Conifur 2004
Sep. 25th, 2004 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothI went down to Conifur yesterday, to do my normal one-day thing, on Friday this year instead of Saturday. People at the con who heard that I was doing this said, 'Nothing happens on Friday!', but there was a lot more going on than normally is when I go on a Saturday. I think they were mostly talking about the Dealers' Den, which wasn't fully staffed.
I got to see several events I've always missed before -- the opening ceremonies, Uncle Kage's Story Hour, and 2 the Ranting Griffon, although I think the last didn't *happen* before. I was going to see Pictionary, but lost track of time trying (unsuccessfully) to get some people to go out to dinner before all the restaurants closed, and playing magic, and missed it.
This year I sat in on both of the demo RPG games happening the day I was there. The first was Ironclaw, a very simple module where we were all soldiers sent out to kill some monsters, and did so, with only a slight complication. Written into the module. There was a more significant complication, in that two of the party decided to disobey orders and go tromping off into the woods on their own, so the big combat happened out in the woods with only the two of them fighting, while the rest of us were mostly bored (not *entirely* bored -- we could hear the fight going on, and -- slowly -- react/prepare/accidentally draw the attention of a giant lizard and have to run for our lives back to the set traps).
The GM thought the Horse was the best RPer there -- the horse being the asshole who split the group by going off and triggering monsters while the rest of us were trying to come up with a plan (not stopping even after only one person followed him, and the GM gave plenty of hints along the lines of 'turn back now or you'll wake up the monster!' 'oh, look, there's the monster! Why don't you go back and report?' 'Hey, for some reason the monster you provoked isn't attacking you, so you might be able to retreat for now and go get the rest of the group, like you said you were going to do if you found it'), then decided to play up his 'honorable' flaw by torturing a prisoner in gruesome detail ("Okay, now I'll twist his tail until it breaks. Does that make him scream?"). No, I'm not making that up, or exaggerating -- and the GM thought that was just fine too.
The sad thing is, for all this ranting, I didn't vote him dead last. There was someone at the table who did nothing at all. }:P
Right after Ironclaw was an Albedo: Platinum Catalyst demo, which went only slightly better than the last Albedo demo I went to -- but no, it *was* better, and Steve Galliachi still holds the title for Worse DM Ever. This time, the DM just didn't know the system, and so had us playing a warped and dysfunctionally crippled version of the system, which is death for a demo -- if I hadn't read over the rules afterwards, I might have thought the game was actually as bad as he made it out to be.
The main main mistake he made was that he didn't understand how skills worked. You can do things by 'rote' (like 'taking 10', basically) which is how you're normally supposed to do things. He kept discouraging us from using that, even to do routine tasks, like land an airplane. You can roll one die normally, which is pretty risky and will often fail, if rote would fail, and worse, will often botch. It's not a good idea. He had us doing that as SOP for everything -- there were a lot of botches, including on on, oh, 'landing the plane'.
Then you can 'risk' to increase the die size, or 'push' to roll 2 dice, giving a higher average and -- most importantly -- a much reduced chance of botching. He told us about risking, but not about pushing, and risking is STUPID in most cases.
There's also 'breezing' where you get to roll multiple dice without spending effort, which he didn't know about at all. So, basically, he encouraged us to use the two worst choices; the ones you should really only use when desperate to do something beyond your skill, or to do something that can be safely retried. That made the system suck, all on its own.
Then, he fucked up the subordinate characters by having them use our skill levels for all rolls. Subordinates don't have the same job descriptions or skill sets as the main characters do -- so, for instance, I was playing an infantryman, but had a 'communications specialist' working under me, who had no skill in Info Analysis or Computer Science (because I didn't). That's not how it works -- the subordinates have the skills given by their race and specialization, and while that's ALL they have, it means they can at least do their nominal jobs.
Of course, the session itself was fucked up beyond recognition by the Horse from the previous campaign, now playing an ox, who ended up in charge of the whole group. If he sucked as a follower, he sucked even worse as a leader, and when Kitsuntaur (who'd been the nominal group leader in the previous game) went off on his own to do something, disobeying a direct order (like Horse-boy had, last game) he DROPPED HIM OUT OF THE AERODYNE. At mach 7. With all our vehicles.
