#RPGaDAY 2019 1: FIRST

RPGaDAY 2019

1: FIRST

Dave Chapman tackles First with his first RPG.

I’ve talked about my formative sessions and systems before, so I’ll go for something else... since Gen Con just started, my first convention.

My first convention was Big Con, put on by GEAS, the University of Edinburgh gaming society that I still GM for. This was 1991 or 92 I think, so I would have been 16 or 17? I think I went to two of them... then there was a gap, and then Conpulsion. Which despite the name is notably bigger than Big Con, which was a Saturday only event.

I went with some of my school group to Potterrow so I was not alone in my introduction to the strange world of slightly more grown-up gaming...

We played a Shadowrun adventure (part of Harlequin, I believe) and more memorably, a one-shot game about the Secret Society of Supervillains, a demonstration of why supervillain team-ups dont work. Hidden agendas, betrayals, a superhero undercover and a demon lord coming to claim the sorcerous villain’s soul. I still hold it up as a great example of a one-shot, decades later.

The last thing (in I think the second?) was a Paranoia LARP, with a small number of players armed with foam dart guns versus just about everybody else playing giant mutant cockroaches, represented by us crouching and tapping plastic coat hangers on the floor to make a suitable noise. So that was technically my first LARP as well, but I was monstering so my first LARP as a player was later...