Geek Girls Rule! Podcast #8 – My Gm-ing style drawbacks in Con Games

GGR Podcast #8.

It is periodically interrupted by hedgehog cuteness, and at least two hedgehog dives into my cleavage.

Geek Girls Rule! #65 – Emerald City Game Fest

Yesterday Mr. Geek Girl What Rules and I ran the Story Games Lounge at Emerald City Game Fest yesterday.  ECGF is a free gaming event in the Seattle area.  They usually get somewhere between 100-200 people.  Yesterday’s Game Fest was at the Northgate Community Center.

I spread out the indy games we brought with us and hung out until I could sucker some folks in to playing some games.  I got four guys to jump in for a game of “In a Wicked Age“, with a fifth joining partway through.  Since one of the players looked to be under the legal age of consent, and there were other children about, I informed them we would not be using the “Blood and Sex” oracle.  So we used the War oracle.  I’ve never had a bad game of IAWA, and this was no exception.  Even Mason, who’d never played it before, got into the spirit of it, as did Denisson (Sorry if I’m spelling it wrong).   Andy, Dave, Jackson and I had all played it before, but it was the first time I’d ever tried running it.

What you do in IAWA is that you extrapolate characters from the oracles you draw.  We began with the deserted campsite of a travelling army recently abandoned, the ghost of a tyrant king strangled by his daughter, a demon of atrocity bound for a thousand years who senses a minute loosening of its bonds, and a speaker of ancestors with messages from the dead.  Our list included the army, the demon, the speaker, the ghost, his daughter, the ghosts of the ancestors, and probably a few others I can’t remember right now.

Andy chose to play a wounded soldier abandoned by his army because he could not keep up, looking for a place to hide.  Jackson played the dead king, Andy his daughter, Mason the speaker of the ancestors, and I played everyone else until Dennisson joined us and took over the demon.  And in spite of my insistence on not using “Blood and Sex,” Andy’s character still wound up raped by the demon.

I had a few moments of uncertainty with the dice mechanics.  The problem with IAWA is that the text explaining the dice mechanics is less than clear, and the examples don’t help as much as I think they’re supposed to.  It’s a viral game, really.  Most people who play IAWA learn it from someone else who has already played it, usually with Vincent or someone he’s played it with.  It isn’t real intuitive at least to me.  But we muddled through and had one hell of a good time with it.  Being as I have played it with folks who know the dice mechanic, I think I need to sit down and really study the text, maybe take some notes on it.  I don’t think it’s unlearnable from point zero, just that it isn’t written in a way that jives with my brain.  That said, the game itself is amazingly fun and the oracles are incredibly evocative.

After the break, I ran the Keep again for Kingston, Mike, John Bradley and Denisson.  For the first time no one took the Blacksmith’s son.  We added my friend Kate when she showed up about midway through the slot.  The original four were the only ones left in the Keep and created a plan for destroying the Keep as it was breached and fleeing, which involved falling into the midden pile and setting the Keep on fire on their way out.  Everyone had a hand in destroying the big bad guy, and I hope got their moments of glory.

I think this game highlighted, for me, a problem with my gm-ing style.  I’m too nice.  I have a tendency to let players get away with stuff that maybe I shouldn’t, such as re-writing what they did before they left the Keep.  I finally got to the point where I’d leave it up to a die roll, even yes, odd no.  And really, maybe I shouldn’t have.  I also have a tendency to fudge die rolls when I’m rolling too well.   Mostly this is because I want them to have a good time and to succeed.  After the Keep and after the LARP last weekend, I realize that I could stand to be a little more ruthless as a GM.  Particularly after last week’s LARP at Ambercon.

I did have a fantastic time running and meeting folks.  I also made some new friends and got some Transporter 3 swag.  For those of you who may not know, any movie in which Jason Statham removes the majority of his clothing is a good movie.

So, for those of you who I promised I would have the info on next week’s Meet-up for, here it is:
Saturday, November 22 at 11am the Wayward Coffee House on Greenwood.  Bronwyn who owns and runs it is made of pure awesome, and even if you can’t make the Meet-up, you should stop in and say “Hi!” at some time.

I’m going to close now and watch the awful mummy movie on Sci Fi right now.  I’m feeling a bit poorly, and I think horror movies and soup on the couch are just what the doctor ordered.  Oooh, someone just got beat up by gauze!  Yay, bad movies!!!

