Convention Games - How do YOU do it?

[Harl Quinn]

So, after a two-year or so hiatus, I'm jumping back into the convention scene in my area with both feet. But I'm not asking for advice here. What I'm interested in is discussing how YOU do conventions as GMs.

With me, it's been a constant journey. When I started, I was a Bounty Hunter for Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), running L5R and Spycraft. After the BH program changed, I moved on to other games with some success. In general, I was running multiple games in multiple systems - I had the time and the energy for it 15 years ago. Now, being married and having other significant changes in my lifestyle, I've adjusted to doing more with less, in a sense.

During my few times running at Nuke-Con, it's meant going with the same system and setting. This year I'm running multiple games, but with the same base system (BRP - Pendragon and CoC, specifically). The overall constant has been to stick with short adventures either in rulebooks or in magazines. Occasionally I might write an adventure of my own, but time is at a premium given my work schedule and the like. Likewise, I love crafting handouts, but it has turned into such a burden due to chronic and consistent low (to no) turnout for my games (see below), so I'm trying to cut back on that waste of resources.

As with any convention, not every game is popular, and I've had more than my share of disappointing turnout for my games. It's no secret here that I have a (nostalgic) love and (now mostly) hate relationship with Pathfinder Society and Adventurers League in this region because it seems to draw players away from other games and systems. To deal with that, I long ago adopted a policy of waiting 15-30 minutes, ready, at my table, and if nobody shows up, I kill the session, pack up, and get ready for the next slot.

At the same time, I'm toying with the idea of biting the bullet and diving into OP as a player. For quite a while I've been holding tight to the GM's chair, relishing and agonizing over being a content creator. As a GM, I prefer to do things on my own terms, and as such, I can't stand the paperwork and hoops an Organized Play GM has to go through. Conversely, as a player the few times I've played, it seems like something was missing. It could very well be that the GM and players - especially in the last event (a PFS game) - weren't right (I was an outsider in a well-established group with their own personal bonds).

So how do YOU handle running games at a convention? Do you run multiple systems and settings or stick with one system? Do you do short campaign arcs of three or four adventures? Use homebrew or published adventures? How much effort do you put into handouts?

 

[AsenRG]

So how do YOU handle running games at a convention? Do you run multiple systems and settings or stick with one system? Do you do short campaign arcs of three or four adventures? Use homebrew or published adventures? How much effort do you put into handouts?

Well, the closest thing we've got to a convention here is "Open RPG Day" (bi-monthly), which is basically a way to get new people to try the hobby and to let everyone see a new system in action. I've been an organiser, now generally I tend to be a GM there.

I run games the same way I'd run it for my home group, so I don't have to handle anything.

I seldom repeat a system and/or setting. Since it's a single-afternoon event, you don't get anything longer than a one-shot.

I usually go for homebrew adventures, but I've run a couple of modules, too. (The only one that became memorable was A Knight's Tale for Dragon Warriors...and it was memorable because a player from my home group* signed for it and didn't even consider letting it run as the authors expected).

Handouts is something I don't use, as a general rule. This might change if I run something like a Call of Chthulhu module, which provides ready-to-print handouts...but generally, if players enjoy my Refereeing style, it's not because of the handouts!
Besides, most of my players would make better handouts than me, so I'm unlikely to impress anyone!

*She'd never played Dragon Warriors before, but by the middle of the first session she'd guessed the main plot, and taken measures to prevent it. Luckily, the adventure actually has boxed text addressing the possibility.
However, the boxed text suggestion is called "If you're playing with Sherlock Holmes", so of course, we had to conclude she's Sherlock Holmes!

 

[tenbones]

I used to run games for the RPGA back in the day all the time. I rarely ran D&D - mainly because I played and ran D&D multiple times a week in my "normal" life, I looked at each convention as a chance to check out new games and I'd run new systems which I'd develop adventures for. I *never* ran modules. I figured what was the point? I wanted players to really feel like they got an experience out of the game with the eye that many of these players might be D&D players that have never even played the game I was running.

I want to add, one of the biggest influences to my GMing, and to my Convention-GMing in particular was none other than the Sage himself - Skip Williams. I played random 1am game of D&D with him and I thought my GMing was on point, The Sage(tm) showed me how it was done. Skip was GMing, showed up with a felt bag of minis and dice. No books. He GMed all night, the gameplay never stopped. No lookups. Everything committed to memory, total engagement. It was a revelation. A new standard. It was very high-level GMing that simply had it all. In a convention one-shot! (I believe someone took a picture of that game and it ended up in Polyhedron)... I was really into it.

