OK. Sunday night I was just posting to complain about some of my pet peeves. Now for the full review, in case you care-
Slot 1 - Exalted
This game was cancelled because the GM left stuff at home and didn't feel prepared. This bugged me...a lot. All of the other games were filled so this caused a bunch of people to lose a night of gaming. He should have just ad-libbed something, but instead he gets the pre-game jitters and quits. I'll make sure to not sign up for one of his games next year. I don't want to risk it. One of the players in the Exalted game jumped in and ran a diceless game of 7th Sea, which turned out to be a pretty neat game for a last minute replacement.
Slot 2- Big Trouble in Little Shadow
A fun game, but too much time was spent on the puzzle and not enough on the roleplaying. (see Sunday's post) I liked my character a lot. I created him just for this game. He's an Amberite who is sick with a mysterious illness that seems to have no cure. He is so weak that he was unable to walk the pattern, so he has compensated by throwing himself in to the study of Trump Artistry.
Slot 3- Flotsam & Jetsam
KG did a good job as GM. The plot suffered a bit from the puzzle problem, but otherwise was fairly good. This was an elder's game. My first choice was Bleys, but he was already taken, so I took Caine. The game was set just after the Patternfall. I chose Caine because I saw him as a very easy one for me to play. He's got a lot in common with Alexander. He is sneaky and manipulative, but in the end he really is on the side of the angels. I think I did a pretty good job with him. I played up on the fact that he had let the family think he was dead for all that time. Then, in their time of need, he swoops in to save the day. Nobody says, "Caine! Thank goodness you're alive!" They don't thank him for saving the day. They just go on as if he never died (in their eyes). What's the point of going to all of the work to fake your death and save the day at a dramatically appropriate time, if noone gives you credit?
Slot 4 - The Heist
This was the first Throne War that I've ever run and I think it went really well. The characters were thieves trying to steal the Jewel of Judgement. Everybody schemed and plotted against eachother and I think they had a great time. Noone won, but a couple of people came pretty close. One character managed to sneak up behind King Eric while he was wearing the jewel. Unfortunately, she tried breaking his neck instead of using a knife or something. She had 5 pts in Strength. It didn't work. MD's character also came very close. Unfortunately, one of the other players shot her with a trump-powered pistol.
Slot 5 - Mercy & Forgiveness
This was MK and KL's new campaign, a sequel to last year's "Into the Abyss." I played Alexander's son Anoki. Raised in a native american-like society, he is a strong, noble man who acts a spiritual leader for his people. He has taken an active interest in helping Brand raise his children. I look forward to next year.
Slot 6 - Morpheus Calling
I took the game in a different direction than I planned and the was different than what I planned, but I actually think it was better than what I planned. The players managed to sneak in to Castle Amber and Morpheus redrew the Pattern. I'm thinking of doing a follow-up next year, "Morpheus Interrupted." We'll see. I already volunteered to run next year's costume LARP.
Slot 7- The Dreaming City
It went great. Once again, I changed the ending at last minute, but that was necessary because of one of the rules I added. Players were able to spend two glamour to act as a temporary GM telling me what they found when they searched for clues. Since the game was a mystery, I had to change the outcome so that all the clues made sense. It was a lot of fun and a great challenge for me as well as the players.
That was it. I didn't play in slot 8. I'd like to thank Liz for running the con. She did a wonderful job.
What can I say? Roleplaying is on my brain. I was thinking about the one game I played in and realized that the big thing a lot of GM's miss out on is catering to the character's concept. If you have a game where everyone can make their own characters, then they will create and want to play concepts that may not fit in to what you were planning. Many GMs just run the game as they planned, not adding anything or changing anything that allows the player to play the character they enjoy the way they want to play them. I don't try to be like that. I like to try and cater to what the player seems to want. This doesn't mean I scrap my plot, but I alter it a little and try to put in at least one scene where the player or character is in his or her element. For example, in "The Heist" JT built a combat monster named Alec. This guy was not the best at being sneaky, but excelled at fighting. Since the game was built around thievery, there was a point where Alec was sneaking around and ran into someof the elders. He was caught and beaten down. I could have left it there and had his character rotting in the dungeons. After all, he had failed at stealing the Jewel of Judgement and was captured: fair enough. However, that would have sucked for JT, since his character would have never done what he was designed to do. So he regained consciousness as the guards of Amber where dragging him to the dungeons of Kolvir. He had a great scene as he fought his way out of the dungeon. JT made a character based on Warfare because he wanted to play a character that fights. That was his concept. By working in a scene where he got to fight, I think he enjoyed the game more than he would have. Meanwhile, the sneaky lying characters got to lie to people and the sneaky cat-burglar types got to creep around Castle Amber. Everyone made a character they wanted to play and it's important if you are the GM to let them play those characters. Don't try and force them to become the characters you wanted in the story, like too many GMs do. (edit- I typed this out the other night and I was really tired from the con. It was filled with typos and poor grammar. I just tried cleaning it up, but I didn't change the content.)
