Anyone ran RoL at Conventions before?

[SanjuroTokage]

Hi there, 

Typical newbie to the forum jumping right in with creating a new thread.

As the titles dictates, I am looking for anyone who has ran RoL successfully or not at conventions only (3-4 hour sessions) to share their experience, I would like to know:

• What are the key components that make a RoL case experience? (e.g. magic, interesting people, the procedural paperwork, cups of tea, etc)
• What parts of the system/elements should not be included for a RoL con game?
• How did the players find it? Did it meet with their expectation of a RoL case.

 

I am looking to run a RoL "con" case at UK Con-Tingency in Jan 2024. 

I have ran games at conventions before.

[Dangermouse]

You might want to ask @Lynne H - I'm pretty sure she's run a few games.
 

[WisdomOfWombat]

I ran RoL at a very small convention, I set it in Munich, Germany. I used a fairly straight forward case involving web designers, spiders, spiders as web designers, a river godess and her son, who is another river god, and a nuclear plant with a slight malfunction. I reminded the players of the procedural work, coffee of course played a part, but not so much magic. I think, I brought all the rules to the table. But there was no fight this time. Unfortunately, only one player knew about RoL beforehand. She enjoyed the case. 

[buckyball]

On 12/13/2023 at 2:16 PM, SanjuroTokage said:

Hi there, 

Typical newbie to the forum jumping right in with creating a new thread.

As the titles dictates, I am looking for anyone who has ran RoL successfully or not at conventions only (3-4 hour sessions) to share their experience, I would like to know:

• What are the key components that make a RoL case experience? (e.g. magic, interesting people, the procedural paperwork, cups of tea, etc)
• What parts of the system/elements should not be included for a RoL con game?
• How did the players find it? Did it meet with their expectation of a RoL case.

 

I am looking to run a RoL "con" case at UK Con-Tingency in Jan 2024. 

I have ran games at conventions before.

I ran RoL at Bubonicon this past Summer, and I started my online campaign with the convention scenario I had made.

A key consideration for running the game with new players is that many, if not all of them, may not have read the books. Even though Bubonicon is a literary sci-fi/fantasy convention, not a single player had read the books. I did have a player who was familiar with Ben Aaronovitch because he was a Dr. Who fan. So what I did was have the players take the roles of members of the public who were brought to the Folly as part of Peter Grant's Vestigia Awareness Outreach program. The big benefit here is that by starting the characters off with zero knowledge of magic you may roleplay explaining magic/vestigia in character as Peter Grant or Thomas Nightingale. Now if you end up with like 4 players who have never read the books and one player who has read and memorized every book, graphic novel, short story and online fiction, you might have to make some sort accommodation for the more familiar player.

The part of the system you should not include is character creation. Create a wide selection of pregenerated characters for the players to choose from. Don't make any of them practitioners. Make them gender neutral and let the players give them names. This will save loads of time. Also since it is likely that the players will not have read the books, they will have an easier time playing a firefighter or a nurse than trying to create a Folly wizard. If you get a player who is familiar with the game and they have their own character, you can always allow that player to bring that character in instead of having to take a pregen. In my online campaign the pcs are, an art therapist, a nurse, a barrister, a professional driver, a boxer, and a wealthy dilettante. They had started with the same selection of pregens I used at the convention. After about 6 sessions into the campaign, the dilettante and the driver both decided to train as wizards and the boxer plans to learn the mystic art of fighting. I think this is better than trying to start them off as practitioners. It also helps me scale their power level as the game advances.

The players had little expectation of a RoL case file, since none of them had read the books. The convention players mostly related the game to Call of Cthulhu. I had two players in my game who were Call of Cthulhu gms. They signed up for the game because it was published by Chaosium. This worked in my favor since the idea for my game came from an older urban fantasy book called Monday begins on Saturday instead of the RoL series. The players all enjoyed it. They did have some difficulty adjusting to the narrative structure of the game instead of a more conventional turn based structure. I had to walk them through that part. They were also really intrigued by Molly. One of the players called her 'Silent Molly'; and I thought that was kind of cool. One of the things that helped make my game accessible to newer players was that it had several pop culture references. In the scenario there were several cosplayers who had become sequestrated into the characters they were cosplaying. So even though the players were unfamiliar with Peter Grant and Thomas Nightingale they did recognize Harley Quinn, Judge Dredd and Dr Who.

I hope that helps. Good luck at Con-Tingency