S. and I went back to Orcacon for the first time since the pandemic and had a great time. I played in three games, and she played in two of those, all of which were at the least a worthwhile way to spend a few hours. We also attended a panel, which was so exciting to me that I already posted about it. This post will cover the con in general and the three games I played.
First, general: it’s a long-running con in the Seattle area. The location has bounced around a bit; it’s currently located at a Hyatt airport hotel near the airport, which is cheap and a decent location. It’s convenient to light rail. You’ll see pilots and flight attendants if you’re at the con. The restaurant is suitable for ingesting enough nutrients to avoid hunger and I would not recommend it beyond that. There’s a Denny’s across the main road and maybe the bar and grill at the next door Hilton is better? Yelp reviews seem to indicate that it isn’t. Maybe they’ll figure out food trucks again. Overall the hotel is a great choice – the room price is excellent, it’s clean, there’s a lot of parking if you go around to the back of the hotel.
The tabletop roleplaying track is a little bit lighter than I wish it was, which I guess means I should run games next year. It is mainstream-focused with what looked like a strong Pathfinder Society presence and a decent smattering of other games. If you want hardcore indie gaming you’re probably already going to GoPlayNW. They are aggressively inclusive, with pronoun buttons, a real anti-harassment policy, and so on. They do not allow games like Kingdom Death and Lamentations of the Flame Princess (among others) in public spaces.
One piece of trivia before I get to talking about games I played: this is the only gaming convention I’m aware of that was founded by a state-level Cabinet official. Our Secretary of State, Steve Hobbs, is a serious gamer who has worked to get D&D material into libraries, including prison libraries. He’s still on the Orcacon board.
OK so I also played games. In order:
Daggerheart, the Critical Role high fantasy game. We played the official quickstart adventure. I won’t do a big explanation of mechanics in this post, but it’s a kitchen sink fantasy game with a hefty dose of narrative-adjacent gameplay on top of a fairly tactical chassis. It doesn’t require a battlemap; you do have to make smart decisions about which powers to use when. S. and I enjoyed it enough to go out and buy a physical copy the next day. I really like the use of cards for powers; it’s reminiscent of D&D 4e, and it’s very convenient at the table. I also liked the way initiative flows during combat, with the GM having clearly defined ways to take the spotlight – that sort of thing is a blessing to me, because it effectively gives my brain permission to be as mean as the mechanics allow for.
The table and the GM were decent. Con games are always going to be random. I wish the GM had used the “how do you know the other party members” quiz on the character sheets. Even without that, most of the players at the table were quite giving about sharing connections, assuming past history between the characters, and so on. I wonder if this isn’t a side effect of people coming to the hobby via streaming? JD Corley had an interesting post on that topic recently so it’s on my mind.
I played Barnacle, a Ribbit (think humanoid frog) rogue. I felt extremely supported by the mechanics – teleporting from shadow to shadow, grabbing things with my tongue, all good stuff. I talked someone into throwing me up into a tree once which was excellent. I’m not totally sure about making a member of a species with swimming special abilities a phobia of water and then not even putting a lake in the adventure. It’s interesting flavor but maybe provide a way to make it something other than words on a character sheet? Not a big deal, just weird.
The GM was energetic and enthusiastic which is what I ask for. Constructive criticism: do not try and reproduce your virtual tabletop set up at the table; you will burn 20-30 minutes of your time slot setting it up and debugging it when your wifi puck is flaky. This is especially true when the game is designed to support theater of the mind combat anyhow. Hey, dude flew out from the East Coast and ran a ton of games, so I appreciate him regardless.
We bought a physical copy of the game the next day. I would like to play more of this; it scratches the itch for four-color fantasy in a way OSR-oriented games usually don’t, and it doesn’t require me to learn Pathfinder.
No character sheet for this one – you can find Barnacle in the official quickstart if you want to see what he looks like.
