Gamex: Saturday
Dogs in the Vineyard: Blue Moon Branch
I bought Dogs at one of my first Strategicons, read it though, but didn't really grok the mechanics sufficiently to be confident of smoothly GMing a game. Accordingly, I've been trying to play in a game since sometime in 2007, without success. So I was excited that I had successfully pre-registered for two Dogs game this time. My first was Dan's game on Saturday morning.
I'd been a bit ill in the days before the convention and while I didn't notice until the end, my Diaspora game killed my voice. This became the theme of the convention for me. My voice was fine throughout Diaspora, but virtually none-existent in Leftovers, so I created an intimidating child, mute because of an eye inside their mouth. In this Dogs game I played a soft voiced gunslinger tired of the corruption he'd seen everywhere (my favourite trait: Don't make me load my gun d10).
Dog's is essentially about Mormon paladins riding from town to town delivering mail and dispensing justice. We arrived in a town aflame and under attack. We drove them off the bandits and soon discovered a couple of sins. Many of the people were about to abandon the badly damaged town, but I convinced them to stay with the understanding that we'd put a stop to the bandits and help with rebuilding. So we put the inquisition on hold while we dealt with that. We tracked them down, captured them and made them help rebuild the town. The sins were about a girl who wanted to marry a boy in the town and her father who wanted her to marry 'up'. We convinced the father of the error of his ways. The final shot was the townsfolk and bridal party processing from the church to a meadow outside town to continue hanging the remaining bandits.
This time the convention was at the Sheraton rather than the nearby (and inferior) Radisson, and the lunch set-up was both better and cheaper.
3:16, Carnage Amongst the Stars: Delta Company
After lunch I ran 3:16, the game of space marines/starship troopers killing aliens. It was the best game of 3:16 I've been in. At the start of this game, my voice was at it's low point of the weekend, but fortunately I had Colin in my game, so I arranged for him to be the Sergeant and passed him very brief mission orders which he elaborated magnificently. We played four planets in four hours (standard pace in my experience), but with the best mix of roleplaying and bug hunting I've seen yet. One of the tricky things about 3:16 is getting that mix right and not having it just be a dice rolling, threat token removal exercise, and this was not. I'm sure having only four players helped, and I'm sure the fact that two of them were experienced story gamers aware of that potential pitfall also helped. The other two players were great too, so I had great groups for both my games. I think the biggest factor was the addition of sub missions on each planet to add extra flavour and purpose right off the bat.
There were highlights aplenty as Delta Company eradicated the exploding hexapedal reptilian dogs of the deserts of Durer while repairing a orbital relay; prepared a latrine station in the rainforests of Monet; destroyed the tripedal laser-eyed robots of Warhol in a simulated training mission; before showing the humanoid robots of Klimt the glory of Terra in a blistering propaganda campaign. The enduring image from the finale was from the final physical and propaganda assault, in which Captain Fuller raised to the camera the severed head of one of the last robots and screamed to the planet of the might of Terra while blood dripped from the robot's helmet.
It was at this point that I discovered the healing powers of 3:16 as my voice had improved over the course of the game! I celebrated with Pann's fried chicken. Ooooo yeah.
Dogs in the Vineyard: White River Crossing
My evening game was James' Dog's game. My Dog was a converted native who had been bullied during training and had a very complicated relationship with the Faith (my favourite traits: The Faith is open to all d10, Hidden resentment of what the faith has done 2d4 (thanks Colin!), and My people will only be accepted when the word is perfected d6 (suggested by James from my initiation scene)). This game featured a thick web of sin which had led to sorcery and genuine demonic influence which almost killed a dog, but we ran short on time so the finale was somewhat compacted.
The day ended in hilarious fashion with a Venture Brothers game of Inspectres that was essentially a bunch of friends sitting around doing Venture Brothers voices. As I hadn't watched the show at that point (although I did remember midway that I had seen one episode) I didn't play, but it was a brilliant couple of hours, particularly the interchange between Morgan's The Monarch and Mike's 21 and 24. The show has now gone to the top of my must-watch list, and when I got home last night, I watched the pilot.
