Kapcon 16

My experiences at Kapcon this year was a little truncated - I only got to the first two sessions each day, and skipped the live game. I found that the lack of tiredness made up for the missed gaming - this was the first con that I came out of feeling fine (as opposed to having my voice gone and so tired I need Monday to recover).

Session one - Full Light, Full Steam. This game went well, but not fantastic. I tried to use a few of the rules that probably should have been dropped for a convention one-off. A couple of players didn't like the way I set up the first scene, as it seemed to block certain options (a fair point, in retrospect). However, once the action kicked off, we got into it and everything went well. The dice system is fantastic (although everyone seems to take a while to get their head around it). There was little use of thematic batteries in checks, but I think this was mainly because the group was moving so fast. Nobody stopped to try and pull more advantage out, they just kept going (to their disadvantage, a couple of times).

Session two - The Gilman House. Zak was running a lot of old scenario contest entries, and this was a Call of Cthulhu one. It was nice to be in one of Zak's games (it seems like years since last time I played one). The scenario was good, although a couple of things bothered me. Firstly, my character had basically zero interest in or connection to the mystery (and I think a couple of the others were similar), which meant that I spent a lot of time goofing around until the monsters actually started appearing. Secondly, the scenario seemed to rely on the player characters doing one or another magic ritual. The only two characters who had mythos/occult background also had extremely low POW score. When it came to the crunch, then, they kept failing their rolls and things went very badly. The group had fun, though, and Zak kept things moving all through. It was, however, needlessly mean to have the two of us who survived arrested for the murder of the others.


Session four - Prime Time Adventures "Ward X." Hix hosted this PTA session, with me and two other players. We had time to develop a show, play one episode, and plan the series that would have been. Hix did a great job guiding the brainstorming, especially as it seemed like the group had quite divergent TV tastes. Narrowing down to something we all liked took some work, but we ended up with a supernatural forensic medical drama. We played through an episode in which a woman was suddenly struck blind. It turned out, after all the investigation, to have been ghostly brain parasites combined with a miscast magical spell. The patient survived with only some recurring invisibility(!). I loved this one section where, after successful brain surgery to remove the parasites, we decided that we needed to reintroduce them before lifting the spell on the patient to save her. The scene between the new doctor on the team and her friend the neurosurgeon was fantastic. He was completely sceptical and was only won over grudgingly. Great stuff from Helen and Hix that scene. I am sad we can't play the rest of that series (or watch the show).

Session five - InSpectres: Helsinki. I ran a game of InSpectres next. It was a great group and we rocked. We picked Helsinki as a place mainly because of someone's story about how students there dress for pub crawls. The franchise dealt with a family home demonic infestation (old graveyard, demonic transmission via phone line); a dimensional rift (mad scientist, inter-dimensional war prevented by homoerotic wrestling); and finally a mysterious smell in a restaurant (the Dark Lord, Satan, was turning people into demonic chickens via haircare products).

A good Kapcon. Huzzah for the organisers and all the people who played games with me. You were great.