Orccon 08

Last weekend four friends and I went to Orccon up in LA near the airport. Orccon is part of a three con series that lands on three day weekends including Presidents Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.

For this con we left around 7am and arrived a little after 9. We got our badges and hit the dealers room where I bee lined it to the Indy Press Revolution booth which sells independent role-playing games. I picked up "Grey Ranks" and rpg about playing teenage rebels during the Warsaw Uprising during WWII. I also got "Cold City" where you play supernatural investigators in Berlin during the 1950s.

At 10am was my first game which was "Houses of the Blooded" with game designer John Wick. HotB is his new game and it was a lot of fun. It had a fun system which allowed players to define characters and the setting as you played.

My second game I ran which was Witchcraft. I had ran this adventure before and it didn't go well. Something had to change and I cam up with an idea before the con. I decided that each player would declare a contact for their character. They would write the contact on a piece of paper and hand them to me. The game would revolve around each character visiting their contacts to solve a mystery. They would take 2-4 other characters with them. The other players would play the contact and other NPCs.

The game was fantastic and everyone had a blast.

The next day I played Heroquest. There were four of us and the GM was ill prepared. He had us make characters (something I discourage for a con game). However, everyone was open-minded and we come up with some great characters. The GM ran with it and was encouraging and creative. The game turned into a great experience and I'm using the concepts we came up with for my own one-shot.

Final game was Unknown Armies. We were playing a published adventure called "Jail Break" in which some of the players play escaped convicts while other players play hostages. I have heard this is one of the greatest written adventures of all time. I ended up disappointed in the adventure though I still had fun. It had some fun moments but a few players with left with nothing to do and character goals could have been a lot clearer especially for my character and the woman who was playing my characters wife (the characters had a very important roll).

Overall, great fun gaming, staying up late, and hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones. I have grown to really enjoy the con scene and am looking forward to GameX in May and possibly Gencon Indy (the big one) in August.