Convention Report: Dreamation 2020

Things are going full tilt for me on the gaming front. So much so, that it’s hard for me to find a moment to devote the amount of reflection and processing that my experiences warrant. But I’m going to do my best to carve out the time.

Today’s post is devoted to Dreamation 2020 which I attended on February 20-23. But before we get there, here are some of the other activities I’ve been up to.

• I completed a 4-game series of the game Mothership with the Gauntlet online RPG community. The game was run by Jason Zanes who did a great job. This was my first encounter with Mothership which takes an OSR-style sensibility and applies it to a sci fi setting. The game has much to offer. The design of the character sheet is innovative, and it takes the player through the generation process through some of its layout features. The stress and panic features are also effective in ramping up the suspense over the course of the session. What I most enjoyed about the actual play is that I had the crappiest character statistics-wise at the table. I was a Marine who commanded the squad of the other PCs, but when situations demanded the dice to come out, I was in big trouble. This ended up being so much fun, as it forced me to be creative in my approach and to lean in heavily on the role playing.
• I finished an 8-session run of Sorcerer and Sword with Rod (from Texas) and Aybars (from Istanbul). More on this (hopefully) in a future post. At this stage, however, I’d say that I enjoyed my first foray into this supplement of Sorcerer. It was a challenging and intense experience, but very satisfying. Sorcerer is my jam, in part because it puts such a burden on the GM and players to make the game their own.
• I have started a series of Over the Edge being played by my daughter and some of her high school chums who were also active members of the game club when at my school. They are all now freshmen in college, but scattered across the east coast, so this is giving them an opportunity to have a regular weekly get-together online. I’ll also write up more on my experience with the game. I’m using the rules of the original edition (the WARP system), and I’d like to put together my thoughts about that and why I opted not to go with the most recent version.
• My maiden voyage teaching RPGs in the English classroom is nearing its end. Students played games last week, and this week they will be delivering their actual play reports to the class. So more on this will be upcoming. 
• In a couple weeks, I’ll be doing a workshop of sorts for the Lausanne Learning’s Dare to Design Conference. This will involve running a brief fishbowl of my classroom Beowulf game followed by some reflections on game based learning.
• In March, I’ll be playing Bluebeard’s Bride with the Gauntlet. This will be my first foray into this game of supernatural horror in a fairy tale setting.
• I’m going to be attending the Serious Play Conference in June. They have a track for K-12 teachers in addition to a track for instructional design.

Now, onto Dreamation 2020. 

Save for a small game convention I attended back in high school, this was my first gaming convention. And it almost didn’t happen. I had initially thought of going to Metatopia, but that event conflicted with another teacher conference. I had started to resign myself to either going to a gaming convention in the summer or not going at all. But a member of the Gauntlet recommended Dreamation on the strength of its indie RPG game offerrings. And it did not disappoint. 

Some highlights:

I had the chance to play a two-session series of MASKS: A New generation by Brendan Conway. This is a game of young, up-and-coming superheroes who are trying to figure out who they are in a world populated by villains and by a clamor of people telling them who they should be. This is a “Powered by the Apocalypse” game, and it is quite well conceived. I was so taken with the experience, that I bought a copy of the rulebook, which impressed me even more: In a world where games are getting pumped out at a feverish pitch, it is refreshing to come across a game which is so beautifully and clearly written. With great economy, the book catches the tone of the genre. Restraint and wisdom are evident on every page: Conway gives you enough to work with, but he also leaves enough unsaid so that the players and GM can make the game their own.

In my game, I took the playbook of “The Doomed” and came up with a character concept based roughly on Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane, but a much younger and more naive version of the Puritan swordsman. This character is more suited to a long term game: One of the key aspects of “The Doomed” is that they have a Doom Track which is designed to fill up over long term play. But I had a fun time challenging myself to push that Doom Track along at a more feverish pitch.

I have been on the lookout for a PBtA game which would be appropriate in a high school play setting. Apocalypse World would be fun to try, but it features the “sex move” as does Avery Alder’s Monsterhearts, so I have sidestepped those games with the high school students in the game club I sponsor. I have not yet had a chance to look at the new “Burned Over” hack that the Bakers have produced with the specific eye towards making the game appropriate for a teenage audience. Even if that works, however, I’ll need to use the corebook, so I’m still up in the air on the Burned Over option. MASKS, however, is already PG in terms of presentation, but it’s quite flexible in terms of how deep and gritty it can go. There is plenty of room to take things in a more serious direction. In the game we played at Dreamation, I leaned heavily into the grim and violent religiosity of my character. And the game ended with a heroic and suicidal move as one of the characters took out the big bad by grabbing them and leaping out of a helicopter. No parachutes were involved, so the end result was bleak. 

MASKS gives the characters a load of cool and flexible “moves,” which is obviously vital for a superhero game. But I was more impressed by some of the other mechanics that add heft to the roleplaying side. For example, there is a thoughtful and nuanced mechanic involving influence, and this gets the players to think about how their characters are motivated by the pressures placed on them by others.

I also like the way that statistics slide in the course of the game: With MASKS, you might gain a point in one area, but that is likely going to involve the loss of a point in another area. For example, I might gain a point in “Freakiness” but that will likely mean a loss in another area such as “Mundanity.” This exchange will bring advantages with some rolls and disadvantages with others, which is cool especially in light of the youthful malleability of the superheroes.

The end result: I’m going to be working to bring MASKS to the table in the game club in the near future.

The MASKS sessions would in and of themselves would have made the trip to Morristown, NJ, worth it. But there were more treasures.

I was able to participate in a 4-hour workshop led by Chris and Heather O’Neill of 9th Level Games. Chris has refined an rpg resolution mechanic which he refers to as the Polymorph System. The system is both elegant and adaptable, so he can use it as the engine for role-playing game ideas invented on the spot.

So, within four hours, the eight of us in the workshop

• brainstormed a new RPG gaming idea,
• adapted the Polymorph System to accommodate the idea, 
• playtested the game,
• revised the game in light of our experiences.

During the playtesting, Chris and Heather worked on the computer to get our ideas onto a document, and each of the participants left the workshop with a hard copy zine of the game. 

Chris and Heather possess a treasure trove of clarity and enthusiasm. They clearly are passionate about game design, and they are able to articulate their ideas to a new audience. If you have a chance to talk to them or to attend a workshop or session led by them, take the opportunity.

Before leaving for the airport on the final day of Dreamation 2020, I played Mars 244, which was an adaptation of Montsegeur 1244. This is a story game by Rachel E.S. Walton (who facilitate our session), with a set of defined procedures to set up characters, frame scenes, and play out the narrative. The tone of the game is tragic and intense, and boy did it deliver! With this type of game, you need to have a table of committed players, which we did. As a result, the game sang. There were grim scenes, sad scenes, and dashes of dark humor. I don’t usually cry at the gaming table, but there were some moments at the gaming table.

I’ll hopefully return to Dreamation. For me, it’s a great size for a conference--big enough to offer many games, but small enough to be manageable. And I love the commitment to indie and small press games.  

One piece of advice: If you plan to go to Dreamation, pre-register for the conference and take note of when you can sign up for individual games. Then, get online and e-mail your choices as soon as the game sign-up opens. Be sure to fill in second and third options for each slot. I thought I was plenty quick in doing this, but I didn’t make it into any of my options, and so I had to scramble at the event to make it into games. As you can tell, however, this might have been a blessing in disguise. I played in some deeply satisfying sessions which I would have missed had I been assigned to my first choices.