The con was a lot of fun and all of my games were (I believe) successful. Out of the games I played in, I enjoyed MK and KL's game the most. With two GM's, MK's style of game works a lot better and the players and GMs all did a great job. I wasn't sure that I wanted to play in this and find myself commited to an annual campaign, but in the end I think it was worth it.
I have decided that I do not like plots where the characters have to solve some problem that makes their abilities useless until they figure it out. Many of these gaes don't have many NPC's, so the players have to keep looking at eachother saying "Have we tried this yet?" I played in two games like that and while I enjoyed myself, I could have enjoyed myself much more. Sometimes you need have a few exciting NPC's so players can talk to them, wondering if perhaps they are the villian or if they have the clues they need. Without any NPC's in these games, you knew that your fellow PC's were in the dark with you and there wasn't much roleplaying where you try to get the answers out of them. These games are exercises in problem solving, not roleplaying. The GM's for these games did a good job of running them, but the concept of their game makes it tough to enjoy them if you're not a player who enjoys solving puzzles or if you were more interested in playing a certain character concept that doesn't try to solve puzzles.
Sebastian is dead. Alexander stabbed him and fled into shadow. I, the player, know that Alex has made a horrible mistake. He has made Veronica (Carla's character) a bitter enemy. He has used he knife to draw Sebastian's Psyche into himself, which will probably have dire consequences. Worst of all for Alex, very few in the family will trust him now. They have no reason to fear him, but they will. At least one will hate him.
Corwin should have spoke to the family before releasing Sebastian. He could have tried to calm everyone down and convince them to give Sebastian a chance. Instead, he let Veronica convince him to release him from the sword. He was placed in the sword for his own protection, not ours. Corwin released him into a world of enemies and to completely doom him he took away his one defense. He let Alexander, who made it public knowledge he planned to kill Sebastian, spy on them with a pattern lens. When Sebastian was alone, Alexander struck. He didn't expect to be able to cross the shadows. He expected that Corwin or Bleys had a way to block the shadow from Alex's travel. Why else would they let him spy?
Sometimes I don't understand my own characters. In MK's Amber game I play Alexander. "Hangs out with the wrong crowd" is probably the best way to describe Alex. The son of Corwin he was raised on an Earth created when Corwin created his pattern. When he was about 16 he ran away from home. At that time the date was about 1918 CE. He started running numbers in Harlem. Later, he moved to Detroit where he smuggled Rum from Canada. He worked his way up the ranks of the mafia quickly. Eventually he was shot down by Feds in an ambush that to this day he believes his brother, Sebastian was responsible for. He "miraculously" survived the shooting and was sent to jail. While in prison he found religion. More to the point, he discovered several of them. He studied many of the religions of the world.
Eventually Alex left "the box." He travelled to the Courts of Chaos to find someone to teach him how to shapeshift. Alex had learned Shamanism on the shadow earth and had been a natural at shapeshifting in his vision-quests. He wanted to be able to shapeshift for real. He apprenticed to Nestor who also taught him about the Logrus and how to feed off the emotions of others. Alexander had become a form of psychic vampire.
Alexander can be a bit of a contradiction. One minute he is very spiritual, the next he is ruthlessly executing his enemies and enjoying their suffering. Last night, Carla and I were watching "The Sopranos" an there was a great scene that helps explain Alex. Tony Soprano was asked by Dr. Melfie if he thought he would go to hell. Tony told her he didn't. He isn't the type of person who goes to hell. She asked him what king of people deserved hell. He said murderers, child molesters and all the "real sick fucks." He's not like that. He's a soldier and he's in a war. The people he kills are also soldiers. They know the risks when they get involved.