Go Play NW
On Saturday, probably in one of the short afternoon slots, I'm going to run a game at Go Play NW, a local indie game con. It's Pantheon, one of
robin_d_laws 's many fine games, this one published by the inimitable James Wallis. Each player takes the role of a pregenerated character in a genre-specific story, and together they free-form the plot from beginning to end. Characters are prose only, no stats. In this story, called "Grave and Watery," the genre is "underwater monster action movie," and it should seem familiar to anyone who remembers The Abyss or DeepStar Six. Thematically, the underwater monster movie is also a lot like Alien. At the end of the game, the team scores points according to a secret schedule, accruing points for each in-genre element they included in their story.
"Pantheon" is a vehicle for Robin's keen insight into story, genre, film, and games. It's also inspired, in part, by an observation I shared with him: horror RPGs do not reward you for doing the stupid things that characters in horror stories do. Wouldn't it be cool, I suggested, if a horror RPG somehow rewarded you for checking out the noise in the basement by yourself even though the light just went out?
I've played Pantheon before, with Peter Adkison, Richard Garfield, Skaff Elias, and others. By the book, the game is competitive, but I want to see if my variant cooperative version will play better.
If you want to sign up, you'll need to get on the Go Play NW web site and sign up once I officially post it on the wiki.
My understanding is that at the con there will be no panel on why women don't flock to tabletop hobby games, which may be for the best all around.
robin_d_laws 's many fine games, this one published by the inimitable James Wallis. Each player takes the role of a pregenerated character in a genre-specific story, and together they free-form the plot from beginning to end. Characters are prose only, no stats. In this story, called "Grave and Watery," the genre is "underwater monster action movie," and it should seem familiar to anyone who remembers The Abyss or DeepStar Six. Thematically, the underwater monster movie is also a lot like Alien. At the end of the game, the team scores points according to a secret schedule, accruing points for each in-genre element they included in their story.
"Pantheon" is a vehicle for Robin's keen insight into story, genre, film, and games. It's also inspired, in part, by an observation I shared with him: horror RPGs do not reward you for doing the stupid things that characters in horror stories do. Wouldn't it be cool, I suggested, if a horror RPG somehow rewarded you for checking out the noise in the basement by yourself even though the light just went out?
I've played Pantheon before, with Peter Adkison, Richard Garfield, Skaff Elias, and others. By the book, the game is competitive, but I want to see if my variant cooperative version will play better.
If you want to sign up, you'll need to get on the Go Play NW web site and sign up once I officially post it on the wiki.
My understanding is that at the con there will be no panel on why women don't flock to tabletop hobby games, which may be for the best all around.