Running The Watch as a longcon
about 7 years ago
– Sun, Mar 05, 2017 at 01:17:07 AM
When I was at Dreamation, I was lucky enough to run an amazing longcon of The Watch with the inimitable Aaron Friesen as my co-GM. We had a full event, with two tables of four, running the three evenings of the convention, with each session lasting four hours. Happily, all of the players were fantastic and committed, and at the end we’d told a fantastic story and everyone was excited about the amazing roleplaying that had happened.
(If you want to read a summary of the story that happened, one of our players has part 1 of a 2 part summary up on Google+ here.)
It was a great reminder for me of just how satisfying longcon play is, so I thought I’d share with you how Aaron and I made The Watch work as a 3-session longcon, since normally a full campaign takes 10-12 sessions.
Pre-Longcon setup
Firstly, rather than try to cover all three campaign phases (Defend the Remaining Clan Lands, Take Back Lost Territory, and Assail the Shadow’s Lands), we decided that we would instead play through all of phase 2, and end the longcon on a note similar to the end of a season of a Netflix drama. (“We’ve only tied up half the plot threads! Here is an ending montage of all the characters! Too bad you’ll have to wait forever to find out what happens next season!” ...you know how it is.)
We also decided on a pre-set order of the missions for phase 2, just so we could keep the stories mostly tied together. The (slightly modified) list we came up with was:
Session 1: Secure and hold a location until reinforcements arrive; defend a fort (the location from mission
Session 2: Attack a Shadow-held strategic point, Retake an ancient cultural site from the Shadow
Session 3: Collect conscripts from the clans; Drive the Shadow’s main force from the clan lands
First Session
During the first session of the longcon itself, we ran character creation with all of the players together, so that there would be an interconnected web of PC relationships and so that everyone could answer worldbuilding questions together and build an internally consistent world. After that was done, we split into two tables. (For a little added emotional twist, we had our two ranking officers take turns choosing their squads, but we could just have easily had one officer at each table and randomized the rest.)
While running the sessions, we tried to keep the timing of the missions the same (each table ran missions simultaneously, with each table fulfiling different parts of the same objectives. Sessions 2 and 3 Then between sessions, Aaron and I decided on which characters we would get to switch tables. For the second session, we had the officers switch tables and everyone else stay the same - because much of the dynamic at the table is created by how the ranking officer chooses to interact with her subordinates. For the third session, we again switched two PCs, this time with an eye to what would create the most drama. This worked out really well, because it meant that everyone got to play with each PC at least for one session.
End of Session 3: Final mission
For the final mission, we actually used the final battle rules for defeating the Shadow at the very end of Phase 3 to model the final battle to evict the Shadow from the Clan lands - to make the end that mission feel like an accomplishment and bring more of a feeling of resolution. We also ran the final battle all as one table, so that everyone would be reunited again at the end, although the modification I’d suggest for anyone doing a longcon in the future would be to disallow using Need A Hand to boost mission rolls for the final mission only. (It made things a bit too easy to be properly cinematic.)
Because skipping Phase 3 of the campaign means that Devastating Mission Complications never come into play, when we reached the point of the battle where the Shadow “makes as hard a move as it is capable of”, Aaron and invoked the Devastating Complication “half of the players (rounded up) endured terrible injuries and must Suffer Great Harm”. Then to decide who would roll, we had everyone draw lots - just to increase the suspense.
At the end of the battle, when the mission was won and all of the Clan lands were under control of the Clans once more, we took things out on an ending montage. I had each player take a turn narrating what the final shot or shots would be of their character in this montage that would mostly tie off their plot arcs but still leave room for drama in “Season 2”. Once that was over, roll credits! Have everyone take a small bio break, because then was the:
Debrief
Longcon play is intensely satisfying, because it’s emotionally intense and intensifies an already intense convention experience. However, because of that, it’s important to give people space to process and decompress. First, every person had 2-3 minutes to share whatever they wanted to share about their feelings and their experience, with the understanding that there would be no interruptions or responses, and that players could not use their time to argue with the experiences of someone else. (The MCs included, although we went last.)
Next, we had a moderated discussion, where the players could expand on things that were said in the first part of the debrief and the MCs made sure everyone got equal time to speak. Once we felt things were winding down into people just wanting to yell cool stories at each other (which is great!), we ended things formally, invited people to move the conversation to a more formal space, and that was that.