Skip showed me the way! And I wanted to get that level of engagement in all my games (regardless of Convention/non-convention). So...

My goto-games were Cyberpunk 2020, FASERIP, or if I ran D&D - it would be something off the beaten path like Spelljammer, Oriental Adventures, Darksun etc.

General rules of engagement

• Always a new adventure. It should largely be committed to memory, with crib-notes as needed. My last CP2020 adventure I wrote was 80-pages long, and I staged each section to fill at least 4-6hr slot, with objectives that would, if met, would carry the group to the second-day. I generally wrote adventures that would last at least three days. Obviously you don't have to go this crazy. I've seen people do an "adventure" called The Bar Room Brawl. A gigantic battle royale in a huge Inn. Filled with odd NPC's with hilarious dialogue in between round-by-round fighting with *30* players. So just commit to whatever it is you're doing.
• Adventures would be linear, but disguised well enough so that each encounter could branch off in various ways that would bring the PC's to whatever big showdown would be the big payout in the end.*
• Pre-generated PC! Since it's time-sensitive. It's easier to create pre-generated characters at the appropriate power-level for the adventure. Make MORE than the number of players for the event. Because people have different tastes. I'd make at least twice the number of Pre-Gens needed with cool backstories and let the players pick who they wanna play.
• Keep stat-blocs and crib-notes for your NPC's and environmental counters handy. Keep "lookup" to a minimum. My goal is minimal look-up because I assume no one has played the game before and I want things to feel as seamless as possible.
• If players are veterans of the game and want to bring their own PC's - go for it. But review them to make sure they're up to the task at hand.
• Humor. Enjoy the absurdity of it all. Don't be self-conscious. Just dive in. Your enthusiasm will keep everyone engaged.
• Avoid the obvious. Sure you can run a module. But taking players out of their comfort-zone with you being an enthusiastic GM brings the best out of most players in my experience. (Sure you'll get the occasional asshole - but you can just kill them off and tell them to leave). If you're committed to your adventure, it makes it even more fun to *show* the newbs around and make it fun. That's how you get people to remember Con-experiences for years, rather than ho-hum I played Raveloft for the 19th time... blergh. Go for the unexpected. OR run a D&D game in a weird setting and draw them in and give them the ride they never knew they wanted!

 

[Mook]

I've GMed quite a few convention one-shots in the past few years, each run three different times over the long weekend -- always GURPS, but always something new for each con, and running the spectrum from light-hearted romps through a child's dream world to hard-core military infiltration and retrieval; Bunnies & Burrows to a biker gang in a bloody battle against a family of werewolves.

For me, I find the table presentation and pre-gen PC handouts to be critical. I absolutely will (and have) run a game with nothing but a single page of notes if the PCs are solid and well put together. I want the players to have something in their hands that looks great, shows the key aspects of the character at a glance, and has enough game information that they can easily learn as they go (if they want to -- I'm also a huge fan of the ol' "just tell me what your character is trying to do, I'll tell you what you need to roll to make that happen").

I've written some pretty detailed looks at how I put these things together (along with complete downloads of the finished product for a lot of them), but the basic flow is something like the below, each step building on those before it:

• Step 0, Perpetual Prep: I spend the weeks/months between conventions reading books, watching movies & TV, and basically digging up plots, characters, and ideas that I think would be hella fun to play.
• Step 1, What is it? More or less the "elevator pitch," just a quick summary of what the game is about (for example, for "The Warriors," it was "The PCs are members of the Warriors street gang from the 1979 movie, trying to bop their way home").
• Step 2, What Happens? This is where I start to mold that amorphous blob of idea into something concrete, building on Step 1. Continuing the example, as in the film the PCs will begin the game stranded at Cyrus's rally in the Bronx after he is assassinated. Getting home to Coney Island will be tough (assuming that's what they choose to do), as every gang in the city and the police are looking for them. Plenty of room for chases, fight scenes, stealth, and even some role-play if they try to parley with other gangs.
• Step 3, The Player Characters: As mentioned, this is the most important part to me. Now that I have at least a broad idea of the game setting and challenges going on around them, I can create characters tailor-made to meet those challenges and logically exist in that setting. I finish the pre-gens mechanically (i.e., complete the GURPS stats, outfit them properly, make sure they each have some interesting advantages and disadvantage to play off one another, etc.) and move on to...
  
