International Tabletop Day

Yesterday was International Tabletop Day, an event promoted heavily across social media (notably Twitter and Tumbler) by celebrities such as Whil Wheaton and Felicia Day. Despite battling an especially nasty chest  ailment I decided to attend the event at Gigabites Cafe in Marietta,GA.

I had planned to maybe play a game that was on offer, like "Fiasco", or run something myself. Given how bad I felt, I thought I'd play it safe and take along a fun scenario that I could knock out in a few hours and knew inside out. My choice was an old favorite, "Jailbreak", a scenario by Greg Stolze for the "Unknown Armies" RPG. I've run this at Gigabites before and also at Dragon*Con 2012.

A few gamers who I consistently play alongside or run games for where there when I showed up, none of whom had played this before.I spent thirty minutes describing the system, setting and character sheets, then we played. The whole thing took maybe two hours, consistent with the previous runs that I've done.

The scenario is simple. A group of convicts escape from prison during a riot. They hijack a car which runs out of fuel. It's a stormy night, so the prisoners take their hostages to the nearest building, a remote farmhouse. The game plays out over the course of that evening. The players can choose to play a convict, a hostage (including a prison officer) or an inhabitant of the farmhouse. The convicts want to avoid detection, the hostages want to be freed, and the farm owners want their "guests" gone.

The characters also have secrets and personal triggers that have been set up in such a way that they're bound to conflict with each other in the situation.Having run this with three different groups, everybody really understands the characters, interpersonal dynamics and system with little explanation. That shows how well this was designed.

I don't like to publish major spoilers but a minor one is fine in this case. What turns the scenario on its head is that one of the characters is an occultist. Nobody is told this up front as I like the possibility of a player choosing that character without knowing the secret...until they get the sheet! It's also possible for that character to be an NPC if not chosen. There is a real sense of uneasiness in this scenario and it's been a success every time  I've ran it. I'm glad I took part in the event and it's great to see the hobby get so much recognition.