Sunday, December 29, 2013

Run A Game At Kapcon

Kapcon needs more games!   If you're thinking of trying out a new game, or published scenario, or even something of your own creation, Kapcon will supply you with a dedicated room, players and promotion for your offering.  Just sign up here.  If you are interested in offering a session of EPOCH please drop me a line, as I'm offering some additional support for folks who run my game.

Kapcon has been a staple of the Wellington, and the New Zealand convention gaming scene for a fair while now, and seems to grow larger with each passing year.  I've attended Kapcon for many years and had a great time - you can read about my past experiences here.  I hope to see you there in a couple of weeks time...

Friday, December 6, 2013

A Nightmare Before Christmas

I recently released the EPOCH Christmas Special Silent Night, a scenario which is a collaboration with the esteemed Morgan Davie, with all the proceeds going to charity.  This is the 16th published EPOCH scenario, and as you’d expect, it has a distinctly Christmas flavour.
 
The playtest of this scenario was a lot of fun.  The players decided that a family group would be appropriate for a Christmas scenario, so they created some excellent characters including:
 
Rose McIntyre - Grandmother and family matriarch, Rose had recently buried her husband and wanted to take her two adult sons and Granddaughter back to Patterson's Fork for Christmas (Secret: Rose has terminal caner and only a year to live)
Patrick McIntyre - A protective father (son of Rose, father of Abigail) and computer software engineer (Secret: Patrick's wife has been kidnapped, and the kidnappers are holding her for ransom, forcing him to hack into bank accounts)
Philip McIntyre - Patrick's brother (son of Rose), who recently abandoned his white collar job and embraced an eastern philosophy which he seeks to share with everyone he meets (Secret: Philip is Abigail's real Dad, but abandoned his old life when Patrick's wife wouldn't leave him once she became pregnant)
Abigal McIntyre - An teenage girl. (Secret: She has a tattoo and belly button piercing)
Nazomi - A Japanese foreign exchange student living with Abigail and Patrick (Secret: She was forced to come to America by her family to remove the influence of Japanese gangsters).
 
As you might imagine, a great deal of the scenario was spent exploring these stories against the backdrop of the horror unfolding around them.  From the initial cast, only Rose and Abigail survived to secure a total victory, allowing them to narrate their own ending for their characters.  Abigail opened a tattoo parlour near a large West Coast beach and got her father and uncles face tattooed on her back.  Rose visited the graves of her husband and sons to lay flowers, both buried next to where her own headstone was already prepared…
 
It's stories like that that make running EPOCH an enjoyable and unique experience every time.  And while I’m talking about EPOCH, let me point you in the direction of Mash’s excellent analysis on activating players.