Con Artistry

Matthew McFarland

People in makeup and strange clothes run rampant. Clandestine games of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” are held in dark corners. Everywhere you look, a card game threatens to break out. The rattle of dice fairly shakes the earth. This is the majestic horror of a gaming convention.

OK, it isn’t all that momentous. But cons can be a lot of fun. I’ve been attending various cons off and on for a lot of years now. Game Masters usually get into cons free (that is, they don’t pay the registration fee, which can get pretty steep at times) so I always run at least one game, sometimes to the exclusion of playing in any others. I also try to get my friends who run games to attend. And that begins the real point of this essay.

A common response from less-experienced Storytellers is that they don’t wish to run games at a con. Reasons range from simple lack of confidence in their game-mastering skills to not wishing to run a game for a bunch of people they don’t know. While these are legitimate concerns, it is my hope that this essay will give a burgeoning “con artist” some idea of what to expect, and some tips on how to run a memorable con game.

The Basics

To begin with, let’s consider a few basic facts about the environment of a gaming convention. It’s noisy. There’s no way around that. You won’t be able to use mood music, incense, or any of the atmospheric tricks that require preparation of the space (since you typically won’t see it until right before your game). You’re going to have to speak up in order for your gamers to hear you, so if you’ve got diction issues, resolve them before the con.

Gaming cons are also crowded, and not many people go alone. That means that any of the people gaming with you might see people they know, and want to get up and say “Hi”. This makes for some game disruption, but you can’t chain them down. You just have to learn to deal with it.

I’ve noted in other essays that gamers aren’t the most time-conscious of people, ordinarily. As far as cons go, I’ll state that I’ve never started a con game on time. Usually, when the start time for the game rolls around, I’ve got one player and I’m wondering if I’ll have to cancel the game. And then, all of a sudden, an avalanche occurs and I’ve got nine people who want to play in a 6-person game.

Finally, the players you’ll have in a con game typically fall into two categories. Either the players are fans of the game that you’re running (and therefore know the system backwards and forwards, have read all of the books, and come prepared with their favorite character which they’ve been playing since the game’s first edition went on the market) or they have never played the game before and are curious about it. Usually, a game at a con includes both types of players, so you’ll have a group half-full of very knowledgeable players and half-full of very confused players.

I’ve had some pretty irritating players at my table during cons, including some folks who have the audacity to correct me on rules. The folks who know the system well often don’t seem to care if they overshadow the newer players, and, in general, one finds a high incidence of power-gaming at cons. Some players come to the table thinking that the game will be one long fight, some deliberately make trouble for the other characters and the Storyteller, some get bored and wander off to go watch Aliens two hours into the game.

So, with all this in mind, I’m sure you’re wondering why in the world you’d ever want to run a con game? Well, for several reasons, really.

First of all, it’s a superb exercise in directing characters without railroading them. That’s a subtle balance, and since con games are hard to make up on the fly (as you typically don’t have the characters’ backstories to fall back upon) you’ll probably need to gently nudge the characters towards your storyline if they go off on a tangent.

Second of all, you might just find some new players. This is especially true at smaller cons that don’t attract people from quite as wide an area. If you’re actively looking for a gaming group, go run at a con, and then ask if any (or all) of the players would like to game on a more regular basis.

Finally, it’s just fun. There’s something about cons that allows a “do or die” kind of attitude in games that isn’t present in an ongoing game. You might find yourself allowing more over-the-top ideas from your players, just to see how they’d work, whereas doing so in your weekly game might well wreck the plotline. It’s easier to take risks in Storytelling with people you’ll probably never see again.

Preparation

Most of the time, you’ll sign up to run a game several weeks (or even months) before the actual con. This gives you time to knock the kinks out of the scenario you’re going to present (unless you’re keeping it kinky, of course). Often you’ll need to fill out a form for the con, including such information as how many players you’ll allow, how long the game will be, what system (or rules within a system) you’ll be using, a blurb for the program (if there’s going to be one), and whether or not players can bring their own characters. Let’s examine each of these in turn.

I recommend no more than six players in a con game. I’ve ended up with as many as nine, but that was in a game of Mage: The Sorcerer’s Crusade that I felt would work well for a big group. The probably with games that large is that it’s hard to give everybody your attention, and the group won’t be able to interact as easily. This, in turn, means it’s easier for people to wander away. If it’s your first time running at a con, I recommend a six-player game. That allows for two groups of three, should the characters decide to split up, for one thing. However, whatever your maximum number, I recommend that unless you can stack your game (that is, you know for certain that a given number of people are going to play) you make the game flexible enough for a minimum of two players.

