MageCon North 1996 Report:
Player's Guide

It all started when my friend Pete started waving the MageCon prereg book around. Pete and I had met Carol Gundrum and Judy Stucky, two of the MageCon organizers, when we helped to judge the Magic: TG tournament at TwinCon (RIP) '94, and Pete and Carol had stayed in touch. There was a nice assortment of games in the book, though weighted more towards wargaming than role-playing. MageCon also looked like a fantastic place to market Con of the North.

So, I pre-registered and offered to run a game ("The Orc Adventure", of course), planning to drive there myself if need be. Well, it turned out that Don Prust, the Twin Cities Guru of Gaming, had organized transportation and a hotel room for a group already, so I just signed on with them. So, Paul Koch, Don, and I congregated at Don's house at noon on Friday, picked up Sara Leschinsky, her minivan, and a tray of brownies (very important to have), then off to Sioux Falls!

We arrived at the Ramkota hotel by 5 PM, plenty of time to dump our stuff in the room and pick up our registration materials. I even managed to grab a sandwich from the concession stand before the second gaming session had started. I had signed up to try Planescape and brought an old D&D character from the original Forgelsby campaign back at Williams College. Bill Colwill was the GM, working from a TSR module (but an entertaining one), and we had a couple of good role-players: Denny and Eric. There were a couple of serious D&Ders who kept their noses in their rulebooks for the entire game and didn't bother the rest of us. It was a tournament with a couple more rounds that I looked forward to playing in: very enjoyable dark 'n' gritty high fantasy.

I went to bed early (10 PM) because I was running "Orcs!" at 8 AM, or so I thought. The description had been published in the onsite book, but when I got to my table at 7:45, there was no-one there! There was only one name on the sign-up sheet, which was also on a sheet for another game happening at the same time. The other game didn't seem to be taking place at its assigned table. As I looked around, a gamemaster needing more players asked if I was looking for a game to play. So I rescheduled "Orcs!" for Sunday morning and joined his game.

It was a D&D game with a vague title, so I was relieved when the GM, Dan Chisum, handed out character sheets with substantial text in the "background" section. I much prefer role-playing to hack 'n' slash. I ended up with an ambitious fire cleric. There were a couple of adult players, including Gordon, who played a laconic hill dwarf, and a couple of pre-teens, one of whom was desperate for a hack 'n' slash scenario (he was playing a mage and had no concept of tactics). The GM set up the scenario: a merchant was hiring the party to bring a cargo up north. We insisted on examining his wares and refused the job in disgust, deciding to go into business on our own. The GM apparently went into shock for a moment, then sat up with a slightly crazed look in his eyes and asked what we were planning to do. We decided to go north and scout out potential markets on our own, since so little information could be had about that area without going there.

So, off we went, and Dan simply combined elements of his original adventure with an improvised problem for us to encounter and deal with. We managed to set up a business deal with barbarous elves, meet a dragon, defeat a threat to a northern town, and prepare for an incipient war, all in four hours! I won a prize, thanks to a bizarre MageCon institution (they had $8500 of various gaming products to give away!): GURPS Reign of Steel.

Lunch was a hot dog from the concession stand. I met up with Don, Sara, Paul, and one of the serious D&Ders from the Planescape tournament. Don had given a seminar on what GMing is all about and had quite inspired the young D&Der. Don didn't actually do any gaming all convention, as it turned out, just relaxed and socialized and recovered from his work-week.

I'd signed up for a Champions game for the afternoon, run by Carol and Judy. I had a few misgivings (the description said it was set in the Mall of America) but it turned out to be a fantastic game. Apparently, Carol and Judy have been running a Champions game at MageCon for years with the same set of heroes. I won't give away any details, in case some of you get a chance to play it in the future, except that it features a live-action mini-golf contest. The scenario was ingeniously designed to give every player great opportunities for role-playing and problem-solving. Sara was also playing, but Duane Sutton stole the show with his amazing role-playing.

I stayed for the auction over the dinner hour. I was disappointed that they put the role-playing stuff and the painted miniatures and tried to peddle computer games, pictures, and old board games that didn't seem to fetch very good prices.

I bought another sandwich and wandered off to play in the second round of the Planescape tournament. It was pretty much the same crowd as the previous round, plus Brian Botz, a daring young role-player who decided that since there were two necromancers in the party, he should play a paladin. The serious young D&Der who had been inspired by Don to "actually role-play" handed Bill, the GM, the sheet for his necromancer character, whose ability scores were straight 19's (except charisma, because who really cares, right?). Bill seemed a bit underwhelmed.

I enjoyed the game a lot, as Eric's and my characters had gotten more of a feel for the situation and for each other. The other role-players also seemed to be having a good time (except for Don's devotee, who pretty much returned to his rule-book), and the scenario itself was pretty intense.

I talked with Bill, Brian, and Don's devotee until about midnight and then went to bed (Don, Paul, and Sara were already in the room, asleep!). Again, I got up bright and early to run my game, and again, no one had signed up! In fact, there were darned few games running at 8:00 on Sunday morning. But I noticed that Carol and Judy's Pendragon game had twice as many people signed up for it as it could take (Sara and Paul were on the list). So I signed up too, deciding that I would grab all the disappointed extra players and have them play in my game!

Well, I got to Carol and Judy's table and chatted with Sara and Paul while the GM's got ready, and then was told to sit down. The extra players had stayed in bed and I was in the game. So much for my mad plan and the reliability of pre-registered players! The Pendragon game was almost as good as the Champions game, but for different reasons. I'd never played Pendragon before, but it looks like a good system for motivating role-playing and the players themselves were terrific. I'll probably pick up the system and run it for one-offs. Carol and Judy mostly stayed out of the way, threw in a bit of plot now and then, and left us to it. The characters looked very simple at first, but came out very vividly in play. I won another prize in this game, a Pendragon supplement, yet another incentive to buy the rulebook. *sigh!*

I asked Don and Co. if we could stay for part of the auction. I bid on and actually got a huge pile of GURPS stuff that I'd had my eye on, including Time Travel, Psionics, Ultra-Tech and a few other supplements, for $21. I didn't get to play in the third round of Planescape, but a couple of other players, good ones, weren't going to make it either.

All-in-all, a remarkably good con, and I was able to pass out quite a few Con of the North t-shirts and kept the freebie table stocked with flyers. The make-your-own-fun principle is always an essential at cons.