Conquest 2010
Ugh. Conquest done for another year. Good fun, but now I'm stuffed.
General con organisation was good, but the web site needs to better explain their fee structure. In fact, the web site still lists the fees incorrectly.
I ate a lot of salad-and-cheese wraps from the canteen. I think that's largely testament to the ready availability of good-quality wraps and my lack of time to stand still long enough to eat much else. There were other food options there, I just didn't get a chance to try most of them (though my options, as a nigh-vegetarian, were obviously somewhat more limited than for a full-on omnivore).
Started the gaming with Stormfront. Decent game. I picked the twist before the start of play, but that's no big deal. The character sheets needed to cross-reference details better. (Questions concerning the well-being of my children shouldn't send me scurrying to the GM asking, "I have children?")
We'll skip discussion of my and umbra_mentis's game for now.
House of the Black Lion was also decent. It seemed to peter to an ending that was something of a draw, and while I don't mind draws, it didn't seem to get to that as a result of anyone's actions in particular.
Shinboku was good, though I could have stood not spending ages building a plan that was never going to be enacted due to other plot elements. (Yes, the planning itself can be circumvented by the players, but when we enact things and get positive results as part of the set-up, we tend to believe that this is part of the plot, and allow ourselves to keep using the time that way.) The way we met the bad guy was stretching my credulity. The ending was interesting, though, and I enjoyed the characters a lot.
When I was asked what I thought of Bleach: All Hollow Inside at the con, I said I found the ending dissatisfying. Having mulled it over since, though, I realise my opinion is quite a bit stronger than that. I loved my character, the other characters seemed similarly interesting (though I haven't read their character sheets), there were great personal plots running through the game, I had reasons to interact with the other characters (and to be interested in their plots), and then all the interesting parts of the game came to a crashing halt when the time came for the writers to insert their plot. I reckon you could have dropped the main plot, the entire tie-in to the manga that inspired the game, and the game would have been greatly improved as a result, simply due to having an extra three quarters of an hour of play time to deal with the good parts of the game.
Jan Snoots Diamond Murder didn't seem to be designed with a possibility of actually solving the mystery in mind. If I'd had to guess at whodunnit, I'd have picked the right guy, but I had no clues let along actual evidence to back up my pick. The interactions of the characters were amusing but it wasn't much of a mystery.
The Scarlet Pimpernel: the Final Peace allowed me to return to the delightfully incompetent Prince George. I had plenty to keep me occupied, but I think some others had more trouble getting anything done, and the game did suffer from what I think I'll start calling "recurring plot syndrome". That's where a series of games have a plot which can be resolved in only one particular way or just left lying (frex, a secret that one person wants to keep hidden and another may reveal - either the secret is revealed, or it remains unrevealed as at the start of play) and when that plot is unresolved in one game it simply moves along into the next game. This is bad because there's only one way to tie up the plot, and until people are willing to go that way it is just boring. If the plot doesn't get resolved in one game, drop it and move on in the next, please. I wound up giving away Belgium in exchange for a carriage and a team of six fast horses, though, which I'll admit was a lot of fun.
I had a lot of fun in Against the Dark, a dark superhero game during which we largely ignored the fact that it was supposed to be played tabletop. I and at least most of my fellows had a blast hamming it up, though I think Martin missed a golden opportunity to really sink the boot in with this game. Unfortunately I have been told that at least one other character sheet was unnecessarily explicit (shall we say).
Harry Potter and the Shadows of the Past was a typical Shaun Hately romp (which obviously isn't a bad thing, since we always play them) though in this case he cut back on the plot (since usually players spend too long being Hogwarts students to actually engage with the entire plot) and so we found ourselves a bit short on plot to sustain the game with only three players (and thus less interaction to be done between us).
Via Dolorosa did not run, and I didn't even find a game to replace it.
Airship Mayhem What Ho seemed to be about as much a mystery as the tabletop game of the series. The character sheets were way too sketchy. When my character sheet says I want to make a business deal with Topolov and provides no other details, I know the only way I'm going to make such a deal will be for the Topolov character sheet to instruct the player to make a deal with me. I didn't bother trying, whereas if I knew what I had to sell and he knew what he wanted to buy, there's a chance I can make things match up (possibly by exchanging what I have with other people for what I need to make my deal with Topolov). I had some fun, but that was at the devising of myself and the other players, with little added by the game itself, even just by providing a springboard.
Tower Inc. was, I think, the strongest of the games I played. I had a character with some emotional meat to him, and I was lucky to be playing off a very strong partner in the role of my wife. However, I really could have used some more depth to the description of the other characters in the room. I wanted to go looking for clues, but the info available to me was insufficient to start a conversation with more depth than banal pleasantries in most cases, so couldn't. Also, the scenario relied on an extremely high degree of coincidence, too much for me to really buy in this genre. So, a good game, but could have been better.
Now for the nitty-gritty: Catch Me, I'm Falling. Everyone keeps telling me how good the game was. Em and I know how close we came to not pulling it off, but we did get the game to run. My intro needed work - better the second time around than the first, but still can be improved. There are some other things which might have been a little better. However, it appears that our game was the smash hit of the con. I've had people complimenting the mechanics, the structure of the game, the content of the character sheets, the "posters" from which people picked characters, the themes and more. 23 players received votes for Players' Choice across two 18-player sessions. I guess everything just came together for this one. Frankly, I'm overwhelmed, surprised and quite unsure how we did it. Also, very grateful to have had Emily as my co-writer for this one. There's no way it could have happened without her.
Then, there was the after-party. I think pretty much everyone is in agreement that we won't be going back to the same place next year, but a bunch of us found a really nice place a few doors down which we'd like to push as a candidate for next year.
And that was Conquest 2010.