Issue 8 - TACTICON 2024

Attended a local gaming con this past weekend, and I have some thoughts.

Aug 28, 2024

Hello folks, welcome back. Summer 2024 continues to be a busy one, with work, travel, vacation, chores and other family responsibilities eating up most of my time. As a result I’ve neglected this blog, found less time to play with my two biweekly virtual RPG groups, and had to hugely skinny up the number of play-by-post (PbP) games I run and play in.

As a result, I’m finding myself generally dissatisfied with gaming at the moment. There are highlights: I’m still engaging with some great Discord communities, I’m -loving- running Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) for an all-star PbP crew over on gamersplane.com, I’ve had good experiences playing Mothership with pals… and am really liking exploring ~~solo~~ duet PbP gaming with Gabe of Analytic Dice fame1.

So with the summer coming to a rapid close2, I thought perhaps a big dose of gaming at a local convention might cure what ailed me. For better or worse, Colorado doesn’t have a large gaming convention, but rather several smaller ones throughout the year. This is one of them.

TACTICON 2024

TACTICON, hosted at the Hyatt in Aurora, CO each August these past few years, is a gaming convention that traditionally focuses a bit more on card, board, miniature and war games than it does RPGs. Over the four or five times I’ve attended, though, I’ve never struggled to find great RPGs to play.

The games on offer this year seemed a bit thinner than usual, but I didn’t think much of it as I signed up for five games, many of which are favorites of mine: Mothership, DCC Lankhmar, Savage Worlds, 2d20 Dune, and Delta Green.

And so with about ten other blog posts half-written, including the next one in the space marines series and a complete non-sequitur regarding how I feel about the e-bike I bought this summer, I thought, “why not blog about those games?”

(I invariably write up my con games in my own notes for posterity, or slap them up on Discord for others to peruse, so I figure the Hearth is actually a good place for this stuff. Expect to see something similar regarding the games I play at Gamehole Con in October, BSer Con 4 in January, and Genghis Con in February.)

Since none of you are here to talk me out of this, let’s get to it.

Mothership: Decagone

I love Mothership. I grabbed the ashcan (0e) version of the game years ago when it first game out, I have the new deluxe box set, I have a metric ton of 3rd party content for it… it’s a game I really enjoy. Space and horror and evocative art and state of the art layout — yes please. More please.

Decagone (mothership module) — Slowquest — *Decagone* is an underwater lab adventure by Slowquest, and is very purple.

I started the con with this game, early on a Friday morning. The PC team (an Android, a Teamster and two Marines) was hired by a corporation to check on an asset of theirs that had gone quiet: an underwater lab where, you know, Mothership things were sure to be happening.

The GM let us know in advance that this was his first time running a con game, and while he was an experienced game master, a nice guy and had decent mastery of the rules, he didn’t bring a lot of energy to the table. Nor did he, I suspect, carefully read or internalize the Warden’s Operations Manual, which is pure fucking gold in terms of GM advice — for Mothership specifically, but also generally speaking. In Mothership, the PCs don’t want to be rolling dice3. Rolling dice means something has gone wrong, there’s a risk you need to avoid, or you’re trying not to get your face bitten, melted, sanded or chopped off.

Here’s the kicker many people seem to miss:

Every time a PC fails a check or save in Mothership, they gain stress. Every single time.

For the GM, this means two things.

You should only call for rolls that have stakes that matter. Dangerous outcomes, precious time that might be wasted, resources that might be used up, etc. Think about it: if you fail, you take stress. That’s not going to come from some ho-hum attribute / skill roll.
You have a ready-made consequence for failure. Meaning failing forward is virtually always on the table. For those Mothership modules where the author is calling for a Strength check to open every single door… a failure doesn’t have to mean that you simply can’t open the door. The PC is taking stress if they fail — that can be enough of a cost. The door opens, but what was that sound behind you? The door opens, but oh man did it take a long time. The door opens, but what is that smell? The door opens, but you’ve bloodied your knuckles painfully on the doorframe. You get the picture.

Bottom line, designer Sean McCoy built in some pretty fabulous mechanics that mean the players should always be angling for situations where they don’t have to roll (or at least roll with advantage), and where the GM has a ready-made solution for every roll that allows the action to keep moving forward.

So the other thing the GM (Warden, I suppose I should call them) has to do is call for Panic Checks when it’s appropriate. Without getting into the guts of the system, the stress and panic mechanics in Mothership got a complete overhaul in 1e, and are much better than they were in the 0e ashcan edition. As your stress goes up and up, your chances of getting a nasty result on the Panic table climbs… but to visit that Panic table, the GM has to actually call for Panic Checks. Our GM seemed to be only looking in the adventure for specific places where Panic Checks were called for… and seeing none, he called for exactly… none. (Often monsters and horrific scenes trigger Panic Checks, but the GM just needs to read the room and be on the lookout for the right times to pull that trigger. Zero is not typically the right number of Panic Checks in a one-shot Mothership game.)