As far as game length goes, guess. If possible, playtest your game with your regular group before the con and try to gauge how long it’s going to be. Then add an hour for waiting for players, chargen, screwing around, distractions, and so forth. (Trust me here: an hour is optimistic. You need to add an hour and you’ll still have to pay close attention to the clock.) When your players arrive, ask if anybody needs to get out before the scheduled end of your game. It happens with remarkable frequency that a player will inform me halfway into the game that he’s signed up for a LARP (always a LARP!) and was just playing in this game to fill the time. I’ve never actually throttled someone with my bare hands in such a situation, but I’ve certainly told a few folks off. It’s more politic, however, to just ask at the get-go. As far as actual game length goes, I recommend six hours, maximum, unless you’ve really got a kick-ass game to run and you know you’ll have players (in which case, what do you need this essay for anyway?).

Game systems are pretty much are matter of taste. If you like the 1^st edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, go ahead and use those rules. Just make sure that you note that in the program (if possible) and let your players know before the game starts. Likewise, if you have any house rules that you plan to apply (most GMs have a few), tell the players before you actually start the game, just like in a normal chronicle. One of the main reasons to let folks know what system you’re using is so that they can re-read the rules: in cons, it’s often expedient if you can count on at least some of the players to be able to calculate things like damage by themselves. A caveat here, though: People cheat. Watch their dice, and if something seems improbable (“Wow, four 10s again!”), take a look at the roll. Also, beware of rules lawyers. This may be a con, but you’re still the Storyteller, and if you don’t like the way Lady 10-Sided (or 6-sided, or whatever) falls, you can change it. Don’t ever let yourself get bullied by players.

When writing a blurb for the con’s program, trying to make it enticing as possible, without giving away exactly what’s happening. Assuming people actually read those things (I always do), if there are three Werewolf games that have blurbs to the tune of “Something goes wrong during a Rite of Passage” and one that reads, “The Sept has fallen. You are the last survivors. The attackers have been turned back…today,” I know which one I’d sign up for. (In fact, I ran that last one at a recent con in Delaware, Ohio, and it went quite well.) Again, mention the rules system, and any other particulars. I sometimes add, “Rules lawyers die first!” to the end of my blurbs.

Finally, we come to the thorny issue of pre-generated characters versus allowing the players to bring their own. Both have pros and cons (no pun intended).

If you let players bring their own characters, they will. By that I mean, they won’t create characters for the game, they will bring their own (typically the one they’ve been playing for years and may have doctored just a tad). Occasionally, though, you’ll get someone who will follow whatever character creation guidelines are set forth in your blurb, in which you’ll want to check over the character for gross example of rules-raping (“Hmm…5 Dexterity, 5 Brawl, 5 Melee, etc.). The other option is to have the players create characters at the table. This depends on how well the players know the system, and how intricate chargen is. It’s a possible approach with White Wolf, as the chargen system is relatively simple, but I wouldn’t recommend it for Chill (which, while it has a superb chargen system, takes some explaining). Allowing players to bring or create characters has two major disadvantages (above and beyond the “Can I play my 5^th rank Get of Fenris Ahroun who knows sphere magic and 5 levels of Kailindo?” dilemma). First, any new players will need your help anyway, which rather defeats the purpose of the exercise. Second, the players will choose what they think will be helpful in the game, but they might be wrong. This second problem with not creating the characters yourself brings me straight into my discussion of…

Pre-generated characters (or pre-gens). I admit I’m biased: this is the approach I nearly always use. Even when I allow players to bring their own characters, I create few just in case. Why? Well, throughout all of these essays I’ve been saying (in a nutshell) that the key to running games really well is paying attention to the interaction between the characters and the storyline; in essence, making sure they mesh, either by tailoring the storyline to the characters or vice versa. In a con, though, you’re creating the storyline ahead of time and you’ve only got one session. That means that the characters must be able to function within that storyline, and the only way you’ll know that this is the case is if you create the characters as well as the storyline. For example, let’s take the Werewolf game that I ran at the Catchy Slogan con recently (the blurb that I mentioned above, remember?). I knew that I did not want characters who knew too much about Werewolf society; the point of the game was that these young cubs were the last survivors of a vicious attack, and were basically babes in the woods (in the desert, really). Therefore, skills like Rituals and Lore were restricted to low levels. So, when I created the characters, I made them all useful (in their own way) but kept them to certain limits.

I recommend allowing a certain amount of customization in pre-generated characters. For example, White Wolf’s chargen system allows players to spend “freebie” points to raise or buy nearly any trait or skill they wish, after all of the initial points have been assigned. When I run White Wolf’s games at cons I leave these points unspent, so the players have some say in what their characters’ capabilities are. Other systems that don’t leave room for flexibility like this make character customization a shade more difficult, but if nothing else, a character’s name, appearance, and temperament should always be up to the player.

When bringing pre-gens to the game, I advise creating about half again as many as you’ll actually need (that is, nine characters for a six player game). This is to allow some diversity among the characters and to let players feel like they have more of choice. Just remember that you’ll need to be able to run the game with any combination of those characters, so construct the characters accordingly.

Running the Game

After you’ve got characters and players and times and rules and so on straightened out, the real work begins. For the next X hours, you have to hold the attention of several highly creative, caffeine-addled gamers, and somehow manage to keep them on track and get them through the scenario you’ve crafted. How to do this?

