What I'd do with the Nationals

Since we did come close to actually winning, these kinds of thoughts dwell on the mind. In fact, they've been percolating since 1998, the first time we went, but placing focused them more clearly.

Gonnae No Roll That
Keep this. It raised about as much for charity as my hair. Obviously not for wargames, and most applicable for RPGs where, to be honest, dice rolling shouldn't play that big a part anyway.

House Rules
This is not your house. This is not my house. This is not the time or place for house rules.
This is definitely not the time or place for spending half an hour explaining all the variations you've brought into the system when we've signed up to play D&D. freakcrab has killed for less.

Normal Day And Weird Day
Don't try to run freaky convention-style one-offs on both days. Just don't.
If I've signed up for Star Wars, I want to be able to shoot Stormtroopers, or at least Battle Droids. I don't want to play a Stormtrooper.
If I've signed up for Shadowrun, at least one of the two adventures should involve the PCs doing some Shadowrunning.
Both adventures being set in alternate dimensions is a bad sign unless you've signed up for a Sliders kind of game. It's definitely a bad sign when playing the World Of Darkness category.
Exploring strange sides of the setting is fine on one day out of two, but the other had better be right at the heart of what makes the game distinctive. I was very glad to have some backstabbing Camarilla politics after the Simpsons Sabbat game this time, but even that involved a scientist supervillain and elder PCs.

You All Know Each Other
No, we actually don't. Our characters might, but since we don't it might help if they didn't either.
If they're a defined group (the regular cast in a Buffy game, say) this isn't a problem, but if these are new characters who have pre-defined connections, we really need to know what our characters know and think about each other. I've seen this done well, inadequately and not at all. And if they don't need to know each other, we would be as well to take advantage of them not.

I Want To Play... Um... Blank Sheet Two.
The Nationals RPG tournaments generally hand out characters utterly blind. As a test of general roleplaying ability, that's fine, but on one day out of two I'd like a bit of say. For example, in a Supers game in Glasgow, the character pictures were on the back of the sheets so the players could go "I want to be the big monster!" and so on.

So I'm A... What The Hell Am I Again?
On a related note, having hooks from outside sources is very helpful. Being able to say "this character is like this character" or better "like one of these characters" is a great help. Likewise, it should be something that can be played up. Being scheming and cynical like Blackadder makes for better gaming than being nice and polite like Mrs. Pot from Beauty And The Beast. I've been handed both of those in my time. Fun characters will bring more to a dull adventure than dull characters will to a fun adventure.

A Theme
The 2001 Nationals were A Gaming Odyssey. A cute, simple theme. Monoliths were meant to turn up in at least one of the two adventures in every game. In Star Wars, for example, a big black monolith is clearly a Dark Side artefact and generally bad news, while in Open Sci-Fi, the USS Monolith is under attack. It's a simple idea which added to the discussion and in-jokery between groups and teams. "So where was the monolith in your game?"

My own suggestion for a theme is one that, frankly, if you can't get this into a game you're not trying.

Pirates!

Think about it. You've got classical pirates, modern pirates, space pirates, data pirates, pirate ghosts, Vampirates (the pun is not my fault, I swear)...

So that's what I would do. I think it would be fun.

Suggestions welcome, naturally.


In other news, my ears and the back of my neck really are uncomfortably cold much of the time. It's particularly bad putting my head down on a cold pillow when I'm trying to sleep.

No good deed goes unpunished...