This weekend saw the year coming full cycle, and the last face-to-face gaming convention that I attended, Revelation, returning as a virtual event. This is one of the three events (usually at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield) that I am involved in organising with Graham and Elaine.
We continue to see the dynamics of the conventions changing, with the virtual approach resulting in people becoming more and more selective on what they play. The lack of a physical hub for the games, and the amount of time that people are spending in Zoom, Teams and more, has also led to people only attending a few slots. Our sign-ups were similar to normal, but we did see a sizeable proportion decide not to engage once game booking opened. We also saw a drop off in GM numbers; I suspect it may be driven by the change of format from real-to-virtual. I suspect that prospective GMs who've not gone virtual see a screenshot from Foundry or Roll20 and feel intimidated, when the truth is that you can just use Zoom or Meet, and physical dice.
I ran for two slots, and chose not to play the others because I spend a fair bit of time in Teams meetings all week, and it gave an opportunity for some work/life balance. My first slot was a return to the neon-noir powered hero genre of City of Mist.
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| Entering the City of Mist... |
I had run City of Mist twice at last year's convention and loved it. The game has a similar vibe to Netflix Marvel, with a strong noir streak. The scenario I ran was one that I nearly took to the table last year, called 'Gambling with Death'. This had recently been released on Roll20, and I migrated all City of Mist Starter Set characters into the scenario using the transmogrifier tool. The character sheet integration is excellent and it handles status cards so well. I added in a couple of tracks from the soundtrack for background, which seemed to go down well when played quietly in the background.
I had a crew of four powered individuals played by Lynn, John, Elina and Phil. We started slowly as people adapted to the interface, but soon they all had a grip on it and we were underway. I chose to start the scenario as a missing person case, for the private detective agency that the characters were in and then bring in the murder plot to put Lynn's detective in a position of conflict between personal and professional lives. I was a bit too ambitious on what we'd cover, but we brought the game to a good ending with a sting in the tail, just after midnight. As Elina pointed out, it could have been a two-parter or mini-campaign. Everyone seemed to have fun, which is the main thing. I was reminded how much I love this game; it's begging to have a campaign run with it.
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| Welcome to Mire End... |
The second game, Sunday afternoon, was a return to the a|state 2 playtest, "Nicely, Done". I ran this at North Star last year while it was under playtest and wanted to run it again as I'd committed to Graham to run it for him. Paul, Andrew and Dragongirl74 filled the rest of the crew. The main change from the previous run-through is that the scenario has been focussed to be even sharper. I ended up undoing that because I wanted a longer game like the one that I'd run before. I did this by opening up the 'gather information' phase at the start but trying to keep it focused before we engaged with the adventure site.
The game was run using Google Meet, and Dragongirl74 introduced us to a great dice-rolling Chrome Extension, which worked well. I shared the gaming materials using presentation mode, and it worked fine. It just goes to prove you don't need the bells and whistles to have fun.
The new edition of a|state uses the Forged in the Dark engine, and cannot really be used without the SRD or a copy of Blades in the Dark as it's a taster for the final game. I enjoyed running it, but I did find the game mechanics quite slippery to hold onto as a GM, and they definitely required me to think on my feet. The end game saw a huge explosion and a successful escape with a large number of kidnapped and enslaved children. The game did veer towards the humourous for a moment, but then dug back in as the heroes tried to bring hope to a flooded borough. It was fascinating to see another group run through this scenario, with different takes on the same characters and different solutions. The session ended with a huge number of questions about how the game handled downtime and more, questions that I couldn't answer with the playtest material.
On reflection, both City of Mist and a|state left me feeling that I wanted to play more with the same characters and players. Both sessions felt like openers to longer campaigns. It's something that the Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games are good at, in my experience. It's why I keep coming back to them.
Thanks again my players and fellow committee members for a fun time.
21 February 2021
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