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Conned into Having a Good Time: The ApartmentCon! Adventure
Live game demos are a little bit controversial in the gaming industry. A lot of people will tell you that you can't sell a game unless you demo it. On the other side of the fence, however, is the very good advice that some games don't do well in a one-shot demo. Games which have particularly complex setups, or which are built for interesting long campaigns, can sometimes fall flat in one-shot one-hour sessions. Multiverser, as an "I game", builds very complex characters and targets long-term campaigns, and we had concerns about whether one-shot games would do it justice. But in part from an on-line game I had been running a while back and in part from ideas for a new introductory role playing game in development I had pulled together a new "on the fly" character creation system, and if it worked it could get people involved in the game quickly. A convention would be just the place to try it: converting complete strangers into game characters on the fly would be a real test of the idea.
But there were a lot of hurdles to cross before I would get that far, and the first was just getting there. We've got two cars, but one of them needs a few repairs before it's back on the road, and my wife doesn't like to be stranded, even at home. Her immediate thought was that the car would have to be fixed, and mine was that this was not going to happen within the budget. But before I had to think too hard about it, Nick said he could pick me up, and I thought this was great. The transportation problem was solved, I didn't have to drive the two hours to the con, and I could start the game in the car on the way.
All of this was not taking into account the suspicions of my wife. She soon was worrying about the ax murderer who preys on unsuspecting gamers, offering us rides to conventions and marveling at how gullible we are. She became more and more convinced that if she let me leave with this Nick person she would never see me again. I mentioned to Nick that I was going to have to find a way to set her mind at ease on this, and he soon wrote back with a new idea. He would drive from Ohio to Maryland Friday afternoon, and then would bring the convention hosts Clint and Peter to New Jersey that evening to scoop up me and take me back. Right--I didn't even have to ask my wife whether she would be more comfortable if I left with three total strangers.
Well, we went through several variations on the theme, and at one point Clinton was going to come visit us the week before to play board games and not be a stranger. I don't know if that would have worked, but a particularly nasty influenza strain hit our house that week, and we recommended otherwise. I would just have to trust that Nick wasn't an ax murderer. Besides, if the convention was going to start early Saturday morning and Nick couldn't leave Ohio until early Friday afternoon, he couldn't get to Maryland before he came to me. It would be the two of us, and we'd start the game in the car early Friday evening.
Things were falling into place on my end. The Multiverser Referee's Screens project had been put on hold, but I had the files which would be the charts and tables side. Although I swear by the maxim, "A thing of beauty was made by someone else", I proceeded to cut up some of the boxes here and glue the charts on one side. I casually mentioned to art director Jim Denaxas that I was doing this, asking whether he had any of the preliminary sketches of the artwork that could be put on the outside, and he said bring them by and he'd do something with them. A week later I had what I thought were beautiful screens, which along with the score of blank character forms, printouts of worlds under development, magic creation worksheets, new pencils and paper, and a few other odds and ends, were becoming a substantial kit for the game.
I finished up my work early on Thursday, but there were family matters which kept me awake late. On Friday I had a lot of things to do before I could leave, so that things would run smoothly in my absence. Around four in the afternoon Nick called. He had passed Pittsburg, and was estimating about 270 miles to Philadelphia. He had sent me an e-mail changing the plan--for reasons I still haven't learned, he was planning to pick up Ed on the way, or perhaps not quite on the way as Ed is maybe ninety minutes north of me, at least thirty minutes north of the east-west arteries which came my direction. But at the moment he was caught in traffic. Says I, "Gee, you're going to reach Harrisburg just in time for rush hour"; says he, "Oh, so that's what this is". He gave me Ed's number, and the number for his cell phone. The cell phone number was slightly below useless, as it became a non-working number when he shut off the phone, so no one ever really could reach him on that line. But I called Ed and discussed the best way to get from his place to mine, and ate dinner expecting to hear that they would be arriving between nine and ten.
That was wishful thinking. Between nine and ten, Nick was finding his way into Philadelphia. It would be a long time before he found his way out again. I kept grabbing naps here and there, and waiting for a call which would tell me what was happening. The last time I called Ed he knew no more than I; and neither of us could raise Nick on the cell.
I also had two phone numbers for Clinton. But the cell phone kept reporting as a non-working number, and there wasn't any answer on the apartment line. I tried to call a couple times early in the evening, and Ed also tried to reach him, but he had gone out with friends.
