RPG A Day 15: Favourite Convention Game

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Day 15 Question - Favourite Convention Game

Let’s do this thoroughly. Playing and GMing, at cons in general and at the Nationals.

As a player: one from about 1990 that I still remember vividly. Discounting Call of Cthulhu GMed by SANDY PETERSEN (see yesterday) let me take you back to Big Con (the precursor to Conpulsion) and...

The Secret Society Of Supervillains monthly meeting. A comedy game of expy villains (I was a gangster with a gimmick called the Ace of Spades, for example) who all had their own conflicting agendas. One of the PCs was actually Vigilante Hero in disguise, the mystical bad guy had sold his soul to the Devil-expy and tonight was the night he came to collect... it all came together to provide a vivid example of why the good guys win.

As a GM: the slightly nerve-wracking time I ran Buffy The Vampire Slayer for a group half of which had assembled when one spotted the sign-up and called in two friends to say “wanna play Buffy?”... and Giles was played by con guest Phil Masters, who wrote the book on Watchers. Literally, he wrote the unpublished Watchers sourcebook for the Buffy game line.

Player at the Nationals - Wraith: The Oblivion in the World of Darkness category, circa 2000. Because the characters (and their Shadows) were all so neatly connected, with clashing Passions and overlapping Fetters (including the token living PC and the Haunt we all shared, a closed-down school) that we all clashed and allied and bounced off each other and caused all kinds of trouble.

GM at the Nationals - Buffy again, the sometimes-discussed-here one-shot(s) with the same idea as A Buffy Season about a college indie band with a slayer in the lineup. It’s all in the mix of players, and I’ve seen some groups really run with the funny and the crazy and the heartache.

So in all, as a GM it’s all about the players, and as a player it’s all about the pregenerated PCs. Which are, of course, a springboard for the players.