Buckets 2010: Sunday
After the traditional Too Little Sleep, and a brief burst of Googling, I found a Dogs town to run for Jan in the morning slot.
Nazareth Summit (Dogs in the Vineyard)
This was my first time running Dogs and it went very well. I initially worried that the four characters were overly focused, but it worked fine for a one-off. The four characters had quite divergent attitudes on sin and punishment, which made for a lot of negotiation at the end. Here's what Thorog had to say:
I’m a dirty hippie indie gamer. That’s why for me the highlight of the con was Hamish Cameron’s Dogs in the Vineyard. Vincent Baker‘s classic game of morality and hard choices in pre-Civil War Utah had the party investigating an impending marriage in the village of Nazareth Summit. Lex demonstrated the means by which one may escalate from talking to gunfire as Brother Jebidiah and Brother Cyrus has a disagreement about scripture in a deserted barn, and the session ended with the Dogs heading back to Bridal Falls with a reluctant young man in tow. Perhaps six months of religious training will stop him sinning.
You can read the rest of his account here
Santa's Return (FATE)
Shortly after Echoes filled up before the first session, a couple of keen FATE players added a slot to the Sunday afternoon timetable headed "Fate by Hamish. Please, please, please!" which was soon fully subscribed. Unable to resist my fans (and potential fans), and wanting to run an un-prepped FATE game anyway, I acquiesced to the will of the masses. We created the setting collaboratively (super villains who had conquered the world and had to face a new menace) and created characters with a abbreviated skill tree (5,4,4,3,3,3), five aspects and a weakness. Those five aspects had to include a nemesis and a relationship with another character, and could also include minions, gear, powers, etc. The limited number of aspects and the reasonably specific guidance provided by the genre proved sufficient to create a fun group of characters in a short period of time. I'll post all of those (quite tongue-in-check) characters later [ 1] [ 2] [ 3].
In the end, almost the entire game was played out in the conference room of the group's secret headquarters. I narrated an object flying in from space, had the players make declarations and maneuvers, and played off the facts that the group created about the game to weave an entertaining and gonzo final session game. Highlights for me included subverting The Internet (played by fraser_by_proxy) to the service of Santa and the rivalry between Global Crisis (adrexia) and Major Catastrophe.
I'm not a proponent of the theory that the last game of a con will necessarily and preferably be silly in tone, but in this case, it worked quite well.
163
Nazareth Summit (Dogs in the Vineyard)
This was my first time running Dogs and it went very well. I initially worried that the four characters were overly focused, but it worked fine for a one-off. The four characters had quite divergent attitudes on sin and punishment, which made for a lot of negotiation at the end. Here's what Thorog had to say:
I’m a dirty hippie indie gamer. That’s why for me the highlight of the con was Hamish Cameron’s Dogs in the Vineyard. Vincent Baker‘s classic game of morality and hard choices in pre-Civil War Utah had the party investigating an impending marriage in the village of Nazareth Summit. Lex demonstrated the means by which one may escalate from talking to gunfire as Brother Jebidiah and Brother Cyrus has a disagreement about scripture in a deserted barn, and the session ended with the Dogs heading back to Bridal Falls with a reluctant young man in tow. Perhaps six months of religious training will stop him sinning.
You can read the rest of his account here
Santa's Return (FATE)
Shortly after Echoes filled up before the first session, a couple of keen FATE players added a slot to the Sunday afternoon timetable headed "Fate by Hamish. Please, please, please!" which was soon fully subscribed. Unable to resist my fans (and potential fans), and wanting to run an un-prepped FATE game anyway, I acquiesced to the will of the masses. We created the setting collaboratively (super villains who had conquered the world and had to face a new menace) and created characters with a abbreviated skill tree (5,4,4,3,3,3), five aspects and a weakness. Those five aspects had to include a nemesis and a relationship with another character, and could also include minions, gear, powers, etc. The limited number of aspects and the reasonably specific guidance provided by the genre proved sufficient to create a fun group of characters in a short period of time. I'll post all of those (quite tongue-in-check) characters later [ 1] [ 2] [ 3].
In the end, almost the entire game was played out in the conference room of the group's secret headquarters. I narrated an object flying in from space, had the players make declarations and maneuvers, and played off the facts that the group created about the game to weave an entertaining and gonzo final session game. Highlights for me included subverting The Internet (played by fraser_by_proxy) to the service of Santa and the rivalry between Global Crisis (adrexia) and Major Catastrophe.
I'm not a proponent of the theory that the last game of a con will necessarily and preferably be silly in tone, but in this case, it worked quite well.
163