The promise of the premise

Lessons from Sydcon 2011

1. Don't expect the canteen to be open before Session 1. (At my first Sydney convention, in the early '90s, I survived on sausage rolls and Mars bars. Broke my fast with the same at this con, before switching to healthier fare.)
2. The era of "star" teams in matching T-shirts appears over.
3. Players are now encouraged by the organisers to tweet their experiences live.
4. Splitting the party is still a bad, bad thing.
5. Around this neck of the woods at least, tabletop role-playing remains a very Anglo hobby.
6. I reckon there are more eccentrics in this subculture than even the sci-fi, comic and manga ones.
7. Characters in modern scenarios now rely on Google, SMS-ing, etc.
8. Kathy loves Johanna. (Actually, I learnt this from a desk carving.)

How I spent my sessions

SATURDAY
1. "Andersonvilletown 1931: Sex, Lies And Cherry Pie" (custom system)
2. "An ARD Day's Night" (Paranoia)
3. "Witching Stew" (Warhammer FRP 3e)
SUNDAY
4. "Murder In Two Stag Pass" (Legend Of The Five Rings)
5. "Evil On The Loose" (original D&D)
6. "The Shadow From The Chapel" (Call Of Cthulhu)
MONDAY
7. "The Seven Secret Deaths Of The Crystal Dragonfly" (Giallo/Fudge)
8. "Sympathy For The Devil" (World Of Darkness)
*. Skipped the prizegiving. Not my scene and I had a weekend's worth of work to catch up on anyhow.

In a word, the GM was...

1. Committed
2. Mischievous
3. Professional
4. Knowledgeable
5. Laid-back
6. Theatrical
7. Urbane
8. Confident

I played the role of...

1. An ex-pro wrestler
2. A pen pusher
3. A grave robber
4. An archer of the Mantis Clan
5. A dwarf
6. A professor of biochemistry (or something like that)
7. A ballet student
8. A jack-of-all-trades
Note: All PCs except the archer were male.

One interesting feature of the game

1. The six of us got to choose from 26(!) pre-generated characters.
2. Music and sound effects courtesy of the GM's phone.
3. 3D map used for grand finale.
4. The character sheets were lovely, especially the portraits.
5. Took me back to 1982, gaming with the Moldvay basic set on the concrete pitch of an unused cricket net at St Michael's, Nelson Bay.
6. There were laminated reproductions of old photos for all the people and places!
7. While the castle floorplans were neat, the strengths of this module were its originality and rich setting.
8. Run from an iPad, which I guess will go from novelty to standard practice soon enough.

No. of dice rolled, time over or under the scheduled three hours

1. Zero dice, +37 minutes
2. 12, -20
3. I stopped counting at 100, -5
4. 90, +15
5. 14, -5
6. Seven, dead even (or in my case, just dead :-))
7. 28, even
8. 73, even


For RS: Boosters cracked. There seem to be a high proportion of mythics, but also an annoying number of rare doubles and even triples. Sorting next...

From CM: http://little-people.blogspot.com/ <- RECOMMENDED!


Paint it octarine.