[Blog] Arnecon 2023 Reports are in!

[Yaztromo]

For quite some time i thought you were Greg. Sorry about that!

Too much honour for me...

[klintron]

Day 2: Evening: Greyhawk/0D&D

After Braunstein I was pretty beat, thought I might be done gaming for the night. There was an Irish pub kitty-corner from the hotel, so I grabbed dinner there figuring going to an Irish pub counts as LARPING =)

After dinner, I dropped by the hotel bar to see if anyone from Arnecon was around. No one was, so I decided to watch some of Paul's Greyhawk game, which was based on unpublished maps of and notes on the "real" Greyhawk dungeons, not the version TSR published. (I guess the material Paul used was supposed to be published by Castles and Crusades as Castle Zagyg but only the above-ground levels were ever published?). I showed up mid-way through the time slot, but Paul just said "Hey, roll up a character" when I walked in, so I did. We were playing with just the OD&D Men & Magic booklet (though some of the Paul had out on the table copies were longer and said "Convention Supplement" or something like that on the cover and had extra pages). I ended up as magic user.

Maybe it's because I came in late and was less invested, but I was less into this game than I was Paul's DA5 session. But I still had fun. I had some notes on an index card (my notebook was in my hotel room), but I can't find the card so my notes might be lost to time. Here's my recollection of what went on:

Most of the sessions involved exploring the area around a large underground lake. We fought some harpies and (I think) manticores. Then we encountered a foreboding cavern. That's where the fun began. The line of the night: "I reach into my bag of tricks and pull out a bear." Yes, dear reader, a magic user rolled "Bear" on a bag of tricks roll, and she sent it into the cave for reconnaissance. It never came out. I forget how, but another PC discovered that there was a turtle dragon in the cavern. There was no way forward without crossing the body of water it called home.

The magic user with the bear proposed using Phantasmal Forces to project an illusion of "a giant puritan making a batch of turtle soup," but Paul ruled that that was too complex an image for that spell, so she settled on just a giant puritan to distract the turtle. My favorite plan was concocted by two players: a magic user would open a dimensional door inside of the turtle dragon, and then a fighter would burst out from inside of it. Sadly they abandoned this idea.

We used spells to make the entire party invisible. Unfortunately, it turns out that dragon turtles can see through invisibility. It let out a mighty steam attack that killed several party members, including the MU with the bag of tricks and puritan illusion. My character also died so I was an observer from here on out.

The turtle dragon was eventually defeated by using Polymorph Others to turn it into a koala bear and then killing it, making it the saddest victory ever.

The surviving PCs moved on to discover a tower within the cave, with an evil cult doing rituals within. Most of the remaining party members died fighting the cult. One ran away, pillaging treasure and a few magical items from dead comrades. He barely escaped from the dungeon alive. The only other survivor, a magic user, died but came back to life thanks to a ring of regeneration, and teleported himself to safety.

[klintron]

Day 3: Braunstein IV: Banania

This one involved a bit more setup than the other Braunstein. There was a large map on one table, hand-drawn by a player from a printed ASCII map. Our session had a lot more characters than the ones listed in the handouts published by Robbins. https://arsludi.lamemage.com/static/brau...cters.html

There were miniatures that represented each PC and any faction(s) they controlled. For example, I was the factory union leader, and I had a few minis representing union members, and one representing my bodyguard. As with Braunstein I, we got a packet with our bio and goals, a map, and starting money. The packet also included a sheet for writing down our actions at the end of a turn (more on this later).

There was more structure procedurally as well. The game was divided into "turns." Each turn was about 15 minutes (We got a late start, so normally the turns might be longer). During a turn you could talk to anyone who was near you on the map, or make phone calls to anyone anywhere else on the map. The secret police and the Minister of Information could tap any call they wanted to listen into conversations, so if you wanted a private conversation it was best to meet in person at a location on the map, but you had to wait until the next turn to move locations.

At the end of a turn, we wrote our directions on our turn sheets and handed them over to Wesely. On the sheets, we could specify where on the map we'd like to move to, where we'd like our factions to move to, and leave some coded directions. For example, I could tell the union to strike or stop striking, and/or tell them to picket, wherever they are (if we were dissatisfied), or to sing uplifting songs (if we were satisfied).

Wesely would go through these directions and move our minis based on what we specified. Sometimes that would lead to bits of narration and additional role playing or skirmishes. For example, a group of air force soldiers opened fire on some protesters at one point. I think the way this worked was: the player in charge of the protesters moved them to the same location that the general of the air force moved a unit of his forces. The general had either included instructions to disperse the crowd or perhaps Weseley just asked him what he wanted to do. The player in charge of the protesters said they did not disperse, so the soldiers opened fire. Weseley had the general roll a d10, and looked up the results on a table (one civilian died). Then the bodyguard of the PC in charge of the protesters got a turn. He got to roll to shoot soldiers, basically every successful roll he took out a soldier and then when he finally failed he was taken out by the soldiers (Weseley described this as movie logic: as long as you're shooting, no one else is shooting at you). I don't know if he was using Strategos N or something else.

I haven't played Diplomacy, and I know Wesely has downplayed it as an influence on the creation of Braunstein, but it does seem procedurally similar, in that there's a period of discussions, then simultaneous movements, then any resolution necessary.

This ran much more smoothly than Braunstein I did the day before. I don't know if it was the more structured play, the fact that we'd all just played together the day before, or if it was because the characters had better goals/motivations to interact. It was probably a combination of all three. This time around everyone was constantly wheeling and dealing, with far fewer, if any, instances of people sitting around with nothing to do. I worked on negotiating a union contract, met with the leader of the plantation union leader to confirm solidarity, worked on potential side deals with the Minister of Information and Treasurer, and tried to assure the Secret Police that they had nothing to fear from the union.

I had some other ideas of things I wanted to do, like start some additional industry in town with investments from the factory owner and treasurer. But we started late, so I had to leave to catch my flight home before we wrapped up. Another player, Alexander, filled me by email about some of what happened after I left, but the late start also meant a more abrupt ending for the game and no debriefing where all was revealed. I do really wish I'd been there to the end to do some last dealing and see the big twist at the very end. Ah well. I'm just glad I got to play at all!