RPGaDay: Strange

One of the great things about RPG conventions is the opportunity to try strange games - strange in that they're new to me (although obviously some of them turn out to be the other kind of strange as well.)

The latest one was The Cthulhu Hack, which I played at Virtually Expo.  While I have played it once before at Concrete Cow, that was several years ago and the game was also very much not your traditional Cthulhu investigation.  This one was, so I could really see how The Cthulhu Hack works.  Unsurprisingly, very well.  I'm not a fan of huge skill lists, so not having one was definitely a bonus for me.  The resource dice are good too - no worries about whether you're going to find a clue, only if finding said clue will deplete your resources.  The only thing I really wasn't sold on was calling them Smokes and Flashlights.  I couldn't make these very specific nouns match up with the abstract concepts they're supposed to represent.  That's a minor niggle though.  I would definitely play again, and I do love the wipable characters sheets available for it.

I've got two more strange games coming up at AlbaCon - City of Mist, and Broken Shield.  The former I'm aware of, as it was recommended to me as something similar in tone to the Birds of Prey movie.  I'm hoping for low power superheroes in a world that's both dark and colourful.  The latter I know almost nothing about, beyond that it involves a futuristic London, and I'm looking forward to finding out what it's all about.

The strangest game (weird strange as well as unfamiliar strange) I've played at a convention is probably Seco Creek Vigilance Committee, which is unlike any other game I've ever played.  A game of justice, law and revenge, with no dice, only resources and abilities.  Each character has their own agenda, which is likely to clash with both other players and the situation at hand.  It was a memorable experience obviously, since I'm writing about it now, but ultimately I didn't really jibe with the mechanics.  An interesting, creative game, but not for me.

A whole different kind of weird strange happened when I signed up to play We Are Detective, a game run by James Mullen using Inspectres.   It was based on the Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency TV show, and involved Peruvian hedgehog coffee being smuggled in mannequins, and that was the least weird part.  I remember balloons, and another character's ability to produce a kitten from his pockets at will.  That day I saw two forces of weird collide, in the form of GM and player, and the resulting fallout in the form of one of the strangest games I've ever played.

A fun thing about seeking out strange games at conventions is getting to play game from the future!  I played Blue Planet: Recontact at Concrete Cow about a year and a half ago.  Apparently it's still being worked on, and I hope they're getting somewhere, as I really enjoyed being a sentient gorilla on a water planet, and want to play some more.  At Tales from Dreaming Spires I played a game called Sainted London, which was set in a bizarre alternative Victorian London.  A game so new it hasn't even hit Kickstarter yet.

Not all my experiences of trying out strange games have been great, but the vast majority have been brilliant experiences.  A convention one-shot is one of the cheapest ways to try out something new, especially in these times of exclusively online gaming where travel and venue hire have ceased to be a thing.  At worst, you've only lost a few hours and at best you've got a new favourite game.