Home from Camp Nerdly 3
It's Monday morning after Camp Nerdly 3, and I want to say how much I enjoyed the weekend.
I was there to run games, and I managed to run a game in every slot from Friday evening to Sunday morning.
I ran two games of "classic" or tabletop Ganakagok, one Friday night and the other Saturday night. The people who played in the first game were Paul Czege, his wife Danielle Lewon, Ryan Macklin, and Nathan Herrold (who I roped into the game, possibly against his better judgment). Ryan enjoyed the game a lot, Nathan had a bad time, and Paul was non-plussed by the mechanics, for reasons which he was not quite able to articulate. Danielle I didn't get a read on. I feel bad about this game, because it was supposed to be an indie-gaming birthday present from Paul to Danielle, and may have been the story-gaming equivalent of a salad spinner for them.
The reason I say I feel bad is because the warning signs of narrative incompatibility were there from the beginning: Nathan wanted his character to be an outsider, a non-Nitu quasi-Norse character named Sitt. This is never a good sign, because it signals a kind of alienation at the social level; in the future, I'll offer a stronger warning about the potential impact of such a choice.
But the other games were fabulous! The Saturday night tabletop game featured Travis Farber (who has run the game for his friends at home), new players Anna Kreider (of Thou Art But A Warrior) and Kit Kreider, and old Ganaka-gangsters Andrew Morris and Krista Evanouskas. The play got awfully intense at one point: Kit's character murdered the aging chieftain with a set of bear teeth, and Travis assaulted the generous poet who was the fiance of Anna's bold hunter-maiden. This infuriated the bold hunter-maiden, and Anna was incensed as well. But it made for a compelling story, I think.
And the Sunday morning jeepforged game was sheer pleasure. We had nine players, including Rob Bohl, Emily Care Boss, Joanna Corcoran, Patty Kirsch, Ryan Macklin, Chad Underkoffler, Jule Ann Wakeman, Jeremy Wakeman, and Rachel Walton (plus the Wakeman's infant daughter, but she just watched). They told a story about rival families and the struggle for leadership, and then hung out and debriefed with me to tell how to make it better. I think people really enjoyed it, and I'm excited to run it again at Dexcon next month.
I also ran Spirit of the Century and Trail of Cthulhu games, both of which were a ton of fun for me, and both of which ran very well. Spirit of the Century was "Rex Rich and the Warlord of Mars," which I ran Saturday morning in a short slot (2.5 hours) for Alex Vasquez as Martian rebel Tan-Gliil, Ryan Macklin as wealthy aviation entrepreneur Rex Rich, Kevin Middleton as private eye Max Mensch, Sean Leventhal (who'd played Tan-Gliil in a previous iteration) as hotshot barnstormer Jack Redstone, and Krista Evanouskas as intrepid girl reporter Lucy Lovelace. It was a rip-roaring adventure that ended at a nice "to be continued..." moment with Rex Rich and Dr. Einstein trapped on the flying city of Mars.
The Trail of Cthulhu game went extraordinary well. I was lucky that Shane and Ami Jackson, playing Berkeley sociologist Paul Taylor and Hollywood reporter Adela Rogers St. Johns respectively, were big Mythos fans who've taken walking tours of Providence to see H.P. Lovecraft's home there, and that Jeff Hosmer had a lot of fun playing young Robert Heinlein -- his favorite sf author -- as a die-hard rationalist who denied any evidence of the mystical. Phil Walton wasn't having fun playing Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg until we talked a little bit on a break and he realized he had to engage with the mystery. So he did, and found himself learning the secrets of "mental radio" and rescuing his wife from cultists.
Besides the games, I had an interesting time just being at the camp. I bunked with Alex, Kevin, and their friend Brian Slaski, and we found ourselves freaked out by this chipmunk/lemur hybrid we named "Peter Parker" for his habit of skittering around on the inside of our cabin's walls. Kevin snored like a fiend, driving Brian away, and I found him and Ryan Macklin wandering around the camp early the next morning. They had stayed up all night because Ryan's bunkmates snored as well (that's Chad and Buddha, as I understand), and I joined them as we wandered down by the river; Brian was excited to find a tree that looked like it had a sphincter. He took pictures.
I was Lord of the Kitchen for Saturday lunch, and I roped Sean Leventhal and Andrew Morris into helping me because no one else showed up; that seemed odd. I was a little at sea because I hadn't read the menu closely enough, so I started cutting up tomatoes and lettuce for sandwiches before I realized that they were supposed to be for dinner, and I only put on the non-vegan cream of mushroom soup, leaving the tomato risotto on the shelf. Oops!
