Sunday, March 2, 2025

Being a GM at Conventions

Last time I talked about some of the difficulties and general thoughts I have being a player at conventions.

This time I want to talk about some of the insecurities I’ve had relating to being a GM at conventions. Like playing convention games, running convention games is something I love to do and I get a real sense of accomplishment when I’ve brought a game along that my players have enjoyed. However, I do find it challenging in different ways to being a player so I wanted to explore some of these here. Like last time this is more dealing with internal feelings rather than anything I think could be improved by convention organisers and players.

GMing at conventions

One pattern I find myself falling into when GMing at conventions is worrying excessively about wasting people’s time. Especially with new groups I hold myself to an incredibly high standard and find myself worrying about everything that might go wrong during the game and if I’m a good enough GM to be running anything in the first place. This usually recedes when I’m running the game itself due to adrenaline but comes back with a vengeance post game where I analyse every little thing that might have gone wrong and why it wasn’t a good game after all. This is particularly true for scenarios I’ve written myself or games that require a high amount of improv. I have these thoughts while GMing for my regular groups but it’s more prominent at conventions as I’m often running for new people.

On the one hand, it’s good to want to run a good game. It shows you care about your players and also it suggests that a good RPG experience is something you value which in turns suggests that the hobby is for you. However, I think there’s a tendency amongst some GMs, especially those of us with anxiety, to strive for a perfection that we’ll never reach out of fear that we’ll let our players down.

A simple point that it helps me to remember is that the GM is a person who is playing the game and it’s equally important that they’re having fun too. They have a different role and may have fun in different ways but essentially, you’re investing your free time in a hobby you enjoy. I first heard this point on Crispy’s Tavern  (an excellent youtube channel focussing on mostly D and D but with some good general gaming tips) and it seems a really simple point but, when I started to internalise it, it helped me to re-contextualise the whole experience.  My enjoyment became a factor in my thinking, not the only factor of course, but an important one.

I’ve found that players are often very forgiving people. They’re here because they love games so you already have a tailored audience to some extent. Also, many of them have been in the GMing position before so they know how scary the chair you’re sitting in can be. I’ve never been in the position where I've had to ask my players to bear with me while I think through my next steps or have had to call a break because I need a little time to process and the reaction from the table has been anything but supportive and understanding.

I find it useful to have a little chat with my players at the start of the game before the safety tools section to introduce myself, ask how their con’s going and talk a little bit about my relationship to the game. This allows me to gauge my table and get to know them a bit as well as allowing me to express anything I need to up front. For example, if I’m running a new system, I’ll straight up say that this is new to me so if I need to check the rules a bit more often please bear with me. This helps me fight the perfectionist fears a bit I suppose. It puts me firmly in the role of “fallible person who’s also here for a good time” rather than “person who has to know all the things and never miss a beat”.

Another important thing to remember about conventions is that your players might be tired. If someone’s been in one or two sessions before yours, their energy levels might not be what they were at the beginning of the con. This can sometimes feel like lack of engagement when it really isn’t. It’s just part and parcel of the event. There might be things you can do to make the game easier for them but it’s ultimately something to factor in if you’re worried a table might not be fully engaged.

This leads into a wider point about players reactions at your table. When you’ve been playing with people for a long time, you can often get a read on whether they’re having a good time. At the bare minimum the fact that they keep showing up is a positive indicator. At a convention game you’re likely to be dealing with new people who have different ways of expressing their enjoyment of things. I’m not always great at reading people and often my anxiety is hyper vigilant for signs that people aren’t having a good time to the point where I sometimes see signs of displeasure that aren’t actually there.

My strategy for this has been to ask people how they’re finding the game at the half way point when we take a break so I can redirect if I need to and also ask them about their feelings at the end of the session. That’s the easy part, the hard part is believing them if they say positive things. This has been a tricky one for me and to be honest it’s not something I’ve quite got the hang of.  I know that when I say positive things to GMs I tend to mean them but the worms in my brain can’t always seem to grasp that other people are doing the same. I’ve been slowly training myself to take positive comments at face value but it takes work so if you have the same problem I very much empathise. If you have any tips for overcoming this, let me know in the comments.

