#RPGaDAY2015, Day 15: Longest Campaign

Today’s #RPGaDAY2015 topic is Longest Campaign Played, which threatens to fall into the horrible space that Let Me Tell You About My Character does. ((My first time at Gen Con, I was chatting with Adam Jury and Paul Tevis came up and we were talking about things, like humans do, and I mentioned a steampunk costuming booth up the aisle and Paul said he was looking for a good vest for his character in a LARP but he’s kind of picky because the character does this type of thing and then Paul just stops and says, “Oh god, I was just ‘Let Me Tell You About My Character’, wasn’t I?” We all laughed and Paul never returned to Gen Con.)) When someone tells you about their character, it’s a bit like someone trying to describe an awesome movie in about three minutes, which means leaving out a lot of the context and all the other things that makes what you’re describing awesome. Plus, the life of an adventurer kind of meanders around a lot when you think of it. It’s not as straightforward and concise as a novel or movie and just kind of wanders all over the place, narratively, and seems to go on just a little bit to long, just like most of the sentences in this paragraph.

Now, imagine that with four other characters, told in the same amount of time.

I don’t really play long campaigns any more. There’s just too much to throw together, too much cruft to craft. And there are too many good games out there I’d love to play. Back in my high school and college days, it was absolutely fine to run a game from level 1 on up to 20, or have a game that lasted two years. But as a GM, trying to get that done now that I have a family, work, and the remnants of my gaming group spread across the continent, it’s too much of an effort to maintain a long-running roleplaying game campaign. ((I’ll eventually put the Low Prep, No Prep talk I gave at the first GM Conference online, where I went into trying to manage time outside the game.))

adventure-pathsPlaying in a campaign is easier: you really just have to show up and play. During this time of running short campaigns, my wife and I were in a Pathfinder game that ran every other weekend for two years, but that was nothing like the weekly games of our undergraduate years. That Pathfinder game was from one of the Adventure Paths which meant all the heavy lifting was done for the GM: he just needed to add his own flavor to the mixed metaphor. Back in the days of AD&D2 or WEG Star Wars, we created our own stuff, maybe playing the occasional published adventure. I don’t think I could run a long game in a complex game like Pathfinder without the aid of an Adventure Path to guide me along. Prep time is just a killer.

Brisco-castSo, longest campaign. I simply have to go back to the days of college when we played each weekend for a few hours, marching our way through a pseudo-medieval magical fantasy realm for a year or two or the big magically-infused cyberpunk game that had seven players and I made The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. canonical to the campaign. But in the past fifteen years? A Dresden Files game that ran for eight months. A Blue Planet game that ran for about five. The Pathfinder game that only met every two weeks. Nine game sessions of Primetime Adventures. Lady Blackbird with six or seven sessions. Six sessions of Apocalypse World. The Lacuna one-shot. The time for the grand, long campaign was back then. Gotta prep for now.

#RPGaDAY, Last Year: Day 15 – Your Favorite Convention Game

As I mentioned in the yesterday’s Last Year post, I haven’t been to a convention since this was written. The last convention game I ran was a year before this was written, which was pretty good. If the game I wrote about below didn’t happen, the Edge of the Empire game I ran for a group of friends who moved away from each other, only getting to see each other at Gen Con would be my favorite. But the Call of Cthulhu game that Derek ran was also a “group of friends who moved away” story, only this time I was one of the friends.

This post is all about my friend, Derek, who I wish I could play games with just one more time.


Favorite Convention Game. Despite organizing and running a game convention and attending multiple Gen Cons, I haven’t played many RPGs at conventions. Boardgames, sure. RPGs? Few.

No, wait.

It has to be the Call of Cthulhu game at Gen Con, run by Derek Rex.

Derek hadn’t been to Gen Con for a while and it looked like he wasn’t going to be able to go when he realized that certain things in his schedule at work fell into place that he could attend the last half of it. So he went from Arizona to Indiana on a whim and I had a call from a friend saying that Derek was up and would I like to play Call of Cthulhu with him?

CoC was Derek’s favorite rpg. I would see him spending hours prepping for his CoC games at RinCon. He would go to the Tucson Historical Society to get a copy of a map of 1920’s Bisbee and photocopies of early 20th century phonebooks for props and inspiration. He would skip playing a session of gaming to put the final details on the pregenerated characters for his next game slot. He loved playing CoC and loved running it. He was one of the best game runners I knew.

You may notice I’ve been using past tense when writing about him.

Derek died not that long ago. The cancer came back. He was an amazing man and a great friend. It’s strange to think that there’s a world without him in it. It’s strange to think that night was the last time I saw him.

But when we were playing – finally able to sit in on one of Derek’s games – he was alive, so alive! The boyish twinkle in his eye, the smiles as we puzzled out the mysteries, the laughter at the surprises we took! Oh, my, he was fantastic! That was a great evening, then it was over, and I never saw him again.

I remember him from when he ran a Pathfinder game at our house every two weeks. We were playing through Rise of the Runelords and our characters were being interrogated and we’re all having a lot of fun and then it was my character’s turn to be put in the interrogation box and that’s when I remembered that Derek used to be an interrogator for the US Army. And his current job was training interrogators. And that’s when I realized that my character was in serious trouble.

That was amazing.

It was great to finally play Derek’s favorite game with him. After knowing him for so many years, I’m glad the last thing I did with him was something that he loved so much.

derek

#RPGaDAY2015, Day 14: Should I Attend Gen Con?

