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Posts Tagged ‘anonycon’

Craft Sequence Gaming at AnonyCon!

Hello, dear friends, and please take care not to fall into the enormous pit in the center of my website!  Also, be careful when sampling the cream-filled pastries, some of which may have been filled with Grimwald Variegated Industries Nanite Superweapon Lifelike Cream Substitute [tm, pat. pend.] due to a catering mishap.  All of which is to say: I’ll be updating the site over the course of the next week or so, and as Wordpress hackery goes, I’m one hell of a hack.  I’ll do my best to offer a seamless transition, but I’m not exactly the Lord King of UX Testing, so if something breaks for your edge-case browser, please do let me know.

I had a wonderful time at the World Fantasy Convention this year, though I think I’ll be the next week or two recovering from the sleep debt incurred those four days.  Cons, as I may have observed on this site before, are ritual spaces—for three days a dedicated corps of acolytes creates a space which is by definition tangent to all other ritual spaces of the same tradition.  (Though it occurs to me that this view of ritual space may be particularly Abrahamic, or maybe even post-Christian—the opposition of ritual space and holy place… Fruit for further research & / or blog entries.)  Cons transform otherwise unassuming Marriotts to lands of adventure—or at least to places where staying up until 4 AM talking about social dynamics in live action roleplaying makes sense.  I had a wonderful time with too many people to list—though I tried on Facebook as soon as I came back from the con, and of course left out a bunch of people and as a result now feel kinda like a heel.  Anyway!

My next con follows hot on the heels of World Fantasy: AnonyCon in Stamford, CT, from Dec. 5 – 7.  AnonyCon is a gaming convention I’ve attended with friends off and on since college.  For the last couple years we’ve been working on games in the Craft Sequence universe—an announcement I’m happy to make today!

Michael Seidman has been working on a Craft Sequence d20 system which we’ll be road-testing this con—and I’ll run a God Wars game using, naturally, Mythender, the only con-weight system I know with a power level high enough.  If you’ve ever wanted to game in the Craft world, this is your chance.  Here are the games!  The Mythender game’s on the schedule already, and the d20 games should be there soon:

God Wars – Mythender

2-6 PM Saturday, Dec 6

Max Gladstone

Welcome to the God Wars. You and your teammates are Craftsmen, once-human magic-users fighting for human freedom from the dark gods that rule the world. Create a lich king, a demon accountant, a bankruptcy necromancer—and go punch a God of Thunder in the face. But will the destruction you wreak loose your already-fragile hold on humanity? Characters created at session. Come with concepts. Some familiarity with the Craft Sequence preferred; general desire to murder gods a plus.

God Wars is a game using the Mythender system. If you prefer to use your own dice, bring d6s. Bring lots of d6s. You may not own enough d6s for this game. The rulebook suggests a four-player group can get by with 170 dice. The GM will bring dice cubes.

So Sue Me

(Not yet scheduled)

Mike Seidman

Your team has been hired to represent a local colony of intelligent worms in a lawsuit against one of the most powerful firms in the Iskari Empire. What could possibly go wrong?

The next two games may or may not be run, depending on schedule—

Are You Feelin’ Hot, Hot, Hot

An office building in the city of Kol ‘ir, built by the Iskari architectural firm Koralli Consolidated, has suffered significant fire damage despite being warded against such events. Koralli has sent the team to investigate what happened, why the wards failed, and what needs to be done to repair the place and ensure it stays safe. Pre-generated characters provided.

The Iskari Treasure Fleet

The great nation of Iskar is bringing the riches home from its diverse colonial holdings. Despite the powerful magics, curses, and blessings designed to ensure a safe voyage, the trip is not without risk, especially for those newly drafted into service with the Iskari Merchant Marine.

There’s a chance Mike will run revised versions of two other Craft Sequence games, depending on demand and his own availability.  So, yeah—if you’re in the Connecticut area and want to game in the Craft world, hie thee hence!  Also I’ll be hanging around signing books and stuff, so there’s that.

I’ll be updating the con appearance section soon with confirmed dates for 2015.  Stay tuned!  And take a pastry on your way out

Wait, no, not that—

-static follows-

 

Bushed

I had a wonderful time this weekend at AnonyCon in Stamford, CT—very good games, including one based off Three Parts Dead!  I’d had a chance to play the module before (the developer’s a friend as well as a fan) but it was fun to see how people who have read the book, and those who haven’t, participated in the game in different ways.

All of which made me think about putting together something like a series bible for roleplaying purposes.  On the one hand, the world lends itself very well to roleplaying—lots of competing factions, potential danger, scheming, and adventure.  On the other hand, the basic mechanics of Craft aren’t precisely compatible with most magic rulesets I’m aware of.  The closest I can think of would be something like the old Changeling: the Dreaming system, where if you spent your points properly you could make deals with inanimate objects, forge binding compacts with the stars, and stuff like that.  For moment-to-moment magical needs, many systems can approximate the behavior of the Craft in the book, though that approach puts more pressure on the GM to establish flavor.  I like trusting the GM in principle, but in practice I worry that too much GM trust leads to decisions that look arbitrary from a player’s perspective.  We shall see!  Bible-writing is fun whatever the results end up being.  (Don’t quote me on that out of context, please.)

While the Con was fun, I didn’t get to sleep Sunday ’til well after midnight due to the kind of bus-related mishap that will be hilarious about a year from now.  That, plus a weekend’s worth of sleep debt, made for a day much more conducive to staring at walls than to putting fingers on keyboard.  Oddly, in spite of all that I crushed my wordcount goal.  The plot continues to accelerate.  Characters are running into other characters at escape velocity.  I’m intrigued by differences between this book and others I’ve written.  I feel like I’m writing a Smiley book as opposed to, say, a Bourne novel—though we’ll see whether any of that makes it into the final draft.

Whatever happens, after this (and finishing the weird epistolary novel project now steeping in the background) I will be in the mood for consuming, and writing, something lighthearted and wacky.  Anyone save the world from aliens lately?