Cold City Gen Con Game AP Report

On the Friday of Gen Con Indy 2007, I was due to run my first ever scheduled game at the con. My feelings of trepidation should probably have been no more marked than at any other convention: after all, there are only so many players at the table anyway. However, for this particular con game, I had taken lots of advice in light of a couple of bad experiences at cons in the UK.

To give some brief back story, I had been deeply unsatisfied with the last two games of Cold City I had run at conventions. They were, to my mind, far to proscribed and procedural, very much in the 'traditional investigation' mode. Although the players had a fair degree of input, I felt that, because of the constraints of a con game, I was still holding on to too much control.

For the Gen Con game, I decided to approach it somewhat differently, after the aforementioned advice. I should mention that in the 2 games I was unsatisfied with, the players commented that they had enjoyed the games. I was, however, still left with the feeling that they could have enjoyed them more if I had approached them ins a slightly different way.

One of the main things was to abandoned my previously cherished ideal of really strong characters, clearly defined and with agendas set by me at the outset. What if the players were handed a character sheet with just the bare bones of a Cold City character and were allowed and encouraged to really make the character their own? Would this, in a time limited con situation, actually work? With this in mind, I created sketches of characters with strong concepts, but without over embroidering them. The sheets contained the following:

Name
Brief background
Attributes
2 positive traits
1 negative trait
National hidden agenda

What was handed to the players was essentially the following:

American

Lily Marquardt, French speaking OSS (see note 1) agent, dropped into France in 1944

Born in New Orleans.

Traits: (+) Hard as nails, Armed and dangerous, (-) Reckless and overconfident

National HA: Kill the monsters. They may be victims, but they need to be put out of their misery as quickly and efficiently as possible.

British

Dr. Julia Yorke, physicist and member of the BERG (see note 2)

Traits: (+) Keenly analytical brain, Tougher than she looks, (-) Susceptible to charm

National HA: Acquire a live specimen for research and make sure it is shipped back home.
French

Jacques Benoit, shady former Vichy (see note 3) sympathiser, double agent and black marketeer

Traits: (+) Savoir fair, I know people, (-) Arrogance.

National HA: Do your best to make sure the Germans get nothing from the RPA. In fact, if you can get them kicked out entirely, that would be even better.

Personal HA: Get enough money together by shady means to retire to a peaceful life in idyllic Indochina.

German

Eduard Reisser, former Brandenburger Regiment (see note 4) officer (Oberleutnant)

Traits: (+) Mr Man, Hardened combat veteran, (-) Killer

National HA: Manoeuvre the Allies out of the RPA and make it into a purely German organisation: subvert, suborn, sabotage

Soviet

Captain Ilya Kondrashev, GRU (see note 5) Officer

Traits: (+) Interrogator, Politically astute, (-) Sickened by the violence

National HA:

As an additional note, only one of the characters had to be played as male (Reisser), all of the others were described and named in such a way so that they could either be male or female, depending on the choice of the player (Julia could become Julian, Jacques could be Jacqueline, etc.). This choice was explained to the players, but they were happy to stick with the characters original names and sexes.

From the very outset, the players were encouraged to create the following for their characters:

The 'draw', the thing which caused them to be part of the RPA
1 more positive trait
1 more negative trait
Personal hidden agenda
Trust levels for the other characters
As much background as they saw fit

From my point of view, this worked remarkably well. Most (if not all) of the players were used, in con situations, to being handed fully fleshed out characters with concrete back stories and defined goals. The opportunity to flesh out the characters themselves and create vitally important parts of the character seemed to be a refreshing change for them. Furthermore, there was a reasonable degree of back and forth around the table about the character and their relationships. We discussed about playing in an 'open' game, where everyone would know about the hidden agendas of the characters. Some players were slightly taken aback at the idea of the really important secrets of the characters being know by everyone, but once the nature of the game and the way this could work in play was discussed, they were highly satisfied (which was a great relief to me!).

