CanGames 2012 Day 1 Report
Well, the convention is already two days over, so I figured that I should start posting up the reports on the weekend that was at CanGames 2011 today, while I have the chance. I don't really know how long and detailed these reports will be, since I'm not up to sitting at the computer and writing all the details out. Not to mention, I didn't take as many notes about the convention events as I usually do. So lots of this stuff is from memory and my notes the morning after, so to speak. However, there are some photos from Saturday and one from Sunday that will go into the reports that cover those two days, so you'll get a bit of perspective, if nothing else, that way. This post, and the rest covering the events of each day at CanGames 2012, is behind the cut.
Friday, May 18th
The morning dawned bright and clear, and the weather was expected to be around 220C for the day, a relatively comfortable day in the Ottawa valley for this time of May. spross arrived at my place around noon, and after packing up the gaming stuff that I needed to run the Primeval RPG for Friday night as well as the other stuff that I needed to take with me, we headed out. We went over to the Subway down on Hunt Club, and grabbed lunch and ate there, and then proceeded to the curling club venue that hosts CanGames.
Arriving at the Rideau Curling Club, spross had a pretty easy time of parking the car, pretty close to the venue (about three blocks), and we grabbed the stuff out of the car, and headed for the club. Once there, the registration process was easy, as both SteveR and I merely had to go up to the Tournament Desk and get out Registration packs (as GMs, it makes it somewhat easier for you). I checked the various games that I was running for the weekend, and saw that I had 1, 0, 1, and 1 players pre-registered for the games in that order. Not an auspicious start to the convention, I thought.
After dumping all of our stuff down in a pair of lockers, spross went out to the car, and brought back the games and stuff that he and I planned to sell; you can read about my stuff in this blog entry. While SteveR went out to get the boxed up games, I went and bought 40 of the Cangames Booth forms (at $1.00 per form) so as to label the stuff that I was selling. I wasn't sure yet how many I'd need, but the CanGames folks will refund the forms that one doesn't use, so that was fine. I have to say that I hate this process, as the forms are somewhat tedious to fill out, but I was hoping that I would sell off everything that I had brought to the convention. After spross came back with his dolly and the boxes of games that he and I were going to sell, we both settled in (along with our friend Doug) to fill in the forms and take the games to the CanGames desk. It took me about two (2) hours to fill in all the forms. *sigh* :<
I spent the next couple of hours relaxing a bit from all the writing on the forms (my hands were badly cramping by the time I was finished), at times just sitting back and relaxing with the book I'd brought to read, at other times walking around and seeing the other games that were going on or just talking to friends and acquaintances. A couple of the games that intrigued me while walking around were the A Few Acres of Snow board game (about the French-British conflict in North America) and tashiro's "Proof of Concept", a playtest of his new Trionfi: The Game of Trumps RPG. Both of these looked quite interesting from what I saw. I managed to fit in a snack around 4:15 pm of some Edam cheese wedges with a couple of pieces of Ryvita. Yumm! spross had to leave around 5:00 pm to go to a birthday dinner for his mom, so that left me hanging around the convention on my own.
Since I had to run a game at 7:00 pm, and the CanGames folks would put out the sign-up sheets for the game half an hour before the games were supposed to commence for the evening, I needed to eat supper relatively early, around a quarter of six. spross had already helped me bring the gaming stuff up for running the Primeval RPG upstairs to the table. I was fortunate this weekend in that all of my games were being run at the same table. Makes it easier for me to remember these things. :) I was not impressed with the new look and new style of the Rideau Curling Club cafeteria section, and the menu was less impressive (especially if one has Diabetes or any other health concerns). I ended up having a club sandwich (which was quite good), with half a salad with balsamic dressing (tasty and fresh) and a mini-order of french fries (which weren't that good being soggy and lukewarm, given that they were being kept in a warmer tray). I washed the meal down with my medications, and tried to drown out the left-over taste of the chips with some Dentyne Ice gum.
