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This weekend was a SAGA Minicon, and I spent much of Saturday and Sunday there.
Saturday morning I "sat in on" the introduction to GMing seminar, where I inevitably had to put my oar in. It was really quite interesting, with a number of things called out that we experienced GMs tend to do without explicitly thinking about it. Another really good thing was that about 1/3 of the eager young faces sitting around the table were female, and taking copious notes.
The workshop also inspired me with a lo of thoughts for running a worldbuilding seminar, which I spontaneously offered to run Sunday morning.
Saturday afternoon I was running Marvel Heroic. This didn't really go according to plan with the players getting bogged down in mechanics 9i think) and taking the full 3 hours just to finish the introductory skirmish. After that one had to leave but the others were keen to keep playing - we started about 1:30pm and finished the scenario about 8:30pm.
I *think* most of the delay came down to player composition - one player is known to always slows down any game they are in, one player turned out to be something of a power gamer trying to find a way to squeeze every last advantage out of every action, and one who came in a bit late I only learnt *after* the game that it was her first or second RPG ever; had I known I would have handled interactions with her character differently. Fortunately the player seated next to her took it upon herself to help out and did so in a suitably non-controlling manner. Nevertheless it was an exhausting session to run.
For the record the roster was Captain America (female player), The Thing (male player who had to leave after the first scene), Black Widow (female player), Iron Man (female player), and Storm (male player). It has only just occurred to me that there were more women seated across the table from me than men, which really is how it should be - unremarkable.
To round out the evening (one of my passengers was in a game which wasn't going to finish until 10pm) we played Pandemic, easy mode, 3 novice and myself, and managed to win on the very last turn.
Sunday morning between breakfast and leaving I scribbled down a page and a half of notes to get worldbuilding presentation stuff out of my head. There were no takers - when we arrived two RPGs had started and there were enough of us left to board game. This didn't bother me - more time to prep and I might stress test it in an on-demand spot at BoD or at a later Minicon. Else there will probably be a series of blog posts ....
In the morning we played Settlers of Catan, which I managed to win convincingly from a very awkward-looking start position. (Getting two points from dev cards helped). I didn't have critical mass to run a second session of Marvel, which was probably for the best, so we managed to get in a stress-free game of Lords of Waterdeep (2nd) and of DC Heroes (won). After a bit of a break I managed a couple of games of Biblios before calling it a day.
On the whole, good weekend.
Saturday morning I "sat in on" the introduction to GMing seminar, where I inevitably had to put my oar in. It was really quite interesting, with a number of things called out that we experienced GMs tend to do without explicitly thinking about it. Another really good thing was that about 1/3 of the eager young faces sitting around the table were female, and taking copious notes.
The workshop also inspired me with a lo of thoughts for running a worldbuilding seminar, which I spontaneously offered to run Sunday morning.
Saturday afternoon I was running Marvel Heroic. This didn't really go according to plan with the players getting bogged down in mechanics 9i think) and taking the full 3 hours just to finish the introductory skirmish. After that one had to leave but the others were keen to keep playing - we started about 1:30pm and finished the scenario about 8:30pm.
I *think* most of the delay came down to player composition - one player is known to always slows down any game they are in, one player turned out to be something of a power gamer trying to find a way to squeeze every last advantage out of every action, and one who came in a bit late I only learnt *after* the game that it was her first or second RPG ever; had I known I would have handled interactions with her character differently. Fortunately the player seated next to her took it upon herself to help out and did so in a suitably non-controlling manner. Nevertheless it was an exhausting session to run.
For the record the roster was Captain America (female player), The Thing (male player who had to leave after the first scene), Black Widow (female player), Iron Man (female player), and Storm (male player). It has only just occurred to me that there were more women seated across the table from me than men, which really is how it should be - unremarkable.
To round out the evening (one of my passengers was in a game which wasn't going to finish until 10pm) we played Pandemic, easy mode, 3 novice and myself, and managed to win on the very last turn.
Sunday morning between breakfast and leaving I scribbled down a page and a half of notes to get worldbuilding presentation stuff out of my head. There were no takers - when we arrived two RPGs had started and there were enough of us left to board game. This didn't bother me - more time to prep and I might stress test it in an on-demand spot at BoD or at a later Minicon. Else there will probably be a series of blog posts ....
In the morning we played Settlers of Catan, which I managed to win convincingly from a very awkward-looking start position. (Getting two points from dev cards helped). I didn't have critical mass to run a second session of Marvel, which was probably for the best, so we managed to get in a stress-free game of Lords of Waterdeep (2nd) and of DC Heroes (won). After a bit of a break I managed a couple of games of Biblios before calling it a day.
On the whole, good weekend.