For #RPGaDAY2015, there’s this thing in small print: “Feel free to post something different if you don’t have an RPG that matches the description.” Given the difficulty I am having coming up with 500 words to determine what an “accessory” is ((Today’s real topic: What is your favorite RPG accessory?)) and why it doesn’t seem to cover supplements, plus that in my Last Year posts, everyone is currently at Gen Con 2014, I’m going to grab onto that and talk about Gen Con. Specifically, Should I Attend Gen Con in the Future?

Gen Con 2015, Day 1: Opening of the Exhibit Hall, courtesy of Gen Con Indy’s facebook page.

I have been privately debating that question over the past few months. This morning, I think I’ve made up my mind. No, I won’t be attending Gen Con again, unless it’s with a company. ((Or, unless it’s a vacation with the family. But there’s many other places I’d rather visit with a family than Indianapolis in August.))

I’ve been to three or four Gen Cons, primarily for networking, and I’ve always found it difficult to connect with people at the show. There’s a list of people and companies I want to talk to, but I can somewhat reliably find them only at the Exhibit Hall, where I am acutely aware that the time I take up with someone at a booth is time they aren’t selling product to customers. Each year, the hall gets packed with more and more people, so that’s fewer and fewer chances I get to interact with people I want to look at for mentoring or work. It’s difficult to meet people outside of hall hours as well, because the people I want to meet are meeting up with old friends that they don’t get to see except once a year and who wants to devote time to a complete stranger?

I didn’t attend this year, which is a shame, because this would have been the first year where I’ve finally broken through with layout. I’d be recognized by a much larger group of people in the industry than in years prior. In theory, I would have been able to actually network outside the hall hours. But is it worth it?

GenCon2012Crowd-1024x768
…and this was an image from Gen Con 2012, the last year I attended. I was actually at the booth directly behind and one space down from whomever took this photo. (Image from NerdTrek.com — click through to visit their site.)

ken and robinThis morning, I’m listening to the first segment of the most recent podcast of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, and Ken Hite is talking about how this the first year he didn’t get a chance to walk the dealer hall because it was so busy. ((The relevant stuff is around the 14:00 – 20:00 minute mark. I couldn’t see how to embed the player here.)) ((Translation: Almost no time for freelancers like me to talk to established professionals or the people that I need to talk to.)) Robin Laws says that in previous years of the convention, you could wander halls at a quiet time and introduce yourself to others, but now there simply is none of that quiet time where that can happen: “The chances of being able to strike up the casual interaction on which so much networking in any field is based is going to be reduced because at night, when we have a chance to sit down and unwind, we’re going to be with our tightest homies and not seem to be… approachable.” ((Although the Diana Jones Award is a great place to be, but with the move to the new place — the old place closed — it’s way too loud to jump into conversations. Plus, most of the times I’ve been there, it’s difficult to get into those groups because people sit at tables with their professional colleagues and there’s limited seating. It’s very awkward to have that casual interaction Robin speaks of when you’re the only one standing at the edge of a booth that’s packed with people who have known each other for longer than the two minutes you’ve known them. Intimidating, even. Even if they are great people and are happy to see you, the physicality of the social setting subtley tells you that you’re not part of that group.))

And then Ken agrees, suggesting that this is a time when people might want to look at creators’ and contacts’ convention schedules outside of Gen Con. Gen Con is more for boothwork, playing demos, and living the gamer life 24/7. But it’s no longer the best for networking and freelancers. Maybe it should shift to another convention, he suggests: “I hate to say it, because Gen Con used to be great one-stop shopping for freelancers… I would find it amazing if a freelancer was able to get two words of quality time, edgewise, with a busy booth owner.

If folks like Robin Laws and Ken Hite are saying it’s rough for someone who is going to Gen Con to find work, yeah, maybe it’s time to try someplace else.

Earlier this year, I was discussing possible Origins and Gen Con plans ((I didn’t attend either, due to various reasons.)) with some people on twitter. Origins seems to be a much lower-stress level convention. There’s time to talk to gaming industry professionals. There’s the Big Bar on 2.

Gen Con is expensive if you’re doing it solo. Not the convention, with a four-day pass coming in around $80, but travel expenses, lodging, food. For 2014, Ron Blessing and I (and hopefully his wife, Vern) were going to do This Just In…From Gen Con. ((TJI 2014 didn’t happen for a number of reasons. Some of them are in this post from last year.)) In preparation for the trip, we looked at what the cost of attending the show was, and how much we would have to raise in sponsorship. About $1100 for the hotel room ((The room rate included internet access for Wednesday through Sunday, flying out Monday morning)) and between $400-600 for plane tickets. Plus transport between airport and hotel. Food: budget in maybe $30 for food a day. That’s a lot for just one person to go, looking for work, even if the cost of lodging was split three ways. ((Which I’ve done before, but two different hotels on two different trips wound up charging my card for the full amount instead of splitting it three ways like they were supposed to.)) Do I really get $1500 worth of work from attending Gen Con, meeting people for moments, and handing out business cards? Would I have gotten work without fronting a third of a thousand dollars, plane tickets, and eating lunch and dinner out for four days straight? Probably. Maybe.

But now that I’m established in the hobby games market — and worked on two ENnie-award winning products this year — is Gen Con neccessary for me, going on my own?

I can only come up with “not really”.

I’m looking at Origins 2016 for next year for me-time. For Gen Con 2016, if I attend, I’ll be there as part of a group effort and you’ll probably see me working at a booth. If things work out.