Something that’s always helped me with my anxiety around running games at conventions is booking my game in for the earliest slot I can. This means I have less time to ruminate about things that might be worrying me about running the game. Ideally I wouldn’t be worrying much about running games at all but seeing as I know that this is something I do and am working on this has been a nice practical step to reduce anxiety a bit. It also means that, 9 times out of 10 I have a nice positive adrenaline boost to start my con and on the rare occasions things don’t go well I have the rest of the con to look forward to.

That’s all from me. If you find yourself relating to anything in these posts I hope you’ve found the discussion useful, if only to prove that it’s not just you feeling this way about things. Thanks for listening and I’ll be back soon with more ponderings about mostly RPGs but sometimes things that are not.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Being a Player at Conventions

I went to a convention and I had a really lovely time. That’s it, thanks for reading.

Actually, I do have more to say but I thought it was important to start with a positive and true statement, as it was partially how much I enjoyed this convention that made me consider the following topic.

You see conventions are wonderful. It’s nice to get away, see friends, meet new friends and play and run excellent games. However, I must admit that, no matter how much fun they provide and how much I love the experience, they’re also quite stressful for me sometimes. I’m rather introverted by nature and suffer from quite a bit of anxiety. I’ve been working for years on the latter (I don’t really see the former as a problem necessarily) but, even though I feel as though I’ve made a lot of progress, there are particular aspects of conventions that push my personal buttons. So I thought I’d share a few things about conventions that I personally find stressful along with some coping mechanisms I’ve found useful as I dive deeper into the RPG scene.

I’m going to split this into two posts, one about playing games at conventions and one about running games at conventions.

Please note, what I say has more to do with my own personal thoughts and insecurities than the way conventions are organised or the folks who attend them. The organisation teams of all the cons I’ve gone to have been universally helpful and lovely and the attendees generally tend to create a genuinely welcoming atmosphere.     

Being a player at conventions

My major tip here would be “Don’t try to do everything”. This seems self explanatory and obvious but convention environments do seem to unintentionally encourage one to push oneself past their limit. There’s an air of excitement, there’s lots of fun things to do and there’s even a bit of a culture of joking about not getting enough sleep and playing all the games. This in itself is not a problem. The problem comes when it’s mixed with a mindset of fear of missing out, or somehow feeling that if you take time to breathe you’re somehow not getting the full convention experience or you’re going to regret it later. Now there are people out there who can do all the things and have a great time. Not me however. I’ve realised I need breaks. A combination of medical problems and also general anxiety around social situations means that it’s not plausible for me to keep going nonstop.  I also need to be very strict with myself about these breaks as I do rather find the convention atmosphere a little intoxicating. I want to hang out with my friends, I want to play games.  However, I’ve learnt from experience that if I do push myself, I just end up not having as much fun as I would if I’m sensible. I’ve even on one occasion had to drop out of a game and spend the rest of the day recovering when I pushed myself too far at a longer con.

This year, at the same convention, I limited myself to 2 games a day maximum (apart from 1 day when I went to 3 but I ended up having the whole day off the day after), and it worked super well for me. I got my con fix while looking after myself properly and I didn’t feel like I was missing out because I knew that I needed the downtime to have a good con. Obviously other people will need fewer or more periods of downtime depending on who they are but I just want to make clear that a good convention isn’t always a packed convention. Take the time you need for you and don’t feel guilty about not filling your schedule to the brim.

Being a player with new people is also a bit scary. I have very rarely come across new people I haven’t liked at a convention and the folks who go are almost universally lovely. However, if you’re a fellow social anxiety sufferer the mere act of engaging with new people can be a bit of a strain. I personally find myself analysing my playing much more than I would do with friends. I want to make a good impression so sometimes it feels a bit more like a high stakes performance than a game. I have thoughts like, am I being annoying, am I fitting the tone of the game, do I fit in with the group, am I talking too much, am I not talking enough etc. If you ever find yourself falling into this pattern, I think an important thing to remember is that everyone has the same goal: having a good time. You’re all kind of a pre built team in that regard, there to help each other have a good experience. Personally I find that having that in the forefront of my mind helps me to relax and decentre myself a bit. It’s not only on me to make sure everyone’s having the most wonderful time and a sub-par role playing decision is not going to mess up the game.

