Hosting a Long Con (Different Systems, Same Setting)

#1

I am hosting a long con next week and am looking for any advice from folks who have tried similar projects. We are going to play a series of games in the same setting, with a focus on systems that require minimal prep and learning-time.

Each time we start a game, we’ll locate the session somewhere on a Microscope timeline of our setting. Each time we wrap a game, we’ll note major events on the timeline and share any major additions to setting. Then we’ll take a break, choose a new game, and begin again.

Any thoughts on potential pitfalls to avoid or procedures to adopt? Also, anything in particular that would be useful to report out from such an experiment?

Related thread: Linked Stories with Different Systems

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#2

Could you define what you mean by a long con? Are you talking one table of players or more than one?

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#3

We’ll have one to two tables running at any given time. Some folks are dropping in for a couple games, others are staying all weekend.

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#4

So this sounds like actually a long and wide con. A “long con” (aka KristaCon) is generally multiple sessions of a game with generally the same players. A " wide con" is generally a single session of a game but multiple tables playing at the same time.

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#5

Oh cool. The term wide con is new to me. Long wide con describes it perfectly.

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#6

It’s like a squarecon, with both length and width!

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#7

This sounds cool. I’ve seen the DMs (Dramatic Masters, because all the drama!) text each other during the game to stay in sync and make it so the consequences of action in one group impact the other. Also, having a big final scene together is awesome.

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#8

Oh yeah, we will definitely have to plan a big finale.

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#9

Potential pitfalls:

The scale of change at one table vastly outpacing or overshadowing another table. Make sure that one table doesn’t get to go after the Galactic Overlord while the other tables are trying to fix the irrigation pump. Keep the challenges and rewards roughly in-scale and don’t be afraid to preclude some options that broadly effect everyone without any advance warning.

I would not allow folks to switch table once the event begins, and especially avoid it while games are underway. Give each table a satisfying arc from start to finish across the multiple games, and if you’re time-jumping make sure there’s some compelling continuity to tie the sessions together.

I’d avoid allowing tables to communicate with each other, or allow it only in an explicitly limited manner that either happens at a proscribed time (a ten-minute epistolary break halfway through, maybe) or comes with an unpredictable time delay (so that tables don’t have to interrupt their narrative to respond).

BEST PRACTICES:
Make sure the GMS have a chat before each session about where they’re going and a quick debrief afterwards. Consider a roaming co-ordinator to move between tables and offer advice and assistance and help with continuity depending on how much you value it.

Consider knocking off 15 minutes early to get everyone together to see who their various table affected the world. This requires real work and discipline, you need GMs willing to cut stuff short to make it happen the right way.

Get as close as you can to requiring anyone who registers to play in all the slots. Continuity of players will really help with creating the sense of an ongoing, connected narrative.

Finally, I would very strongly recommend that you stick to the same system throughout. You’ll get much better pick-up, stronger continuity, and have a far better shot at recruiting GMs who’ll deliver consistently. If you’re deeply immersed in the hobby, it can get easy to forget that asking folks to GM 3 or 4 sessions is a heavy lift, but asking them to know 3 or 4 different systems well enough to do it is approaching unreasonable.

Good luck! These events are trickier than they appear, but when you pull them off, they’re amazing.

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#10

This is all really solid advice. I would sometime like to run a small long con just as you’re describing. I’ve done a long con with a single table of Blades in the Dark over a full weekend and it was great.

For this gathering, our attempt to manage GM load is a little different than what you describe above. No one is GMing more than once, and we’re playing primarily GMless games that we have played several times before. So responsibility to maintain coherence across games is more distributed. We’ll have to see how feasible that is. The check-ins and updates between sessions you mention will help. We’re also just keeping this small, only running two tables at a time, rather than many.

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#11

This was super fun, though we decided to scale down and get a proof of concept in berore hosting a larger event. We played Questlandia -> The Wizard’s Grimoire -> Follow.

Questlandia was great for world creation and seeing the political trends and crises of the world. It also let is be really collaborative about the pallet of influences and themes. We ended up with two powerful city states, locked in cold war, seperated from a valley of toxic mists.

Wizard’s Grimoire let us zoom way in on a single character in this world, and their (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to turn their magical talents into a living. We saw this wizard travel the newly established subterranian rails, running from past follies and seeking arcane knowledge.

Follow let us swap perspective to a group on the edges of this society: one of the villages set deep in the mist-shrouded valleys, fighting for independance from the guild-controlled city-states.

It was unlike any play-experience I’ve had before, and reincorporating ideas in totally new contexts was great fun.

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#12

I’m currently prepping a proper long-con: a weekend-long campaign of Mouse Guard. I’ll start a new thread when I have notes to share.

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