DragonCon 2007 After-Hours Gaming After-Action Report
This was an admittedly ad-hoc affair. I didn’t manage to rope anyone in to run Unknown Armies, Kevin “ANT Pogo” Pezzano couldn’t make it because he was ill, and Benjamin “Bailywolf” Baugh could only come Sunday, so that cut down on the gaming we could run. I was prepped to run Delta Green, but not too many people showed up looking for Delta Green. The ones who did got to linger, lovingly from what I could tell, over the spiral-bound proof copy of
Delta Green: Eyes Only.
Friday night we mainly spent talking about ideas for a Mythos/Horror programming track at DragonCon 2008. Saturday we posted a bunch of flyers for the late-night gaming, and that paid off in a way that surprised me. A bunch of people came Saturday night thanks to the flyers. But they weren’t after our hottest properties, Delta Green: Eyes Only or Wild Talents — they were all looking to play
Monsters and Other Childish Things. I told them to swing by Sunday night, becase the author would be running a game himself.
The hot flyer. Give credit to Rob Mansperger’s art for its allure.
Bailywolf came in Sunday with his very nice wife and their adorable young daughter. We had lunch with my old friend Joe Crowe from
RevolutionSF, I showed them around a little, then they explored the con the rest of the day. Around 10:00 that night I met him in the Hilton where he was drawing up notes for the night’s game.
Everybody who had been interested in Monsters before showed up, plus a couple of new players, plus a bunch of people wanting to play Unknown Armies. After I told the UA fans the bad news, they decided to run a game anyway since one of them had brought the book. So we brought in some coffee and drinks, they set up in one corner of the conference room, we set up the big Monsters gang at a table, and we put on some Lovecraftian movies courtesy of Lurker Films on a DVD projector.
The Monsters game. Clockwise from left: Joe, Cori, Tim, Bobbi, Jeff, Kelly, Derek, Coley. (One player had crashed by this time and gone off to bed.)
The Monsters game, “What Did You Get for Christmas?”, was about kids coming back to school after Christmas break, with brand-new monster friends that wouldn’t leave them alone and their favorite teachers all replaced by creepy substitutes.
Before the con Benjamin and I had worked up a scheme to bring some arts and crafts for the players. He brought bunch of paper plates, sticks, crayons and colored pencils so they could draw their monsters on the plates and hold them up to signal when it was the monster speaking or acting. It was AWESOME. Everyone seemed to love it, and some of the players were really clever artists.
The game was huge, in every sense. We had eight players plus a couple of observers, and judging from the constant laughter and occasional moments of “oh, creepy,” everybody seemed to have a blast.
Monsters and Other Childish Things is a strange little game that doesn’t quite fit into any existing niche — it’s funnier than Little Fears but more serious than a Pokethulhu-style parody. Personally, I found it great to run into a bunch of people who seemed to love the concept as much as I do. We’re working on an expanded collector’s edition now and a couple of campaign setting books, and I really look forward to having copies at next year’s DragonCon.
Susan “The Princess” Shuman’s monster, Lucinda. Lucinda looks like a coifed Texas beauty queen aged to about 40, but her appearance is only skin deep — her skin being a hard shell that covers a thick, gooey filling that smells like concrete sealant and burns the skin. She’s always smiling, too. And she always has cookies or brownies, fresh from the oven — even when there isn’t an oven for miles.
Peter “The Jock” Peters’ monster, The Team in I. A mass of zombie football players mushed into a giant conglomerate player fifteen feet tall. When the Carter Jr. High football team went off that cliff in their bus, what arose was more than the sum of its parts. Personality: Gung-Ho and ready to rock. Lots of Hooo-aaaa! Calls Peter “Coach.”
Walter “The Narc” Wilson’s monster, the Watcher from the Corners of Time: A vaguely reptilian shadow in a coiling inky cloud of sweet-smelling gas which boils out of a corner in the room. Only semi-material, the Watcher can affect the world but is hard to itself affect.
Top row: Possibly a sketch of Susan Shuman, I’m not sure; and the Trashman, a giant shambling humanoid with black-plastic skin, bones of bottles and cans, guts of rotten watermelons and leftover meatloaf. Bottom row: Baby Ticktock, a giant baby doll with a cracked porcelain face and clockwork innards; serrated blades and rotating knives burst from her body when needed; Connie, a giant airborne caelacone — a predator from the ancient seas before anything walked the land; and Lucinda’s ride. The kids said they needed a ride to the former vice principal’s house, and Lucinda went and found an RV. She cleaned off most of the bloodstains before picking up the kids.
Thank you to all the players for coming — I hope you had a terrific time.
Special thanks to Bailywolf for running a great game, “Pope Jonny X” at the DragonCon Space and Science Track for helping us set up the after-hours game room, the good folks at Lurker Films for providing DVDs, the hackers partying next door for refreshments, and the guys with the musical Tesla coils down the hall for keeping things lively.