A question that often crosses my mind is how do I choose what new games to play? Sometimes I like to play it safe and pick systems I’ve played before that I know I’ll enjoy or games run by GMs who I’ve played with in the past and know I can trust for a good game. This is perfectly reasonable way to do a con and I’ve had some great cons as a result of this strategy so if that’s your preference, go ahead and have a wonderful time. However, there are a lot of fun new games out there and sometimes I want to branch out and try something completely different. 

I play a lot of horror games or games that are otherwise emotionally intense. Therefore, an important thing for me is clear, prominent and well thought out safety tools and content warnings. This isn’t to say that GMs who don’t list clear safety tools don’t care about their players but I sometimes use good safety tools on a sign up sheet as a shorthand for : "I’m more likely to be safe in this game" if I don’t know the GM and this has tended to serve me well.   I love weird storytelling games so I tend to go for those. This is a personal preference of course but it seems these sorts of games are self selecting as most of the time when I’ve signed up to them I’ve had a lovely time with people who are on the same strange wavelength as I am.

Finally, if you have friends at the convention that you trust, then I urge you to talk about insecurities or anxieties you might have with them. I sometimes feel a bit bad about doing this as I feel like I might be bringing them down or making their convention less fun by expressing something difficult. However, every time I’ve had that sort of conversation it has always been positive and productive. They’ve helped put things into perspective, commiserated with me, cheered me up and sometimes expressed that I’m not alone in my anxieties.

The latter of which is why I’m writing this. I’ve found that opening up about things sometimes helps other people to open up about their stuff too. To that end, if you’re reading this please share some of your player convention survival tips. I’d be really interested to know people’s thoughts. 

 


Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Viola's Room - Punchdrunk

Hi everyone. I saw a play last weekend and at the risk of making this blog even more niche than it already is I’d like to talk about it a little as I really enjoyed it. The below will contain spoiler’s for the experience so I’ll say briefly here that if you like dark fairy tales and immersive theatre you should definitely try and see this if you’re around and about London in the next week or so.

Also, I’m not any sort of theatre critic so anything I say is just my enthusiastic thoughts. I’ve probably missed a ton of things and picked up on some things that aren’t there. But individual people’s reactions and interpretations are one of the things I like best about art. So it’s only fair I let people in on my own.

This was actually the second time I’d seen Viola’s Room. I loved it so much the first time I had to go again, especially when I heard it had been given a Christmas makeover. The makeover itself didn’t affect the content of the play itself so I feel fine in combining the two experiences together.   

Viola’s room is an immersive theatre piece by the company Punchdrunk. Now immersive theatre is an incredibly broad church so that alone gave me little idea as to what I was getting in for. I didn’t want any spoilers as I knew these things were best going into blind so all I had was the assurance of some friends (admittedly friends whose recommendations I trust) that it was very good and I’d probably like it and the vague blurb that suggested that I was going to enter a dark, dreamlike almost ghost story.

Any expectations I had, the show exceeded them. Dreamlike really is the word. It felt like I was stepping into a waking nightmare and when I think back on it now and try to remember specific parts it does feel a little like trying to catch snatches of a dream that you know when you wake up had greatly affected you but you struggle to piece together the snatches of meaning from it. While viola’s room does have a definite plot, the story narrated to you through a pair of headphones follows the short story :”The Moon Slave” by Barry Pain very closely, there is also something else going on there, another narrative left open to audience interpretation intriguing and hidden between the cracks.  You walk from room to room and along corridors, the story unfolding as you go. You’re required to be barefoot for the duration which is used to great effect as I’ll touch on later.

