Feedback on Game Over Gaming Cyberfestival March 2024 - D&D!

My experience of my trip to Game Over Gaming is always memorable. This time was no different!

Two years ago, I went for the first time and, despite nursing a migraine borne out of the depths of hell, the weekend had gone really well. This year the migraine wasn't physical, but I had a persistent pain in the butt due to car issues towards, throughout, and from Glentana. At least we got there safe and the issues were resolved soon after returning home. No long-lasting damage or anything. 

As for the actual convention, it was a little bigger than last time with definite potential for growth. I didn't take a lot of pictures (because I'm a dummy), but it consisted of a hall where the pc- and console-gaming happened, then an external room with stalls for comic-art, peripherals and other stuffs, and finally an outside tent for board gaming and hanging around.

There was a side room which is actually a kitchen / tuck shop that we used for our D&D games. Some people might frown at this setting, but I actually loved it. There are three places that are classic D&D spaces: The basement, the dining room, and the kitchen table. So being able to capture one of those spaces for the game was great.

I had a group of five players that I did a modified Out of the Abyss - Velkynvelve with. Four of them were newbies with one veteran... they all survived and managed to set everything on fire. In hindsight, having one of them be a dragonborn wasn't necessarily a good idea, but all-in-all I loved everything about the session. 

Especially the part that I didn't know the convention hall was watching... I knew it was being streamed on a twitch channel, but I didn't know the next room could see everything. Ignorance = bliss!!!

My anxiety did mean that I had to hide my hands because they were trembling, but at the same time, I tend to talk with my hands, thus it was a constant battle. But that's a normal thing for me. I'm still nervous even when I've done something a million times before.

But yes, it was fun. I slept very little, didn't eat enough, worried a lot about the car and things, but ultimately had a blast.

TTRPG Babble: New homebrew start-up and future possible joys

 This coming Saturday, I will be introducing more players to my homebrew world. I'm very excited at the prospect of doing so. 

When I crafted the idea of this homebrew, I wanted to create a world that experienced players could traverse without fear of their existing knowledge. So, instead of having them act dumb whenever they see a creature they've encountered a million times before and know the weaknesses of, I made their characters experienced warriors who've seen all of it before and knew how to respond - no distancing required. 

The second aspect I wanted to incorporate in the homebrew was the idea of character backstory being relevant in some way to the game. There are a number of players who want to have a solid backstory without knowing what the game is fully about. They craft all these amazing things that their character has supposedly already achieved and then, when they play, are forced into a far more insignificant role because a character at their level simply couldn't achieve slaying a dragon on by their onesy regardless of what their backstory says. With my homebrew's approach, they could very well have done all the amazing things the backstory states. In fact, it is encouraged to be as elaborate and grandiose as possible.

I don't know if my incorporating of these two aspects into my game is all that unique, but I'm very happy with it. And I do think that one day I'd like to assemble this campaign into a book form. Not because it's absolutely amazing, but because I believe it gives the starting points where anyone can build something amazing from it.

But I digress. 

So I have a new campaign coming up and I'm absolutely delighted by the initiative this group has taken in crafting round characters. They've even given me ammunition to make their characters' lives miserable! My discord server's channels are filled with conversations and questions posed at each other about characters and story. They've even gone as far as writing snippets of fiction to better define and introduce their characters and the world to each other. It's been fantastic.

Naturally, it does mean that I'm nervous about the game, but I've realised that my excitement manifests as anxiety, so the more anxious I am, then in truth, the more excited I am. 

I'm very excited.

In keeping with my commitment to not overextend myself, this campaign is only going to play out once a month. There are some challenges connected with that - people forget and you spend more time in a session talking about what happened in the previous ones - but at the same time, there is also an understanding among the group that everyone is busy and we should make do with what we can.

But, speaking of excitement. I have been surprised by an offer to play Ironsworn Starforged co-op with a friend. It came out of the blue and I'm genuinely thrilled. To make it more interesting, the plan is to stream it on her channel. It makes more sense to do it on hers seeing as we'll be playing at times where the peeps who usually watch my stream are sleeping like normal people. Also, her videos stay up longer. So that's also a win. 

This will hopefully start up in April. I'll probably babble about it more here once I have more specifics.