Forty Year Old Fanboy Update#14

Day three of the Gamex 2017 convention had me waking up and realizing I had almost overslept and lost my opportunity to play in Ben Woerner's 7th Sea game, The Seahorse Rescue.  I messaged him that I was freshening up and hurried had a hot shower and a quick change of clothes. I quickly made my way downstairs to the boardroom and joined the group there. As it turns out, one of my players in an earlier game was in the game, which made it pretty more awesome. I chose from a selection of character options and chose to play the Vesten Bosun who had a tendency to lose herself in her berzerker ragers and loved to drink. I played up her concept as having a love/hate rivalry with the Castillian first mate and we went through the storyline bickering and annoying each other so well that it served as a major distraction against a coming Villain. But I will confess to loving the fact I was able to play a game under Ben - despite Ben's failing voice from his pre-nasal drip.

Afterwards, I quickly met up with the people of IdeateTV who wanted to interview me for their show. I probably sounded all nasally (as usual) but they were nice and very courteous and kind. I hope I answered their questions to their satisfaction and I even made sure that I wore my ZsaZsa Zaturnnah T-Shirt because I wanted to have Carlo Vergara's wonderful creation grab a bit more screentime.  You can watch that interviewhere: http://tagsessions.blogspot.com/2017/06/forty-year-old-fanboy-update13.html

We swung by the tables and I discovered my sign-up sheet for Schauermarchen was missing! I informed them of this problem and they brought out the main sheet, explaining that such slip ups happen. I was kinda annoyed given there was no attempt to apologize for the oversight and I wish the kids who were assigned to the table were a bit more efficient in handling things.  Something about people handling the desk, eh?

I grabbed a salad, and then was unable to eat it as I mapped out running the horror game.  Interestingly, jim ended up offering his table space given in his room, he and the three other games running had absent players, leaving the room quite empty.  Given in my room there were four tables, we shifted to that other room and I struggled to stay calm as I ran my first game with jim as a player. And yes, of all the games I'd run with him in it, it would have to be a John Wick game.

Midway through the game, I called for a break and during this instance, jim shared his feedback on my gaming style and on how the game was in his perspective. I found a bunch of good insight and gems in his feedback, but at the same time also understood that my approach to games always was sorta a middle ground between Story-game narrative sharing and traditional role-playing games. True enough, the players who were more old school appreciated how much my gaming approach made them feel like they were "role-playing the most they ever did for the first time in their lives." If anything, I felt like I helped broaden their horizons and allowed them to now consider trying other kinds of games.

With the game over, we swung by the front desk because I wanted to sign myself and Ben up for jim's upcoming game.  To our horror, this time it was jim's signup sheet that was missing.  Certain people were clearly not doing their job. I hurried upstairs to leave my game stuff and seeing my phone on the verge of dying, left it up there to charge.  I met up with the gang at the lobby.



Once downstairs, I rejoined them and we grabbed some delicious chicken at Dinah's.  Clearly we enjoyed our lunch despite the need to swallow it down to get back in time for our game.  I snuck in a moment to take a photo... tourist style. Dan did not approve. :-P



We rushed back and met with the other players to finally have a session of The Black Monk. I was able to play this concept called the Mime and I liked how I was able to give the role a creepier and disturbing angle. One of the players who enjoyed Schauermarchen was there and he had a blast trying the game out and discovering how immensely narrative a game can get. I loved how dark and twisted the story became and I decided to grab from jim copies of a few more games he had made, now that I knew more or less how to play them.

After that session, we weren't quite done yet.  We opted to play next a session of Forget Me Not: Florida Edition which I admittedly at first hesitated to play since I wasn't sure I could pull off a convincingly funny redneck portrayal. In the end, I just tried pretending to act like certain players I used to have and guess what... it worked like a charm.  We played through the game, hilariously doing all the terrible jokes and stereotypical one-liners needed to eventually reach the end and uncover who exactly did in Joe Bob.  I loved the game so much I've ordered the Twin Peaks inspired version (and hope it arrives in time before I leave) as well as purchased from jim the Murderhobos edition.  I suggested he come up with a version of the game where it was about people in a role-playing game, with characters and "players" as roles.  Our conversations spiraled around to even other options and in the end, we were just super psyched with the stories we ended up sharing.  With the others having retired for the night,

I realize now it was the previous night too that jim and I tried to grab dinner at night and found Carl's closed.  So we ended up walking a bit further to Denny's for some pancakes and a platter of yum. On our way back, there was an encounter with a somewhat enthusiastic personality, and it definitely ended as a night full of interesting laughs.

For this night, however, Ben and Dan shut down.  I left Dan with jim to talk about the greatest Wrestling story people never saw (it concerned a character named Chikara and more on this here.) I was tempted to listen in but I was too tired and sleepy to really do so. I ended up just quietly moving back to my own room and shutting down for the night.