Looney Labs Rabbits Mailing list Archive

[Rabbits] [Event] An UberRabbit at UberCon by Seth Ruskin

  • FromSuperFRED <superfred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateTue, 18 Oct 2005 15:44:21 -0000
This is an auto-generated report from SuperFRED regarding an event that Seth Ruskin has submitted.
http://rabbits.looneylabs.com/?RabbitUserID=GnTar

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Title: An UberRabbit at UberCon
Location: UberCon (East Rutherford, NJ)
Date: October 14 - 16, 2005

At the request of the Director of Board Games for UberCon, I agreed to run a series of Looney Labs games for them at UberCon this past weekend. After donning my lab coat and rabbit-earred top hat, I ran the following events over the course of the weekend:

EcoFluxx (Friday, 11pm - Midnight)
I ended up with a free hour before my first scheduled event, so I sat down at a free table and pulled out my stash of Looney Labs games. Shortly thereafter, three fans of Looney Labs games arrived at the table and after talking, I introduced them to EcoFluxx. Right before we started, a new player arrived. A brief tutorial later, we started playing. As none of us had played EcoFluxx before, suprises abounded as we were able to compost the deck, frogs went extinct, dirt became polluted, and insects became poisonous. We were only able to play one game before I had to move to another table, but I know at least one player bought the game from one of the vendors at their earliest opportunity.

Are You a Werewolf? (Saturday, Midnight to 2 am)
As the midnight hour approached, 11 unsuspecting villagers assembled... well, more like 8 new players and 3 experienced  players assembled to play a series of games of mob paranoia. Right off the bat, the players shifted into character (avenger mode) and bumped off villagers left and right in their quest to find the werewolves. I added bad puns and sarcastic color commentary when appropriate. Unfortunately, they weren't able to find the wolves in their midst and the werewolves killed everyone. One player walked away, but another showed up to take his place. After a quick tutorial, I had the new player up to speed. This time, the group requested a no-kill first night. Alas, it didn't help their chances much and the werewolves won again. By resounding request, we played two more games. During the last two games the villagers got their act together and managed to lynch both werewolves at the last minute. Now 2am, the session was called so people could get some sleep.

Volcano (Saturday, Various pick-up games)
During moments of free time, I set up my pyramid sets on a free table. This had the immediate effect of drawing people. One person would request Volcano (usually a person who had challenged me at Volcano at last year's UberCon Little Experiment) and the game would be on. I believe that 4 of the 6 opponents I had over the course of the day were either new to Looney Labs games, or Volcano in particular.

Zendo (Saturday, 6pm - 7pm)
Two new players and one experienced player sat down at the table to play. For fairness, I chose to use the rule cards supplied with the boxed set. Three games were played, testing the players' reasoning skills until the Buddha nature was discovered.

UberChrononauts (Saturday, 8pm - 10:30pm)
Though both players had experience with a version of Chrononauts (one played the original, the other EAC), neither had played UberChrononauts. So I reviewed the rules changes and we got underway. Though I pulled out to an early lead with a successful ID victory condition, I was soon left in the dust. The timeline was strained with up to 9 paradoxes in a four line area, but never broke.

Are You a Werewolf? (Sunday, Midnight to 3am)
Over the course of the day, I had people asking me if they could play in tonight game. When the moment arrived, I had so many people asking to play that I had to turn a lot away with the advice to return later to see if anyone dropped out. With a full fifteen players at the table, I reviewed the rules (I can't say how many were new and how many had experience), got group consensus on "no-kill" first nights, and we got underway. Unlike yesterday's village, tonight's shifted into detective mode. One player tried to institute a more fair system of justice, another applied statistics and lobbied for a random draw for the lynching victim. After a while, I had to invoke time limits on the day cycle so that the game wouldn't grind to a halt. We managed to get through 2 games by 2am (when the event was scheduled to end), werewolves winning both times. I offerred to run one more round, and after some players departed, 4 new players sat down to learn the game. The last game ran in ave!
 nger-style (as the two detectives were lynched and eaten back to back), and the village managed to save itself by the skin of their teeth.

Fluxx (Sunday, 10am - 11am)
With two new players and two experienced players sitting down at my table, I shuffled the deck. Though the game lasted for an hour, we didn't even make it around the table twice (thanks to the Composting rule (added into the deck as a promo), Take Another Turn action, Empty the Trash action, Draw 3 Play 2 action Play All rule, No Hand Bonus rule, Draw 5 rule, X = X + 1 rule, and the Reverse Order rule). Thankfully, one of the players supplied Oreos so that those of us that only had 1 turn had some compensation for sitting for most of an hour watching the other three people play. The winner (one of the new players) of the game received a copy of Flowers and Fluxx that I had put up as a prize.

In addition to running these games, I walked around the convention in my lab coat and earred-hat distributing promotional materials, Icehouse and Fluxx stickers, Happy Flowers, and singing the praises of Looney Labs games.