[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by lachimba

As an effort to do something that I can do to make GURPS more popular as opposed to something that SJ Games should do, I've decided I want to try running GURPS at a convention.

The recent big two gaming convention in Sydney had a ton of D&D, but not much else in the way of RPGs.

What do those with experience think would work best as a convention game?

I'd like to have the whole game done in less than five hours. Ideally about three would be great. So I'd ideally have characters made and take some short cuts.


Any other advice would be appreciated.

I’ve played in more convention games than I’ve run and I’ve never run GURPS at a convention as a GM. That said, a couple of annual regional game convention used to have healthy GURPS contingents, so I’ve seen things that have worked and others that didn’t.

At various times, people have run GURPS Supers, Space, Psionics, Special Ops, Martial Arts, Cliffhangers, Old West, Swashbucklers and Fantasy. One unlisted type of game that GURPS or a combination of GURPS/Toon would handle very well is the Free for All where teams of two characters try to get the McGuffin on a last character standing basis. Teams have included: Dr. Smith and Will Robinson [Lost in Space]; James Bond and Modesty Blaise {separate British espionage series]; Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock [Star Trek]; Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan; and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

The first suggestion is don’t list your game as, for example, GURPS Swashbuckler. By all means, have it listed under GURPS, or even GURPS Swashbuckler, but give the game a title of its own. Something that will catch the attention of your prospects. If your convention prints a program, make sure you get your game submitted in time to be listed. Do a one paragraph write-up about your game (not about GURPS) that answers the following questions your prospects are likely to have: what is the initial premise of the game; what kind of characters will they be playing (broadly speaking), what sorts of things will they be doing/facing that makes your game a better choice for them than another game in your time slot(s) (and you’d better be able to deliver on any implicitly promised interactions)?

Do not ‘bait and switch’ the players, not even in the name of surprise. One convention GM advertised his game as Special Ops (the players) vs. Star Wars. Star Wars turned out to be Star Trek. I wasn’t particularly bothered but a number of players at the table were outraged. They had signed up for the game specifically because it was supposed to be Star Wars.

Before you start thinking about anything else, decide who your prospects are going to be. An adventure for boys age 9-12 is going to have different requirements than a game for girls 13-15 and they’re both going to be different from a game of mixed twenty-somethings. A game for people who have barely heard of role-playing games is going to have different considerations from a game for role-players who haven’t tried GURPS and that’s different still from a game for experienced GURPS players.

A couple of points bear mentioning because it has come up conventions, though rarely. If you have any inclination to run X- or R-rated material in your game, post the game as for mature gamers (and do remember that you’re playing in public, with both other gamers and non-gamers at least listening, if not watching). While conventions may allow mature games, they’re usually more comfortable with G-, possibly PG-, rated, material.

Before you start pre-generating characters: decide on your genre, lay out the bare bones of your plot, decide on the NPCs (animals included) that the PCs will meet, decide on the settings that your plot requires and think about your plot beats (an idea borrowed from Talsorian’s Dream Park RPG), i.e. alternate action scenes with scenes that advance the plot. You’ll usually hear advice to keep it simple. That doesn’t mean you can’t have complex, convoluted, complicated plots but your complex, convoluted, complex plot does have to: be easy to understand and readily followed by the players and it does ultimately have to make sense (at least within the conventions of the genre).

For NPCs, at the least, have a NPC Record Card for each of them. If they're important, have a full-blown character sheet.

Pre-generated characters are an absolute requirement for convention play. Make sure each character is reasonably balanced. No matter what the scene is no character should be useless (and hence, no player should be bored because he has nothing to do in this scene). That doesn’t mean that a character can’t shine more brightly than the others in that scene but if you do that remember that there need to be scenes in this game where each of the other characters get to shine just as brightly. (This is important because you can’t say, if I miss someone this session, I’ll make it up to them next session. There is no next session.) Make sure all the really essential skills are covered (and it’s a good idea to have at least one character with a really good level in an essential skill and another with an adequate level in the skill as back-up, in case accidents happen to the characters).

It’s not a bad idea to provide a brief personal history for each player character. Cover the essentials: Where and when was he born (how old is he), does he have living members of his family, how does he get on with them, how handy are they if he needs their help, how did he come to have the particular skills he does. What does he do for a living? Is he currently employed? Who’s his boss? If he’s between jobs, why and who did he last work for and was the parting amiable? If not was he fired or did he quit? Is there a romantic sub-plot, with an NPC or another PC?

You can use photographs (one GM used portraits of well-know western actors, I got to play Paladin) or drawings for hard to locate characters,( I played Neon Kid in that Supers game) and either will make an impression on the player (I played both of those characters exactly once more than two decades ago.) Failing that, write out a physical description: how tall is he? How much does he weigh? What does he look like? How does he dress (maybe even give him two or three clothing descriptions: formal, everyday, sleepwear)? What’s in his personal room? Is it neat or a strewn mess?

One trick I use in my games at home is personal knowledge cards for the characters. A character starts out with some cards at the beginning of play. For example, the scout in my Autoduel campaign started off one session with a couple of relevant knowledge cards: one saying Blood Pass was the only likely route for the convoy employing him but it was likely, based on previous experience to snow in to impassability within a week, maybe two. The Pierced Nose bike gang have their headquarters there because it has a working oil well that pumps out a barrel or two a day. Blood Pass is called that because all the Pierced Noses leave of trespassers through the pass is their blood. Another card told him that he knew the Pierced Nose gang’s leader, Iron Helmet, and was a friend with a personal safe conduct pass. Without a safe conduct pass from the gang, any traveller is by definition a trespasser. [The adventure was lifted wholesale from the Trailsman series of novels.] Finally, I hand out cards with the name and physical description of each NPC they meet to each player. I’ve found that players like not having to ask the GM for certain information and then relaying it, in character, to the other players, who’d just heard what the GM had to say for themselves.

Some GM’s like to give their players some choices about their characters. Some were better options than others. Having players select quirks for their characters (especially a full five) is time consuming and awkward if you’re going to give points for role-playing them at the end. Pick the quirks yourself and make sure you provide opportunities for them to come up in your game, if you absolutely have to go that way. Having the player make a meaningful choice of weapons and equipment is slightly better but can burn a lot of playtime in dithering, too. Give two maybe three choices of one or two combinations. For example, a cheaper, lower damage weapon with more ammunition or a more expensive, higher damage with less ammo. A cheap backpack and an expensive sleeping bag, an expensive backpack and a cheap sleeping bag or an average backpack and an average sleeping bag.

Providing characters with speech quirks/flavour quotes can help players make their character distinct from the others.

Don’t be afraid to pull a fast one on a character. It can be fun to let the practical joker character sit on the edge of his upper bunk and watch as the tenderfoot PC hops into his bunk and comes crashing down into the burly, short-tempered PC below because he removed all the bedsprings. It can defuse things when the practical joker rolls out onto his bunk to land on the character below him, because there’s a NPC practical joker who pulled the same trick on him.

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