 15th through Sunday, August 19th — two trips in a row makes for a busy month! As before, there will be a new post every day, but I won’t be able to respond to comments or reply to emails. I’ll be back with a full report next week — have a good time without me! — Martin

What’s Your Secret Campaign Crush?

I suspect every GM has an idea on the back burner for a campaign that they’d love to try sometime, but never seem to get around to.

Mine is a hybrid MechWarrior/BattleTech game where the PCs are all ‘mech pilots (and the RPG stuff is handled with a different system than MechWarrior, which looks awful), with the cool bit being that when they get into ‘mech battles, we switch to the BT rules. I’ve had that one rattling around up there for around eight years now, and never had the combination of time, inclination and group to try it out.

So how about it: What campaign concept have you always wanted to run, but never had a chance to try out?

(I’m at GenCon from Wednesday, August 15th through Sunday, August 19th — two trips in a row makes for a busy month! As before, there will be a new post every day, but I won’t be able to respond to comments or reply to emails. I’ll be back with a full report next week — have a good time without me! — Martin

All Holes Filled with Harn

An interesting side topic came up in the comments thread for Does Age Matter in Gaming?: sexual themes and younger players.

In thinking about this, two GMing angles came to mind:

• Deciding whether or not to incorporate sexual or other mature themes into your games at all.
• How that decision changes when you have younger players in your group.

I’ve never had to make the second call (mature themes and kids): when I was younger, so was everyone in my groups (and we were, at times, filthy little bastards); and now that I’m older, I’ve never GMed for kids.

In terms of the first angle, I generally steer clear of using sexual themes in my games. This is partly due to personal preference, and partly due to the complexities that surround this issue — it can get messy.

And in that vein, for this first day of GenCon 2007 I have a GenCon anecdote to share: The game my GenCon group refers to as “All Holes Filled with Harn.” As you might have guessed from the title, this post could be considered NSFW (not safe for work).

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