Through heroic action, Kits saved himself and most of his team (but not any of our heavy armor), but was thirty miles away from the action. It would have been better if he'd died, because he wouldn't shut up about what he was doing, off in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. We seriously couldn't get out of the plane for an HOUR in real time (about ten seconds in game time) because Kitsunetaur kept interrupting to ask if he was in range to fire yet (ETA: 30 minutes game time) and trying some crazy scheme to reduce the time or go faster.
When we FINALLY got out of the Aerodyne to engage the enemy swarming the airfield, the GM broke down, not having the slightest clue about how to run combat, and had us roll a few random things before deciding that the enemies were running away and we'd won. Game over. Um, yay.
We did have a fun little scene when Kits got back with the surviving vehicles, and refused to get out of the tank until Horse-boy gave him assurance in writing that he wouldn't be arrested... then arrested him, once he got out of the tank. We court martialed both of them. }:) Kits for disobeying orders, and Horse-boy for dropping (and wrecking) our armor.
I'd already bought a copy of the game in the dealer's den before the demo, so I was able to read it over once I got home, and it looks like a fairly interesting simulation of the Vietnam War. Seriously -- characters are in more danger of suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than of getting killed by enemy fire. I want to try it for real sometime; the idea of having troops supporting each player character is sort of neat.
I also got to play Rez in the game room, some. It looks neat -- I'm sorry I was never able to get my hands on it when it was actually for sale. Supposedly, it'll be coming out in a platinum hits type $20 release -- I hope that's accurate.
And, I finally got a con badge done this year. It came out... okay. I don't know who the artist was -- it was just some random person who was doing them cheap -- and they sort of messed up the hat, in a totally different way than it's messed up on my current default icon. I'll have to scan it sometime, if I can ever get my scanner working. It took her five hours to make it (well, it and the ones in the queue before it) -- she'd estimated two. I had to leave in the middle of the Albedo game to run up and get it, although GOD KNOWS there was enough time spent doing nothing to do that without any problems.
So, overall, the con was pretty fun. I didn't meet too many new people this year, because I knew so many of the people there from the Sunday meets, and hadn't arranged to meet anyone from out of town or anything... I talked some with Elix, I guess.
I ended up driving Kitsunetaur home (he failed to find a room to crash in) after 2's Rant, and got home at 2am. SO HUNGRY, due to lack of eatage all day, that I cooked myself some hot pockets and waffles despite the late hour.
I got to see several events I've always missed before -- the opening ceremonies, Uncle Kage's Story Hour, and 2 the Ranting Griffon, although I think the last didn't *happen* before. I was going to see Pictionary, but lost track of time trying (unsuccessfully) to get some people to go out to dinner before all the restaurants closed, and playing magic, and missed it.
This year I sat in on both of the demo RPG games happening the day I was there. The first was Ironclaw, a very simple module where we were all soldiers sent out to kill some monsters, and did so, with only a slight complication. Written into the module. There was a more significant complication, in that two of the party decided to disobey orders and go tromping off into the woods on their own, so the big combat happened out in the woods with only the two of them fighting, while the rest of us were mostly bored (not *entirely* bored -- we could hear the fight going on, and -- slowly -- react/prepare/accidentally draw the attention of a giant lizard and have to run for our lives back to the set traps).
The GM thought the Horse was the best RPer there -- the horse being the asshole who split the group by going off and triggering monsters while the rest of us were trying to come up with a plan (not stopping even after only one person followed him, and the GM gave plenty of hints along the lines of 'turn back now or you'll wake up the monster!' 'oh, look, there's the monster! Why don't you go back and report?' 'Hey, for some reason the monster you provoked isn't attacking you, so you might be able to retreat for now and go get the rest of the group, like you said you were going to do if you found it'), then decided to play up his 'honorable' flaw by torturing a prisoner in gruesome detail ("Okay, now I'll twist his tail until it breaks. Does that make him scream?"). No, I'm not making that up, or exaggerating -- and the GM thought that was just fine too.
The sad thing is, for all this ranting, I didn't vote him dead last. There was someone at the table who did nothing at all. }:P
Right after Ironclaw was an Albedo: Platinum Catalyst demo, which went only slightly better than the last Albedo demo I went to -- but no, it *was* better, and Steve Galliachi still holds the title for Worse DM Ever. This time, the DM just didn't know the system, and so had us playing a warped and dysfunctionally crippled version of the system, which is death for a demo -- if I hadn't read over the rules afterwards, I might have thought the game was actually as bad as he made it out to be.
