The ACNW report
bastille and I went to
AmberCon NorthWest this year,
along with rob_donoghue and debela for
the first time since 2002. The con's grown a fair amount (almost a hundred
people now), the Edgefield's changed some, and the game selection has moved
considerably further away from traditional Amber, but a good time was
definitely had. We'll be back next year, I hope, barring unforeseen
circumstances.
There was just a single Evil Hat game this year, Karm v. Osric (watch this space for a posting of the game materials). Sadly minus drivingblind this year, rob_donoghue and I enlisted the help of denyse and evilmagnus, the end result of which was high wackiness starting about midway through the game and ending in a bloodbath at the end (five of our sixteen PCs didn't make it to the end).
We had some truly magnificent moments, some nice "Obie" nominations, with folks from our game taking three of the "awards" -- bastille won "Most Heinous Betrayal", Mike Sullivan won "Best Quote", and Bernie Hsiung won "Best Improvised Solution" -- and I think all of our players had fun. All in all, I think the game went extremely well, if down somewhat unexpected lines -- much better than I had expected considering the amount of ad-hoc design and last-minute preparation that went into the game this year.
The details:
When we ran Women and Children back at ACNW '02, we had a lot of carefully balanced factions, allies and enemies and axes of play. Blood Ties, our '01 game along those lines, was pretty similar. This year was kind of raw chaos, partially because the game went through several major design revisions as it was written, and partially because the factions and alliances were considerably less clear-cut, with a lot of characters dealing with likely-conflicting desires and goals.
The game started off like we like to see these games starts -- little huddles of frantically plotting factions. Evil Hat games of this sort tend to require very little GMing (95% of the work goes into very detailed character write-ups, although at a character booklet length of as much as 30 pages this year, it was really too much detail). So we wandered around, listened to conversations, planted rumors, answered the occasional question, during the morning.
Then, around noon, Bernie, who was playing Quinn, the sorceror-gadgeteer, decided he was going to take losrpg's character, Spencer, who'd gotten the Dark Heart of corrupted love, up to his laboratory, in order to put him in his one working gadget, a machine that could detect fae magic. (That involves strapping the victim to a big vertical wheel and spinning it a bunch. I referred to it as "the centrifuge" and the name stuck.) Except that Quinn also had the Heart of Arden up in his laboratory, powering a weather machine, and the two Hearts in close proximity basically caused the weather to erupt in stormy fury.
That led to an afternoon full of two PCs trying to destroy the castle, another trying to save it, frantic politicking, wacky fae hijinks, jhkimrpg's Osric turning of the Heart of Arden into Rebma's analog to the Jewel of Judgement, and eventually, Oberon returning and doing a lot of yelling.
With these "historical" Amber games, I like to try to walk a fine line between reflecting canon history and ensuring that the players have full freedom of choice. Some of that worked out decently in this game -- Moins became the first ruler of Rebma (after Lir's death); the Rebman 'Jewel' became a weather artifact imbued with Pattern; Rebma rose in power and Arden declined; the vendetta defense was established and Osric was banished, with the stage set for Oberon eventually sending Finndo off for trying to usurp power. And most things in the game settled out to give almost all the PCs satisfying endings, I think.
Particularly entertaining moments, from my perspective:
(The background for the game is partially based upon the setting of drivingblind's FATE Amber game from a few years back, Born to be Kings.)
I had fun in the games that I played, although the time zone was really killer (I had a tough time staying awake through my evening games), and I've come back with a bunch of ideas for what to run next year. In particular, I think I've figured out how to make our long-talked-about, long-prepared-for, still-not-finished (and which last I looked at it, needed a ground-up rewrite) game Oceans of Time genuinely workable. More on that in some later post.
Anyway, it was awesome to be back at the con, awesome to see folks I hadn't really gotten much chance to talk to in years, and as always, creatively inspiring. (Although sadly the Edgefield has ditched the Mount Angel root beer, which made me very, very sad.) Next year, I hope to see more of you there!
(I've got a bunch more life update stuff to post, but I'll do that later and friendslocked.)
There was just a single Evil Hat game this year, Karm v. Osric (watch this space for a posting of the game materials). Sadly minus drivingblind this year, rob_donoghue and I enlisted the help of denyse and evilmagnus, the end result of which was high wackiness starting about midway through the game and ending in a bloodbath at the end (five of our sixteen PCs didn't make it to the end).
