CuteGod Development: (44 / 172 requirements)
Wind, Bear, and Moon Proposal
Summer Biking: (203.5 / 400.0 km)

You know, I should get off my ass and get some of that bike riding done this year. I really should. But, not today. Actually, I wanted to mention about my two games at GenCon. Both of them were related to each other, the 29th Tepet Legion invading the Two Firs area to hunt down a single lone Anathema. Yeah, right. It ended up being five Solars and one Lunar involved, or would have been if I scaled the adventure correctly.

Probably the first mistake I made was options. The adventure was set up how I would run a normal adventure. Set up the seed, figure out all the characters involved, and basically let the players take over from there. That... didn't work out so well since they spent the first couple hours learning the game and basically figuring out how to come into the map. Next time, I'll go with more of a railroaded plot to handle the four hour session a bit better. Imagine that, me restricting players. But, it was a really important lesson learned.

The second was related to the first. I created tokens for each and every character that could have been involved. I created character sheets (learned about the Anathema DB typo as I was stuffing them) and spent a lot of hours creating characters for them.

Basically, I spent two days making characters (that I could use in the comic no doubt), cutting them out, and gluing them to washers. All in all, I used... twelve of the forty plus tokens I made. So, less options will mean less miniatures made. On the other hand, they were a hit that I made customized miniature tokens.

I thought I might have made a mistake with one thing. At the convention, I got magnetic bases for the washers. With yellow, orange, red, and black for -1, -2, -4, and Incapacitated respectively. Despite my best judgment, I used them for the second game for the first time, but it worked out pretty well. Of course, I only had one player but that just meant he got a four hour solo game and he seemed to have enjoyed it.

That led to mistake three: don't run a game during Saturday night. As in, when everyone is out drinking, dancing, and hitting on people. Makes for very quiet games. Even with the ICTSG* showing up three hours too late, it led to a very small game. Admittedly, if I yelled out over the hotel that I needed players, I could have gotten more, but I don't like yelling that loud.

I really should have gotten charm cards. Being that I have charm cards I can make, I should have gotten it done. It would have simplified things greatly. It just inspired me to make more and in two different formats. Uteck uses a wide format (4 to a page) instead of the more narrow ones that came out of White Wolf. They would have been pretty nice for this.

The first game ran two hours over the four hour block. They were having fun, I was having fun, so that was a good sign. The other was almost exactly four hours, but my player had to carpool out the next day. Oh, mistake four: bring a watch next time.

So, that was my experience of running a game at a convention. I really enjoyed it so I'll probably do it again next year, though I'll limit the options a lot more. There was a lot of interest in Exalted and, frankly, I was really glad I could try helping White Wolf sell just a few more, or at least tried to help them sell a few more.