The long-awaited call came around one thirty. Nick had reached Ed, and they were leaving to come get me. I took another nap, and then moved my luggage out to the front yard. I say luggage; I had a small duffel containing mostly clothes, a cardboard box with all gaming gear including my dice box, a portable file box containing character papers and worlds, some separately-packed medical supplies, and a rack of eight two-liter bottles of Coke. (I have a terrible Coke habit--two, sometimes three liters a day. I had no intention of running short during the game, and didn't want to be rude to anyone who asked for some. It would prove to be more than I needed, but that had been my expectation.)
Barely had I moved things outside when a car arrived. It was not Nick's car. Nick was pretty beat, and Ed had taken over the driving. It was three in the morning, and the convention was scheduled to start around eight according to the last schedule I'd received. Loading most things in the trunk but the game stuff in the back seat, I settled in for the ride.
We didn't play on the way down. For one thing, I was handed the task of navigating and wasn't quite clear myself how to get where we were going. And Nick and Ed had been trading tales already, so their conversation continued. Plus, Ed's car has speakers in the back seat, and it's tough enough sitting in the back and hearing what's going on in the front when there's no music with which to compete. But it was good conversation, I learned some things about my companions, and I chose the back so there's no point complaining.
Apparently we had more than one copy of directions, and they did not all lead to the same place. I was navigating from a Yahoo! directions printout which was intended to give a rough idea of how long it would take. It took us to the center of Annapolis, and then abruptly ended. With no idea where the apartment was, Nick called Clinton. At five in the morning we pulled him out of bed to talk us out of town to the apartments. We still weren't home free. I'd seen an address, but it didn't include an apartment number; Ed had an apartment number, and was looking for that. It took us a while, including parking in the wrong lot and walking to the wrong building, before we worked out between us that we had to find the building number first, and then the apartment number--well, it was after five in the morning. So we climbed back into the car and drove to another lot. Before we'd spent any more time finding him, Clint came out to the parking lot and found us.
I want to interject at this point that Annapolis is a beautiful city, at least from what we saw of it. Even driving through at that hour we noticed that compared with other cities in our experience it was clean and pleasant. It was only a few blocks before we were out of the downtown area and into something quite suburban. It was a very nice place for a convention, and if Clint does it again, let me encourage you not only to attend but to give yourself an hour or two to see the area. We didn't have that time, so I can't tell you what there might be to see, but what little I did see was refreshing.
Clint was ready to send one of us to the hotel; although originally he had expected to send both of us there so he could keep his own bed (remember, we were expected to be a duo), he had procured a second bed of sorts and tossed it in his living room, so he was now prepared to give up his room. Since not being at the hotel would mean that I wasn't dependent upon someone else for transport, I immediately opted for the bed--which worked out well for Clint, since my companions spent the weekend on his futons and he never did have to rent that room. I also opted immediately for some sleep, and with some difficulty persuaded myself to withdraw from the still engaging conversation and make myself as comfortable as one can in a strange place.
The convention was going to start at eight, and I felt sorry for our host who had been out late and then awakened by us so early. But I slept until almost ten. I'm told that they tried to awaken me, but nothing penetrated until they spoke my name, at which point I snapped to wakefulness quite abruptly. Well, I'm approaching my silver wedding anniversary, so I've been conditioned to respond to that. When they woke me they informed me that I had missed breakfast at Denny's (at least I think that's what they said--I wasn't completely awake at that point), but could grab a bowl of cereal before people began to arrive. If like me you have kids, you've already misunderstood the concept of "grab a bowl of cereal". We have between four and twelve varieties of cereal on the shelf at any given moment. My host, young and living alone, had Frosted Flakes, and although I enjoy those from time to time, it didn't seem worth the effort after visions of a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast had scampered through my mind. As long as I get lunch, I said, I'll be fine. And I brought my game supplies to the living room table, filled my covered sixteen-ounce mug with Coke, set up the dice box, and prepared to run a little Multiverser. For as little sleep as I got, I felt well rested, no doubt due to the abundance of half-hour naps I'd taken the day before while nervously awaiting my ride.
People began to arrive. Several of them expressed an eagerness to play Multiverser, but there were several other games planned for the weekend, and it seemed like nearly half of those who came to play were also scheduled to run something. I sat there for a while with character papers ready, meeting people whose names were still a blur, trying to connect at least some of them to screen names and ideas they had posted. It was often said of E. R. Jones that he remembered people's character names much easier than their real names; that may be one reason why Multiverser was conceived as an "I game". But today I could understand that feeling, as I didn't know whether to call people Dak, Prospero, Doc, and Vaxalon, or Nick, Clinton, Peter, and Fred; or indeed for some whether to call them Clint, Pete, and Wookie. At least Ed was Ed; but I'll bet there were quite a few there who didn't know whether to call me Emjay or Mark.