We had some truly magnificent moments, some nice "Obie" nominations, with folks from our game taking three of the "awards" -- bastille won "Most Heinous Betrayal", Mike Sullivan won "Best Quote", and Bernie Hsiung won "Best Improvised Solution" -- and I think all of our players had fun. All in all, I think the game went extremely well, if down somewhat unexpected lines -- much better than I had expected considering the amount of ad-hoc design and last-minute preparation that went into the game this year.
The details:
When we ran Women and Children back at ACNW '02, we had a lot of carefully balanced factions, allies and enemies and axes of play. Blood Ties, our '01 game along those lines, was pretty similar. This year was kind of raw chaos, partially because the game went through several major design revisions as it was written, and partially because the factions and alliances were considerably less clear-cut, with a lot of characters dealing with likely-conflicting desires and goals.
The game started off like we like to see these games starts -- little huddles of frantically plotting factions. Evil Hat games of this sort tend to require very little GMing (95% of the work goes into very detailed character write-ups, although at a character booklet length of as much as 30 pages this year, it was really too much detail). So we wandered around, listened to conversations, planted rumors, answered the occasional question, during the morning.
Then, around noon, Bernie, who was playing Quinn, the sorceror-gadgeteer, decided he was going to take losrpg's character, Spencer, who'd gotten the Dark Heart of corrupted love, up to his laboratory, in order to put him in his one working gadget, a machine that could detect fae magic. (That involves strapping the victim to a big vertical wheel and spinning it a bunch. I referred to it as "the centrifuge" and the name stuck.) Except that Quinn also had the Heart of Arden up in his laboratory, powering a weather machine, and the two Hearts in close proximity basically caused the weather to erupt in stormy fury.
That led to an afternoon full of two PCs trying to destroy the castle, another trying to save it, frantic politicking, wacky fae hijinks, jhkimrpg's Osric turning of the Heart of Arden into Rebma's analog to the Jewel of Judgement, and eventually, Oberon returning and doing a lot of yelling.
With these "historical" Amber games, I like to try to walk a fine line between reflecting canon history and ensuring that the players have full freedom of choice. Some of that worked out decently in this game -- Moins became the first ruler of Rebma (after Lir's death); the Rebman 'Jewel' became a weather artifact imbued with Pattern; Rebma rose in power and Arden declined; the vendetta defense was established and Osric was banished, with the stage set for Oberon eventually sending Finndo off for trying to usurp power. And most things in the game settled out to give almost all the PCs satisfying endings, I think.
Particularly entertaining moments, from my perspective:
- The Urthscmug vowing to find and destroy this "love" thing that was
keeping Faiella in Amber.
- Cymnea and Faiella making identical grand entrances from opposite
ends of a ballroom.
- Quinn talking mtfierce's Faiella into allowing him to
centrifuge the infant Eric -- and pjack's Finndo's
double-take upon walking into the laboratory and seeing this.
- The old Karm using his One Last Good Fight to kill the Urthscmug
(Arden's fae ruler), and then spending the remainder of the game
hobbling around with a cane.
- The dying Dorr receiving his sole bit of medical attention from Quinn,
who wanted him dead -- and Dorr's continued attempts to talk despite
Quinn trying to assure other people that he really was dead.
- bastille's Cyrus killing his best friend Lir less than a
minute after Lir triumphantly became the King of Rebma, as revenge for
sleeping with his wife.
(The background for the game is partially based upon the setting of drivingblind's FATE Amber game from a few years back, Born to be Kings.)
I had fun in the games that I played, although the time zone was really killer (I had a tough time staying awake through my evening games), and I've come back with a bunch of ideas for what to run next year. In particular, I think I've figured out how to make our long-talked-about, long-prepared-for, still-not-finished (and which last I looked at it, needed a ground-up rewrite) game Oceans of Time genuinely workable. More on that in some later post.
Anyway, it was awesome to be back at the con, awesome to see folks I hadn't really gotten much chance to talk to in years, and as always, creatively inspiring. (Although sadly the Edgefield has ditched the Mount Angel root beer, which made me very, very sad.) Next year, I hope to see more of you there!
(I've got a bunch more life update stuff to post, but I'll do that later and friendslocked.)