All in all, we had a fun-enough, fairly low-stakes time exploring the lab, meeting its denizens and unwinding what happened. There’s a time-loop gimmick in the adventure that makes it ideal for one-shot / convention play, and I liked it enough that I plan to grab the Decagone PDF and read it myself. Might even run it at some point.

So in the end, an okay start to the con.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar: Masks of Lankhmar

As my bud Robb and I walked up to this table, we were a little concerned about this game actually launching. We were the only two players signed up for it, and I’ve seen GMs decide not to run with that number before. This GM, though, Allen, was a gem. He said that two was actually perfect for Lankhmar — just think of the fiction we were about to emulate!

So off we went, a brawny warrior and an ambitious wizard, filching, fighting and carousing through the infamous streets of the City of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Meet Shmehk, who hails from The Land of the Eight Cities!

Shmehk was a huge amount of fun to play, and managed to cast four of his five spells during the session!

This was a fantastic experience, and firmed up in my mind that I actually prefer the Lankhmar version of DCC to the (also awesome) standard game. I won’t get into spoilery details on the adventure (Masks of Lankhmar which I think is the first module Goodman Games put out for the setting), but lord love a duck I had a good time.

Written by Michael Curtis, *Masks of Lankhmar* is chock full of evocative scenes that bring the famous city to life. Loved it, will run it.

I think part of that enjoyment came from the GM getting the tone right, being on-point about pacing, and having mastery of the Lankhmar version of the rules — which came from him running a two-year long campaign for his home group. The scenario itself was right on target in terms what I think about adventuring in Lankmar: thieving, chance meetings, opulent merchant parties, crumbling temples turned into crowded slums, grabby street urchins, rough-handed thugs who needed to be put in their place, secret passages and tombs and the dark magic that protected them. 10/10, Mr. Curtis.

And then all this was amplified by the way that the Lankhmar version of the game just seems to take things to 11. To wit:

Human-centric
No clerics or easy healing — if you want to patch yourself up, grab that bottle of wine and take a swig while you use some of your…
Fleeting Luck! A fabulous extension on the already great DCC luck mechanic.
A magic system that is changed subtly, but that introduces a completely different feel to sorcery, and one that drives story — more on this in a moment.
Patrons are tweaked and factor much more into the game. Insanely, I managed to pick up a Patron (Sheelba of the Eyeless Face!) during the con game and actually make use of her help on multiple occasions!
Carousing tables! Which we used after I spent a good portion of the spoils from our first job on the most expensive wine I could find.

I mentioned that the changes to the spell system created story. Check out the “Stipulations” on Shmehk’s sheet:

When Shmehk used the reverse of Ward Portal spell to open a sealed chamber, he had a finger puppet of himself that he had to wiggle on his finger around the outside of the door. When he wanted to cast Spider Climb, he had to stop and toke up. (And the resulting spell check only gave him sticky fingers, which he then used to try and steal the titular Masks of Lankhmar.) And when it came time to use Force Manipulation, we triggered a trap that produced a wall of flame — which ruined the complete darkness Shmehk was hoping for.

It all makes for colorful scenes, especially when combined with the warrior’s Mighty Deeds, and the results on the carousing table, which included that same warrior romancing a noblewoman who’s husband would soon be on the hunt for her illicit lover. We were to continue playing this game past the con, there were about four fantastic threads that came up like this in play that we could all pull on.

Bravo, DCC Lankhmar. Was my second time playing it, and on both occasions I had a fabulous time.

Savage Worlds: The Voronezh Incident

It's actually taken me a long time to warm up to Savage Worlds4 , but in recent years I’ve come to appreciate what it’s good at — those goofy, high-energy, high-octane stories where the characters all have bad accents, constantly make quips, and where no one takes anything too seriously. Beer and pretzels gaming. Should be right up the alley for those who dig that type of gaming, say Jason from the Nerd’s RPG Variety Cast.

The author of the adventure, which is in Pinnacle Entertainment’s Savage Saturday Cinema line, is a solid GM, and I often look for her games when I’m going to local cons. (Previously I’ve played in, and liked, the Good Society and Call of Cthulhu games that she ran.)

Here’s the pitch:

In the end, I have a little less to say about this game than the others. It was good, lighthearted fun, and I quite enjoyed the pregen PCs and especially their art. Sara (the GM) didn’t use minis or battle maps, and I always appreciate that. Sticking to theater of the mind helped keep the game fast-flowing, and as I wasn’t exactly enthralled with the defeat-the-giant-house-cat mission itself, I was glad for that.

Overall, it was a pretty good time, though I liked it less than the other games of Sara’s I’ve played in, and I’m kind of re-thinking hitting one SWADE game per con.

2d20 Dune: Kernels of Doubt

Ever since I first read Modiphius’s Star Trek Adventures back a number of years ago, then bought, read and played Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, I’ve felt like there was a great game somewhere inside those two games. I really enjoy the core of the 2d20 mechanics, I love all the Fate DNA that’s present, I dig the rich treatment of the subject matter and the spot-on trade dress… but it’s always felt like there’s a lot of fat to trim, like those bloated and at-times needlessly complex systems needed another pass from a keen-eyed game designer. It felt like too many of the good ideas from the initial whiteboard brainstorming sessions made it into those games, and that a general streamlining, paring down and clean-up would result in a vastly better play experiences.5

Well, after playing Dune: Adventures in the Imperium at Gamehole Con last year in Madison, and now after playing it again at TACTICON a few days ago, I’m here to tell you that Dune is that game.