• Step 4, Adding Detail: With the PCs (mostly) done, I now go back to the adventure itself for the nuts and bolts. I can't create the PCs in Step 3 without knowing what happens in Step 2; similarly, I can't fully flesh out the adventure details here in Step 4 without knowing who the PCs are from Step 3. Here, I take the broad plot arc from Step 2 and break it into 6-7 specific scenes (with 1-2 that can be easily skipped without affecting the main story, in case the group doesn't seem like they'll finish in the allotted four-hour time slot). It's important to note that the party doesn't have to hit all or even any of the scenes -- but if they do, I'm prepared (and if they don't, I just wing it using all the prep and research I've already done). For the Warriors, the scenes were (inspired by the film):
  • Begin at Conclave / Cops / Graveyard
  • Turnbull ACs / Subway / Track Fire
  • Orphans / Subway to 96th-Broadway / Cops
  • Baseball Furies / Lizzies (optional) / Walk to...
  • Punks / Bathroom Fight / Union Square
  • Sunrise / Coney Island / Rogues and the Riffs
• Step 5, Finalizing the Characters: With the adventure details in place, I do one more pass over the PCs to make sure I didn't neglect any necessary skills or equipment, and basically just check that they are up for handling the challenges from Step 4.
• Step 6, Final Details: At this point, everything is actually done, I just need to make it pretty and presentable. So this is where, in addition to the character sheets and adventure notes, I create all the handouts, pictures of the PCs, paper minis for the party and the likely enemies, gear cards, name plates, maps... anything that will help me and the players really get into it.

Congrats if you've read this far! It may seem like a lot, but most of the steps are super-fast, and now that I've got a structure in place that I like, everything is just about streamlining and making it more efficient with each passing convention.

Which is why I'm looking forward to all the replies in this thread, so I have more juicy ideas from other GMs to wantonly pilfer.

 

[Edgewise]

I'm pretty new to GMing at conventions - I ran DCC at the last two Gen Cons. I like to say that I leveled up this year, because I handled some unique interpersonal challenges in my final session...but that's another story.

My methodology is pretty straightforward, I think. Here are the steps I follow:

1. Create pre-gens (using the Purple Sorcerer character generator for DCC, naturally).
2. Run the adventure before the convention - twice if possible.
3. Document anything in the adventure (assuming it's published) that was insufficiently explained, and come up with my own rulings ahead of time.
4. I create a few forms that help me track things at the table quickly. I have a sheet where I write down player names and their PCs on a chart with table position. I have a sheet to keep track of initiative and NPC hit points.
5. I print out the entire adventure, placing the pages in sheet protectors within a three-ring binder. I group the maps together, and I may create cheat sheets that group NPC stats and that sort of thing.

That's prep. My approach to running things at the table is as follows:

• I place a high-priority of minimizing delays and downtime. If I can't find a detail in the adventure in less than five seconds, I make it up; same is true for the rules and about ten seconds.
• I always run my sessions with plenty of joking around and merriment, so that's no different, but I do put a higher priority on player enjoyment compared to my own than I do at my home table. Even though I'm not getting paid, I'm trying to promote a game that I like, so I feel a responsibility to act as a representative.
• I'm flexible about table assignment and that kind of thing. I'll take late additions without a problem, and if I'm running short of enough players, I will help mine to join another table if they want. Even so, I won't wait more than ten minutes to start, because time is limited in a four-hour slot.
• When it comes to scheduling games, I like to bunch them up early so I have a day or two to enjoy the convention without the low-level of stage fright that occupies the back of my head when I have an upcoming session.

I think that about covers it. Basically, it's a slightly fancier version of what I do in my own house. I'm pacing things a bit tighter and catering more to the players, but it's mostly a matter of degree.

 

[soltakss]

I usually run a system I know and am familiar with.
Also, I run a lite version of games systems at Conventions, to keep it quick and simple.
For SuperHeroQuest, I normally get players to roll up characters, as it takes very little time. For other systems/genres I normally have pre-generated PCs, usually with one more PC than players. I also do not have the scenario revolving around one PC, in case nobody picks that PC.
The scenario itself will be in bullet-points and I dress things up when they happen.
I generally have scenarios that can be done easily in Route A or Route B, but the players pretty much change what happens anyway.
I'm normally pretty good at timing, so scenarios normally last for 3-4 hours and don't drag in the middle. I am not afraid of inserting a scene that doesn't exist or chopping one that makes no sense in the game or if we are running late.

