The Crystal Ball view of KapCon '22
KapCon has evolved over the decades into a very efficient machine for doing what it does, which is providing a venue for a splurge of one-session games of 3-hours duration. This year with no pre or post-con drinks, no verbal notices between rounds, the retirement of the nomination and voting systems, and it's truly a lean dicing machine. I've never been involved with actually running the convention, but I have been a very vocal occupant of a cheap seat on the sideline. I was in the chorus calling for the removal of the "duck walk" where GMs used to first pitch their games to the crowd then gather up their allocated players. I was very keen for there to be an official fourth round in parallel with the flagship LARP.
There have been any number of really interesting things that have been tried and some have stuck while some have been forgotten as the pressures on the convention change. When I was young, there was a fairly chronic shortage of GMs - George supplied me with several adventures to run at the con because as a dumb kid I couldn't write them myself, but they needed someone in a GM seat. I have also played in games stacked with veterans to ease that awful transition into being a new GM, facing the pressure of entertaining 4-8 people for a couple of hours.
Being honest, it's not easy to think about how to improve the efficient centre of the gaming itself - games now are far, far, better than they were when I started coming, and things run actually pretty closely to time. Everything we could do better is in terms not of efficiency, but in pursuit of ever higher excellence. But if there did need to be a revolution, I, as the very old guard probably need to be first up against the wall. That said, I do have a few thoughts.
I'd like to see the current blurb format pretty seriously restructured to fit the new varieties we're seeing - there's no spot in the system for indicating fundamentals that are relevant now like whether it's a LARP or Table Top, whether it's a GM-led or a freeform or a shared narrative, and so on. The website was a major breakthrough, but for the past few years that round 4 slot has been awkward since it doesn't fit into the three-column format that it effectively superseded.
I do think that completely losing the nominations and "GM competition" were good moves - they're basically meaningless in terms of a tournament or real competition and this year I didn't have people disengaging from the game so that they could ostebsibly record how engaging they were finding it and the other players. Yet, those nominations were part, a tendril, of a shared experience and that aspect may mean the idea has some merit. I'd rather replace it with something better though, or at least less disruptive at the table.
The con seems almost ludicrously under-staffed for all the huge number of admin tasks that it generates. When I arrived, I got my badge directly from Idiot, because having done all the e-mail communications, wrangled the GMs, sorted out the timetable, allocated the first two rounds of players, and signed up to GM a couple of rounds, he just wasn't contributing enough. I guess just at a real ballpark bare minimum, there are 7 rounds of gaming requiring someone at the desk, and hence 5 breaks where they need someone at the door, there's setting up and packing down, there's putting up all the game blurbs each round - that's 12. I generally think that basically after your first KapCon, you probably need to be either GMing or volunteering - and maybe volunteering can be as easy as signing up to run a game, you just indicate you're available in the sign-up.
There are, equally, quite a lot of things that have been floated but never tried. I advocated a few years ago for rounding up the usual suspects (GMs) and sitting them down to roughly coordinate coverage across the convention of genres and styles. For example, this year there was essentially nothing other than D&D and derivatives in one late-convention round. Idiot argued against on the basis of some kind of freedom of individual choice - who knew he was secretly a free marketeer? Yet, the ability to structure a shared experience across the con relies upon actually sharing some kind of experience - the LARP has fulfilled that in years past, but it alone can't do that because the con is too big; we need a second front on that concept.
An alternative to the LARP for shared experience is to run a game through several streams. Last year Conan and I both ran games that were multi-part, this year Hamish ran two different games in several parts (successive runs of Ironsworn and The Sprawl sharing a world over the convention), Dale ran his wrestling game with repeat performers - it was advertised as Summer Slam III, which is itself suggestive. Running a true "Living" game as some communities do is probably overly ornate, but a gesture in that direction may help build the sense of a shared experience. A few years ago we had the EPOCH stream.
Another interesting thing that's not been completely exhausted are panels and workshops. I forget what was tried a few years ago, but Paul ran a GM workshop this year which was apparently useful for the attendees. The fourth round on Saturday's the obvious spot for such things - most of the other rounds it's probably a bit much to sacrifice a whole game for most attendees. Panel and workshop topics aren't in short supply, but the one I want is on "how to play". We emphasise the role of the GM, but to a huge degree it was the other players at the tables where I was a player who were key to the experience - perhaps especially because I played Apocalypse World games which require high levels of player input.
Strangely, I think the missing mid-year events and cons are also a part of this eco-system. Hopefully the return of CONfusion provides an easier entry point for new GMs, as it historically did, that kind of thing.
I'd be very interested to see some kind of systematic longitudinal study of con attendance too.
One way or another, I have felt for a couple of years that there needs to be a refresh of the convention as an experience, but I always really thought this was my generally curmudgeonly nature settling into place. One way or another when this thought occurs it inevitably turns into the acknowledgement that for what seems like forever we've really let a handful of people do all the heavy lifting on the event. I ran Fright Night, a con for 16 players, twice and haven't felt willing to run anything in the decade since - I can't even imagine the endurance of the core KapCon team, doing these huge tasks for now decades on end.
