Origins Event Submission help

[grandmastergm]

Hello fellow HERO gamers,

 

I'm planning on running some events at Origins in 2019. They will be Champions or HERO games given my disappointment at the lack of those games at the 2018 convention.  Have you ever submitted events to Origins before?

 

Just curious as I've never done event submissions and could use some help.

[drunkonduty]

I've never submitted to Origins (I'm in Australia) but I did submit to the local Cancon last year.

 

I wanted to attract new players and I had a long hard think about what I could do to make the game more playable for new players.

 

I opted for player cheat sheets for basics like hitting, damage, and standard manouevres (with plain English explanations of those manouevres.) I also got rid of the OCV/DCV chart and replaced it with a simple equation (Roll 3d6+Attack, vs. target number of 11+Defense; equal or higher means a hit). I would recommend the HERO mobile app (available from the downloads section.) It quickly and easily counts Stun, BOD, and Knockback for damage. In my experience this is one of the things that new players struggle with.

 

I designed the characters. I wrote up plain English descriptions for all the powers. I wanted (but totally lack the programming skills required) a much simplified character sheet. One that downplayed the HERO speak jargon and focused on the plain English  explanations (the stuff  HERO designer puts in the notes and prints in teeny tiny print.)  Also just bigger printing on the sheets. I toyed with doing up my own sheets and then just manually filling them in, but time and laziness got away from me.

 

For each character I did up a character picture using Hero Machine. I did male and female art for each character and printed out little paper minis for the characters. To make tracking BOD, Stun, and END easier I put tracks on the art sheets. The players could use tokens to track the stats that way. I also included speed and skill level tracks.

 

I wrote up 3 scenarios of increasing complexity. The first was a VIPER agent bash. The second involved finding an underground metahuman fighting ring and rescuing 2 prisoners. The 3rd was a classic "the villains are stealing tech to build a doomsday weapon" scenario. I play tested my first scenario with my regular gaming group. It went pretty well and I got some feedback that I acted on.

 

And in the end I got no players. Couple of people contacted me but one of them contacted me late and cancelled shortly thereafter. The other was only ever a soft maybe. In the end I didn't want to run for one person (maybe). On the second day of the con a third person emailed me to see if I was running but by then I wasn't. ?

 

Some advice re. dealing with the con organisers:

Get your game blurb in early. I did, but it made little difference because...

Make sure the con organisers  put it up on their website and give it the appropriate tags so people can find it.

I did put my own blurb up on Warhorn. Don't think that helped find players. But it WAS useful for organising my own schedule.

Make sure they give you a table (or better yet room) in an appropriate space. I was given a table in the middle of the effin trade hall. Far too noisy and busy to run an rpg there.

Contact them regularly and make sure they are doing their end of the work.

 

Origins has the advantage that it's much bigger than Cancon and people are being paid to do the work. So you probably won't have the problems I did. But make sure this is the case.

 

Also, use word of mouth and your social media networks to spread the word. Tell everyone you know to tell everyone they know.

 

 

 

[Brian Stanfield]

I just remembered that forums member rjcurrie has run many events at Origins. I’ve played a couple with him. He’d be able to tell you the specifics of what’s required. And if you plan enough events I think you get a badge in exchange. Shoot him a message and see what he has to say.