2009 saw the second year of the Games on Demand room (or, rooms, this time round) at KapCon. Our facilitating team from last year was boosted by the addition of Simon Carryer and Gregor Hutton. This meant that, overall, we had seven people able to facilitate and talk about games. It gave a lot more latitude if people wanted to take a session or two off, play in games, run to get coffee etc.

From my experience, the quality of facilitating was very very high. We had at least three games running in every session, sometimes hitting five games on the go. And those games represented a great diversity of style, technique and content. In greatest demand were 3:16 and Best Friends, helped by the engaging presence of Gregor, with people seizing the chance to play in a game with him.

Once I've had some time, I'll be writing up AP reports for all of the games I facilitated and played in and will come back to edit this report to add links. However, here's a brief capsule overview of what went I took part in:

First out of the gates in the morning was 3:16. Fun was had playing through two planets of alien threats (although the low-gravity, parachute wearing, tree-living giants of the second planet seemed more confused about why they were being attacked than anything else).

Much to my relief, I got to play in The Mountain Witch, run by Simon. One of the great things that Simon brought to this game was his knowledge of Japanese mythological creatures. Each encounter was with something from folklore, something that Simon could detail in a very engaging way. After a slight false start, it turned into a really fun game.

Taking part in a game of Best Friends with Gregor was like picking up a well-loved book for another read through or re-watching a favourite movie. Hyperbole aside, our game of Amish girls returned to the community from their trip to the big wide world had many moments of pathos, hilarity and downright awfulness.

It's always a pleasure to introduce new people to the excellent Covenant by Matt Machell. The process of character creation, tied into the creation of your conspiratorial cell, is one of the best of any game I've facilitated. It never ceases to produce interesting, conflict filled situations straight off the bat. The game wasn't without its faults during play, but overall it gave a short, but satisfying little story.

Duty & Honour was probably the game I was most nervous about facilitating in a convention environment. Especially as this was the first time I had done so. Overall, it worked really well, with enthusiastic players and a short but interesting military mission involving sneaking into the French camp to kill a famed sniper and missions of personal importance involving stealing wine from the French, attempting to get promotion and trying to convert Catholic guerillas to Protestantism.

Full actual play for the above game can now be found here.

My final game of the con was My Life With Master. In the big scheme of things, this was the most difficult game of the con. For one, I was pretty tired by this point. More importantly, it took us a long time to come up with a setting and Master that everyone was happy with. For that first half hour or so, it felt really hard to get engagement from the group. in the end I was delighted with what we came up with (the master was an Ed Wood-esque movie director in 50's Hollywood. The minions were his effects man, musician, assistant director and leading man.)

Overall number for the games run are listed below. The first number is the total number of people, including facilitators/GMs taking part. The number in brackets is the number of GoD people, including the facilitator/GM who took part in that game.

3:16 : 4 (-2)
3:16 : 7 (-5)
3:16 : 4 (-1)
Best Friends : 5 (-3)
Best Friends: 4 (-1)
Covenant : 5 (-1)
D&D: 5 (-1)
Don't Rest Your Head : 4 (-1)
Duty & Honour : 4 (-2)
Geiger Counter : 6 (-1)
Geiger Counter : 4 (-1)
kill puppies for satan : 4 (-4)
Metal Opera : 4 (-1)
The Mountain Witch : 6 (-2)
Mouse Guard : 4 (-2)
Mouse Guard : 6 (-2)
My Life With Master : 5 (-1)
PTA : 5 (-2)
The Shab al Hiri Roach : 4 (-1)

Overall, a great success, I would say.

Cheers
Malc