 

[Harl Quinn]

Sorry for my silence as of late. I'm in the midst of con prep. Most of my notes are put together for my adventures and now I've got to get down to brass tacks on pregen characters. For my return I'm running four six events - three for Pendragon and three for Call of Cthulhu. Basically I'm taking intro/book scenarios and augmenting them a bit.

Pendragon - I've got an intro slot where I want to give the players a brief overview of the game before we dive into actual play, followed by an enhanced version of the intro scenario in the fourth edition rulebook. Basically, I just filled it out with options for the player-knights to encounter such things and places as the Tower of the Brass Bell, the Adventurous Shield, the Tomb of Lions, and the Perilous Cemetery during their hunt for the supposedly man-eating bear. After that, if anyone wants to stick around, I might take them through a Winter Phase. I have to admit that the reservations are not looking good for Pendragon, but I'm OK with it, oddly. If I don't get anyone for those events, I'll most likely jump in on either a friend's Traveller game or try my hand at one or more of the D&D Adventurer's League games... Friday kind of seems like a "throwaway" day for RPGs at the con anyway as a lot of people are deadheading it after school/work and don't want to put too much thought into their gameplay. Then again, I hope I can snag a chair at one of my friends' Tier-1 D&D games...

Call of Cthulhu - With this one, I'm updating and adding some things to the scenarios The Haunting, The Edge of Darkness, and The Rescue.

Anyhow, back to the subject of pregens. I don't have a problem coming up with the stats or a number of characters, but doing up the sheets seems to be an interesting conundrum. I have to confess to being a perfectionist and as I hate my handwriting, I prefer to create my pregen sheets in Photoshop and OpenOffice. For example, here's the front of one of the Pendragon pregens:

​

I used the much-hated Comic Sans (don't judge me! ) as it has a legible, handwritten appearance. So do any of you go this far or do you rely on form-fillable or Hero Lab character sheets instead of subjecting your players to your handwriting?

In case anyone's wondering, this is the Mad Irishman sheet; and yes, I do intend to post all the pregens once I've got them done. It may have to wait until after the con, but I'll get them posted.

Overall, the Pendragon pregens will include:

• The Average Knight
• The Berserker
• The Courtier
• Master of the Tourney
• Master of the Hunt
• The Welsh Giant
• The Lady Incognito (a young Cymric lady posing as her deceased twin brother)
• The Daughter of Boadicea (a young Cymric warrior woman looking to prove her mettle)
  
• The Knight of the Briar Rose
• The Illegitimate Son (The Knight of the Briar Rose's illegitimate half-brother)
  
• The Penitent Knight (a Grail Knight of sorts)
  
• The Pagan Knight

I know the Master of the Tourney (4th ed.) and the Master of the Hunt (5th ed.) are one and the same, just renamed, but I went ahead and made them separate pregens by switching a couple of their stats around. Want a sneak peek at their stats? Here's the spreadsheet.

So that's where I'm at right now with my con prep.

 

[S'mon]

When I ran convention games I ran the current version of D&D (3e), made my own adventures, and had way too many players. These days I GM mostly at my own Open 5e D&D Meetup and I wouldn't dream of running at a convention. I certainly wouldn't touch Organised Play with a bargepole.

Edit: For GMing at the Meetup, I always have a bunch of pregen PCs availlable, or players can bring their own. Me and my co-GMs allow PC transfer between games, and all PCs start 5th level with 1 Uncommon magic item from a curated list. Point Buy/Array, Feats, no multiclassing. This works very well - players can turn up grab a pregen & jump in, or bring their own character made as per the rules.

 

[carpocratian]

This year I have been GMing "Call of Cthulhu" at conventions. I typically run one session of a completely original adventure in a 4-6 hour slot, but I wouldn't mind doing a second session of the same adventure if there were enough slots available. I am focusing on that one system this year because I'm trying to put together a group in my area. I haven't had a lot of luck getting a steady ongoing group for Call of Cthulhu going, so I figure that if I run games at conventions in my region I might find some folks who are interested and who like my GMing style. I have also been using it as a way to playtest some of the adventures, with an eye towards putting them up on the Miskatonic Repository. I will probably continue to do so next year, as well, but I would like to run at least one session of another game at each convention, as well. I'm starting to develop adventures for Trudvang Chronicles and other less common games for that purpose. I ike giving convention attendees the opportunity to try out games that they might not otherwise experience.

