Dreamation 2009 Report

Dreamation 2009 was last weekend. I attended and administered the IPR booth, and I ran four games at the con. I am avoiding dropping names in this post because I know I will forget someone and I don’t want to insult anyone.

As always, the con staff was great. Many props to Vinny, the con organizer, and his staff. The convention was at a new hotel this year, and the accommodations were wonderful. The Hyatt Morristown staff was top notch, and I felt quite welcome. The role-playing area was in a conference center that featured lots of small rooms as well as a big ballroom-style area. The little individual rooms were great for privacy and noise reduction.

On the IPR front, we did very well. I brought a lot fewer books than last year, and I sold most of my stock by Sunday. I was down from three shelves to about one and a half. I probably could have sold a few more copies of some of my more popular titles, but I am pretty glad I was left with only one smallish box to send back to the warehouse. IPR also made more money than last year.

I ran four games. The first session, Mortal Coil, went reasonably well. It certainly wasn’t my best con game of all time, but we had some good scenes and a bit of resolution. It felt more like the start of a longer story cycle, so a lot of threads were left dangling. Some of this was certainly my fault. I went in with pregenerated characters and a built-out theme document. I definitely won’t do that again for convention play. Mortal Coil gets significant juice from the player buy-in you get when everyone develops the theme and their characters together.

Friday night I ran How We Came to Live Here, and that was a major hit. The players were also super-enthused at the end, and more than one told me they wanted to buy the game NOW. That game is a shot of drama juice directly to the veins. It’s very finished, I just need to finish writing up the rules and get moving on production. The rules I have now are humming and the whole thing works great.

Saturday afternoon I ran Duty & Honour. This game is meant to emulate the historical fiction of the Sharpe’s Rifles series, and I think it does that very well. No one at the table had ever played it before, and the scenario I prepared ran out just like a Sharpe story. I think some of the players were a bit shocked by the conflict system. As GM, I probably only won conflicts about 10% of the time. Still, when I did win, the consequences were usually pretty severe. One character got taken out by a musket ball in the second mission challenge. He wasn’t dead, but he needed a long recuperation and there was a time limit on the mission. I think the rules would definitely benefit from a little more clarity. As GM, I had little or no guidance on how many cards I should use in my hand during tests. Also, the stats (called measures) seem to mostly deal with healing abilities, but this isn’t entirely clear in the rules text. We sussed it out from the rules notes on the character sheets. Overall, I think it’s a good game if you like the genre, but the rules could be a bit tighter.

Saturday evening was Spirit of the Musketeers. This went reasonably well, too. One of the players seemed a bit frustrated at first, but once everyone figured out how the skills interacted with the conflict system, things picked up and we had a pretty rollicking adventure, which was definitely my goal.

I also got the chance to play two games over the weekend. The first, on Thursday night, was Tales of the Fisherman’s Wife by Julia Bond Ellingboe. This is definitely a fun game. It ran through quickly in about an hour and a half. We had a distinctly terrifying game, with some disturbing demons. One took the form of a drowned baby. It’s a fun little game, and I like that it runs through so quickly. It’s also nice and flexible with player count, adjusting from two to six players easily. Julia did a nice job here, and her hand-made copy of the game is gorgeous. Not yet available in published form as far as I know, but I will be picking up a copy when it is.

I also had the pleasure to play a quick game of Misery Bubblegum by Tony Lower-Basch. This is a great game. Tony’s cards are really nice looking, and it’s a quick-playing little game that uses the cards to guide brief role-playing scenes. It focuses on miscommunication and insecurity, perfect for a game meant to emulate high school relationships. Definitely worth watching, I can’t wait until I see it commercially available.

Of course, the highlight of Dreamation was getting to see, meet, and hang out with some truly awesome people. This con has turned into an off-season imperative for indie game designers, and indie game enthusiasts have the opportunity to hang around with an impressive list of designers. I consistently have some of my best gaming of the year here, and I encourage everyone who can to start coming.