North Star 2021 - Afterthoughts

My pre-convention advert

This weekend brought North Star, Graham (First Age) and my Science Fiction themed convention. It's the fourth year that we've run the convention, and the second time that it's run online. 

Preparation went a lot more smoothly, and we focused on making sure that we reached out broadly to maximise the reach. Graham did a lot of that. Registration was via Google forms as usual, and we managed GM submissions and game allocation through Google Sheets, which worked smoothly. It's actually the same process that we use normally.

We knew that we'd face at least 25% dropouts based on previous online cons (this is our fourth since the lockdowns started, hopefully the last for now), and so had deliberately pushed numbers for the player base. One of the issues with online cons is that you see this drop out; it's especially frustrating when it happens once you've done game allocation as it's very time consuming. Drop outs before have very little affect. The dynamic to face-to-face is hugely different; if you're at a real location then you're likely to play. If you're online, it's easier not to. Anyway, it is what it is.

I was fortunate that Graham took over the comms once I'd done the initial GM and player allocations, as it gave me space for game preparation. The allocation and numbers are very visible, and it's hard not to bite when you get some 'helpful' suggestions and observations over forums and Facebook. 

Dropouts are especially annoying when someone tells you that they've done it for one reason (probably as they don't want to cause offence) but you then see it was for something else on Facebook or other social media because they're friends of friends. I'd wish they'd be more upfront; we understand that lots of people spend all day sitting in front of screens and also have other lives and opportunities that come along. Ultimately, we're really interested if you'd be there or not rather than the why. We have considered whether we should take a refundable deposit for the bookings; we refund it if you turn up and play, but I suspect that we won't. It will hopefully be a moot point come Furnace in October.

Anyway, the weekend seemed to go quite well. I hope that the after-con reports bear that feeling out.

So, what did I do? I ran two games I'd never run before, on a VTT that I'd not done anything other than test things for Graham on! The games were Golgotha and Dune 2d20, and I used the Role VTT.

Golgotha in the Role VTT, at the point they reached the advertising image

Golgotha is built on the Black Hack engine, and is a science-fiction game of raiding long abandoned relics of alien civilisations. Greg Saunders said that the Revenger series by Alastair Reynolds was an influence, and you can see it. You could play this as D&D in space (the Golgotha - or abandoned alien locations - would be dungeons). I didn't do this; I threw in a wilderness adventure too. I started the game with the players given a mission to find out what happened to another group of scavengers; they found the wrecked ship, which had clashed with one of the big bad alien races and then followed a breadcrumb trail to an O'Neil cylinder where they tracked down the surviving crew member and escaped ahead of the other big bad alien race. They were being hunted. They made it back to base, and then got the follow up mission to complete the first team's objectives. 

The Tergamant heads into space

I cut a section out that I'd planned, because time was tight, and we ended up with the camera cutting away with the party trapped in an ancient alien spacetime warping artefact orbiting a black hole, having managed to shutdown the fractureways used to travel faster-than-light by all the races.

I imagine Sley, Scratch, Dor and Smoooth Eddy are even now sitting in the Tergamant somewhere in the middle of nowhere bickering about whose fault it all is."

The players seemed to enjoy it. The system fades into the background (although I'd not run the game before, I have run The Cthulhu Hack and Heroic Fantasy which both draw on the same background) and was a joy to run. The only element that jarred was that I think that the damage levels for the non-fighter characters are a bit low. Damage done is based on class, so you could have a Ghost (magic user - hacker) doing d3 damage and the Blade (fighter) doing 3d8 at the same level. It felt a little too extreme. However, that was minor and the players seemed to enjoy it and I got some nice comments back.

Dune, Arrakis, Desert Planet

The second game I ran was Dune, the new 2d20 game. I've loved the setting for years (but let's not discuss the non-Frank Herbert bits) and I'd been tempted enough by the promise of a lighter take on the 2d20 engine to try again. I'd bought Star Trek Adventures previously and abandoned it due to the general incoherence of the rules presentation, selling the book after the third attempt to read it. However, I'd subsequently played it at a Furnace and enjoyed it (thanks to Dr Mitch and Paul Baldowski) so I reckoned that there'd be a way through. I pre-ordered the books and read the Quickstart.

First pass notes...

Second pass notes...

On first impression, there was a lot going on! I read the QuickStart twice, taking copious notes. Then I read the final corebook rules sections and it started to click. I've started to tie these altogether into a crib sheet which you can see on Google Docs here. It need a bit of work, but was helpful. Unlike Golgotha, this game has its engine very much in your face and you are playing a much more narrative, metagaming experience. 

My first taste of 2d20 and it went very well.
I could feel the sand in the wind, the heat on my head and taste the Spice.
Marvellous!

I ran the introductory scenario, which was probably dangerous time-wise as it needed lots of conversations (with 13 NPCs) which it proposed tests to be done with for each one! In the end, I abstracted this into groups of engagements with the players, and it worked well. We ended up with a deadly knife fight at the end, between three players and an Assassin.  I did a short wrap sequence, and the characters seemed to have succeeded, protecting the Atreides family from the Harkonnen. Meanwhile, the players looked on, knowing how wrong the characters were. 

The QuickStart could easily be used to set a campaign after the Atreides fall, with the characters guilt-feeling survivors. I liked the game engine and I will dig back into it.

The final new experience for me was Role. Role is an AV first VTT (virtual table top). Graham has long been an advocate of it, and my interest in it has been peaked as we approach Google Hangouts shutdown and Google Meet 45min limit reinstatement. It has great AV, a decent dice roll system, simple asset (maps, graphics, tokens), chat, safety tools and an easy to use visual character sheet builder. It was solid through the sessions and I will definitely use it more!

Overall, North Star was a hit for me, and I look forward to the fifth next year. Yes, we're planning to do it again! Thanks to the players and GMs for a great time.

9 May 2021