115
I bought Dogs at one of my first Strategicons, read it though, but didn't really grok the mechanics sufficiently to be confident of smoothly GMing a game. Accordingly, I've been trying to play in a game since sometime in 2007, without success. So I was excited that I had successfully pre-registered for two Dogs game this time. My first was Dan's game on Saturday morning.
I'd been a bit ill in the days before the convention and while I didn't notice until the end, my Diaspora game killed my voice. This became the theme of the convention for me. My voice was fine throughout Diaspora, but virtually none-existent in Leftovers, so I created an intimidating child, mute because of an eye inside their mouth. In this Dogs game I played a soft voiced gunslinger tired of the corruption he'd seen everywhere (my favourite trait: Don't make me load my gun d10).
Dog's is essentially about Mormon paladins riding from town to town delivering mail and dispensing justice. We arrived in a town aflame and under attack. We drove them off the bandits and soon discovered a couple of sins. Many of the people were about to abandon the badly damaged town, but I convinced them to stay with the understanding that we'd put a stop to the bandits and help with rebuilding. So we put the inquisition on hold while we dealt with that. We tracked them down, captured them and made them help rebuild the town. The sins were about a girl who wanted to marry a boy in the town and her father who wanted her to marry 'up'. We convinced the father of the error of his ways. The final shot was the townsfolk and bridal party processing from the church to a meadow outside town to continue hanging the remaining bandits.
This time the convention was at the Sheraton rather than the nearby (and inferior) Radisson, and the lunch set-up was both better and cheaper.
3:16, Carnage Amongst the Stars: Delta Company
After lunch I ran 3:16, the game of space marines/starship troopers killing aliens. It was the best game of 3:16 I've been in. At the start of this game, my voice was at it's low point of the weekend, but fortunately I had Colin in my game, so I arranged for him to be the Sergeant and passed him very brief mission orders which he elaborated magnificently. We played four planets in four hours (standard pace in my experience), but with the best mix of roleplaying and bug hunting I've seen yet. One of the tricky things about 3:16 is getting that mix right and not having it just be a dice rolling, threat token removal exercise, and this was not. I'm sure having only four players helped, and I'm sure the fact that two of them were experienced story gamers aware of that potential pitfall also helped. The other two players were great too, so I had great groups for both my games. I think the biggest factor was the addition of sub missions on each planet to add extra flavour and purpose right off the bat.
There were highlights aplenty as Delta Company eradicated the exploding hexapedal reptilian dogs of the deserts of Durer while repairing a orbital relay; prepared a latrine station in the rainforests of Monet; destroyed the tripedal laser-eyed robots of Warhol in a simulated training mission; before showing the humanoid robots of Klimt the glory of Terra in a blistering propaganda campaign. The enduring image from the finale was from the final physical and propaganda assault, in which Captain Fuller raised to the camera the severed head of one of the last robots and screamed to the planet of the might of Terra while blood dripped from the robot's helmet.
It was at this point that I discovered the healing powers of 3:16 as my voice had improved over the course of the game! I celebrated with Pann's fried chicken. Ooooo yeah.
Dogs in the Vineyard: White River Crossing
My evening game was James' Dog's game. My Dog was a converted native who had been bullied during training and had a very complicated relationship with the Faith (my favourite traits: The Faith is open to all d10, Hidden resentment of what the faith has done 2d4 (thanks Colin!), and My people will only be accepted when the word is perfected d6 (suggested by James from my initiation scene)). This game featured a thick web of sin which had led to sorcery and genuine demonic influence which almost killed a dog, but we ran short on time so the finale was somewhat compacted.
The day ended in hilarious fashion with a Venture Brothers game of Inspectres that was essentially a bunch of friends sitting around doing Venture Brothers voices. As I hadn't watched the show at that point (although I did remember midway that I had seen one episode) I didn't play, but it was a brilliant couple of hours, particularly the interchange between Morgan's The Monarch and Mike's 21 and 24. The show has now gone to the top of my must-watch list, and when I got home last night, I watched the pilot.
115