Convention Chaos

Gaming conventions are scary and terrible. Going to a gaming convention means meeting all of those other attendees, who are people—and as we know, people are terrible. Gamers are worse. Who knows who we might end up with sat around a table playing a game, trapped with them for four hours? How are you going to cope with queues to get in—to everything—let alone the crowds in the trade hall and the dealers pushing things at you, trying to sell their latest and greatest games? And if the number of other attendees is an assault on the senses, so are the smells of the other attendees and the range of food on sale. Invariably bland and greasy, and whilst you might be hungry, are really you hungry enough to bolt that burger down and gulp that bottle of fizzy pop in the few minutes you have between the last event and the next? And there is, of course, the ‘con crud’ factor… Just how bad are you going to feel on Monday morning after the convention and your weekend away? What minor illness did you back with you which is going to leave you under the weather for days? Above all, are you really going to have fun, or end up exhausted and hungry with little to show for it except the ‘Con Crud’? Not all gaming conventions are really that bad, but the one you are about to attend in Stuck at a Gaming Convention very probably is.

Stuck at a Gaming Convention: A silly, thematic role playing game is a storytelling game published by Beyond Cataclysm Books. It can be played with a Game Master or without and is designed to take a group of players through the convention experience from the safety of their own home without necessarily having attended a gaming convention—though the experience of play will definitely be heightened if they have. Of course, Stuck at a Gaming Convention could actually be played at a gaming convention and even be influenced by that gaming convention as much as any other! Stuck at a Gaming Convention is a game about surviving the travails and traumas of being at a convention—encountering Coplayer Monsters, Leafleter Monsters, Crowd Monsters, Stallholder Monsters, running to the Food Court and the Nap Station, and all that before even managing to get to the games and actually play something!

Stuck at a Gaming Convention is played using a ten-sided die and a six-sided die. A Conventioneer has three stats—Fun, Fatigue, and Famine. All three are rated between zero and ten and Fatigue and Famine are negative stats, whereas Fun is not. A Conventioneer also has a Name, a non-gaming hobby, a reason why he came to the convention, and a favourite game, the latter selected from the six games detailed in the back of the book. The occupation, non-gaming hobby, and the reason for attending the convention each allow a single reroll during play if appropriate to the situation. The favourite game allows a single reroll in that game if it is played. If any Conventioneer’s Fun reaches a score of ten, then everyone will have had a good time at the gaming convention, everyone can go home happy, and the gaming convention has been a success and Stuck at a Gaming Convention is won. Conversely, if the Fatigue or Famine of any Conventioneer reaches ten, then that Conventioneer is reduced to misery as the gaming convention has beaten him, he and his friends have had a terrible time and decided to go home, and Stuck at a Gaming Convention is lost.

The roleplaying game is played into two phases—the Action Phase and the Gaming Phase. These alternate until the game is lost or won. In the Action Phase, the Conventioneers face the monsters of the ’Fan-dom Encounters’, including the Cosplay, Leafleter, Crowd, and Stallholder monsters. Face-offs against each monster are dice-offs, the player rolling the ten-sided die, trying to roll higher than the monster, who uses the six-sided die. Defeating a monster grants a reward that increases a Conventioneer’s Fun. Visiting the Food Court or the Nap Station will reduce a Conventioneer’s Fatigue and Famine respectively, but at the cost of Fun.

In the Gaming Phase, the Conventioneers play one of six games which include Settlers of Takan, Storm the Castle, and Escape the Dungeon. These are mini-games, typically dice games which are parodies of well-known board games, though Dream It is a drawing game. These are thankfully short affairs, not necessarily that interesting in themselves. They really offer only the one type of game as opposed to the range of games typically offered at a gaming convention, so no roleplaying, no LARPS, and so on. What this means is Stuck at a Gaming Convention may actually be asking the players to have their characters engage in gaming activities which they themselves do not find fun. Some random events might have been useful too, to give more chances of having Fun or suffering Fatigue, and they perhaps, could also have made the games themselves that little more interesting.

Physically, Stuck at a Gaming Convention is a busy, fuzzy affair in pale pink and purple that lives up to its name. Stuck at a Gaming Convention: A silly, thematic role playing game is silly and it is thematic, a one-shot game about surviving the game as much as the imaginary convention. It is also a game with a dichotomy. The part of the game where you are actually not meant to be having fun in-game is actually more fun out-of-game, whereas the part of the game where you are actually meant to be having fun in-game is actually less fun out-of-game. Stuck at a Gaming Convention: A silly, thematic role playing game is a game where the more fun that the players put into it, the more fun they are going to get out of it, and ultimately it is a game that people are not really going to want to that do that more than once or twice.