This was my tenth time to DunDraCon, which after a year off during the pandemic had switched venues to the Santa Clara Marriott by Great America. This is the same venue that had been used for years for Pacificon.
Friday 6 PM on Teen Room (Table 2) for 4 hours
GM: John Hanju Kim
Type: RPG
System: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Ed
Players: 5
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: 3rd
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Family
The Land of New Horizons is an Incan-inspired fantasy setting, where characters are agents of the Solar Empire bringing peace and justice. It uses the standard D&D elements, reinterpreted into the new setting. This adventure is solving a deadly crime in one of the newest trade hubs - Newgate City!
This was my run of a 3rd level introduction to the Land of New Horizons, an Incan-inspired game, with all teen players. Thankfully, they got along fairly well - but there is a common tension with random teens having to play together. In this case, they were investigating a murder mystery, which took a lot of discussion between them. They cooperated well, and followed the suspicious merchant Fernrustle until they discovered his connections - and they did well by the two difficult-but-still-sympathetic NPCs who were involved.
It wasn't the most outstanding run of this game, but I think it was a good experience for the young players.
Saturday 10 AM in 234 for 4 hours
GM: Sean Patrick Fannon
Type: RPG
System: Prowlers & Paragons
Edition: Ultimate
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: Standard
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Mainstream
Emperor Epoch is using incredibly advanced chronotech to lead his Chrononauts across space and time to establish strongholds and allies in his bid to command the entire Omniverse. The Heroes of the Justice Battalion must unite against many of their well-known foes and the Emperor to save the UWU from his machinations. This is one of the three EVENTS you can play in the Time Marches On sequence, giving you a chance to experience the P&PUE system in three different settings while immersing yourself in the greater Omniverse. Sean is the co-designer of the system and is happy to teach the rules. There are six excellent pre-generated characters from the Unending War Universe (UWU) for you to choose from.
Website: www.evilbeaglegames.com/unending-war-time-marches-on-1948
A superhero game set in an alternate timeline 1948 - where WWII continued due to strange forces at work. It was set in Chicago, where we started as part of the "Justice Battalion" who were fighting gangsters, prior to the true villain revealing himself. The players and their characters were:
The game was mostly three action scenes, showcasing the conflict rules. There was the opening combat, a quickly-resolved scene of penetrating the enemy lair (using fast conflict resolution rules), and then the final combat. I had fun, though I didn't find the rules particularly compelling.
Saturday 8 PM on Teen Room (Table 1) for 4 hours
GM: John Lantz
Type: Mixed-Genre Miniatures
System: What a Tanker
Players: 8
Provided: All miniatures provided by GM
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Family
High School sports not your thing? Maybe they would be if your school had a sensha-do team. Sensha-do?the way of the tank?is one of the most popular high school sports in the world of Girls and Panzers. Choose a tank, team up with others, and lead your school to glory ? or at least a league championship.
A miniatures game in the Teen Room. This was ostensibly adapted from the absurdist anime "Girls and Panzers" - about rival girls high schools whose school sport is vintage WWII tank combat. However, it was played as completely straight miniatures tank combat with gaudily-colored tank miniatures.
It illustrated a problem to me with running games for kids. In this case, there was one young teen who was very disengaged from play, and then a slightly older teen who was annoyed at this and kept targeting them to destroy them. Unfortunately, this dynamic dominated the whole game. Technically we had two teams of three, but there was almost no discussion among the team members. This was partly because of the system - which made planning difficult - but also was partly in an emphasis on how the game ran. Since I have often run teen games, it made me think about how I would handle such a dynamic if I ran a game for them.
Sunday Noon in Suite 1445 for 4 hours
GM: John Hanju Kim
Type: LARP
System: Custom LARP
Players: 12
LARP Experience: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: FamilyThis is a Doctor Who LARP, where twelve varied characters are thrown together to discover what happened to the universe. They come from a variety of backgrounds. However, each has the same name: River Song. Finding out how and why is part of the game. This is a mix of mystery, drama, and improv. It draws on Doctor Who lore, but doesn't require it from the players. All the information to play is included.
This was a difficult first run of this larp, which was designed for 12 players. I had 12 signups with 2 on the waiting list for my game - but only got 6 players (including 1 walk-in). So there were 7 players who were signed up but never showed. That was frustrating. However, we did have some good players who enjoyed themselves.
It is a strange experimental game where all the characters riff off each other. Based on this, I did revise to not call the deadly operative as "evil" known to others. It was fun to have the W family there. I think it was tricky for family dynamics to have parents and their young kid all cast as not just equals, but identical people. But I think everyone still had fun, and the end resolved well.
This was a scheduled game that had a second impromptu session scheduled because the GM supposedly had overprepared material for the first game. This was the sequel to an excellent game that we had played in Pacificon 2021 - "The Land Juggerpede". And the game concept had even been inspired by events in our session of it, as we had lost a PC named Rollo who was kidnapped by feral halflings.
I missed the initial session of this, but I played in the impromptu second session on Sunday night. The players and characters we had were:
Unfortunately, the game went poorly, in my opinion. We started out attacking an outpost of the feral halfling "Razorclaws" - and saw that they had strange changes to their anatomy - grafted skin and repeated burns on their necks. But the progress was very linear, and everything we tried outside the direct confrontation failed. We tried at a few points to investigate side options, but those didn't lead anywhere. There was a woman player who walked out, which people were shocked at, but talking to her later, I was sympathetic. The individual scenes were all handled reasonably, but I did see the same dynamic she did.
Monday 10 AM in 234 for 6 hours
GM: Jon Robertson
Type: RPG
System: Masks: A New Generation
Players: 5
Provided: Characters are created for the game
Variations: all officlal playbooks
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Mainstream
Of all the teen heroes in the city, you're the bottom of the barrel. Whether you've made an enemy of the press, offended a major hero, don't know how to work together, destroy everything you touch, or you just have the worst luck imaginable, you're the punchline to every hero joke in the city. We'll decide together why you're Halcyon City's most unpopular heroes, and then work together to try and change your fate. All playbooks available, so long as you have a concept that works with the setting.
An excellent run of this narrative system. The GM was well-prepared with materials, but was rather low on energy on the last day of the con. Thankfully, it was made up for by a terrific and enthusiastic set of players who contributed to the story. The concept was that we would create a set of less respected teen heroes. We decided that the primary superheroes had a "League of Awesome" along with the associated "Junior League of Awesome" (patterned after the Teen Titans). Meanwhile, we were the low-rent heroes who were not well respected. The players and their characters were:
Together, we called ourselves the "Winners Club" -- but our frequent mishaps meant that we were often known as the "Losers Club". The plot revolved around a magical compulsion that started coming from products of the "Pineapple" company (a parody of Apple Computers). We first confronted a mob at a Pineapple store, then investigated one of their factories, and finally traced the culprit to a magic-influenced AI inside of the local base for the "Junior League of Awesome".
But it was less the plot than the camaraderie and joy of invention that drove the game - like struggling to take the bus to crime scenes, or arguing over our Internet rep, etc. We ended by inviting the rogue AI to join our group, and tried to take over the base. (Previously, the closest thing we had to a headquarters was hanging out at the local pizza place with a superhero theme, called "Pizza & Heroes".)