Claimh Solais

Ambercon 2005: 4 days of Peace, Love and Diceless Gaming

I almost did not make it to Ambercon this year. I started getting very sick at work on Wednesday. When I went home, I went straight to bed and slept until the next morning. Thurday, I spent most of the day laying around, hoping I'd start feeling better. I tried to get game preperation done throughout the day but that did not happen.

Thursday Night: Luckilly, I started feeling good enough in time to pack and get to the con on time. Carla and I got there about 5:00. She went out to have dinner while I laid down in the room for a bit.

Slot 1: Le CygneMy first game of the con was Ginger Stamply and Michael Croft's Le Cygne. I was little worried about this one since I was jumping into the second episode of a series game, but I had a really good time. The group of characters did not have very strong motivations for the plot but it was fun seeing how the crew of "The Swan" palyed off of eachother and how my four armed blue woman fit into the cast.

Slot 2: One Night in HeeratThis is the first time I have ever played in any of Chris Kindred's games and I was curious. I had heard quite a bit about him and have enjoyed discussing gaming with him and having him as a player in one of the episodes of Gillian, the Vampire Slayer. Chris seems to let people create their own characters for the scenarios and then tries to create and have players create associations between eachother. He seems to supply little plot and let the chips fall where they may with little prepared. (I do a lot of adlibbing myself, so I can appreciate this. It is not easy.) Having people create their own characters like that and build relations in game give me an idea why so many of his games turn into campaigns. When you build a character for that and build a strong place for him in the world that is all your creation, you want to continue playing the character more than if your character was just a few stats or a pre-gen.

The plot had some fun moments and it had its slow parts. I was disappointed that my character did not get more chances to do what he was built to do, tinker with people's cybernetics and ....be a weasel. I don't think he ever got into a situation where he got to interact much with an NPC but that is what happens when a game has 8 or more players and only one GM. The group of players was really good, so not having any NPCs to interact with wasn't so bad.

Slot 3: The End of All RoadsThis was the first of five games in a row I would be running. In it, a group of Amberite children from out in shadow were called to Amber by a spell, giving them the ability to shadow -walk and the urge to go to Amber. It was fun, although not stellar. I felt a little ill-prepared for the game and I feel it showed. Still, the players seemed to have fun and there were some great memorable scenes.

Slot 4: Splinters of Amber: So, I had to scrap the plot I was originally going to run for the LARP this year due to lack of players. This left me without a lot and I could not think of a LARP plot to run with only 4-5 players. I did not come up with something until the Monday before the con. (Talk about cutting it close.) This left me trying to gather the props and plan the details in a week and after getting sick Wednesday night, I did not complete making the clues I wanted to leave for the LARPers. So, the game was not anywhere near as good as I would have liked it to have been.

The group still seemed to have fun considering what I handed them was basically a puzzle plot with elements of bargaining, since only so many characters could benefit from solving the puzzle and who gains from the solving of the puzzle would be based on the bargains made earlier in the night.

Slot 5: Brave New Krypton: Two games were down and neither of them turned out very good. So, I was really glad to go into this game with a scenario that I know had worked out well before and in a genre I am very comfortable with. I ran the game system-less although I did use a deck of cards to determine initiative order in much the same way as I used it in Buffy at the last game. The card deck initiative went over very well and the scenario was a big success. (The players told me afterwords that they were very nervous when I brought out the card deck but after it started they enjoyed it and felt it fit very well with the genre.)

The characters for the game were Batman, Spider-Man, Magneto and Dr. Fate. In an alternate earth that was invaded and occupied by several hundred survivors of the planet Krypton, the PCs were members of the resistance. After meeting with another resistance leader, Lex Luthor, at a hotel in Livonia, MI (that should have been familiar to the con attendees), a battle in the atrium of the hotel between the group and three Kryptonians broke out. Thanks to Magneto flinging around Metallo (one of Lex Luthor's creations, a cyborg with a human brain and a Kryptonite heart), the group managed to defeat the three aliens and took two as hostages (including General Zod of "kneel before" fame). On the run from the Kryptonians, they discovered and stopped a plan by some Earth scientists, Professor Ivo and T.O. Morrow, to turn Earth's sun red (which would have killed everyone on it) and discovered where Zod was keeping the old leaders of Krytpon after his coup and rescued them so that they could help them stop the General's followers.

It was a blast. This is probably the last time I will run "Brave New Krypton" (having run it at ACNW) but after this I am really looking forward to running another "Elseworlds" game next year.

Slot 6: Morpheus Drowning: I took on extra players at the last minute and with eight players to play with instead of five, I returned to trying to run the scenario as I had originally described it (with two seperate groups) rather than as I had planned it with one group. It really struggled as I attempted to keep all eight players entertained and failed. I also am getting the feeling that Morpheus is getting played out. The Matrix is effectively destroyed at this point and without the Matrix, the campaign loses what made it what it was. I have apparently allowed the players to succeed too well and the New Amber of the Morpheus-verse is now basically like Amber and the game is basically like an Amber game. Even the finale of this game was very standard Amber...and not in the good way. The game had some really fun scenes but it could have been and should have been better. I was originally not going to run Morpheus this year and now I wish I had run my other idea.
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Slot 7: Battlestar Pegasus: I think the system I came up with worked very well and sometime I will try to post my Diceless Battlestar Galactica rules. (modified Amber) The pacing worked out very well, complete with an explosive (but a little early) finale. Kudos to Jarrod who did a really good job playing the legendary Commander Cain and Ben who got to be the bad guy (as a Cylon agent on the Battlestar). They managed to escape an almost perfect trap by the Cylons and return to Caprica and alert the colonies of the coming Cylon invasion. The players seemed to have a good time and were enthusiatically involved with the plot, so I'm calling the game a success.

Slot 8: Hanging Out : I hung around the hotel for slot eight to visit with people and got to see Texorami in action, chat with Michael K. for a bit (whom I haven't talked to in a long while) and had a really neat conversation about game design with Seth B. that has me really exited about returning to work on the Dreaming City.

Overall: Despite many of games not going too well, I had a really great time and am really looking forward to next year. Hopefully, I'll be heatlier next year.

Posted by Nuadha at April 4, 2005 11:02 PM