Basically that is all that I've been doing in the last two months which is why this EGG is a little late. Gencon This is a very lar ge convention. I believe I heard that some 4000 people came to it. I personally like smaller more personal conventions but I was there to run games. In four days I ran seven four hour events. Two runs of "Save Gordon" an MG about the Sudan campaign. Two runs of "The Swashbucklers" the beginners MG. Two runs of "Peninsula Campaigns" using the same matrix as for save Gordon but now set in 1808. And "Rescue Lady Stephanie" an MG about a fantasy adventure. I was very tired by the end of the con. Next year I will not run that many games! Peninsula Campaign This is a small one day convention put on in Kalamazoo Michigan by the Military Gamers of Michgan. This convention puts on consistently high quality historical miniatures events. It is relaxed and friendly. If you are In the' region it is worth going to. I ran "Peninsula Campaigns" for one run and played in two other excellent miniatures events. Brother Aelred played in my game, which was very-gratifying since he is the person who first suggested to me that the Peninsula Campaign might be an excellent MG. Rigid rules give precise, step by step instructions on exactly how to do every action in the game. They are in fact very mechanical. So much so that it is impossible to distinguish an neophyte from an expert merely by watching them play. The test of skill come from the results of their moves, not "how" they made them. Now contrast this with a bad/new story teller... "I heard this, ah, really neat Joke the other day. Ah, Jack told it to me while we were coming home from work. Yea the highway was really crowded, so, ah, he told the Joke." Please note that we are still waiting for the Joke. It may be another five minutes before we hear it. Unfortunately though one knows that it probably isn't worth all the build up. Hopefully the story teller will not spoil the punch line, but that is likely to happen. A poor story teller is indeed a horrible sight to see. The critical event is this. After hearing a bad Joke told poorly, could you (who have never heard a Joke before) tell the Joke in a way that is funny? Probably not. The art of running RPGs, and free kriegsspiels has less to do with the content of the message as it does with how the message is delivered. After all the end result of a miniatures game Is that one side wins. The end result of an RPG can be the exact same thing. It is how one reaches the result that defines the type of game. Free style games are in fact story telling. As such there 15 more to them than just reading out of a book. There are many subtle skills involved. And the best way to learn them is to see them done by an expert. Consequently, free style games are best transmitted by word of mouth. This is a big disadvantage, especially considering the low number of gamers in the world before the 1960. Once the genie is out of the bottle though, look out. Dungeons and Dragons is a free style game. In the 70s the game hobby seemed to hit the critical mass needed to sustain this kind of game by word of mouth. The game, like all RPGs and free kriegsspiels, is dependent on the referee to make it work, but there were enough good refs out there to teach the style. Back to Experimental Games Group # 14 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com