Geek Girls Rule! #64 (For Reals) – AmberconNW 2008 Post-con report

Oh wow, such a good time!  I love AmberconNW so much!  The gaming, the socializing, the drinking, the conversation.  And the Edgefield added a big long soaking pool.  It was amazing.  We all invaded Sunday night and soaked and talked and splashed.

Thursday night, got there, got checked in, had the intro meet-n-greet sort of thing.  Then played in Thaddeus’ “Between Venus and Mars” game.  Set in the 1970s glam rock scene, we had to stop someone from assassinating Bleys, the lead singer of Bleysing Star, THE glam rock band.  We had Monroe Breckinridge the famous Photographer, Melodie Carole the up and coming singer, L the avant garde artist, Virgil White DJ of “White Noise,” Eddie Newton another musician and alien, Sidney Goldman Vietnam Vet, Michael Heron man of the scene, and Violette Skye fifteen year old call-girl/scene queen.  A complete blast.

Friday morning I played in an Amber Noir game, “Down these Mean Streets” run by Madeline.  I did not realize it was part of an on-going game, but loads of fun.  We had to stop Mandor from completing a trap created by the sacrificial mutilations of half-demon half-human crossbreeds.  We survived and succeeded!  Culminating in my character getting reprimanded by Gerard for telling him to tell his stupid brother to the King to listen to me when I advised him.

I took Friday afternoon off to nap and soak in the new incredibly awesome soaking pool with two friends and their sprogs.

Friday evening was the Pooh game, which is a long-running Amber/Hundred Acre Wood crossover game, and I could give you the plot of the game, but it would make no sense whatsoever.  Just know that the GM now takes special delight in outraging or making my character wail.  Ticketyboo the Trump Artist hedgehog.

Saturday morning we ran “Loose the Blood Dimmed Tides” a 17 player 6 gm LARP.  We made some mistakes, only had one major continuity error, and Ogre kind of sidetracked the plot.  But we did manage to keep 17 people entertained for six hours with it, so it went pretty good.  We’ve learned a lot from the experience, especially me since I’d never GM-ed a LARP before, or even co-GMed with anyone before.  The plot was that the Moonriders of Ganesh had returned to take Amber.  They succeeded in surprising the elders, and we began the game with Benedict, Caine and Dara crucified in the courtyard, Benedict with his arms cut off, Caine with his eyes missing.  Fiona came through a trump with a massive head wound.  And then it was chaos.  Woot!!!!

Saturday evening, I ran the Hogwarts/Amber crossover game “Wands of Avalon.”  It’s primarily returning players.  I’m running them parallel to the Harry Potter plot.  It is a blast with plenty of laughter and giggling.  At one point one of our players was conscripted by another game to play Gerard, trumped in to settle a dispute, so her having NO idea what was going on there was perfect.  I’m sure I’ll post more about it later.  But I did get to include a scene where Hagrid was wailing over the death of a stray chaos beast that he’d been feeding outside his cottage.

Then Sunday, I ran “The Keep” again.  This is the first time I managed to get them out of the bloody castle.  We had Gerald Fiona’s son, Vrazda Caine’s daughter, Linka Random’s daughter, Marcus Gerard’s son, and Byron Brand’s son.
After being stuffed in the bolt hole, they came out to find everyone gone, the Unicorn Shrine destroyed and the priest mutilated on the altar.  Gerald found some trumps but they didn’t know how to use them.  They saw something small and black spying on them, then the closed the gates, and Vrazda saw a man in green and black watching them from the trees.  They fled out the garbage/manure shoot and fled down the mountainside.  They captured the chaos critter that was tracking them, and Linka named it Blackie.  They got it to answer questions by nodding and carried it bound with them.  They happened across some shepherds, one of whom wound up being an agent of Caine.  They were attacked by more werewolves.  The shepherd shouted at them to “Call Julian!” and started killing wolves with a spear.
I’d let them get some inkling of how to use trumps earlier, so they finally managed to pull some elders through, and while the elders dealt with the werewolves, the kids faced down Dalt.
It was a blast.

