You may have read part 1, already. But this is part 2 of my time at Gary Con XVI...
As mentioned, I ran 6 games... 3 of them were Cha'alt via Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer. I decided to ask players a short survey of questions before running to find out their familiarity with me, the campaign setting, rule-set, weirdo game mechanics like Cha'alt X-Cards and Gilded Die of Satanis, along with their favorite movie.
I remember way back when... it might have been my first GameHole Con. I went around the table, asking players the same thing, but might have narrowed it down to "genre movie." During an "x" moment in the game that could have gone in virtually any direction, I incorporated a guy's pick of The Thing, especially since The Thing is one of my all-time favorite movies.
After the session, the player who had said The Thing complained because my including an aspect from the movie somehow ruined his immersion. I suppose because he could no longer pretend that the game world and characters were "real" and independent of influence or inspiration from non-canon sources or something?
It took me a while to get over that because I assumed other players would feel the same, as if my player base was some monolithic aesthetic. That's also when I was young(er), impressionable and believed that "gonzo stupid" wasn't as cool as serious, Tolkien by way of Gygax, "realism" that many nerds assert in order to fool themselves into thinking that one kind of fantasy and therefore elf-game is inherently superior to another.
But I've long since gone full-gonzo and stopped caring what people thought about my games, if they get too silly, are too off the wall, or people laugh too much instead of... I don't know, mentally masturbating about pretending they're Aragorn but toothless and dressed in rags exploring a dungeon so dry and boring that it must be real?
Anyway, I got a lot of movie suggestions (which, incidentally, helped when it came time to improvise something on the spot using the Cha'alt X-Cards and Gilded Die of Satanis). Plus, chatting about movies helped everyone get to know each other a little bit and eased the tension of meeting for the first time, even though I had played with some players before, and many players knew each other.
One player let me know that he was in my Cha'alt game 2 years ago at GameHole. And he must have brought his whole group because all 6 of those guys knew and gamed with each other. A couple guys in the Alpha Blue game had played in my virtual Roll20 sessions, and grew to be supporters of my content and play-style. Another session contained guys who saw my session in the game roster, thought it sounded cool, signed-up, and then started researching my stuff to get more familiar and they fell in love with the campaign setting and overall vibe.
As you may recall, most of my games were in good-sized rooms with lots of other games happening right next to me, making it difficult to sit back in your chair, make an off-hand comment, watch how PCs respond, and basically let the game come to you. Although, that's exactly what I did for the Alpha Blue session on the last day.
But for all those other games, I sat up, leaned in, prepared what I was going to say with my notes, did my best to speak-up, say things clearly and distinctly, and focused my hearing so I wouldn't miss anything the players were saying as the game moved briskly along. I felt like I was chasing after the game in several spots, if not those entire sessions.
Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I can only assume that many GMs run their sessions like that all the time. However, my style is different. As I said, I like the game to come to me. That means I set things up as partial sandbox with PCs able to kind of do what they want, I'm able to interject improvised bits and pieces on a whim or at the drop of a hat, and turn up and down the heat as needed.
I won't say too much about the Cthulhu hack scenarios because those went well, aside from both scenarios drawing to a close in about half the time they should have. So, that just leaves Alpha Blue, and the 3 Cha'alt scenarios that were actually 1... a trinity as it were. It is the prophecy!
Based on my pre-gen sheet (actually, 9 pre-generated characters were divided between 3 sheets of paper) - I think I preferred last year's arrangement where all the possible PCs were on a single sheet of paper. However, I was able to provide a little more background this time, which is just a trade-off, balancing act, I suppose.
One player took to the idea, based on my provided pre-gen notes, that Cha'alt culture was based on demon civilizations from thousands of years ago. Because of this, he (and soon the group) decided to keep 3 vials of zoth for themselves, and deliver 1 to the blood-elf's brother, instead of the other way around.
Every GM worth his salt likes it when PC actions directly correspond, one way or another, with the campaign setting. When something affects something else, that's amore! Lol, no. It's an internal consistency that feels like reality... the building blocks of immersion.
I believe it was also that player who really took the "tentacle fetish" note to heart. At some point, based on everything that had transpired, we decided if there's a chance he's not at least a little bit aroused, the world will end. I think that was in reference to a tentacle-fashioned apocalyptic magic item stolen from the palace vault... probably an adventure unto itself.
