Running games at conventions - feedback on comments

I've had quite a few comments on the original blog, and I thought I'd write a follow-up.

Firstly, safety tools. These are quite a new thing for me, as they have only been around for a few years, but they are absolutely essential. I would be absolutely mortified if something happened in a game I was running that made someone uncomfortable beyond acceptable limits.

At Expo this year, I ran a game with two fairly young children as players. This was a game which featured some mild elements of body horror, and I was somewhat concerned. So I checked in with the parents present, made it clear what sort of thing we could expect and gave them a means of raising concerns. Then, I toned it down somewhat.

If you're an old curmudgeon like me and you've been doing this for years, it's not acceptable to say "we did without them all that time." Who knows what effect you had on players that went unreported. Safety tools. Use them. No excuses.

Secondly, playtesting. Don't beat yourself up if you can't playtest a game before the event with your local group. It's not essential. However, if you have an opportunity to do so, take it, because you learn some things only by playing.

Some scenarios do not make good convention games and may need modification. Sometimes there isn't time to write something new, and we have to adapt something. Some scenarios are too long, and you'll need to cut stuff out. Very few are too short! Don't be afraid to abstract down. Here's an extreme example.

We'd been playing a campaign for a while where the objective was to put the rightful ruler back on the throne. Classic stuff. It was feeling like the game was coming close to the end, but realistically you would have expected several battles between the forces of the adventurers and the opposition. Instead of playing out those battles, which would have become repetitive, I asked each player to explain how their character was contributing to the war. We then agreed a relevant task, they rolled, and we recorded the number of successes they rolled. My home game has a mechanic for the number of successes. Several weeks of warfare was replaced with one die roll per character.

You can use this in a convention if you're running out of time. Don't have time to fight your way across the city? Abstract it down. Encourage the players to get creative with their choice of task. This can be a lot of fun.

So, playtesting will help you iron out some of these things beforehand, but games vary enormously and it won't solve all potential problems - be prepared to improvise.

Thirdly, and this should go without saying, be polite and helpful to the people running the RPGs at the convention. Try not to be difficult. I'm telling myself this as much as anyone else. These guys have a tough job, just do what they ask, follow the convention's systems, policies and procedures. Don't complain about the IT system.

Finally, some thoughts on pregens from my good friend Andrew. Do have pregens prepared, because rolling up characters takes up precious play time. But don't give them out to players who arrive early, because otherwise players who turn up on time may find their choices severely limited. Arriving on time and finding all the pregens have been taken can be really irritating.

I hope you have found this useful. Have fun GMing and see you at the next convention!