Game 2, solo: Shadowdark, the hot fantasy OSR game. Is it still the hot one? It’s been out for a couple of years. It’s mostly standard D&D OSR mechanics: the typical 6 stats, roll a d20 to hit, and so on. No separate saving throws, a slot-based inventory system, and the big gimmick everyone talks about: it’s intended to be real time. You track light duration for torches or spells by starting a one hour timer and when the timer goes off, the light goes out. You cannot see in the dark. Monsters can. It’s dire.
This was my least favorite game of the con. I had a decent time and the table was good. However, when I’m playing a game that talks about being unforgiving and relying on player skill, I don’t want to be forgiven. I think I’m asking the GM to walk a difficult line here, to be fair. For example, at one point we’re messing around in the start of the dungeon and one of our fighters has occasion to go join the other half of the party in a different room. GM says yeah, that’s a double move. Cool.
Then later our kobold wizard zips back from room 2 to room 1, casts a spell, and ducks back around the corner. I have zero objection to the player wanting to do this. I think the GM should have maintained consistency – that’s a core OSR principle. Make a ruling, then stick to it. Also we completely lost track of who had light and who didn’t, as far as I could tell, which mutes the impact of that much-vaunted timer rule. I had a timer running in the corner of my iPad notebook, and I wanted to feel like I was getting something out of being smart! Player skill matters!
Now, would I as a GM feel comfortable TPKing a bunch of con players halfway through the session? It wouldn’t be easy for me. So I get it if some of that was going on; again, I generally had fun. I just didn’t feel like I was completely experiencing the game as designed.
Oh, and I want to shout out the tremendously cool pregens. Rather than just making up six for the table, the GM had these cool cards. The back has complete Shadowdark stats. It burned a little bit more time as people looked through them; well worth it to provide some additional choice. If I was gonna run a lot of Shadowdark I would buy these in a split second.
I also really liked the carousing rules. These are common in OSR circles – they go back to Dave Arneson’s tables – and in short it’s a mechanic for converting gold into experience points. In this implementation, you spend the money as a party, then everyone rolls on a table, with results ranging from waking up with a headache to waking up in the King’s treasury with a great magic item in hand, a bunch of extra experience, and the King’s Guard in front of you asking pointed questions. This got little Kozmin enough experience to hit level 2! Which is just more hit points, not that this is a bad thing.
Finally, both S. and I played at a Mothership table. This was the best game of the con for both of us. I just adored the table, both players and GM – they were generous players across the board and the GM had a strong command of the rules and his scenario. Perhaps not coincidentally, he’d written this himself rather than running a quickstart. Nothing wrong with the latter, particularly since running games is a lot of effort, but the extra familiarity really showed.
A first time experience for me: the GM’s teen daughter was one of the players! (They were also both players in the Shadowdark game.) I expect that having two pairs of people at the table with high mutual comfort levels also went a long way towards the positive vibe. One of the players, the guy playing the android, got a secret briefing from the GM at start of play. I am always a table transparency person but in this case, because the player in question was a) willing to signal his secret goals heavily and b) playing for a positive experience for all rather than playing to win, it went nicely.
I played Timur, a cynical and as it turned out deeply cowardly xenobiologist Kazakhstan refugee from the Russian Reconquest. S. played, completely by coincidence, a Russian marine. Timur did not survive the game experience.
Please excuse the error in character generation. He does have one too many skills, to my shame.
And I actually took down game quotes because it was such a delightful jaunt into horror.
Samantha: “Your name is Amazon Exxon-Mobile?”
Amazon E-M: “My parents sold my naming rights before I was born.”
Amazon E-M: “Amazon Prime, if you will.” (Did I mention there were clones?)
“It’s a whole new kind of PvP.”
“PvMe!”
Samantha: “Are you volunteering to be bait? I’d find that very sexy.”
Mikhal: “The life support is still working with the power out?”
Samantha: “The Company is cheap, but not that cheap.”