My weekend in a JiffyCon
Nov. 19th, 2007 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
Right, so, it was a fun weekend. I went to the Fall 2007 edition of JiffyCon, the one-day gaming convention hosted mostly by my friend Emily and her Western Mass. RPG-designer friends. Attendance was fairly high and we had people from Boston, New York and Virginia.
Since the pre-registration numbers were really high, Emily tapped me to run a fill-in game to help with the overflow. I chose Great Ork Gods, the best game that never really made it past playtest. It's the perfect game because it's fast, funny, and requires almost no prep on the GM's part. Players take on the role of one of the Great Ork Gods. At the same time, they also play an Orc who is hated by the gods. Whenever a situation comes up, the god appropriate to the task determines how hard or easy the task is. This can get modified up or down a bit and then the player of the orc in question has to roll some dice and try to score higher than the god's hatred for him.
This round was pretty fun (as usual). Highlights include:
But the crowning achievement of the session was the young girl of 5-6 who wandered up to the table, listened in on the orc-y plans to dispatch one of the daughters and said "That's mean! You guys shouldn't hurt people! That's really mean!". Out of the mouths of babes.
The game ended early, but I busted out my copy of Manhattan and we built some skyscrapers for awhile. I think I came in second. I was pleased to be reminded of how fun that game is and how close the game can be even when early rounds show a clear winner. I certainly suffered from "kill the leader" syndrome.
In the afternoon, I got to sit down with Julia Ellingboe, and play a game of Steal Away Jordan -- the RPG about being a slave in Deep South. It was a brutal, brutal game. Which, yeah, given the subject matter you'd expect that, but it wasn't exactly physically brutal. Only one PC came close to getting a whipping and he managed to fast-talk his way out of it. No, it was brutal in the sense that of the poor choices you have as a slave, our choices just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
We played as slaves on an antebellum plantation in the South with the fantasy elements turned up high. So it starts in the morning with an unknown slave brutally murdered in the field, moves on to bloodstains that won't come out, sullen ghosts, and a busy night for the local wise woman, and then really kicks into high gear when two slaves go off to the crossroads to make a deal with the devil. One does pretty well, the other one fares badly and has to cut off the left hand of the Mistress.
Meanwhile, I'm ordered to keep an eye on the Master's son and, hoping to offset, some the black magic going around, I say I'm going outside to talk to the animals and see if they can give me some help.
"OK," says Julia, "you go outside and Martin [the PC who fared well in dealing with the devil] has come back to the plantation with this massive black hound with red eyes. It nods in your direction and says 'hello, Homer'".
"Hey, Martin, where'd you get the dog?"
"Oh...down by the crossroads..."
"I turn around and go back to the house. Mr. Bluebird is not on my shoulder and wants nothing to do with this."
It's at this point, I'm told by a helpful spirit that the Mistress is possessed and I need to cut off her right hand to save her. This leads to a confused scene between me and Ceasar about which hand should be cut off by whom and why.
Long story short, Ceasar and I are flat-out killed by a demonic Mistress, the hell-hound gobbled up every half-way decent white person on the farm and the other two PCs escaped from Hell Plantation. Just a brutal, brutal game.
There are definitely some mechanical wrinkles to the system, but frankly, it's all kinda secondary to the stories that it creates. It was...fun in a cathartic sort of way? I certainly wouldn't break it out every day and I have no idea what low-fantasy version of this would look like. But it was fun to play.
Aside from the gaming, there was a lot of socializing and "your mom" jokes. It was a pretty good time and I look forward to the next one.
later
Tom
Right, so, it was a fun weekend. I went to the Fall 2007 edition of JiffyCon, the one-day gaming convention hosted mostly by my friend Emily and her Western Mass. RPG-designer friends. Attendance was fairly high and we had people from Boston, New York and Virginia.