The experience engages your senses in a really interesting way. I’m do some folktale storytelling in my spare time and one of the things that I was taught to do when describing scenes is not just to describe what a space looks like. We often don’t experience things through sight alone and a description can be made much more real and visceral if you bring the other senses in. It doesn’t have to be dwelt on but helps to make things whole. I can truly say that I’ve never encountered a piece of theatre that has incorporated nearly all the senses (apart from taste, including that might be a little unhygienic) so well and so seamlessly. It was so impressive in fact, that I’m going to split up the rest of my descriptions into what I could see, hear, smell and feel.

See: Visually the play was stunning. You start off in Viola’s Room itself, a cosy childhood bedroom full of soft furnishings. You are invited to lie down and the lights dim until you’re plunged into complete darkness. After hearing the story’s introduction a passageway at the other end of the room is lit up and it’s time to start your adventure. There are a few set pieces that are really breathtaking. Whether it’s standing beneath the ever present and ever ominous Hawthorne tree or sitting in a quiet secluded chapel with a dark secret the environments created show you just enough to impress while not being too crowded that you lose the dread of what could be lurking in the darkness. Both darkness and light are used to great effect, the light to guide you and draw you towards what they want you to see, the darkness never far behind, sometimes enveloping you, sometimes suggesting something more in the corners of your view. I was also very impressed with the subtle visual cues all throughout. For example, at the beginning of the story where things are less ominous you’re transported through corridors of white sheets with tiny beautiful model and shadow puppet representations of the action. As the story becomes darker so do the sheets, taking on a grey and worn quality.

Hear: Throughout the experience you are told the story through headphones. Helena Bonham Carter does an excellent job of narration, building the tension softly yet relentlessly, keeping throughout that fairytale feel. The soundtrack was also wonderful, the music flawlessly reflecting the emotional beats whether it is the bright but constricting atmosphere of a royal court to the feeling of being stalked through the dark.

Smell: Different rooms had different smells which did wonders for immersion. The most over powering smell was the one in Viola’s room itself. It almost smelt like too sweet fabric conditioner at once comforting but also wrong. This smell clung to my jumper as I went through the play and I could still smell it when I left the building. Every time I caught the scent I got flashes of the experience.

Feel – The feelings of different textures beneath my feet are probably my most visceral memories of the show. The ground beneath you starts out soft and cushioned but gets harder and more uneven as the story progresses to its terrifying conclusion.  The texture that still gives me shivers at the thought of is the feeling of damp muddy bark. This texture is present in a climatic sequence where you are walking quickly through a maze, an unknown force chasing you. The feelings of disorientation both brought about by the situation and the off putting texture was truly something. Added to this was the fact that the walls themselves got closer and closer together the further you went through the maze, constricting you just enough for you to feel trapped and boxed in as you squeeze through the gaps.

All in all I had a wonderful time with this play both times I went to see it.  What I really took away from it is how, if done right, an engagement of all the senses can turn an already interesting story or concept into magic. I’ll really be remembering this experience when I GM my next horror game. Although I don’t have the expertise of the space Punchdrunk have I shall do my best to hold onto the ghosts of the feelings I had in Viola’s room and figure out how best to put those feelings into words.  

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Writing The Space

Recently I wrote freeform LARP for the Golden Cobra Challenge called The Space. Aside from a few scenario ideas for TTRPGs, this was my first go at dipping my toes into the vast and ever changing sea of game design. I learnt a lot from the experience and it also got me asking many questions regarding how to write a game. I wanted to share a bit about my thoughts and process around writing the game in case it helps anyone starting out.

Note: I didn’t have time to play test the game but I did send it to several people to read over. The support, suggestions and interesting discussions I had as a result of doing this were indescribably helpful, so helpful that I wanted to say, definitely get feedback from people you know and trust. This is true for whatever you’re writing and is probably more important than anything I have to say below.

What is asexual horror?

I decided quite early on that I wanted to write an asexual horror game. Horror is a genre that I’m quite comfortable with and the competition guidelines actively encouraged games by asexual people. This led me to quite a difficult question: “What exactly does asexual horror even mean?”. Obviously, there are a million ways that someone could write an asexual horror game but luckily I only needed one.

