A Guide To the Creation of Canyonside
As I was preparing for our last GenCon game, I had to research all the games I ran at GenCon over the years. Throughout the scenario, as I wrote it, I threw in references to each and every game I ever ran. As a treat to those who were there at the beginning as well as a quick historical reference to the story arc of the Canyonside adventures in general, I offer the following timeline series of posts.
It all began in 1994.
1994-The Twists of Tui-te
This was the first GenCon I ever ran a game at. I ran a 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons scenario that would eventually become the basis for our 2013 Snakes on Plane scenario. That scenario had originally been designed to be a three part tournament. I had made 36 pre-generated character sheets and only 4 players of the 12 qualifiers showed up. I was dejected and about to begin with a sad heart when interestingly, a number of players were walking around like homeless gazelles looking for a place to play on the arena floor. They would come and ask "is this game open" and I said "Yes, but you have to know the rules, if you don't have your character action ready, your character does nothing, and I don't want any fights on judgments of how magic items work because I don't plan on looking anything up". Surprisingly, everyone actually seemed more excited by the prospect, with one younger kid actually exclaiming "Oh Yeah!!!" like the Koolaid Man. I collected their generic tickets and I ended up running 18 players/characters for a 4 and a half hour game. It was incredible because everyone knew every magic item and ability and all I had to do is determine NPC actions; the mechanics were for the most part handled by the players! That was when I realized that the d100 system for HiBRiD 1.0 needed to be scrapped for something easier to use. I also began hacking the system apart and wrote the HiBRiD mentalics and damage systems that year.
This was when decided that I wanted to run games where the players would help me rather than have a traditional adversarial game where it was my creation against the players' knowledge of the rules. I also decided I wanted to run big groups of improvisational players instead of rules lawyers, and that I wanted to get rid of D&D altogether as it had too many rules. This was the last D&D game I would ever run.