So there were a few glitches, but overall I had a great time.
I was there to run games, and I managed to run a game in every slot from Friday evening to Sunday morning.
I ran two games of "classic" or tabletop Ganakagok, one Friday night and the other Saturday night. The people who played in the first game were Paul Czege, his wife Danielle Lewon, Ryan Macklin, and Nathan Herrold (who I roped into the game, possibly against his better judgment). Ryan enjoyed the game a lot, Nathan had a bad time, and Paul was non-plussed by the mechanics, for reasons which he was not quite able to articulate. Danielle I didn't get a read on. I feel bad about this game, because it was supposed to be an indie-gaming birthday present from Paul to Danielle, and may have been the story-gaming equivalent of a salad spinner for them.
The reason I say I feel bad is because the warning signs of narrative incompatibility were there from the beginning: Nathan wanted his character to be an outsider, a non-Nitu quasi-Norse character named Sitt. This is never a good sign, because it signals a kind of alienation at the social level; in the future, I'll offer a stronger warning about the potential impact of such a choice.
But the other games were fabulous! The Saturday night tabletop game featured Travis Farber (who has run the game for his friends at home), new players Anna Kreider (of Thou Art But A Warrior) and Kit Kreider, and old Ganaka-gangsters Andrew Morris and Krista Evanouskas. The play got awfully intense at one point: Kit's character murdered the aging chieftain with a set of bear teeth, and Travis assaulted the generous poet who was the fiance of Anna's bold hunter-maiden. This infuriated the bold hunter-maiden, and Anna was incensed as well. But it made for a compelling story, I think.
And the Sunday morning jeepforged game was sheer pleasure. We had nine players, including Rob Bohl, Emily Care Boss, Joanna Corcoran, Patty Kirsch, Ryan Macklin, Chad Underkoffler, Jule Ann Wakeman, Jeremy Wakeman, and Rachel Walton (plus the Wakeman's infant daughter, but she just watched). They told a story about rival families and the struggle for leadership, and then hung out and debriefed with me to tell how to make it better. I think people really enjoyed it, and I'm excited to run it again at Dexcon next month.
I also ran Spirit of the Century and Trail of Cthulhu games, both of which were a ton of fun for me, and both of which ran very well. Spirit of the Century was "Rex Rich and the Warlord of Mars," which I ran Saturday morning in a short slot (2.5 hours) for Alex Vasquez as Martian rebel Tan-Gliil, Ryan Macklin as wealthy aviation entrepreneur Rex Rich, Kevin Middleton as private eye Max Mensch, Sean Leventhal (who'd played Tan-Gliil in a previous iteration) as hotshot barnstormer Jack Redstone, and Krista Evanouskas as intrepid girl reporter Lucy Lovelace. It was a rip-roaring adventure that ended at a nice "to be continued..." moment with Rex Rich and Dr. Einstein trapped on the flying city of Mars.
The Trail of Cthulhu game went extraordinary well. I was lucky that Shane and Ami Jackson, playing Berkeley sociologist Paul Taylor and Hollywood reporter Adela Rogers St. Johns respectively, were big Mythos fans who've taken walking tours of Providence to see H.P. Lovecraft's home there, and that Jeff Hosmer had a lot of fun playing young Robert Heinlein -- his favorite sf author -- as a die-hard rationalist who denied any evidence of the mystical. Phil Walton wasn't having fun playing Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg until we talked a little bit on a break and he realized he had to engage with the mystery. So he did, and found himself learning the secrets of "mental radio" and rescuing his wife from cultists.
Besides the games, I had an interesting time just being at the camp. I bunked with Alex, Kevin, and their friend Brian Slaski, and we found ourselves freaked out by this chipmunk/lemur hybrid we named "Peter Parker" for his habit of skittering around on the inside of our cabin's walls. Kevin snored like a fiend, driving Brian away, and I found him and Ryan Macklin wandering around the camp early the next morning. They had stayed up all night because Ryan's bunkmates snored as well (that's Chad and Buddha, as I understand), and I joined them as we wandered down by the river; Brian was excited to find a tree that looked like it had a sphincter. He took pictures.
I was Lord of the Kitchen for Saturday lunch, and I roped Sean Leventhal and Andrew Morris into helping me because no one else showed up; that seemed odd. I was a little at sea because I hadn't read the menu closely enough, so I started cutting up tomatoes and lettuce for sandwiches before I realized that they were supposed to be for dinner, and I only put on the non-vegan cream of mushroom soup, leaving the tomato risotto on the shelf. Oops!
So there were a few glitches, but overall I had a great time.