Hunter: the Vigil at SCARAB 2011

I’ve driven over a hundred miles to deliver this tale.  I’ve braved ice and snow.  I’ve risked heartburn and indigestion from con pizza and too much cola.

For those of you following along at home, you may already know that I’m spending the weekend at SCARAB in Columbia, SC.  Driving in from the beach, I was totally oblivious to the fact that there might be snow and ice on the ground, but the roads were clear and much of it was already melting when I arrived, so I made it safely to the con.

After I got here, I took care of the important stuff, like registering to play in some games (I’ll be playing in a Pathfinder game Saturday morning and a World of Darkness game in the early afternoon and then running Dragon Age in the evening and Fiasco at night), checking in to the hotel and procuring my only meal of the day at a restaurant I remember fondly from my college days not too far from here.

My game of Hunter: the Vigil was scheduled to run from 8pm – midnight, so I had plenty of time to re-read my material, stress out about completely bombing, re-read the material again, get really stressed out about sucking like a badger’s ass in a vacuum cleaner; then put on my big-boy pants, splash some cold water on my face and convince myself that I could do this.

You see, when I got to the conference center this afternoon, I was doing fine.

Then, I got in line to register for games and made the mistake of eavesdropping (I know it’s not cool, but it was hard not to hear) on the couple in-line in front of me.  They signed up for a game, then looked at the sheets some more, before one of them (I wasn’t paying attention to which one, I was reading sign-up sheets) said, “Wait.  Scratch that out.  We need to sign up for this game.  I heard this guy was an awesome GM.”  That caught my attention.  I waited respectfully for my turn at that particular batch of sign-up sheets, but I was impatient.  I wanted to sign up for the game this couple signed up for with the “awesome guy” running it.  I consider myself a decent GM, but I’m always looking for fresh ideas, and I love to watch top-notch GM’s run games, especially if I’m playing.

When I reached the sheet in question, I ran my finger down to where they had signed.

There names were written on the blank lines under my 7pm Dragon Age game for tomorrow.  Someone had told these people an incredible lie (I now know the culprit and justice will be meted out accordingly – Thanks, Dell).  Like I said, I consider myself a decent GM.  I do NOT consider myself awesome. Believe me, I am intimately acquainted with my flaws.  Besides, I’ve seen people who can GM circles around me.  Some of them are here at SCARAB this weekend.  Hell, Clint Black (no, not THAT Clint Black) from Pinnacle Entertainment Group is here running games.

Most people would be incredibly flattered.

My first response was actually to be incredibly flattered.  I felt 10 feet tall and bulletproof.

This feeling lasted about 30 wonderful minutes.

Then, I had a revelation.  An epiphany, of sorts.

“Uh oh…  You can’t suck now.”

Damn.  I was right.  Now, I had to be awesome, or at least pretty good, or I was going to feel pretty damn foolish and probably go home feeling like a piece of shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe.  If I had never heard that innocent comment, I would have been extremely disappointed if I flopped and fell all over myself running this game.  Now, if I flopped, the repercussions were going to be much worse.  I just couldn’t let it happen.  It really started to stress me out.  I really did go splash cold water on my face about 20 minutes before my game was scheduled to start.  I had to calm down.

Actually, my game almost didn’t happen tonight.  I checked the sign-up sheets at about 6:30 and nobody was scheduled to play.  Earlier this week, I printed signs for each of my games on high quality card stock and on premium photo paper.  I tucked them into sheet protectors.  When I unpacked my stuff at the conference center, I was planning to hang them near the sign-up area, but they were out of tape.  After looking at my blank game roster at 6:30, I checked to see if the “con flunkie” (thanks, Myles) was back from the store with the tape.  He was, so I hung my signs.

After about 15 minutes, my game was full.  I was really going to have to do this.  After all, it was why I came here.

It was going to be a “Bad Night at Blackmoon Farm” after all.

I chose Chuck Wendig‘s adventure, because it has several things that are great for a con game:

1. It starts with a bang.
2. It starts narrow, gets wide in the middle, and gets narrow again at the end (Kevin Kulp’s brontosaurus theory).
3. It gives players a sense of urgency. This helps the action stay within the time constraints of a con game.
4. It almost runs itself.  The design makes pacing and creating tension easy.

For pre-generated characters, I used the novice-versions of “The Keepers.”  As it turned out, I had exactly five players, a perfect, full table for this set of characters.

None of my players had ever played Hunter: the Vigil before.  The closest any of them came was a player who had experience with Mage.  Several of them signed up because the description of the game sounded like the tv show Supernatural.  That’s fine with me.  I’m a fan of the show myself.  The player who was a fan of Sam Winchester took the Lucifuge character.  Also, the Supernatural ink that a couple of my players were sporting was impressive.

After a brief tutorial on the mechanics of the game and a walk-through of the character sheets, we were off!

BANG!

I played out my line as gently as possible while still keeping the set-up brief and I succeeded in luring them in.  It was going to be an investigative scenario.  Except when it’s not.

The person playing the EMT character was immediately in full triage mode as things rapidly escalated.  I also had her be the first one to get shot.  I don’t want to completely spoil the scenario for anyone who hasn’t played it yet, but I will say that the group quickly developed a scorched-earth policy.  I’ve run Blackmoon before and this group’s approach was totally different from my previous experience with it.  There’s nothing wrong with that.

I think I did a pretty good job bringing the NPC’s to life.  Izzy really disturbed and polarized the players.  After they sussed out what Marsha was up to, they decided that they would save who they could, but anyone and anything that presented an obstacle to that goal was to be put down quickly.

The group even built a makeshift bomb using the fertilizer and tractor fuel and blew the silo sky high to create a diversion (grain dust is extremely combustible).

It was somewhere around this point that I heard one of my players utter what has to be the coolest thing ever for a H:tV GM to hear.

The player of the EMT character looked at me, looked around the table and said (I’m quoting from memory here, it’s late and I’m old, so the wording is not 100% accurate.  Deal with it.), “This is not okay.  I’m uncomfortable that I’m playing a character who is used to this level of violence and weirdness but I’m not, I’d be freaking out.  This is creeping me out.”

Bingo.

Ain’t that what the vigil is about after all?  It should make the players feel a bit uncomfortable.  They should capture, to some extent, the way the hunters feel when they have taken on the mantle of the vigil.  It’s difficult to creep players out in a con setting, but there were a few moments where I had them.

When the group had rounded up a few wounded survivors, this character escorted them back to the road and the waiting vehicles.  The player was okay with sitting on the sidelines for the rest of the scenario and watching as things got even more violent and strange.

Like I did when I ran this for my old gaming group, I used the Lucifuge character as the perfect foil for Washington’s whispers.  I made the other characters suspicious of her.  The whispers told them to send her to God for judgement.  The final vision showed the world being consumed with Hellfire, as this character led the demonic legions to victory.

I had an incredible time running this adventure for my players and I hope they enjoyed it too!  If you played in my game, leave me a comment.  If you’ve played this scenario, let me know your experiences with it.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I had a pretty good night at Blackmoon Farm.