GenCon Already

I'm trying to deal with a brainstorm I had for a game for the next GenCon. I think it was really a collaborative effort from the geeks at work.

My wife got me an Order of the Stick shirt for last Christmas called Fantasy Fantasy. It shows a bunch of Knights talking about their fantasy characters around the water cooler (spoiler for Ned Stark). Of course we were discussing our own fantasy football teams, and I started thinking about having a fantasy team at GenCon.

So what about it. How could you have a fantasy team at GenCon?

The idea so far.

Teams of either six or eight (I prefer six)

Four separate scenarios - fantasy game, modern day (I think modeled after either The Laundry or a mystery), science fiction (Star Wars maybe or Starship Troopers), and super heroes.

Each scenario is run twice

Scoring per character averaged per scenario. I don't know how to do scoring yet.

There will be six Fantasy Team managers. They will each have to draft a team of PCs - one from each scenario.

Perhaps we will have the draft on Wed. Night along with a sample of each scenario.

Idea still fermenting.

Biggest question so far is do you tell the people playing in the scenarios that their PC is part of another game? The team managers won't be able to play in the scenarios of course, but how do you explain six strangers watching your game and cheering for the PCs?

Hopefully more details later.

On the Road for Work

One of my responsibilities at work is to teach training classes - I like teaching. Unfortunately this means traveling to the clients site for three or four days.

Travel for work is glamorous for about 2.8 pico-seconds.

Yes, I get to eat at restaurants and see cool things like baseball games sometimes, but it's mostly just time spent in hotel rooms - depressingly similar hotel rooms. Technology helps. I can use facetime google+ or skype to see and talk with my family, and mobile phones mean I'm never really that far away - at least my voice isn't. But in the end it isn't the same.

Work travel also hurts gaming. Google+ is great, but can't substitute for being there. I'm looking forward to some new tools. Tabletop Forge (a recent kickstarter) looks promising. However, this also depends on the host having internet access.

So I'm away from home this week, missing family, missing gaming. Reduced to reading gaming books for ideas for my next campaign - hmmmm an oil platform drilling into an undiscovered alien sanctuary - this might work...