A couple of the scorpion-men PCs in different games befriended a little blue scorpion and used it as a familiar, which wasn't so much a part of my plan as something that unconsciously matched the pre-gens to the scenario and flowed like it was supposed to - guided by higher powers, with whom, as a lowly Game Master, I am barely worthy enough to comprehend. Yes, the dice have their uses, but strokes of the GM's vibrational senses are how we navigate those PSYCHOCOSMIC waters.
Talking to a player who chose the tangerine-elf PC, I had an idea for a hybrid race between tangerine and blood-elf to make blood-orange. No details on what that might look like, but the idea was intriguing and made me chuckle. So, soon...
I already mentioned that the Cha'alt X-Cards were used to color / flavor randomly stolen magic items. There was an A.I. banana... I tried to incorporate the banana motif as much as possible, without overdoing it.
I liked that the PC(s) wished for a working starship that had the correct documentation papers, tiki bar, voice activated autopilot, was nearby, and a few other things, just in case that demon-genie was trying to screw them over, monkey-paw style. Oh yeah, the key was a banana-shaped electronic fa'ab.
A couple guys asked, I think it was either after they had provided a movie to reference / parody, or when one of them stimulated a Cha'alt X-Card, if I could include a bologna sandwich somewhere in the session, as that was a running gag with their home group. So, of course, I obliged. A giant bologna sandwich scuttled sideways across the S'kbah desert until a sandworm jumped out of the sand and gobbled it up in one bite.
That's the kind of thing that might ruin a player's idea of immersion in another game, but in Cha'alt, that's just how we roll. Reveling in that way of doing things has closed doors but opened windows to new ways of experiencing the game.
Oh, yeah. I wanted to mention that it wasn't until about halfway through the first Cha'alt session that I realized why none of the sorcerers were casting spells or even considering that option. I never provided a spell list or any spellcasting information at all. So, I gave the sorcerers in that game a brief synopsis going forward, and physically wrote out all the possible spells on a blank sheet of paper for the following two sessions, which obviously helped enormously.
Two of the three ended sort of similar to each other, while the other went in a slightly different direction. I don't know if one is the right choice over another, but I like the idea of multiple possible endings - above and beyond player agency and PC choices, of course. Reminds me of the Clue movie from the 80s that had three different endings.
Did I mention that I only bought one thing in the dealer's room? The first time I went through, I browsed the aisles, looking at books, knick-knacks, "ultimate gaming tables," and dice - so many dice. It's a tradition of mine to buy at least one set of dice at the cons I attend, but this time, as occasionally happens with me, I decided to break with tradition. No dice to just buy dice. If a set didn't really speak to me, I wouldn't bother.
My second time through the dealer's room, I noticed some kind of massive worm creature in a clear plastic container sans box. I asked about it, and sure enough, it was half price in the "scratch and dent" section. I was hoping the $68 price tag was the original price and I could get the thing (which turned out to be a space-worm for the Spelljammer set) for $34. That would have been a steal! Alas, $68 was the halved price. So, I hemmed and hawed a bit, trying to decide if it was worth it to me to have my very own gigantic miniature sandworm.
I haggled a bit, trying to negotiate a better deal (which is now illegal in the state of New York), and the shop owner was nice enough to roll me for it. He beat me on a toss of two massive foam d20s. I picked the hot-pink and he rolled the teal. So, I paid the seemingly ridiculous price for a really big, painted, plastic miniature and brought it back to my hotel.
I'm tempted to make the Alpha Blue session its own blog post, but my wife is getting tired of me writing about the convention I just spent 3 1/2 days at. So, let's do this here and now!
I had everyone make their own characters, which is my customary way of doing things with that RPG. The characters should be unique and getting to the finish line provides at least half of the adventure or seeds thereof.
There was Daskanzia a mutant conman, Bashir, an alien mercenary who likes to get squishy and turn invisible, Jira, a female droid and former gumball machine (like Servo) who was also a pimptress, Arden, a human pirate and psion, and Gunstarra, an alien metallic humanoid who was dog-sized.
I had the idea on the way over to the main lodge that morning of starting with part 2 of a sleazy space opera movie, where the original had done pretty well at the box-office. However, "The Sequel" got its budget slashed and all the movie stars portraying the main characters, like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Vince Vaughn, and Sophia Vergara were replaced with C-list actors (the PCs themselves) constantly referencing awesome things that happened in part 1 but made no sense to anyone (like all of us) who'd never seen the original movie.
