Hi folks,

Finally managed to get sat down in front of a computer long enough to sum up my feelings about my first Indiecon. I had been to Conception a couple of times and was persuaded by Mr. Stokes that Indiecon would be right up my alley and a great place to get some playtesting in.

Arrived on the Wednesday night to stay with Rich & Claire, was fed some excellent soup and chatted away about the con to come. We didn't set off until about 2pm the next day, arriving about 3:30 during torrential rain and made our way to the lodge. After drying off and grabbing some food, we headed back to the halls to begin our gaming. I set off to find some people to play in a 'Revenge of the Action Movie' competition and had a fun evening of making ridiculous action movie titles and listening to Mick's Baron Munchausen game.

Friday was when the roleplaying kicked off for me and I started by GMing Inspectres. My intention had been to run a Fringeverse version of the game, but ended up with 6 players instead of 4, so just ran the game straight. Well I say straight! 6 players really put me outside of my comfort zone but I was very pleased how well the game worked. The players relaxed into it quickly and came up with 'Inspectres: Solihull' with the tagline, 'We'll grab your ghoulies'. Yes it kind of went downhill in tone from there. I'll right up a proper AP elsewhere, but it was great fun and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Inspectres has consistently delivered for me everytime I have run it and I think it is a great introduction to the 'indie' mindset of games.

Friday afternoon saw me running my first session of Reel Adventures at the con, in which I had Claire who had played the game before, Indypete and a couple of others whose names I have forgotten, sorry. Suffice to say that apart from Claire no one had played the game before. They came up with a animated film about a Disney style Princess, the nemesis, coming to a world to turn all the ugly or unappealing animals into something more cute and fluffy. The film was called 'Candy Cane Calamity'. I had tweaked the game since last I played and the setup went a lot smoother than it had in the past. The game itself played out well and there some great scenes including leprechaun dance offs, sacred cows and bank raids. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and the game highlighted some clarifications I needed to make in the text, but no major changes.

Friday evening I had signed up for a game of Dread, the Jenga version, with Elaine facilitating. Character creation was interesting, done with questionnaires and the scenario revolved around a teenagers party out at a lodge in the deep dark woods. As a tension mechanic the jenga blocks worked very well, but a couple of things bugged me about the system:

1) It seemed to only be down to the GM to say when a block was pulled which didn't sit well with me and I felt the tower didn't 'cycle' quickly enough. It would seem to me, that a much better way of doing it would be to say 'if you narrate anything story changing, you need to pull a block'. Will think on that one more and pick up the book to give it a read.

2) The game became Jenga towards the end, not Dread. Don't get me wrong I love Jenga, but I felt it became the game rather than facilitating the story.

Saturday morning I wasn't playing anything so I set up the Collective Endevaour stall and made some notes from the Reel Adventures game the day before, nice to relax for a session.

Saturday afternoon was my second game of Reel Adventures, and I have to say it was the most enjoyable one I have ever witnessed (I just facilitate Reel Adventures at cons as it is GMless). They came up with a film called 'Davicni's Machines' that was a sort of Musketeer film with Leonardo Davinci's gadgets and a plot to take over the world by his evil ex-apprentice. Lots of excellent scenes, over the top action and Doom style automata. I will write this up properly very soon, but it was probably the most 'filmable' game I had ever seen. Really good fun, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and the system held up really well.

Saturday evening was a game of Dead of Night facilitated by Andrew Kendrick, which was a modern day retelling of the Grendel story. Really excellent stuff, with everyone really playing up to the myth and the system rewarding and punishing as it needed to. I am not entirely convinced it would have worked with a group not familiar with the tale but Andrew really knows how to push the conflicts when he needs to and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Sunday morning was my chance to get into an evilgaz game and it was his 'Hot War' powered Delta Green game which was absolutely stunning. Gaz really drove the game well and the inter-party conflict and alliances that we formed really made this the best game I played all con. I'll try to remember exactly what happened and write up an AP.

I had to head off about 5:30 and was pretty knackered by Sunday afternoon, so I broke out 'Pandemic' and played a couple of games with Elaine, Claire, Andrew and someone else whose name I forget, sorry!

I thoroughly enjoyed Indiecon, played and ran lots of excellent games and was really pleased with the positive attitude people had to playtesting new games and playing new and interesting things. I will be making every effort to get back next year, hopefully with something to launch along with me. I think Indiecon would make a great venue to launch a game and get some buzz before selling it at Dragonmeet.

Thanks to everyone who played my games and played alongside me, I enjoyed every minute of it.

All the best

Iain