I started setting up the stuff for the Primeval RPG game at the table (you'll be able to catch some pictures from the game I ran on Saturday night, but spross left his camera at home on the Friday, so I couldn't get any photos of the game this night), and the look of the GM Screen that I was using drew several people over to ask about the game. The fact that I was wearing my not-very-good Primeval tv series t-shirt may have helped as well. Augured well for filling up the game, I thought. The Primeval RPG game had only one pre-registered player, as I mentioned earlier, but two others had signed up for the game some time around 4 o'clock. Once the sign-up sheet went out at 6:30 pm, I had no problems getting players - three others signed up, and there were three additional folks who would have liked to have gotten in. I was pleased to have a full table for the game.
The scenario for the Primeval RPG that I was running on the Friday night was called "Message in An Anomaly", which was the adventure from GenCon 2011 that I had run there, so I was looking forward to this one. It features the primary characters from the Second Series of the show - Nick Cutter, Stephen Hart, Abby Maitland, Connor Temple, and Jenny Lewis - and throws in a new security guy, Jake Hemple, for the sixth character, and is quite an entertaining little adventure with a neat premise of a note coming through an Anomaly that reads, "Help Me". I had managed to get a copy of what might be the cover for the Primeval RPG last year, and since I was using the GM Screen for the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space rpg once more for the game, and someone was running the game this year at CanGames, I had four copies of the it printed up and sticky taped them to the outside of the DW: AiTaS screen. (You'll be able to judge the effectiveness of my work when I post the photos of the game being run in the report of Saturday night's game.) This gave the players a good idea of what the game (hopefully) looks like. When the players showed up at the table, they were all male with the exception of one female player. Several of the players had played in my Primeval RPG scenario at CanGames 2011, but three of the players had never watched the series, though they had heard of it. I love attracting newbies to the game, so I was gratified at this.
While I'm not going to go into detail about the scenario for obvious reasons, since it will be run at all kinds of game conventions and the like in the future, I'll discuss some of the elements here. Bear in mind there are a few SPOILER WARNINGS here.
Once all the players arrived at the game table for the evening game of Primeval RPG, I handed out the player character sheets for them to choose from, and after going through an explanation of the game rules and mechanics and explaining some more about the tv series and the like, I started the adventure with them. I thought the game went extremely well, and I managed to keep up the flow of the story and was able to give the players a hand with stuff when they needed it.
Some basic notes on the game follow... The fellow who played Connor Temple did an excellent job of playing the geekiness of the character, though he suffered a bit in terms of his interaction with and love for Abby. During the sequence that necessitated it, he stayed in the security control room, had some awkward interaction with one of the pretty hotel staffers (Connor is terrible in social situations, and he played it well). The fellow playing Jenny Lewis is an excellent roleplayer, and he got a good handle on Jenny as the media expert who is in charge of keeping Anomalies and creatures from them out of the public eye. He did a great story giving the player characters a cover story for what they were ostensibly doing, and did a great job talking to the non-player characters in the game situation. He was also marvellous in the later stages of the game; when the rest of the player characters had gone through the Anomaly, he played Jenny nervous and conflicted, and called her superior (James Lester) for orders about what to do. Excellent stuff. The fellow playing Nick Cutter had never seen the series before, but he understood the leadership role of the character and he had some knowledge of palaeontology which made things interesting. He played up the business of calling Jenny "Claudia" (much to that player's annoyance!), and did a good job delegating though he regretted splitting the party up when they arrived at the Anomaly site. There was a funny moment when late in the game he fired a tranquilliser dart at someone only to miss, and have it go through the Anomaly and almost strike the Stephen character. Hilarious!