Since the pre-registration numbers were really high, Emily tapped me to run a fill-in game to help with the overflow. I chose Great Ork Gods, the best game that never really made it past playtest. It's the perfect game because it's fast, funny, and requires almost no prep on the GM's part. Players take on the role of one of the Great Ork Gods. At the same time, they also play an Orc who is hated by the gods. Whenever a situation comes up, the god appropriate to the task determines how hard or easy the task is. This can get modified up or down a bit and then the player of the orc in question has to roll some dice and try to score higher than the god's hatred for him.
This round was pretty fun (as usual). Highlights include:
- Trying to light a house on fire by vigorously rubbing a goblin against the building (failed utterly).
- Singing the "Fluffy MacBottom, the friendly orc" song and convincing the townspeople he wasn't a threat.
- Being backstab--er...thigh-stabbed by the halfling.
- Tossing an axe to hit the Elf on the roof above the orc, failing, and having the falling axe cleave the throwing orc in twain.
- The goblin flinging himself beneath an orc falling into a pit trap and saving said orc from being skewered on the spikes in said pit.
- The town mayor who took a couple levels in Ninja.
- Attempting to flee with a daughter under each arm only to discover that the orc wasn't as strong as he thought...
- ...but you could certainly use one of the daughters as a bludgeon to kill another orc.
- Hilda, the third of the mayor's daughters being a complete and total bad-ass until she was smothered by a goblin.
- The last of the mayor's daughters being used as a make-shift torch to kill her and destroy a building and get two other orcs in the process.
But the crowning achievement of the session was the young girl of 5-6 who wandered up to the table, listened in on the orc-y plans to dispatch one of the daughters and said "That's mean! You guys shouldn't hurt people! That's really mean!". Out of the mouths of babes.
The game ended early, but I busted out my copy of Manhattan and we built some skyscrapers for awhile. I think I came in second. I was pleased to be reminded of how fun that game is and how close the game can be even when early rounds show a clear winner. I certainly suffered from "kill the leader" syndrome.
In the afternoon, I got to sit down with Julia Ellingboe, and play a game of Steal Away Jordan -- the RPG about being a slave in Deep South. It was a brutal, brutal game. Which, yeah, given the subject matter you'd expect that, but it wasn't exactly physically brutal. Only one PC came close to getting a whipping and he managed to fast-talk his way out of it. No, it was brutal in the sense that of the poor choices you have as a slave, our choices just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
We played as slaves on an antebellum plantation in the South with the fantasy elements turned up high. So it starts in the morning with an unknown slave brutally murdered in the field, moves on to bloodstains that won't come out, sullen ghosts, and a busy night for the local wise woman, and then really kicks into high gear when two slaves go off to the crossroads to make a deal with the devil. One does pretty well, the other one fares badly and has to cut off the left hand of the Mistress.
Meanwhile, I'm ordered to keep an eye on the Master's son and, hoping to offset, some the black magic going around, I say I'm going outside to talk to the animals and see if they can give me some help.
"OK," says Julia, "you go outside and Martin [the PC who fared well in dealing with the devil] has come back to the plantation with this massive black hound with red eyes. It nods in your direction and says 'hello, Homer'".
"Hey, Martin, where'd you get the dog?"
"Oh...down by the crossroads..."
"I turn around and go back to the house. Mr. Bluebird is not on my shoulder and wants nothing to do with this."
It's at this point, I'm told by a helpful spirit that the Mistress is possessed and I need to cut off her right hand to save her. This leads to a confused scene between me and Ceasar about which hand should be cut off by whom and why.
Long story short, Ceasar and I are flat-out killed by a demonic Mistress, the hell-hound gobbled up every half-way decent white person on the farm and the other two PCs escaped from Hell Plantation. Just a brutal, brutal game.
There are definitely some mechanical wrinkles to the system, but frankly, it's all kinda secondary to the stories that it creates. It was...fun in a cathartic sort of way? I certainly wouldn't break it out every day and I have no idea what low-fantasy version of this would look like. But it was fun to play.
Aside from the gaming, there was a lot of socializing and "your mom" jokes. It was a pretty good time and I look forward to the next one.
later
Tom