I thought about it for awhile and came up with the following: what asexual horror is to me, from a sex adverse perspective, is not desiring what society in general and also the individuals around you expect you to desire. There are also strong themes of disgust and repulsion in the game which adds to the horror but without this outside expectation for the players to engage with what they find repulsive I don’t think the scenario would be as horrific.  The theme of nature provided by the competition really helped here. Sex is widely considered one of the most natural and human things in the world for a person to want, an attitude that can feel isolating for those of us who don’t.

How to structure the game?

Once I had the general idea, it was time to work out how to represent those ideas in game form, specifically as a freeform LARP. The first thing I needed to do was work out what a freeform LARP was. Freeform LARP is a very broad category. I quickly realised I had to put aside my love of clear, stringent definitions and read as many freeform LARPs as possible so I could at least find out what they feel like. The Golden Cobra archive was a great help in this and I came across some strange and magnificent things. I’d highly recommend having a browse. I also took some inspiration from card based TTRPGS based around discussions and introspection, the main being Women are Werewolves by Yeunsoo Julian Kim and C.A.S Taylor which is an incredible game. Go and play it if you haven’t already.

I knew I wanted the majority of the game to be a conversation between the player characters. An opportunity for them to discuss their feelings and experiences in the weird world that I’d placed them in.  I very much wanted all the characters to be disgusted by The Space. I wanted them to all share in their isolation and therefore, conversely, feel a bit less alone.

I also knew I wanted to establish The Space as its own character almost. I wanted it to be something that the players could not ignore. So I wanted some sections where the players could focus on The Space, firstly in Scene one to give them chance to define it and make the game personal and then again in the final scene to confront it and in doing so assert themselves, sort of in the same way The Space has been throughout the game I suppose.

The above defined the three scenes in the game.

Additional things I thought about

I wanted to add a few mechanics and bits of flavour. I didn’t want to over complicate things as it was my first game and I was still getting used to how to put things together. However, there were two main things that I considered additionally to the player characters talking to each other.

The first thing was I wanted the space to be present in some way while playing. I thought that was an important way to establish The Space as an ever present entity. However, obviously I couldn’t conjure up a natural space which looks different to everyone there. Therefore, I decided to represent it by an empty cordoned off but empty part of the room. Any prop would have defined the space and I wanted the definition of what was in The Space to be totally up to the players.  Initially I also included rules for online play of the game but the fact that I couldn’t work out how to conjure The Space into an online playing space was a big reason why I eventually removed the online play rules entirely.

The second thing was that I realised that in the second Scene where the characters are having their discussion it was very easy to ignore The Space entirely.  The representation of the Space was there but there was nothing to make sure that players didn’t ignore The Space completely. I needed to find a way to involve it in the conversation. The solution I came up with was to have an alarm go off every 15 minutes to represent The Space asserting itself on the scene. Every time the alarm sounded The Space would impose itself in a disgusting way. I thought 15 minutes was a good amount of time as I didn’t want the alarm to constantly interrupt game play, especially as Scene 2 is only about an hour long, but I wanted it to be often enough that it provided a real intrusion in the scene.   

Conclusion

And that’s about it from me. If you are reading this and you want to write your first game I want to encourage you to do so. I really enjoyed having a go at writing something and the more people writing games and showing their perspective on the world, the better.

 

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Fear of Death and Cosmic Horror

CW: Detailed discussions and a personal account of fear of death

Hi there. When I decided to write this blog I wasn’t intending to start off with something so personal. I wanted to ease my readership in with something a little more light-hearted to show that I am a person of charm, wit and levity. However, unfortunately, me tricking you all into thinking that I’m an urbane, happy go lucky sort of person will have to wait and it’s all the fault of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

What follows will contain minor spoilers for Emmrich Volkarin’s quest line. I’m not at the end yet and I’m not really going to discuss anything past the quest Walking The Graves. However, if you don’t want anything spoiled about Emmrich’s questline (and it is rather good in my opinion) then I release you to read this later.