The main main mistake he made was that he didn't understand how skills worked. You can do things by 'rote' (like 'taking 10', basically) which is how you're normally supposed to do things. He kept discouraging us from using that, even to do routine tasks, like land an airplane. You can roll one die normally, which is pretty risky and will often fail, if rote would fail, and worse, will often botch. It's not a good idea. He had us doing that as SOP for everything -- there were a lot of botches, including on on, oh, 'landing the plane'.
Then you can 'risk' to increase the die size, or 'push' to roll 2 dice, giving a higher average and -- most importantly -- a much reduced chance of botching. He told us about risking, but not about pushing, and risking is STUPID in most cases.
There's also 'breezing' where you get to roll multiple dice without spending effort, which he didn't know about at all. So, basically, he encouraged us to use the two worst choices; the ones you should really only use when desperate to do something beyond your skill, or to do something that can be safely retried. That made the system suck, all on its own.
Then, he fucked up the subordinate characters by having them use our skill levels for all rolls. Subordinates don't have the same job descriptions or skill sets as the main characters do -- so, for instance, I was playing an infantryman, but had a 'communications specialist' working under me, who had no skill in Info Analysis or Computer Science (because I didn't). That's not how it works -- the subordinates have the skills given by their race and specialization, and while that's ALL they have, it means they can at least do their nominal jobs.
Of course, the session itself was fucked up beyond recognition by the Horse from the previous campaign, now playing an ox, who ended up in charge of the whole group. If he sucked as a follower, he sucked even worse as a leader, and when Kitsuntaur (who'd been the nominal group leader in the previous game) went off on his own to do something, disobeying a direct order (like Horse-boy had, last game) he DROPPED HIM OUT OF THE AERODYNE. At mach 7. With all our vehicles.
Through heroic action, Kits saved himself and most of his team (but not any of our heavy armor), but was thirty miles away from the action. It would have been better if he'd died, because he wouldn't shut up about what he was doing, off in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. We seriously couldn't get out of the plane for an HOUR in real time (about ten seconds in game time) because Kitsunetaur kept interrupting to ask if he was in range to fire yet (ETA: 30 minutes game time) and trying some crazy scheme to reduce the time or go faster.
When we FINALLY got out of the Aerodyne to engage the enemy swarming the airfield, the GM broke down, not having the slightest clue about how to run combat, and had us roll a few random things before deciding that the enemies were running away and we'd won. Game over. Um, yay.
We did have a fun little scene when Kits got back with the surviving vehicles, and refused to get out of the tank until Horse-boy gave him assurance in writing that he wouldn't be arrested... then arrested him, once he got out of the tank. We court martialed both of them. }:) Kits for disobeying orders, and Horse-boy for dropping (and wrecking) our armor.
I'd already bought a copy of the game in the dealer's den before the demo, so I was able to read it over once I got home, and it looks like a fairly interesting simulation of the Vietnam War. Seriously -- characters are in more danger of suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than of getting killed by enemy fire. I want to try it for real sometime; the idea of having troops supporting each player character is sort of neat.
I also got to play Rez in the game room, some. It looks neat -- I'm sorry I was never able to get my hands on it when it was actually for sale. Supposedly, it'll be coming out in a platinum hits type $20 release -- I hope that's accurate.
And, I finally got a con badge done this year. It came out... okay. I don't know who the artist was -- it was just some random person who was doing them cheap -- and they sort of messed up the hat, in a totally different way than it's messed up on my current default icon. I'll have to scan it sometime, if I can ever get my scanner working. It took her five hours to make it (well, it and the ones in the queue before it) -- she'd estimated two. I had to leave in the middle of the Albedo game to run up and get it, although GOD KNOWS there was enough time spent doing nothing to do that without any problems.
So, overall, the con was pretty fun. I didn't meet too many new people this year, because I knew so many of the people there from the Sunday meets, and hadn't arranged to meet anyone from out of town or anything... I talked some with Elix, I guess.
I ended up driving Kitsunetaur home (he failed to find a room to crash in) after 2's Rant, and got home at 2am. SO HUNGRY, due to lack of eatage all day, that I cooked myself some hot pockets and waffles despite the late hour.
