Lessons Learned #1 - Don't Be Too Crafty

Nothing can compare to a good playtest, and nothing can get you a better one than with random people at a con. Luckily, I had some great players, and got a lot of good feedback on the game.

Lesson 1) Don't be too crafty.

In no good RPG do you ever want to railroad the players. However, especially in a convention game, you need to have more-than-obvious plot hooks to keep the game moving forward. While I always aim for more than the standard "go kill the things", you also have to have a minimum level of clarity to speed things along. My issue at the con was that while my story was in depth, with plenty of intrigue and twists for the players to discover, I kept them guessing a bit too much, to the point where they weren't sure where to go next.

Yikes! This slowed down the game considerably as I had to come up with more information to feed them. Nothing stumbles a game like the players feeling like they don't have a clear direction.

The key is to use your time to highlight and elongate the intense moments that the players themselves create. They'll do it - almost with certainty - so you need to plan for your games to run on a very short, small set of scenarios. At the same time, you never know when players will think of ways to skip, avoid, or utterly destroy certain encounters, which means you need to have an array of backup plans.

I think one of the best advice I got from a friend was to take a hard look at the pre-generated characters, and come up with a handful of scenarios where each of them could shine. Then, based on who is playing, who has taken the spotlight already, and the amount of time left for the game, deal out those scenarios as needed as extra bonus scenes. Just don't stray too far from the main plot line, as con games don't have a lot of wiggle room for side quests. It's best if each of these scenes add to the main story like pieces in a puzzle.

That all said, I'm still in love with the scenario I've come up with for "Welcome to Hostargo", and am trying to cut down on some of the fluff in order to stuff more setting-specific goodness into it. Hmm... am I even listening to my own lesson? You bet - I will work towards making all of that extra goodness into character-specific scenes to plug & play as needed. Thanks Mr. Land!