But while the first "other" game was getting started, Fred joined me. In its first trial run the On-the-Fly Character Creation system worked smoothly and swiftly (Multiverser referees can find it on our referee support site), and the game was launched.
Fred was the first of a series of excellent players. In a lot of ways he reminded me of me--cautious, thoughtful, prepared, yet true to character. I've seen players get blown out of NagaWorld so fast they never saw the place, and I brought at least a dozen worlds with me to spring on players who did. But Fred set the tone, and not only did he keep himself alive, he began to seriously uncover the secrets of the universe and set the tone of the game so that everyone worked together on survival, and everyone stayed alive.
Others started joining the game, one at a time. We've always launched players one or two at a time in Multiverser, giving each a chance to begin to focus on a direction before introducing the next. Because most of those present were involved in the other game, Fred had enough time to thoroughly if cursorily explore a good part of what he could see, and to experiment enough to provide for his own survival. By the time Ed joined him, he was already creating a map (a miniature Stonehenge), and together they continued trying to understand this very alien world in which they found themselves.
Fred left to introduce a new group of players to the card system he was developing for use with the Amber Diceless Roleplaying System; from time to time I would ask him his character's reactions to events, but he had by then established his intentions and was easy to cover. Others joined the game, and were quickly working together to uncover the secrets of NagaWorld (they covered a lot of ground in the short time they had; few players have learned so much in so short a time).
Clint started cooking dinner. He had promised to feed me, but was undertaking to feed the entire convention. He did it with style. He grilled up some burgers, followed by beef and pork ribs, and it was all delicious, and there was enough to go around and then some--late in the evening as things were winding down, I shared the last block of beef ribs as a late night snack.
It had been a good game and a long day, and while others were playing in the computer room, I dozed off in my room. I'm told they heard me snoring, but I awoke after an hour and changed for bed. This time I heard someone else snoring, but before long I joined the refrain.
Sunday morning I rose early, and heard Clinton taking his dog outside. I was looking for some breakfast (other than Frosted Flakes) before the games began, so I followed. I didn't find him, but within twenty paces of the door I came over a low hill and saw a lovely quiet harbor. Again I was struck with how pleasant a place this was. I did get breakfast; Clint drove us down to Wawa, and I grabbed a sandwich and a side which served as brunch for the day.
From a business perspective, I didn't need to stay for Sunday. Peter was running the Nutcracker Suite game he and Clinton had created, and it was just the five of us. Although I set up for Multiverser and made it clear that I was there to run it for anyone who wanted to play, no one showed up besides the three of us and our hosts, so we spent an hour or so creating characters and the bulk of the afternoon on our adventure. It was a fun adventure with some creative ideas (I remember riding giant grasshoppers in bounds across the desert in search of a mythical turtle who makes Morla the Ancient One look like a housepet), but I was reminded that one-shot demos don't really tell you much about a game system. Thoughtfully the guys gave a CD-ROM copy of the game to each person in attendance. I've lent mine to a critic with whom I share a common friend, but I'm looking forward to getting it back and learning more about it.
Nick had decided we had to leave by five if he was to get home in time for class on Monday. We were gone before six, packed back in the car again with the game stuff and me in the back seat. This time we did play a bit. Nick had fallen asleep Saturday before he got into the game, and so instead of being the first to join the game he proved to be the last. Gameplay drifted into discussion of the mechanics, as Ed asked questions about the bias system. And before long, I was home--in time for dinner.
Overall, it was a worthwhile trip and a lot of fun. If the demo showed anything, it was that the mechanics of Multiverser are a lot less intrusive than people imagine, that character creation for it can be quick and easy, and that I-games can actually be a lot of fun if done right--but whether that's what the players experienced will probably be answered on the forums in the days ahead.
And if I'm invited to run Multiverser at another ApartmentCon!, I'll probably do so.
M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser: the Game and Vice President for Development of Valdron Inc. His writings on the web include much that is related to role playing games, including several articles here on Gaming Outpost:
Morality and Consequences: Overlooked Gaming Essentials
Incomplete Games and Necessary Supplements
and
The Source of Law
all indexed for your convenience.