Day 1 Recap -
Had 1 pre-registered participant who didn’t show, but had two individuals show up who had played the game once (Milk Run). We were just chatting before the Demo time when another two stopped by just to look over the books and chat a bit. After the Demo started, turns out the two that just stopped by to look at the books came back over because their original game was cancelled and the overview I gave them really piqued their interest. So I had 2 who had played before (but were still novices to the system) and 2 fresh newbs and we had a GREAT time. I ended up teaching the game more thoroughly than I anticipated because the game group was awesome. They breezed through Guard Duty in 1 hour 15 minutes, and that was after about 30 minutes of pre-game overview. But they wanted more, so I ran them through some additional optional encounters I made up on the fly. They still didn’t have enough but we had to give up the table to the next timeslot.
So all in all, a great time was had by all and all the feedback was positive.
Really looking forward to the next 3 days.
Day 2 Recap -
Had 1 pre-registered participant who DID show this time and he had prior experience with Milk Run. His group did not continue a campaign after that because they were short on materials and their GM did not have enough knowledge with the system to keep the ball rolling. I also had another person show up that had previous expereience, being part of the ongoing campaign I am part of (yes, one of my buddies showed up to see if I had decent GM’ing chops.) Plus I had two complete newbies who picked up the system rather quickly. In fact, today the group went so smoothly, that after the Arcology rats optional encounter, I threw in a completely makeshift scenario where the medical team who showed up to patch up the team from Blue sector were in fact even MORE activists. I threw in some state shifting and wielding for the group to play with, since they were already breezing through the rules so far. It was a blast!!!
I could get spoiled like this, 2 days of running my very first demonstrations and both groups rocked!
Hope the next 2 days are as good, and that I get at least 4 people for each since this is a more advanced module the next 2 days.
Day 3 Recap -
Had 3 pre-registered players who all showed up, including one returning walk-in from the day before. So 1 had experience, and two new players. Took about 15 minutes to review the basic rules with the new players… with help from the returning player who picked them up so well the day before. I ran the full 4 hour demo of The World is Shaking, with the 3 players, scaling the first encounter down because it is tailored for 4-6 players, but I had an NPC tag along in case the group needed a little more muscle. Well, they didn’t. They used some awesome synergy and pulled out some of the advanced rules for multiple attacks and whalloped the opening combat. SO I gave them a makeshift encounter against a competing group of “operators” which they took out, and the final battle was awesome! I let the medic tap into some healing magic and the final battle flowed back and forth between the big bad taking the group almost out and the medic healing everyone and so on until they nickel and dimed the big bad to death. The final blow came at segment six, last character, two dice left, hail mary called shot to bypass the Damage threshold, only to pull it off with doing 1 more point of damage than they needed. A real nail-biter.
Hope tomorrow has a decent group, but it is the last day of this con, which is not known for heavy RPG attendence on the last day. So we’ll see!
Day 4 Recap -
Ok, so today, I had only 1 pre-registered player, and she was the only one to show up. So instead of the 4 hour demo I had to run the 2 hour demo, because it is the only one tailored to allow a single player. Well, this young lady was AMAZING. She was so cerebral that she caught every single nuance of the rules and we were using iterative attacks on the second combat; complete with Endurance rules, and everything I could think of to add in because she understood and used them all effectively. She even single handidly overcame the primary combat, optional combat and my own special optional optional combat (yes, I meant to use two optionals there). She completed the module in 2 hours but she wanted MORE. So I ran a side scenario on the fly, allowing her to “continue” the story of the module and pick up an escort mission for a protected witness. We used some random vehicular rules as she “rented” a motorcycle to speed the witness to their destination, complete with crashes, avoiding traffic collisions by racing over ramps and clearing lanes of traffic, overcoming water hazards, etc. Not only was this young lady amazingly smart, but her dice were on fire! If I hadn’t lent her the dice myself, I would have thought they were rigged 
We did this for almost 2 more full hours and we were both sad to see it end, we were having that much fun.
Needless to say, the whole weekend was great and I look forward to running again at the next convention. I had a blast, and the feedback I collected was positively glowing.
Thanks again to the MSL for the game and the opportunity to bring this game to a whole new set of players.
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