The fellow who played Stephen had a good time with the role, liking the part that the character played on the team, and made some good, informed decisions, played the character to a "T", and spending a Story Point or two when he needed clues. One of the most hilarious moments was when they were chasing very small little proto-dinosaurs and needed to prevent them exiting onto the streets outside the building. Stephen's player willingly threw himself onto the floor to grab it, but couldn't stop his sliding and slammed into the (hotel) main doors. He still managed to retain his grasp on the creature, though! :) The two other characters were played nicely and adequately. The husband and wife who were playing Abby Maitland and Jake Hemple did a very good job on them, notably Jake, since his character comes from one of the books based on the series. He took control of Jake, gave his men reasonable orders, was quite peeved when most of them died, and did an excellent job protecting Nick when he was the first through the Anomaly late in the scenario. His wife brought Abby across as the caring animal lover, and this worked well, and she was quite adamant in not allowing Jake to kill things with his assault rifle (as he was gunning to kill something or someone all night long). Lots of fun with these two, and they had played the game at CanGames 2011, so had basic familiarity with the rules.
I wrapped up the game a little bit early, as the players really played fast and well with the adventure, and was pleased to learn that they had all liked the game quite a lot. They loved the hunting of the dinosaurs in the building, as it had a nice creepy feel to it, heightened by the use of the Threat markers, and loved the pair of twists that the scenario had to it (that I shall not discuss here). The three who were new to the game and the tv series said that they would have to start watching the series, and thought the rules and mechanics were as easy to learn as I had said they were, and that the elegance of the game system was excellent. Several players asked if I was going to run the game at next year's CanGames (and the game should be out by then) and I said that I was definitely going to do so. They seemed pleased at that.
Meanwhile, spross had returned from the dinner with his mother around 8:00 pm, somewhat earlier than I expected, so he watched my game and the Maid RPG game that was going on at the next table until I wrapped up. After I determined the first three place finishers for the game, and handed in the sign-up sheet with the winner and runners up recorded, I packed up the Primeval RPG materials, and spross went down to grab the rest of the stuff out of the lockers. I had some crackers and cheese as well as some yogurt and water for an evening snack, so felt pretty good but was very sore in the legs, my two broken toes hurt a lot, and my back was aching. Was just feeling tired.
We said goodnight to the players and some of the CanGames staff, and went back to the car. It was a pleasant, somewhat cool night and quite comfortable after the stuffy, somewhat warm, environment of CanGames. spross dropped me off at the house around 11:30 pm. I had some tea and a bit of oat cereal, and then prepped for the two Saturday games that I was going to run, and then wrote the basic notes about the day and the game run.
I managed to get to bed around 12:34 a.m.
And there you have the write-up for the Friday of CanGames 2012. Hope it wasn't too long for your brain to read, and that folks enjoyed the write-up. The write-up for Saturday will have several photos, trust me. :)
Friday, May 18th
The morning dawned bright and clear, and the weather was expected to be around 220C for the day, a relatively comfortable day in the Ottawa valley for this time of May. spross arrived at my place around noon, and after packing up the gaming stuff that I needed to run the Primeval RPG for Friday night as well as the other stuff that I needed to take with me, we headed out. We went over to the Subway down on Hunt Club, and grabbed lunch and ate there, and then proceeded to the curling club venue that hosts CanGames.
Arriving at the Rideau Curling Club, spross had a pretty easy time of parking the car, pretty close to the venue (about three blocks), and we grabbed the stuff out of the car, and headed for the club. Once there, the registration process was easy, as both SteveR and I merely had to go up to the Tournament Desk and get out Registration packs (as GMs, it makes it somewhat easier for you). I checked the various games that I was running for the weekend, and saw that I had 1, 0, 1, and 1 players pre-registered for the games in that order. Not an auspicious start to the convention, I thought.
After dumping all of our stuff down in a pair of lockers, spross went out to the car, and brought back the games and stuff that he and I planned to sell; you can read about my stuff in this blog entry. While SteveR went out to get the boxed up games, I went and bought 40 of the Cangames Booth forms (at $1.00 per form) so as to label the stuff that I was selling. I wasn't sure yet how many I'd need, but the CanGames folks will refund the forms that one doesn't use, so that was fine. I have to say that I hate this process, as the forms are somewhat tedious to fill out, but I was hoping that I would sell off everything that I had brought to the convention. After spross came back with his dolly and the boxes of games that he and I were going to sell, we both settled in (along with our friend Doug) to fill in the forms and take the games to the CanGames desk. It took me about two (2) hours to fill in all the forms. *sigh* :<
I spent the next couple of hours relaxing a bit from all the writing on the forms (my hands were badly cramping by the time I was finished), at times just sitting back and relaxing with the book I'd brought to read, at other times walking around and seeing the other games that were going on or just talking to friends and acquaintances. A couple of the games that intrigued me while walking around were the A Few Acres of Snow board game (about the French-British conflict in North America) and tashiro's "Proof of Concept", a playtest of his new Trionfi: The Game of Trumps RPG. Both of these looked quite interesting from what I saw. I managed to fit in a snack around 4:15 pm of some Edam cheese wedges with a couple of pieces of Ryvita. Yumm! spross had to leave around 5:00 pm to go to a birthday dinner for his mom, so that left me hanging around the convention on my own.
