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If you are the volunteering type, you may have been roped into volunteering to run games at a convention! Convention GMing is its own peculiar species of GMing and requires a different set of tricks than you may use for your own home game! This week, we have a special guest – Bull the Best Ork Decker you’ve never met, is joining the Seize the GM crew to talk about running games at conventions and what sort of adjustments may be needed for you to take on this vaunted task.
- Be aware of time! At a convention, you are more a slave to the time of the session. Each convention is a space premium so how you keep a group on track at a convention is a specific task of steering them in the right direction without it being rails. Both the people running the game and the players have other events to get to! Keep a clock handy and don’t be afraid of asking the players to tighten up the game.
- Know what Paths are Available! Each story and each scene has a way in and a way out – know that those ways out are more limited and know what the ways forward are. Players are creative; let their ideas find one of the existing paths or make sure they fail spectacularly.
- Deal with Players who may derail! Start by taking the attention of the player privately. Have a quick conversation off table about how they are disrupting it for the rest of the players. If you have a room captain, make sure you know how to get their attention and what it takes to have someone removed from a room.
- Engage All The Players at the table! Give every player an opportunity to act with agency and to engage the game. Make sure the chance is there but don’t force the issue. Everyone is there to have fun so make sure everyone has an opening to be involved. Be aware of any limitations or assistance a player needs in the hectic chaos of the game room.
- Take Care of Yourself! Don’t forget bio breaks, water, coffee, and snacks that you need to be a functional humans. Give yourself mental space to decompress or to be able to handle confrontational players – talk; stretch your legs; get to a place you can be simple.
Bull’s Contact info
Stat Blocks
Zendead- Grouper
In the darkness after the collapse of the world generations will pass before they can truly start to rebuild. But even then the people that will come out of it will have changed. Maybe from the fallout maybe from the shift of the poles. But for some reason mystical energy has flooded the planet. This is the world Grouper lives in. She is the truest Urban Primitive. She has made this urban wasteland her home finding relics of the lost time. Finding her in this place is possible if you have read the signs.
Grouper is unique in that she is trying to rebuild a society. She uses her talents and her true power to get wanders to come to find her and her tribe. Her true power is maybe mystical or maybe it is a mutation, but it is powerful. She is able to shape concrete and metal and glass into shapes that it has never been in. Also the scale is part as well. When she takes and molds the old structures of the lost age into symbols and language that you can see from outside of the old places. These tell you where you can find her or places she can find you. Do you look for her. Of course you do that watercan isn’t going to fill itself after all.
Joules – Crystal Hearts
They’ve corrupted everything loved and cherished..
All treasured memories covered in sludge and tar.
All protections lost.
Then there is a light.
It’s warm. Almost too bright to look at. There’s a figure there. A silhouette so sharp you could almost cut your finger on the edge.
The Crystal Hearts. A subset butterfly warriors. They are the most powerful warriors that fight against the denizens of closetland. These are the children who combined their soul with the power of their belief. They are the only warriors from whom the seven kings flee. Even the Boogieman knows to give them a wide berth.
Why haven’t they won against the darkness?
Unfortunately it’s part of the pact they make when they merge their soul and their belief. The Crystal Hearts… They burn so bright but for only half a lifetime. And they no longer can raise arms for themselves. They can only raise arms on behalf of someone else. They can only go on the offensive in the act of defense. They no longer can defend themselves. They can only defend someone else
How far would you go? What would you risk? What keeps your fighting? When everything is stripped from you, and you can no longer lift your arms to defend yourself? How do you find the strength to fight on? Would you throw your life away to defend a weakling. A stranger. A nobody.
Guard-a-Manger – The Most Glorious and Exalted Congress of Fine Fellows and Distinguished Ladies
Greetings and Salutations! Why, yes, you were expected here amongst your fellows. Who am I? Oh, that should be not of your concern, young Master. I am not more than furniture and not less than a butler. I buttle well.
You can place your coat and bag here in the foyer and I shall attend to them. Your meeting is about to begin and I would not want you to make a poor first impression at the table. Why, yes, the study is down the hall and to the left young Master. You shan’t miss it opposite the globe in the hall. I do expect you are just in time to hear about the next stage of the plan.
Oh, it wouldn’t be my place to discuss that plan. That is for you and your fellows who have made the preparations. I will be just an observer to this and to the inevitable future. Oh, pish posh. I am quite certain you are exactly where you should be.
That is of no matter that you hadn’t realized the congress was tonight. Your arrival was ordained and, as I have already mentioned, you were expected.
Now, off with you to the study! The dimensional rifts shan’t open without your vote!
I will bring along tea and crumpets presently.
Nulloperations – The Coin of Cats and Dogs
It’s large for a coin, taking up your entire palm from pinky to thumb, and is embossed with the mold of a dog on one side and a cat on the other. As you turn it over though, you notice the size of the canine and feline figures seem to change, large, small, heavy, scrawny. Never quite the same, but distinctly cat on one side and dog on the other.
It’s only when you’re out on the town and trying to pass the time you notice something odd. First, as you’re holding the coin, any dog or cat you see seems to have a glow to them. Not a true light source, but as if the very colors radiating off them are set several stages higher. Your eyes are drawn to them.
And then you flipped the coin.
The coin lands cat side up, and the dog you look at suddenly shifts to an identical image of the impression of a cat. Large, fluffy, and all together very undog like. You pick up the coin and flip it again. Dog side, only this dog is leaner, muscular, like some noble’s hunting dog rather than the mutt that was digging through trash a moment ago. There’s a commotion and the dog runs before a set of city guards comes storming by. They’re all shouting a name, “Lord Paws,” as they rush past you. The fleeing dog stops a moment in recognition and starts to run back.
And then flip the coin again.
Cat side, only, the embossed image is much larger than a house cat. More muscular. Bulkier.
The tiger doesn’t look happy. You really hope you can flip the coin again before it reaches you.
Lexicon
Seminal adjective sem·i·nal \ ˈse-mə-nᵊl \
Definition of seminal
1 : of, relating to, or consisting of seed or semen
2 : containing or contributing the seeds of later development
Origin and Etymology of seminal
Middle English, from Latin seminalis, from semin-, semen seed
First Known Use: 14th century
Popularity: Top 30% of words
Closing remarks
Zendead- Detroit: Become Human
Joules- Dark Souls Remastered
Guard-a-Manger- Blue Beetle – Specifically, the Jamie Reyes version and any of the collections of the first series that introduced him. Quite simply, it was a reimagination of a concept that blended together golden, silver, and bronze age Beetle’s while also giving DC a great teenage hero to explore that coming of age story.
Nulloperations- Rereading Trader’s Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper, by Nathan Lowell. Starting with Quarter Share, Half Share, and Full Share, it’s a currently 8 part series set during a future where star-faring merchant marines make a living sailing in and out of stellar gravity wells, trading goods. It’s a fascinating set of stories that center on Ishmael Wang, a recently orphaned colonist from a corporate planet now forced to get off world after the death of his mother. The stories are touching, a little corney at times, but overall charming.
Bull- State of Decay 2 – Zombie Action Survival Game with online play capacity across Platform and desktop computers.
Larry XL Origins Comedy Show
Music is courtesy of The Enigma TNG you can find his music on YouTube or on Bandcamp
Find us
Show- Email, Twitter, Facebook
Zendead- Email, Twitter, Facebook
Joules- Email, Twitter, Facebook
Nulloperations-Email, Twitter, Facebook
Guard-a-manger- Email, Twitter
And Thanks to Merriam-Webster for our Lexicon segment
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Guard-a-manger
Iona Stone
J Samuel Diehl
Zendead