Ambercon 2003
Back to real life.

I had a great time this weekend, perhaps the best time I've had at any con so far. A million thanks go to Liz for all the work she has done on the con over the years. It shows and makes for a great experience.

I'm going to write up for my blog some quick overviews of the games I ran and what I think went right and what went wrong. I do this organize my thoughts and perhaps to let other GMs (or potential GMs) learn from my experiences. But first, a general overview:

Thursday: Dinner with John, Kristen, Jill and a couple from London whose names elude me. Introduced two chairs. First slot game was Kristen's "Knights and Pawns." The game had an excellent plot and I enjoyed it despite being royally screwed at the beginning of the game. Unfortunately, the pacing of the game led to the story getting most interesting at the very end of the session and leaving off with a cliffhanger. The game was continued in a slot 7 game I wasn't playing in.

Friday: My second slot game was "Dangerous Relations" by Murray Writtle. The game is set in in a France created by Corwin's pattern and the players play friends of the Four Musketeers. I really enjoyed playing my character Etienne du Lac, the Duc d'Avalon and the story, but this was another game that suffered from pacing issues, this time unintentional. The game had not finished by the time the next slot was due to start and I had to leave to GM a game the next slot before the scenario finished. So, I ran to the room to GM by third slot game, "The New Gods." The game played out nothing like what I had planned, but the players had fun, so I'll consider the game a success. In the fourth slot, I ran the costume LARP "Amberites and the Chaosians that Love Them." Due to a shortage of players, I went to the con extremely worried that the game woudl be a flop. On the contrary, the game was a great success. I don't think I've laughed so hard in a game in my life. I'll describe the scenario in more detail later.

Saturday: Slot five was my only con campaign, "Mercy and Forgiveness" by Michael Kucharski. This game was my favorite of the con. Everyone in the game did some excellent roleplaying and the game had the emotional depth that so many games miss. Slot six was "Morpheus Interrupted." The game went well, but it didn't go as well as the first game, "Morpheus Calling." I realized that, even more so than the first game, future Morpheus games will need more than one GM. The first game consisted of the characters finding out the truth and trying to find Amber. Now that Amber is found and is being populated by all these characters from different worlds/genres, the world has gotten much bigger. To allow players more ability to explore the world of "Amber-Morpheus" and the Chaos Matrix, a new GM would allow more ability for characters split up and explore without the players losing "play-time."

Sunday: The morning started with the checking out of our room and the con banquet. I ran a Dreaming City game (see link to the right) in slot seven, but not the one I described in the game book. Looking over everything, I decided that "Crime and Punishment..." would need more preparation to be done correctly. Since none of the players had played in "Blood and Darkness..." when I ran it at Ambercon North, I ran it again for this group. It went really well. I skipped my slot eight game to go home and work on a paper that I needed to turn in this morning. I was really excited about playing Conrad Gareth, so I was really disappointed. Sadly, I came home and wrote my paper. Then, I went online to check my email and my teacher had emailed the class regarding the paper, not to do it. Everyone was having problems with the paper. So, I didn't need to skip the Texorami game.