So, that's the end of my characteristically over-long and over-written thoughts on KapCon. Sign up for my game next year - bound to finally crack how to run a great game and win my coveted best GM prize.
There have been any number of really interesting things that have been tried and some have stuck while some have been forgotten as the pressures on the convention change. When I was young, there was a fairly chronic shortage of GMs - George supplied me with several adventures to run at the con because as a dumb kid I couldn't write them myself, but they needed someone in a GM seat. I have also played in games stacked with veterans to ease that awful transition into being a new GM, facing the pressure of entertaining 4-8 people for a couple of hours.
Being honest, it's not easy to think about how to improve the efficient centre of the gaming itself - games now are far, far, better than they were when I started coming, and things run actually pretty closely to time. Everything we could do better is in terms not of efficiency, but in pursuit of ever higher excellence. But if there did need to be a revolution, I, as the very old guard probably need to be first up against the wall. That said, I do have a few thoughts.
I'd like to see the current blurb format pretty seriously restructured to fit the new varieties we're seeing - there's no spot in the system for indicating fundamentals that are relevant now like whether it's a LARP or Table Top, whether it's a GM-led or a freeform or a shared narrative, and so on. The website was a major breakthrough, but for the past few years that round 4 slot has been awkward since it doesn't fit into the three-column format that it effectively superseded.
I do think that completely losing the nominations and "GM competition" were good moves - they're basically meaningless in terms of a tournament or real competition and this year I didn't have people disengaging from the game so that they could ostebsibly record how engaging they were finding it and the other players. Yet, those nominations were part, a tendril, of a shared experience and that aspect may mean the idea has some merit. I'd rather replace it with something better though, or at least less disruptive at the table.
The con seems almost ludicrously under-staffed for all the huge number of admin tasks that it generates. When I arrived, I got my badge directly from Idiot, because having done all the e-mail communications, wrangled the GMs, sorted out the timetable, allocated the first two rounds of players, and signed up to GM a couple of rounds, he just wasn't contributing enough. I guess just at a real ballpark bare minimum, there are 7 rounds of gaming requiring someone at the desk, and hence 5 breaks where they need someone at the door, there's setting up and packing down, there's putting up all the game blurbs each round - that's 12. I generally think that basically after your first KapCon, you probably need to be either GMing or volunteering - and maybe volunteering can be as easy as signing up to run a game, you just indicate you're available in the sign-up.
There are, equally, quite a lot of things that have been floated but never tried. I advocated a few years ago for rounding up the usual suspects (GMs) and sitting them down to roughly coordinate coverage across the convention of genres and styles. For example, this year there was essentially nothing other than D&D and derivatives in one late-convention round. Idiot argued against on the basis of some kind of freedom of individual choice - who knew he was secretly a free marketeer? Yet, the ability to structure a shared experience across the con relies upon actually sharing some kind of experience - the LARP has fulfilled that in years past, but it alone can't do that because the con is too big; we need a second front on that concept.
An alternative to the LARP for shared experience is to run a game through several streams. Last year Conan and I both ran games that were multi-part, this year Hamish ran two different games in several parts (successive runs of Ironsworn and The Sprawl sharing a world over the convention), Dale ran his wrestling game with repeat performers - it was advertised as Summer Slam III, which is itself suggestive. Running a true "Living" game as some communities do is probably overly ornate, but a gesture in that direction may help build the sense of a shared experience. A few years ago we had the EPOCH stream.
Another interesting thing that's not been completely exhausted are panels and workshops. I forget what was tried a few years ago, but Paul ran a GM workshop this year which was apparently useful for the attendees. The fourth round on Saturday's the obvious spot for such things - most of the other rounds it's probably a bit much to sacrifice a whole game for most attendees. Panel and workshop topics aren't in short supply, but the one I want is on "how to play". We emphasise the role of the GM, but to a huge degree it was the other players at the tables where I was a player who were key to the experience - perhaps especially because I played Apocalypse World games which require high levels of player input.
Strangely, I think the missing mid-year events and cons are also a part of this eco-system. Hopefully the return of CONfusion provides an easier entry point for new GMs, as it historically did, that kind of thing.
I'd be very interested to see some kind of systematic longitudinal study of con attendance too.
One way or another, I have felt for a couple of years that there needs to be a refresh of the convention as an experience, but I always really thought this was my generally curmudgeonly nature settling into place. One way or another when this thought occurs it inevitably turns into the acknowledgement that for what seems like forever we've really let a handful of people do all the heavy lifting on the event. I ran Fright Night, a con for 16 players, twice and haven't felt willing to run anything in the decade since - I can't even imagine the endurance of the core KapCon team, doing these huge tasks for now decades on end.
So, that's the end of my characteristically over-long and over-written thoughts on KapCon. Sign up for my game next year - bound to finally crack how to run a great game and win my coveted best GM prize.