This one is mainly for the hardcore players that participate in
the events we run at the Double Exposure brand of cons each year. That is
Dreamation held in Jan. and DexCon in July.
For the past few years we have been batting around the idea of
running a campagin, with a branching, player guided on-going storyline. To
an extent we have done this with the Wildcard series of Wild West events
at DexCon 8 & 9.
With the development of a really hardcore following of players at
the Double Exposure events, we think that now would be a good time to
actually start up a full Campagin styled event. We have a great mix of
players from across the East Cost that now come to The D.E. cons. All of
them are some real hardcore players with amazing talents in character
development and costuming.
I was blown away this past DexCon by the sheer ammount of players
in costume of some sort and the level of role-playing that I saw. If only
a small precentage of this power was used in a campagin styled series of
event, it would be amazing.
The biggest stumbling block for us is finding a genre that is
popular with the majority of the players and that we can provide some good
storylines and support for. Some genres have been better received then
others. Hell, I was taken off kilter when we had 40+ players for "The
Osiris Club: Redux", a game originally made for 8 players, that we jumped
up to 25 players and that by the end of the registration and player
briefing we had 40+ players. Whew! I didn't think that a 1940's era
Hollywood event would have been so popular. I guess "Butt Worms" rule!
In order to try and pin down a genre that us as the insane Keepers
can enjoy as much as the players do, I have gone throgh the countless
genres that we have done: Wild West, Viking, Roman, Dark Ages, Crusades,
Victorian, 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, Modern Day, Near Future, Dark Future,
Far Future, and last but not least, The Endtimes. I'm sure I'm forgetting
something here...
After going through these genres and exploring some new ones, I
have come up with some that as a Keeper and scribe to many events, I could
come up with plots, support, props, etc for and that I would enjoy
producing. Now it is up to you to choose what you would like to create a
character for. The four nominiees are:
1. The Wild West 1860's to 1890's
2. Victorian Era 1880's to 1890's (British or American)
3. Victorian Era Steampunk 1880's to
?
4. Pulp High Adventure 1880's to 1940's
Out of the genres that we do, these have the best flexiability of
any. Also, as a shameless plug, the next Cthulhu Live supplement will
include: The Wild West, Victorian, and Civil War genres and additional
rules, stagecraft, and all the things you love about Cthulhu Live for
these time periods. End shameless plug here...lol
Granted making events set in the modern age is easy since we as
Keepers don't have to hide the "magic" of an event and everyone has a
frame of reference. However there are many things in the real modern day
that people fear on a daily basis. It is hard to compete with the real
world. Having an escape from the Nightly News is one aspect of Role
Playing that I enjoy.
Besides, I love a challenge. All the genres above have great web
references for Costumes, Terminology, Technology, etc.
I'll be cross posting this e-mail to our Fourm slot on the Double
Exposure site. I can even set up some kind of snazzy voting thingy to
judge the outcome. But in the mean time, let me know what are your
favorites on a scale of 1 to 10.
At the moment, we are just experiementing with this at our Local
Cons here in New Jersey. But don't worry if you are a Origins / GenCon
regular. We will look into doing something similar in the future there as
well. It is just a little harder to organize something like this with the
numbers that those cons get for participants and the unreliability of
getting the same room year after year.
So in closing. If you attend the Double Exposure series of cons
and are interesting in creating your own character and delving into a full
fledge, branching storyline of an event, then please take a few moment and
let us know what genre is you choice. If things go well, we may even do a
weekend long event. We have been offered site locations to run such an
event, so this is a future possibility.
We'll keep voting open until InterCon Mid Atlantic, which is in
November. This way, come Dreamation, we can be prepared to have a
Character Creation-A-Thon, and start the first chapter in this new series
of events. But don't worry, we will be still running our One-Shots at
Double Exposure as well. So no need to panic that we will only run the
Campagin events.
Well, see those of you that are trekking down to GenCon next week.
We have some great NEW events in store for you and the usual debauchery of
the after event parties. Who knows, maybe we'll even throw an impromptu
Miskatonic Frat Party II. God, people still talk about that. Guess we
burned some images into people's minds that we shouldn't have. Well it was
a "Spanking" good time...lol
See you at GenCon!!!