The players thought that was a neat and/or funny idea, and I awarded points of divine favor whenever they made an out of context reference to the first movie that, obviously, none of us knew anything about in real life because I just made it up. I think that went well. Each player did that a couple times throughout the session to reinforce the "sequelness" of the adventure. We even used crappy on purpose sound effects with our mouth for various scifi-isms, noting that a grip or catering guy was probably making the sound just off camera.
At the end of the original movie, the principle characters were sentenced to 18 months on the penile planet Cygnus Beta where the PCs had been working at a monastery devoted to an old god whose name must never be uttered.
Before long, whilst transporting toilet paper or TP (also known as treasure paper to the head abbot - from whose inner sanctum they stole a number of things, including a tall, ceremonial candle with a note that read "Do not light as this will resurrect a Great Old One"), Jira was impregnated by a penis-worm, but saved when another member of the crew threw out a "humper," distracting it.
There was a transport shuttle taking the PCs to Alpha Blue where some penis-headed aliens tried to get the Sleazoid Express hijacked. "One-eyed Johnson got himself circumcised in the clone war." The PCs thwarted that plan and took a lot of the unstolen cargo themselves.
On Alpha Blue, they located a worm wrangler and obstetrician shop, like those Taco Bell and Pizza Hut combo restaurants, and got the baby penis-worm gumball hybrid out of Jira. The built-in petting zoo helps to domesticate penis-worms (for which there definitely is a market).
Then, they were wandering around the red hologram district and received a message from a 6-inch hologram of a dark zedi relating to a mysterious idol of an unnameable Great Old One sitting in an antique shop. The PCs got it, and were about to leave when the dark zedi himself (3-feet tall in actual size) told them all that the run-time of the movie was almost up and this was their only chance for a laser battle.
So, we finished with a blaster shootout against the Knights in White Satin. I tried out a sort of Blue Escalation for this combat. Basically, on the first round, anyone who rolled a 6 on their dice pool scored a critical-hit and pretty much killed their opponent. On round two, anyone who rolled a 5 or 6 scored a crit. We never got to round three, as the survivors ran away.
That was all the time we had, and resurrecting the unnamed (although, I think I did accidentally say Yog-Soggoth towards the end - hey, this was supposed to be a really bad movie) would have to wait until part 3 because they didn't have anything left in the budget to create old god monster special FX.
Not sure where this fits in, but one of the nights I was in the hotel room, there was the Jack Palance Dracula movie on TV. I watched a fair bit of it. At one point, the vampire hunters found the sleeping brides of Dracula. The audience heard what sounded like a stake being driven through a heart and then a close-up of her mouth filling with blood. It was just for a second or two, really quick (which made me feel cheated), but at the time I remember thinking that's exploitation.
Exploitation is the stuff we really want to see and hear, but the bastard censors won't let us because we're all just impressionable children in a nanny state. In 2024, this is all just so ridiculous when The Bachelor puts a black bar over a woman's butt - who still has her swim bottoms on!!! - but if you try to hide blood and bones and body parts by cutting up the corpse and draining it down the pipes in the house you're squatting in, it's fine. No bail. Just come back to court in a couple months and we'll see if it's even a crime at that point. We are truly living in clownworld!
I have the vague memory of including a gut-munching cannibal scene (or maybe it was worms) with blood-splatter and the sound of hastily eaten, greasy fried chicken or something when the GRINDHOUSE EXPLOITATION Cha'alt X-Card was stimulated, but for the life of me, I can't remember what session that was in, or if it took place at all. Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed it?
Regardless, I had a blast at the convention. Really, all the sessions were amazing in their own way. The only things I would have preferred is less noise and distraction in the first 5 sessions and a non-stinky room for the 6th. Yeah, I'm definitely going to see what I can coordinate for next year because GaryCon is my favorite RPG convention... if you don't count VENGER CON (get your weekend badge now), of course.
This July in Madison, WI is gonna be lit with the flammable zoth-based lube of a thousand tentacled whores. Grab your badge today, hoss!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I know this is an info dump that's missing a lot of details and some context.
VS
p.s. Aside from VENGER CON III: Revenge of the OSR convention, now's the time to get your hardcover Cha'alt trilogy if you don't already own it.