Since I had to run a game at 7:00 pm, and the CanGames folks would put out the sign-up sheets for the game half an hour before the games were supposed to commence for the evening, I needed to eat supper relatively early, around a quarter of six. spross had already helped me bring the gaming stuff up for running the Primeval RPG upstairs to the table. I was fortunate this weekend in that all of my games were being run at the same table. Makes it easier for me to remember these things. :) I was not impressed with the new look and new style of the Rideau Curling Club cafeteria section, and the menu was less impressive (especially if one has Diabetes or any other health concerns). I ended up having a club sandwich (which was quite good), with half a salad with balsamic dressing (tasty and fresh) and a mini-order of french fries (which weren't that good being soggy and lukewarm, given that they were being kept in a warmer tray). I washed the meal down with my medications, and tried to drown out the left-over taste of the chips with some Dentyne Ice gum.
I started setting up the stuff for the Primeval RPG game at the table (you'll be able to catch some pictures from the game I ran on Saturday night, but spross left his camera at home on the Friday, so I couldn't get any photos of the game this night), and the look of the GM Screen that I was using drew several people over to ask about the game. The fact that I was wearing my not-very-good Primeval tv series t-shirt may have helped as well. Augured well for filling up the game, I thought. The Primeval RPG game had only one pre-registered player, as I mentioned earlier, but two others had signed up for the game some time around 4 o'clock. Once the sign-up sheet went out at 6:30 pm, I had no problems getting players - three others signed up, and there were three additional folks who would have liked to have gotten in. I was pleased to have a full table for the game.
The scenario for the Primeval RPG that I was running on the Friday night was called "Message in An Anomaly", which was the adventure from GenCon 2011 that I had run there, so I was looking forward to this one. It features the primary characters from the Second Series of the show - Nick Cutter, Stephen Hart, Abby Maitland, Connor Temple, and Jenny Lewis - and throws in a new security guy, Jake Hemple, for the sixth character, and is quite an entertaining little adventure with a neat premise of a note coming through an Anomaly that reads, "Help Me". I had managed to get a copy of what might be the cover for the Primeval RPG last year, and since I was using the GM Screen for the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space rpg once more for the game, and someone was running the game this year at CanGames, I had four copies of the it printed up and sticky taped them to the outside of the DW: AiTaS screen. (You'll be able to judge the effectiveness of my work when I post the photos of the game being run in the report of Saturday night's game.) This gave the players a good idea of what the game (hopefully) looks like. When the players showed up at the table, they were all male with the exception of one female player. Several of the players had played in my Primeval RPG scenario at CanGames 2011, but three of the players had never watched the series, though they had heard of it. I love attracting newbies to the game, so I was gratified at this.
While I'm not going to go into detail about the scenario for obvious reasons, since it will be run at all kinds of game conventions and the like in the future, I'll discuss some of the elements here. Bear in mind there are a few SPOILER WARNINGS here.
Once all the players arrived at the game table for the evening game of Primeval RPG, I handed out the player character sheets for them to choose from, and after going through an explanation of the game rules and mechanics and explaining some more about the tv series and the like, I started the adventure with them. I thought the game went extremely well, and I managed to keep up the flow of the story and was able to give the players a hand with stuff when they needed it.