So, yup.  I’m all excited about what I’ll be running next year now.  The Hogwarts game is a given.  And it looks like we’ve learned enough from this year’s LARP to make running another much more smooth.  And we’ve already come up with a great idea.  Also, I’m contemplating running “Amber Family Therapy,” wherein the players play elder Amberites in therapy with each other.  It’s something Ogre and Deb Donahue came up with a couple years ago. “Julian, can you use a feeling word to describe your sisters?”  “I don’t know, is ‘bitch’ a feeling word?”  This could be absolutely fantastic, or it could crash and burn.  We will see.

So, yes, a fantastic time was had.  There was gaming and soaking and drinking and giggling and laughing, and loads of inappropriate!  Yay!!!!!

So looking forward to next year.  Also, I’m contemplating trying to get back east for AmberConUS next April.

Geek Girls Rule! #54 – I Run Games

I GM fairly frequently, well at least once a month with the Girl Game, but pretty often outside of that.  This weekend, I’ve set myself up to run two games.  Tonight (Friday) I’ll be running up to Stax’s place to run one of three choices I emailed her earlier today, all fantasy-based, for her and one or two others.  Tomorrow, I’ve issued an open invite for anyone who wants to swing by, grill stuff and game out on my lawn.

Frequently, usually on messageboards, people will tell me I’m the only Female GM they know.  And I find this bizarre.  I mean, I know more girls are getting into games every day.  But even in the Story Games community, women who run games are a definite minority.  Now, AmberConNW does have quite a few female GMs, seeing as it’s about a 50/50 split along gender lines, ok, maybe 60/40, and everyone is encouraged to run at least one game.  I usually run two.

Now, I have to say that as a Female GM, regardless of where I’ve been running, I don’t think I’ve run into problems any different from my male GM-ing friends.  I don’t find that the players are any less respectful of me, or my rules-modding, than they are to male GMs at all.  Maybe it’s the company I keep, I don’t know.  I highly encourage women to GM if it interests them.  It may not, I mean, not everyone wants to run games, regardless of gender.  It can be a lot of work. 

In the past I’ve run several games in the Harry Potter universe, both at AmberconNW and for local groups.  I’ve run GURPS vampire games, GURPS Fantasy.  I’ve run Little Fears, both locally and for ACNW.  I’ve run Teenagers from Outer Space.  And oodles of Bridge System games for people just on a pick-up basis.  And, of course, Amber.    The Mister is also trying to convince me that I need to run a Harry Potter LARP for the kids of people we know.  I say that I have no especially deep self-destructive urges right now, but will take it under advisement.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to have enough people to run a game I’ve been itching to run for months.  Essentially, the players will be the children of people in a Medieval Keep out in the middle of nowhere, a way station in the wilderness, if you will.  The game starts after they come out of hiding after an attack of some sort, and realize that all the adults are dead.  I’m going to have them playing kids ages 9-16, and their character concepts will be built around what their parents/foster parents/trades masters did.  You know, concepts like “Son of the Blacksmith,” or “Daughter of the Brewer” or vice versa.  I figure in a small environment like that, gender lines do tend to break down, because you don’t have the luxury of gender segregation, every hand is needed.  Historical accounts of medieval villages tend to support this.  Gender segregation has, in western lands, largely been a trait of the upper classes.  I’m considering there may have been a very minor noble in attendance, and allowing someone to play his child.  But we’ll see what people want.

I can’t remember when this concept first started percolating in my brain, but I’m very excited about it.  I could have sworn I’d discussed it with Mr. Geek Girl What Rules, but he swears that last night’s drive home was the first time he’d heard mention of it.  I’m pretty sure I discussed it with someone previously.  If it goes well this weekend, I’ll probably run it at AmberconNW this fall. 

For tonight, two of the choices take place in a world I’ve been writing stories in for a while.  In this world, a civil war in the Summerlands leads to a Fae Diaspora into our world, and the Fae become the new immigrants, everywhere.  During a PTA game at a Story Games meet-up we explored the possibility of Fae Enforcers for Al Capone in prohibition era Chicago.  That game, “Guns & Glamour” was so freaking much fun.  Hopefully we can get those same folks again for another episode.  We left with some pretty hefty cliff-hangers going on.  Tonight’s options are, again, a Gangster-Fae sort of thing, or the Fae in Weimar Germany.  Can you just imagine? 

EEEEEEEEEE!!!!

So, other girls who run, share your stories with me.  Have you had any difficulties with gamers of either gender because of YOUR gender?  What’s your favorite system?  Your favorite game?