So, last weekend was the first EndGame Minicon of 2011 (there will be three more this year). In case you don’t know, EndGame is the best game store in the Bay Area, in California, in the U.S., hell maybe the whole world! In my humble opinion of course! The Minicons are one day affairs where roughly 20 games are run over the course of the day. I really dig these Minicons because it’s close, there aren’t big mobs of people, most of the people who show up I know, and there is always a wide variety of games being played, including a lot of the New Hotness, whatever that may be. If possible, I like to run a game and play a game (and that’s about all the energy I have these days).
This time around I ran 3:16. I think this was the fifth time I’ve run the game and the fourth time at the Minicon, and it was hands down the best session of the game I’ve had yet. The players were absolutely on fire and got totally into it. I’m afraid we got a little too loud (sorry, Carl!) but that’s just how far in the zone we all got. There was so much Catch-22 going on and so many one-liners flying around I can’t begin to remember them all. Some highlights:
Chris’ character, Trooper Hicks, and his series of crap dice rolls getting him (among other things) blown up by his own grenades. Probability swung back his way later on and he earned the moniker “Manimal” for his close combat prowess (or at least his enthusiasm)!
Adan’s Sergeant being a shining inspiration to his squad while at the same time finding a way to move back away from the fighting at every opportunity.
Mike’s Trooper Carver spinning out of control through an asteroid field in Zero-G until he was shredded by rock man flechettes, “I hate Zero-G!” you had to be there.
I can’t remember any specific examples, but Morgan had some really great one-liners and got a lot of mileage out of using his buddies as a shield.
And Luke did a fantastic job as the Corporal with the big E-cannon. Over the course of the game, he improved the weapon to do d100 kills – and then he actually rolled a 100! Whoa! Then someone played Forced Weakness on him and in his battle lust he flashed back to his mother telling him “You were never good enough!” and then had an aneurysm and passed out. Genius!
The one trick I pulled this time was couching the at-the-table chargen in the drill sergeant’s tirade from Full Metal Jacket (yes, I’ve pretty much memorized R. Lee Ermey’s classic monologue – I know, I’m pathetic). It worked really well to set the mood and get people into the mindset of the game. I think this may have been the one thing I did that contributed the most to the success of the game. Again, the players were utterly awesome and my helmet’s off to every single one of them!
I will run 3:16 again!
In the afternoon session, I played The Laundry with my fellow Crew member, Wayne Coburn GMing. This was a lot of fun, though I feel I could have contributed more if I hadn’t started to fade around 5pm. I was up early that morning, and the 3:16 game took a lot out of me. I was trying to give 100% but I don’t think I reached it and I hope I wasn’t a drag on the game.
At any rate, though I don’t know much about The Laundry series of novels, I think I have watched enough British TV to understand where the game was coming from. I think I do a shite British accent, but some of the other players were getting along just fine (not that we had to do a British accent for this game but it just kinda felt like we should have at least tried – I appreciated the effort and tried to step up). Gil did a Scottish accent and Matt tried as well. I could at least manage certain word usage with some degree of competence – “boot” “lift” “ground floor” that sort of thing. In the end I settled on trying to channel Jason Statham’s voice for my ex-Metropolitan Police “bagger” – basically a clean-up man – just trying to put in his years and collect his pention.
The adventure itself was from the corebook and was meant as an intro to the setting. The new Laundry agents get sent to Dunwich (yup) for training. I think the big takeaway I got from it was you need to embrace the madness of government bureaucracy to grok the game. There were forms to be read and signed for everything, literally – Wayne had put together a fantastic set of character dossiers in these cool file folders. Wayne’s props really brought a lot to the game.
Upon reaching the island, we were run through some “training sessions” involving mostly being informed of ways we could have our brains eaten. Eventually the body turned up (because there is always a body) and then things, of course, went pear shaped. Some crazy man (besides us) was trying to summon Dagon. Without any weapons to speak of, we set about duct taping the chanting doctor to a chair to question her, while the lunatic outside went all stabby. I was getting a bit punchy at the end and I don’t quite recall the entire sequence of events but the black helicopters showed up and the commandos came down the zip lines and we wrapped. Which I liked!
The Laundry seems like a pretty interesting setting but I think a) you’ll get a lot more from it if your read the novels (which I am about to do) and b) you have to be on board with getting bent over by the bureaucracy and violated with red tape. Since that sort of black humor is part of the setting, you have to go with it to really enjoy it. So, if I’m in the mood for that again, I’ll definitely look at The Laundry RPG.
It’s been a busy month for gaming so far and I’m not done yet!