This version of 2d20 dumps the d6 challenge dice and all the associated effects that are powered by them, it adds levels of play that perfectly model the sweeping scenes and compelling dramas of the books and movies. It offers a conceit for the players to stick together that is dead simple for everyone to buy into6… and it at least appears to be a game where casual fans can enjoy telling stories in this universe without being overly worried about deeply understanding all the IP.

I might end up doing a full blog post on Dune: Adventures in the Imperium at some point so I won’t go on at length there, but wowzie wowzie woo woo this game is good. It was helped out by a great GM who took the time to explain core concepts to the players who hadn’t played before. He was also a great storyteller, comfortable in zooming way, way into the action when necessary, and way out when we needed to make moves at the “Architect” level. (That’s where you move agents and military forces around the map, recruiting neutral parties to our cause, uncovering plots against our House and performing all kinds of other ‘meta’ actions at a level way above your typical RPG. It’s seriously cool.)

Dune won’t be for everyone — it’s kind of a writer’s room style of game with all that Fate DNA coursing through its veins. Players have to be comfortable jumping into and out of their PC’s skins, and then also operating at that strategic level where you’re controlling so much more than your PC. There’s a bit of a board game aspect to the higher-level (‘Architect’) play, but because it integrates absolutely seamlessly with the “on the ground” PC (‘Agent’) play, it never feels jarring or goofy to move back and forth between those two levels. Rather, it feels totally natural.

Bottom line, if you think you might like Dune, give it a shot.

You might just love it. I certainly do.

Delta Green: The Last Equation

Maybe not the best Opera for a one-shot? I plan on reading it soon to find out.

Alrighty! Delta Green is one of my very favorite games. So we’re looking at closing out the con in style, right? Finishing strong, sprinting across the finish, putting a cherry on… on… oh. Oof. Ugh. Nope.

I was hoping for a great final game and dragged Robb and Digital Hobbit to this one, but our GM just wasn’t proficient at running what can be a pretty nuanced game. I generally don’t want to badmouth anyone who takes the trouble to try and run a con game, and in this case the GM was a very nice guy who did his best. He’d run lots of Call of Cthulhu previously, but seemed pretty stuck on some basic things that hung the game up. Were I to find this gentleman in a bar and share a pint with him, I’d humbly point out some things I think he might want to change.

Don’t choose an adventure for a con that might involve loads of travel to very faraway places, and that chews up two hours of table time just getting to the point when there’s even a whiff of the unnatural. And maybe seize those moments where action might erupt, and actually have some action erupt.
Don’t lock key information, and the PCs’ ability to move forward, behind skill rolls. Remember the game isn’t silent on this; a skill of 40, 50, 60 or better can often just succeed without needing to roll if there’s no stressor / pressure present. Also, keep in mind the concept of failing forward.
Don’t ask for skill rolls for every little thing. And when people start failing, as they will in DG if you call for a lot of rolls, don’t start calling for huge swaths of skills. (e.g. “Roll Medical, Science, Forensics or Bureaucracy to get the clue.”)
Use failed rolls to stir things up in the game. Give them consequences. Especially critical failures. Hit the PCs harder. They can take it… and in fact that’s what they are here for.
Don’t take the action that a player has described and add to it in a way that fits where you believe the story needs to go. Let the players stumble, guide them a little, make suggestions, talk plainly out of character if necessary to get them on-track, but don’t decide things for them. Don’t tell them they also did the thing you think is a good idea. There’s no right answer or one solution for these scenarios, and as trite as it sounds these days, playing to find out what happens is generally more fun than following a pre-laid track to a foregone conclusion.

I love me some Delta Green, but I found out on Sunday that I don’t always love it. There’s hope for that GM, and I intend to read The Last Equation to see what I personally would do differently if I ran it.

Okay, just a couple of stray thoughts here to cover before I close up shop.

Colorado Gaming Convention Culture

Over the past several conventions I’ve attended in Colorado (largely in the Denver area), I’ve noticed some troubling behavior: most people don’t introduce themselves at the table, or ask what people are hoping to get out of the session. There’s never a discussion about safety tools or content, when the table might take a bio break, or anything that smells anything at all like CATS7.

We can do better, Colorado! I don’t enjoy running con games, but perhaps I should entertain the idea of running 1-2 per convention to spread some karma. I can nail that first bit, then be a thoroughly mediocre GM for the rest of the session. :)

Final TACTICON Thoughts

Sure seemed like a small convention this year. Never a wait for the bathroom or beverages, lots of empty spaces at tables, and a teeny-tiny vendor hall.8 I’m on the fence about attending next year, and am thinking hard about instead getting a cabin in the mountains where a group of friends could flock for a gaming weekend.

Until we meet again…