In general (not just this year's Call of Cthulhu stuff) I only run original adventures at conventions. I enjoy writing them and doing the research for them, so getting to run them for new people at conventions is just the cherry on top of things. I put a ton of development into Call of Cthulhu games and others like them. I tend to build whole campaigns, then just take a portion of them to run as single 4-6 hour adventures at conventions. That way I have material already developed if the characters stray afield or make unusual choices during the game. I try to write a compelling teaser and description for them, and supplement whatever advertising the convention does by bringing attention to my game on appropriate social media hosts, websites, mailing lists, etc.

I do custom character sheets that focus on attributes, traits, etc. that the players are most likely to use in the session, and keep the secondary stuff (ex. very specific saving throws) that most likely won't come into play on a separate sheet that I hold onto and give the player if (s)he needs it or wants it. I include images of the characters, their weapons, and any unusual equipment on the sheet and a bullet-list that points out the highest skills or traits, too. For some games (ex. CoC) the character sheet is actually a trifold brochure printed in color on heavyweight paper. All of that makes it easier for the players to skim through and pick characters. The players are free to change the names, genders, races, ethnicities, etc. if they choose. It usually takes 5 minutes or less for players to pick their characters and familiarize themselves with them. I generally do twice the number of pre-gens needed, so every player with have several choices, and make them significantly different enough to be able to form a lot of different styles of parties.

When it comes to Call of Cthulhu or other games that have a strong historical element, I typically include props of various kinds. These range from little stone statues to magic words written or carved on sticks to paper documents and more. I don't do as much of that for more action-oriented games, but I try to include some eye candy for the table whenever possible.

 

[spittingimage]

Basically I'm taking intro/book scenarios and augmenting them a bit.

What's involved in augmenting a book scenario? Do you feel the adventures as written are missing something, or is at an alteration for personal play/GMing style?

 

[Edgewise]

What's involved in augmenting a book scenario? Do you feel the adventures as written are missing something, or is at an alteration for personal play/GMing style?

I can't speak for Harl Quinn, but one reason I might do that for a convention game would be because the adventure-as-written might not be perfectly suited to a convention slot; specifically, a typical adventure is intended for more than a single session of play. So if an adventure consists of several discrete parts, that's a good opportunity to find a way to streamline it. For instance, if there are three distinct mini-dungeons, the GM can drop his or her least favorite.

Incidentally, I just picked up Tournaments of Madness and Death, a convention-oriented adventure supplement for Crypts & Things. It has two adventures that are right-sized for convention play, plus a chapter with advice on how to run a convention game. I've so far read one of the adventures and the advice section.

The adventure is really flavorful and compact, with a nice range of things to do. The D101 adventures I've read are always a bit like this - open-ended with multiple parties who have their own agendas and agency. This one is called The Furnace, and it keeps the moving parts to a minimum, so you can conceivably wrap things up with most groups in a 3-4 hour period.

The advice is also nice and compact. It gets to the point, listing your priorities for the convention setting, and giving you a framework for satisfying those goals. It doesn't get overly abstract, nor is it purely a listing of tips and tricks.

At 2/3 of the way in, this looks like a great product if you want to GM an OSR session at a convention. Or really any kind of one-off in a public venue like an FLGS. The hobby really needs more community-building products like this. This sort of ties into what I've been thinking in the thread about why RPGs aren't more popular. A package like this can help evangelize tabletop role-playing very nicely.

 

[Gronan of Simmerya]

I run my game to show what D&D was like back in 1974-76 when it first took off.

"Gary's got this cool new game called Greyhawk, you're a bunch of guys exploring an old abandoned wizard's castle full of monsters and treasure and stuff."

 

[TristramEvans]

Well, first I would need to be very, very drunk.

And if it's anything like the very few cons I've been at, I would probably need some snuff or a breathing apparatus.

I'd run The Farm. Just for the hell of it.

 

[carpocratian]

I went through a brutal TPK game run by Time Kask at GaryCon a few years. Evidently he has a long-standing reputation for TPKs. When we all died, he handed out these little lasercut wooden squares that said something like "I was in a TPK with Tim Kask at Garycon" with a little caricature of him. It made me glad we died

 

[Voros]

Well, first I would need to be very, very drunk.

And if it's anything like the very few cons I've been at, I would probably need some snuff or a breathing apparatus.

I'd run The Farm. Just for the hell of it.

I was wondering what it would be like to run something like Tynes’ In Media Res at a Con.