Everybody and their aunt seems to have made a post of their thoughts about what happened at Fastaval. Having been busy, I haven’t gotten around to it, till now.
The Empire 40k
This year marked my début as scenario-author, on a contribution for the anthology “The Empire 40k”: “Under My Hive.” So, I decided that this year’s GMing choice would be the anthology. It ran Thursday and Saturday at 9 o’clock (brrr!) and knowing that I have a tendency to get to bed later and later during a Fastaval, I chose to run it Thursday. As it turned out, I was one of two of the authors to run it that morning, and so, Kristo asked me to run the start-up for it that morning. I was more than a little surprised when I realised we’d be starting no less than 10 groups that morning (And, as I recall, we missed less than a handful of players).
I’d chosen to run The Interrogation, Space Hulk: Her Dark Beauty, and Under My Hive. In the end, I ran the first two (more on that later).
My group of players consisted of one author, and three young players. Two of the youngsters seemed like very decent players; the third had a tendency to dominate, and wasn’t the greatest player. In particular, I made the mistake of giving him exactly the character he wanted in The Interrogation: the violent one. I felt myself avoiding him, because he kept on leading the game on to a very bloody path, when the depravity of the Interrogation can take so many forms. I didn’t feel we really attained what had attracted me in The Interrogation; that multifaceted story of fall.
Space Hulk went much more according to what I had hoped. We whispered and screamed, the players died in spades, and only won when the second to last player gave his life to help the last one escape with the Power Armour. Epic!
Paradoxically, while I enjoyed Space Hulk far more than The Interrogation, My players (who had all wanted to play the Interrogation, and were more ambivalent about the other two) had enjoyed The Interrogation more. This might have had something to do with the fact that I was measuring my experiences against the written texts.
And, by the end of the day, I hadn’t played my own scenario. I had chosen not to play it based on a number of very valid arguments, but part of it was, that I simply didn’t believe that what I’d written was playable.
Come Saturday, the, to my knowledge, only session of the game ran, led by Kristo and including one of my friends as player. And so it was that I was suddenly assaulted by an enthusiastic player, who assaulted me with a “I didn’t know you’d written anything,” and continuing to tell me how great their session had been. Later, Kristo came to tell me who well it had worked, and finally, the judges sought me out to tell me that they thought I’d really hit the “short story” form, and that they’d really enjoyed reading my scenario. Well, what do you know. I was pleasantly surprised, and have vowed to get around to running it myself.
I guess it’s kind of silly to write a scenario for Fastaval without running it yourself, but I’d signed up to do it about a year ago, and when the deadline rolled around, I barely had time to complete it in time.
Ah, well. At least, now I know it’s not an insurmountable task to write a scenario. Next time, I’ll write one in “feature length.”
Salvation
After taking a nap Thursday afternoon, I was ready for Salvation Thursday evening. I got in a really strong group, with Troels Rohde Hansen as GM. Troels had been a playtester under Simon (the author), and that helped a lot – he knew how it was supposed to go.
Salvation is very much a sandbox. But it is a sandbox that shows you a clear direction. And it worked splendidly. I got a character of a type I wouldn’t normally go for – which resulted in me grunting my way through most of the evening as the antisocial, rugged character of the bunch. It was so much fun. The scenario is about a gang of wild west bank robbers, each of which is somehow broken in the head. And, oh boy, did we do depravity. It got an Otto for best roles, and it had really deserved it. The characters were perfect for sparking some of the most meaningful acts of cruelty I’ve seen in a role-playing game.
Info
We had a pretty good team in the Info this year. A couple of old veterans had returned, and we scooped up three new recruits, but apart from that, it was mostly a bunch of old friends. The highlight of our convention was clearly our strike on Saturday. Usually, the Dirtbusters strike, giving the Bunker a number of demands which usually include at least one thing that we’re supposed to provide. This year, we decided to do a sympathy strike, not answering questions for a couple of hours.
Apart from that, a couple of very unappealing things came our way. First of all, somehow the game evaluation sheets had not been printed, and we had to deal with a lot of confused an annoyed people who couldn’t get an evaluation form, and couldn’t get a straight answer as to when they’d be there.
This year, as well as last year, I had the honour of being responsible for awarding the Golden Plunger. The Golden Plunger is the Info’s award for the participant who’ve made the greatest contribution to Fastaval. Some years, someone will have done something spectacular and noticeable, like when Daniel Benjamin Clausen ferried drunk people to bed when it suddenly started to snow in the middle of the night. But this year, the field consisted of a number of hard workers, who all qualified by having done a great job over the course of the con or, in one instance, over the cause of several Fastavals.
Hell/Heavenly Monday
When one is part of the organising team of Fastaval, the cleanup is always viewed with a certain anxiety. Last year, Hell Monday turned into Troublesome Tuesday. So this year, the school had given us a deadline at 4 o’clock. Which, along with a considerable effort on Sunday, must have been responsible for the relatively unproblematic day we had. The school was closed at 4 o’clock, with only a bit of transport left to do.
It wasn’t perfect, though. I was awoken by my mattress exploding at 8.30, and so, me and another Infonaut woke the organisers up gently and quietly. And I’m glad we did, because ten minutes later, two Dirtbusters came screaming into the room and started shouting orders, then leaving. When I went to the kitchen, shortly before nine, they were somewhat confused, and didn’t know what was expected of them. And, worst of all, no one was there in the kitchen to move people along and get them started on the cleanup. We have to work on that for next year.
Apart from that, I didn’t like the Sunday. Sunday wasn’t. There was a bit of roleplaying in the morning, then cleaning in the afternoon, then waiting for the banquet. Come on! We can do better than that! It must be possible to make a Sunday that doesn’t feel like the whole thing has ended. It certainly didn’t used to feel like that.
Next time…
is going to be grand! We have a great general, who has already started – and he’s started with the thing that most failed this time: the location. Between him and the amazing scenario crew, next year is sure to be something to look forward to.
Oh, and if you want to be part of it, come to the evaluation and startup meeting this weekend in Aarhus.
Filemonia 