GenCon 2011 Musings

Well, I just got back From Gen Con Indy 2011.

We had four really great sessions with all levels of familiarity with HiBRiD itself, from returning players with several sessions under their belts, to players familiar with free-form games but not HiBRiD, to players used to more structured games. As always, I came back with a number of takeaway pearls that will go into development of the game rules as well as for the Gen Con 2013 events (for which I have already begun preparing!...the players I met this year were all very inspiring!)

Takeaway 1: The Initiative System

As many of you know, I have always struggled to use the standard task roll (d20+Modifier+Ite' mechanic) for the initiative system.

I originally wanted there to be the same success levels as any task roll; you made your roll, compared it to a set DR (1=Crit Fail, 10<=Fail, 10+=Success, Nat 20=Crit Success). While it nicely integrated with the mechanics, the method seemed too arbitrary and players had a hard time using it; it was too slow.

I then settled on simply making the task roll and going from highest to lowest. While more intuitive and quicker, calling initiative was a bit clunky for the director ("OK...Nat 20's anyone?... O.K. now who got higher than 20? 15?, 17? oh, OK, let's count down...").

With running Gen Con this year, with 12 players at the table for almost all the games, I stumbled on something simpler, faster, and more elegant. Now, all players make their task roll along with the director at the beginning of the action scene. The director's result becomes the effective DR for the roll. Action then proceeds in three phases:

1. Before the bad guys
2. With the bad guys
3. After the bad guys.

I had kind of been doing it all along, but now it has been formalized and will written into the HiBRiD Basic Rules;

Takeaway 2: Game Session Player Limits

One thing I noticed this year is that a lot of gamers go to an event in groups of 3 or 4. As a result, a 12-person event can often turn into three sub-groups of players participating in side conversations. While I used to think it was because of my failure to direct the game fast enough, with so many 12 player games, it was evident that the din of the ball rooms, the two-circular-table-setup, and the excitement of the con makes concentration on events (no matter how heroic or macho) very difficult. To remedy this, instead of running four 12-player events, I may be considering five 8-player events but will accept extras. If anyone has any feedback, feel free to let me know, but as of now, I will probably be running these events at
the following times

0800 on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
1400 on Thursday, and Saturday.

Takeaway 3: Single Genre Gen Con Events: Eighties Action Heroes

With the great success of the con this year, I will be removing all Ara Knochen pregenerated player characters and expanding to include more characters from the eighties and nineties including Samuel L Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Mr. T, Jason Statham, Michael Biehn, Vin Diesel, and Christian Slater. I am also considering adding John Travolta and Nicholas Cage.

Oh, and for those of you failthful con goers, a little preview hint:  the current working title for the game in 2013 will be Con Air Passenger 57 in Canyonside...though that may change if I am inspired by a different movie within the next two years.