Kubla Crasher

Sunday - Lazy day - unless you stay up 'til 4AM the night before and organize a pick-up game at noon. While some folks think it odd, I bring a 3-gallon water jug, an electric teapot, tea, trail mix and food bars to every con. This was breakfast Sunday AM in the room. Up at 10AM. Ready to go by 11. No game to run that day, so the day was wiiiiide open.

Jack Young's pick-up game was a continuation of a game that a bunch of us had started a few weeks prior. Jack guessed that it would take about 4 hours. Heck, he'd run the game Friday night, so he had a good handle on it. Ya know where this is goin doncha? I didn't get into a 3:30 horror game that I wanted, so no problem until 5:30 - Gil Trevizo's Cthulhu game. Jack's game went to the wire (totally worth it - I almost pulled off a brilliant finale, but the final die roll went against me) and I had to dash off to make it to Gil's. Since I didn't officially get in, I wanted a shot at crashing. Didn't think I had much of a chance as I'd had 8 people waiting to crash my game.

Gil uses a great system for dealing with crashers. I'm totally gonna use it for my games. He puts out a sign-in sheet for both 'registered' Players and crashers. I got lucky and signed as the 1st crasher. Luckier still, 3 registered Players didn't show. Half of the Players! Not quite as surprising as it sounds - there was a mix-up in the time of the game. One time in the program - 6PM. One on the eratta sheet - 8PM. A promise from the staff to fix it for 8PM. Didn't happen & it was set for 6PM.

At 6:10 Gil dispersed characters and seated everyone. He wanted specific seating based on the character relationships. Funny thing is, I'd done the same thing with my game the night before and Todd the same Friday night. Great minds thinkin alike? Well, maybe those two. He'd actually assigned seats and we were doin the musical chairs thing when two of the registered Players arrived. Awkward! One was the GM who had just run the horror game I'd failed to get in. The other was her hubby. Tough choice for Gil. I don't envy him. At first he was inclined to shuck the decision onto the crashers, but he finally GM'd up and told crashers #2 & #3 that they had to give up their seats. Brutal. I spent the next 15 minutes in fear that the Player I'd supplanted would show. He eventually did, but a coupla hours into the game. Whew!

The game rocked and in the end my character gave his life to rescue everyone else. He also got to do in the evil woman that got us into the horrible mess we got into. Very satisfying. Now, Gil scheduled the game for 6 hours. With delays caused by musical chairs +, and Players doin what they do, we wrapped at about 2AM. Hmmmm. I'm scheduled to run Paranoia, Monday at 9AM. Curse me for not trying to get a 10AM slot. No problem on 6 hours of sleep. Make that 5.5 hours. I gotta check out of the hotel Monday AM, so I needed to pack & be ready to do that during a break from the Paranoia. No problemo...