thread: 2015-03-23 : The Vengeful Demon of the Ring as a Con Game
On 2015-03-23, James wrote:
1) Not really! Your note has no exit: they should not do anything that makes *themselves* uncomfortable, but if the secret game is harming or making their con experience bad, well, they have no recourse, other than hoping there's a hidden safety valve they can trigger.
I am noting that it's upfront that there will be some tomfoolery involved, but if I'm really reading carefully, it seems like (and could easily be otherwise), that you're organizing a con and then include this after they've registered. So in this hypothetical world, if somebody wants to show up to this con, like they did "last year", and run some games and have fun, and instead their games are interrupted by players acting weird, and asking them to do weird things for them like fetch a Large Coke. The primary escape valve is: "the players annoy the GM enough such that they show visible frustration, or the GM intuits they have to call the players out on playing another game instead of playing the game they're in."
And that's kind of the thing: I would probably be glad take part in weirdsecretgamecon, but I wouldn't want to run a 'normal' game during it. Why bother running for people who are quite possibly going to be enabled jerks?
You could pitch it more upfront, such that everybody who comes is excited for 'subtle secret game con'. You could try and curate the secret games so that to your opinion, they're less likely to create negative experiences for people pulled into them.
Or you could do something like have a reversible label on their badge which indicates their willingness to be involved in tomfoolery, which offers a simple opt out. That's not even a complete save, because even if I'm opted out, if I'm running a game, are my players opted out?