First of all, a timeline might help. Since con games are of necessity plot-driven as opposed to character driven, it’s a big help to know what’s going to happen when (unless the characters intervene).

In the same vein, know your game. Know the system, know the NPCs you’re going to use, and if any of the characters have special traits that you need to keep tabs on (and ability to sense danger, for example) make yourself a note. The more time you spend checking a book or chart, the more chances the players have to slip away to the Pokemon room. If the game you’re running has a screen associated with it, I recommend bringing it to the con for easy reference, even if you don’t like hiding your die rolls behind it.

Pacing, a tricky practice in normal games, is critical at cons. You must keep the action going. The players don’t know each other and don’t know each other’s playing style, so they’ll usually be less apt to start in-character conversation (though you might be pleasantly surprised). That means that you’ll need to be constantly presenting them with new information. If they get stuck, have them roll something to get unstuck. If someone has spoken in a while, ask what his character’s doing. Going around the table periodically and checking every character’s status enables you to keep everyone informed as to the current situation, as well as to gauge whether or not the players are paying attention raptly or getting bored rapidly.

Combat in cons can be more deadly than in a normal game, as players are more willing to take risks with a character they’ll probably never use again. That’s fine. Just beware of killing people off too early, lest you find yourself missing an important character. In general, however, don’t jump to a character’s rescue if the dice dictate that character’s doom. Do make it cinematic and impressive, however, and definitely allow for final words and heroic moments (see Winter_Heart’s essay on the subject of character death for more advice; most of it works for cons as well as normal game sessions).

What to Avoid

• Overcomplication: I played in a game at a con that was billed as Vampire/Werewolf/Mage. For those of you who don’t play White Wolf’s games, each of these games, while sharing a system with the others, is very different from them in tone, feel, and style. Mixing two is a complicated undertaking, and mixing three would require a good Storyteller and some pretty specific circumstances. This game, however, had none of that. The two groups (vampires and werewolves; nobody played a mage) never met up. The “Storyteller” just switched between the two groups every so often. I can’t remember anything about that game except that a) I was glad when my character met his fate so that I could leave and b) the Storyteller gave me the idea of punching character sheets with a 3-hole punch and putting them into a binder.

This doesn’t mean a con game can’t be intricate, nor does it mean that it can’t require some pretty involved work to get to the end of the game. However, the storyline should be understandable (at least in retrospect) and you should certainly know where it’s going if you’re running the game! If it’s your first con, keep it simple. Survival is a perfectly legitimate goal for the characters; sneaky political games work better for long-term stories, anyway.

• Lethargy: I rarely sit while running games at cons. I stand, I gesture, I pace, I walk over to players to look at character sheets. I keep everything very high-energy. Do not every look bored as a Storyteller, or I guarantee your players will be bored as well.

• Self-Deprecation: Don’t begin the game with, “OK, I suck as a Storyteller, but here goes.” Modesty is one thing, but be confident in your Storytelling abilities. You want to project the air that you know what’s going to happen, that you are prepared for whatever shenanigans the players throw at you (as if any Storyteller every could be).

• In-Jokes: I ran various White Wolf games for six years, and each game took place in the same “world” as the others. That is, a player’s vampire character might meet up with another’s mage character (actually, the closest most characters ever got was hearing about each other peripherally). When I ran games at cons, I sometimes considered those games to have happened in my game world. If you do this sort of thing ¾ involve elements from your ongoing games in a con game ¾ beware of two things. First, don’t let your usual players hog the spotlight. Second, don’t be surprised if what happens in the con completely derails events in your regular game. It’s fine if you want to relate the two, somehow, but don’t make the relation the crux of the game. The player whom you’ll never see again want to enjoy the game just as much as your buddies, so err on their side. After all, you can always rule that the con game never happened or happened differently in your usual game.

• Cheap Shots: I played in a game once where the characters were all Musketeers. The game effectively followed the plotline of the famous story (or the movie version, anyhow) except that the Cardinal was a vampire (White Wolf’s system. The GM let us buy True Faith as a Talent. I really should have walked away right then…). Anyway, during the final confrontation, when the Cardinal stood revealed, my character charged him, raising his sword, and…ran smack into a wall. “Tee-hee,” said the “Storyteller”, and then stated that my soul had become so infused by the Holy Spirit that I’d have some fiery fists of fury power the next turn. Whoopity-doodle-doo, I thought. You’d think God would have warned me about the wall.

The main problem here is that the GM was being cute while I was seriously trying to role-play my character. Moments after this, the GM used the dreaded deus ex machina technique to lay the Cardinal low. Do not take cheap shots at the expense of good Storytelling. This applies as much (or more) to normal games as to cons, but it’s more tempting at cons because of their transitory nature.

In closing, I reiterate that cons are a lot of fun. Hopefully, this essay piques your interest to look around your area for an upcoming convention ¾ or even to start one yourself (how hard can it be? J). Attend at your own risk, don’t feed the Werewolf players, and hope to see you at one soon!

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