Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Gaming Convention

This weekend is my fall trek to the Akron area for Con on the Cob, a great local gaming convention. I go for the role playing, but there are board games and all sorts of other games going on. The con is famous for its kids activities, which usually include costume contests, art activities, movies, etc.

The Wild West LARP I ran last year went well, so this year I'll be running a LARP called Death on the Gambia. There's a lot more intrigue in this one than in the Wild West game. Very few people are actually who they seem, and there's a great lost book mechanic where every single character starts with a copy of Agatha Christie's Death On The Nile. Some are normal copies of the books, others have secret information written in them.

I've printed out old images of the cover for Death On The Nile, and will make covers for some hardbacks to take with me. So every person will be carrying around an actual book, and if someone wants to steal a book they'll have to be pretty tricky about it.

I'll also be running a normal tabletop role playing game. Rather than bring out more of my Call of Cthulhu scenarios, I decided to go for minimum preparation and turn it into a virtue. The players themsevels will decide what genre and theme the game will have, and I'll improvise a fun adventure for them.

Hopefully I'll also get a chance to play some games during the weekend!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I've recently joined the role playing group here on campus. First time doing this I was a little quiet in my gaming. We played vampire masquerade. It took a while for the story to develop in the beginning, because everyone wanted to have some fun and mess with the other players. It was fun for a while, but after an hour it got old fast. I loved the premise of the game where you make someone who isn't you come to life or in my case make a character like me and play it out to the fullest.

Jay said...

Hi Kyle! That's one of the best aspects of role playing, being able to try on different personalities. I've always compared it to freeform acting, which is probably just as fun.

Josh Colyer said...

I love all types of gaming. Role playing is very interesting. It allows you to take on other personalities and characteristics. It also allows you to escape from reality and somewhat enter a virtual/fairytale world.