Emmrich is one of your companions in the Veilguard. He’s a necromancer with a twist. Firstly and less importantly for what I’m going to talk about, he’s not cackling villain or an amoral misanthrope. He’s kind, polite and has a very strong grasp of right and wrong. Secondly, he confesses to you early on after your first meeting that he is terrified of death.  Now very few people like the thought of dying but for Emmrich, it’s something more than that. I have included the video below so you can hear it in his own words but at the times where it grips him it’s an all consuming terror, something that seems to bypass and consume everything else. And when I heard this I felt seen because when I was younger and still now and again I experience the same thing.

The thought of death, the idea that my own consciousness, the thing that I experience the world through, not only could be snuffed out but inevitably would be almost debilitated me at times. It wasn’t a narcissistic worry, how could the world survive without Duncan Spark in it? It was that my mind revolted at the idea. It couldn’t comprehend it and yet it was inevitable. I don’t think that total nothingness, the complete loss of self, the complete extinction of consciousness is something that a self can truly comprehend, I’m finding it difficult to put into words right now, and yet it was something that, for long periods, was constantly on my mind. While I was writing this post a friend reminded me of Philip Larkin's haunting poem Aubade , which almost perfectly encapsulates the feelings that I'm failing to describe. Thoughts of an afterlife did not bring much comfort because then you have to grapple with the idea of eternity and that’s a whole other can of worms. Yes reader, I was very fun at parties.

Luckily I’m a bit better now. I never answered any of my questions of course and nothing actually got resolved. I’m just better at locking it away in its own special place. However, listening to Emmrich brought up these memories of feelings and also how my experience weirdly sort of mirrored that of a cosmic horror protagonist.

Ok, here me out on this one. The cosmic horror protagonist, at some point in the story usually gains insight into a truth that their brain cannot comprehend. They see the world as a different and often much more terrible place than they did before. And it’s more than that. They are often isolated in their experience. The world thinks them mad and they literally don’t have the language to explain why they’re so terrified and what they’re thinking.  Because how can one put something indescribable and incomprehensible into words? They are traversing the same world as everybody else, at least until their new found knowledge takes them to strange places beyond the stars, but they view it quite differently. Their ability to connect to those around them becomes strained.  

Now this is not me saying that my previous way of thinking about death is the only true way and that I’m a genius and all those people I spoke to who didn't understand are all cowards who can’t see the truth. It might all be nonsense and more importantly, thinking this way fucked me up for quite a large portion of my teens. But emotionally, I see some link here. Because, yes, everyone around me knew they were going to die. It wasn’t secret information gained from some sacred tome or eldritch whispers in the dark. But nobody seemed to react to it in quite the same way as I did. I had multiple conversations regarding it across my life and when I tried to explain my deep terror I got blank stares or, what I felt at the time, were misunderstanding platitudes. Those who empathised with my experience only seemed to experience the feeling in brief flashes that they would afterwards ignore, rather than the prolonged, paralysing terror that overcame me distressingly often. It wasn't just that the reality I was living in seemed awful and that I couldn't understand the information my brain was trying to process, it was that I felt incredibly alone. Part of me was screaming at the world to wake up, how can you see things the way I’m seeing them right now?  It was only when I got older and started to study the philosophy of death at university (which also mirrors Emmrich’s path) did I start to find people across the world past and present who, like Larkin, said:” Yes, me too”.    

I suppose the point of this is that, because of this experience, I’ve always had empathy for those confronted by that which cannot be comprehended and, as someone who loves cosmic horror, I think this is quite a big reason why the genre often resonates for me. I hope that by sharing this, I give people maybe a different angle or at least something to ponder. And for anyone reading this who finds something in what I've said above that reflects how they feel, while I won't pretend to know how keep the fear at bay I hope you can be assured that you are not alone.  

These are just some idle thoughts I had while playing a video game I like. Thanks for reading and thanks to Emmrich for inspiring these musings. I don’t actually expect Emmrich to read this. He is a fictional character and also has more important things to do.

(40) Emmrich confesses he's terrified of death | Dragon Age The Veilguard - YouTube


Being a GM at Conventions

Last time I talked about some of the difficulties and general thoughts I have being a player at conventions. This time I want to talk abou...