Some basic notes on the game follow... The fellow who played Connor Temple did an excellent job of playing the geekiness of the character, though he suffered a bit in terms of his interaction with and love for Abby. During the sequence that necessitated it, he stayed in the security control room, had some awkward interaction with one of the pretty hotel staffers (Connor is terrible in social situations, and he played it well). The fellow playing Jenny Lewis is an excellent roleplayer, and he got a good handle on Jenny as the media expert who is in charge of keeping Anomalies and creatures from them out of the public eye. He did a great story giving the player characters a cover story for what they were ostensibly doing, and did a great job talking to the non-player characters in the game situation. He was also marvellous in the later stages of the game; when the rest of the player characters had gone through the Anomaly, he played Jenny nervous and conflicted, and called her superior (James Lester) for orders about what to do. Excellent stuff. The fellow playing Nick Cutter had never seen the series before, but he understood the leadership role of the character and he had some knowledge of palaeontology which made things interesting. He played up the business of calling Jenny "Claudia" (much to that player's annoyance!), and did a good job delegating though he regretted splitting the party up when they arrived at the Anomaly site. There was a funny moment when late in the game he fired a tranquilliser dart at someone only to miss, and have it go through the Anomaly and almost strike the Stephen character. Hilarious!
The fellow who played Stephen had a good time with the role, liking the part that the character played on the team, and made some good, informed decisions, played the character to a "T", and spending a Story Point or two when he needed clues. One of the most hilarious moments was when they were chasing very small little proto-dinosaurs and needed to prevent them exiting onto the streets outside the building. Stephen's player willingly threw himself onto the floor to grab it, but couldn't stop his sliding and slammed into the (hotel) main doors. He still managed to retain his grasp on the creature, though! :) The two other characters were played nicely and adequately. The husband and wife who were playing Abby Maitland and Jake Hemple did a very good job on them, notably Jake, since his character comes from one of the books based on the series. He took control of Jake, gave his men reasonable orders, was quite peeved when most of them died, and did an excellent job protecting Nick when he was the first through the Anomaly late in the scenario. His wife brought Abby across as the caring animal lover, and this worked well, and she was quite adamant in not allowing Jake to kill things with his assault rifle (as he was gunning to kill something or someone all night long). Lots of fun with these two, and they had played the game at CanGames 2011, so had basic familiarity with the rules.
I wrapped up the game a little bit early, as the players really played fast and well with the adventure, and was pleased to learn that they had all liked the game quite a lot. They loved the hunting of the dinosaurs in the building, as it had a nice creepy feel to it, heightened by the use of the Threat markers, and loved the pair of twists that the scenario had to it (that I shall not discuss here). The three who were new to the game and the tv series said that they would have to start watching the series, and thought the rules and mechanics were as easy to learn as I had said they were, and that the elegance of the game system was excellent. Several players asked if I was going to run the game at next year's CanGames (and the game should be out by then) and I said that I was definitely going to do so. They seemed pleased at that.
Meanwhile, spross had returned from the dinner with his mother around 8:00 pm, somewhat earlier than I expected, so he watched my game and the Maid RPG game that was going on at the next table until I wrapped up. After I determined the first three place finishers for the game, and handed in the sign-up sheet with the winner and runners up recorded, I packed up the Primeval RPG materials, and spross went down to grab the rest of the stuff out of the lockers. I had some crackers and cheese as well as some yogurt and water for an evening snack, so felt pretty good but was very sore in the legs, my two broken toes hurt a lot, and my back was aching. Was just feeling tired.
We said goodnight to the players and some of the CanGames staff, and went back to the car. It was a pleasant, somewhat cool night and quite comfortable after the stuffy, somewhat warm, environment of CanGames. spross dropped me off at the house around 11:30 pm. I had some tea and a bit of oat cereal, and then prepped for the two Saturday games that I was going to run, and then wrote the basic notes about the day and the game run.
I managed to get to bed around 12:34 a.m.
And there you have the write-up for the Friday of CanGames 2012. Hope it wasn't too long for your brain to read, and that folks enjoyed the write-up. The write-up for Saturday will have several photos, trust me. :)