One small note should be made about the quick change of location for the game. We had been assigned a table in a large room at the Hyatt as part of the Indie Games Explosion (and I must extend my thanks to Mike, Kat and all the organisers for their tireless work on this and the Games on Demand area). The slight problem that was encountered was that this room was extremely noisy, to the extent that raised voices were required even for basic conversation. Luckily, the IGE/GOD folks were good as gold and sorted us out with a table in the hallway that was much quieter and offered a much better environment for a horror/espionage game.

For the first time in a con game situation, I was using the 'Draw Scene' from the Cold City Companion. This was intended to ease the players into the game and allow them to get into their characters in a scene which was solely about them and their background. A couple of players were super keen to get into their draw scene, having already had ideas about what they wanted it to be, what they wanted the stakes in the conflict to be and so forth. The groups then allowed them to go first, which seemed to help the more reticent players come up with ideas and see how the scenes should work. One players was particularly quiet and seemed to need more encouragement to come out of himself than the others. However, many of the players were very helpful in this, asking if he would like to play an NPC in their draw scene. He did decline at first, but when he saw how it worked, was happier to be involved and when his turn came to have a draw scene, he came up with some good, solid stuff.

We had, prior the game starting, talked a bit about what kind of games people played and what drew them to the Cold City game at Gen Con. Only one had actually ever heard of the game (he owned the book!), all of the others were attracted to it by the description on the con guide, an interest in that period of history, a liking for Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green or Hellboy and so forth. We had a good spread of gaming tastes and experiences. In fact, one of the most enthusiastic players had only been playing for a couple of years and had only ever played D&D and the like. Indeed, she brought an immense amount to the table in terms of ideas, character interactions and bringing the best out of the other players. The player who had experience of Cold City (Denis, if I recall correctly), was also very helpful in terms of assisting other players with the mechanical aspects of the game and throwing in appropriate flavour. He also developed a recurring character shtick which gave a bit of light relief during the game! On one occasion on, his character unexpectedly slapped an opponent (with appropriate arm motions and sound effects). This became a character feature, with slapping entering into numerous situations, even when it would make things go badly for the character.

The game did, in the end, feature a remarkable amount of story coincidence in order to give each character a resolution that related to one of their hidden agendas. The delightful thing was that the players fully realised this and played along with it, bringing in story items, character ideas and things for other characters in order to make the entire thing easier and more fun for all concerned. The players all got to narrate brief epilogues for their characters once the main action was over, varying from the heroic, to the horrible, to the comically tragic (Jacques Benoit retiring to Indochina for a life of tropical bliss in the idyllic French colonies...in 1950...uh oh).

In the final analysis, I was really very happy with the way this game of Cold City worked out. In the GM role, con games sometimes make me feel like the performing monkey: bring the fun, entertain, make everything happen. While in many ways it is reasonable to expect that the GM will turn up with the intention of running a fun game, it can be something of a burden, especially with the unknown quantity of a group of players at a convention. However, this game made me very happy: the players all got right on board, despite a total lack of familiarity with the game, they contributed, they helped each other with good character stuff. That made the entire game so much easier and more relaxed, making it far easier for me to bring my stuff to the table.

The experience was very instructive in terms of GMing games at conventions and has really served to inform how I will conduct such games in the future. I would also like to thank all of the players who took a chance on playing a game they had never heard of during their valuable time at Gen Con. They really did much to give me, as a GM, a great gaming experience and gave me much food for though on how to run con games.

Cheers
Malcolm

Notes

1) OSS: The Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA.

2) BERG: The British Experimental Rocket Group, a fictional organisation that attempts to use twisted technology obtained by the UK. An homage to the 'Quatermass' TV series of the late, great Nigel Kneale.

3) Vichy France: A collaborationist government of France under German rule during World War 2. It took its name form the town of Vichy, where the government was located.

4) Brandenburger Regiment: A military sub-section of the Abwehr (German military intelligence) that carried out behind the lines sabotage and commando operations.

5) GRU: Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie, the military intelligence arm of Soviet state security.