KapCon 2010 – Day 1

KapCon is over again for another year, and it’s proving a hard task to process back into the real world. I had another great Con with more fantastic moments than I can fit in here.

This year I took on the rather daunting task of running three written scenarios and one session in the Games on Demand room. This took me to about my GMing limit and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do the same thing again.

Day 1 started with me running In the Blood, a scenario I had written for the new Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin. From a GMing point of view it went fine, though I don’t think I’ll be writing a game for 6 players again any time soon. Unfortunately I’m particularly bad at taking down quotes from players during games but it was a really solid start to the Con. Special mention must go to Erik playing Orik the Dwarf, who just nailed the drunken, overly regressive dwarf stereotype. He even managed to save his fiancé. Awwww…

The first game I played in for the con was American Gothix. It’s a road trip homage to 80s Goth culture in small town America and it was fantastic. I played the Newcomer, a former cheerleader who had recently moved towns and was desperate to fit in with the Goths. Jackie did a great job GMing for the first time at KapCon and the rest of the players really bought into the premise. I was stoked when I basically failed at all my character goals, it was way more fun that way. All the players nailed their characters but a few special moments were:

• Scott, as the Artist, for his angst filled poetry and obsession fuelled crime spree to get a meeting with Robert Smith
• Kat, as the Brat, who I managed to bribe with candy to make sure she didn’t let my secret past out
• Svend, as the DJ, for his interaction with his new pet rat. I’ll never hear the term “the package” in quite the same way
• Frank, as the Uber-Goth, for being just oh so creepy and misunderstood
• Thomas, as the Outcast, for being so very dysfunctional.

Then, after dinner and a quick change into my LARP costume (more on that later) I ran Slayage by Gaslight a Buffy RPG scenario, set in Victorian London, I first ran for my regular Buffy group which I tidied up for the Con. I had a great group of players and I felt they really captured the feeling that I was going for. Happily they beat the Big Bad and saved the world.

Honourable mentions:

• Sam W was a fantastic Slayer and she seemed to have a lot of fun playing Anastasia’s arrogance and totally got into the style of having Slayer strength
• The other Sam was just amazing as Ernest the Watcher. I have never before seen someone sleep with a prostitute because it was the honourable thing to do.
• Penny, as played by Tigger from Auckland. In my mind she was timid and afraid of her power. He just made her kick ass.
• Phil playing the street urchin Charlie, trying to kill steal from the Slayer once again!

Day 1 was almost over, but first I had a LARP to get to.