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Okay, so I think I'm starting to recalibrate a little from this morning, so I've got some #GameholeCon thoughts about the actual games (not just the overall great experience of the trip).
Both Powered by the Apocalypse games that I played were great. @weregator and @kevthulhu are great at running games. What I noticed in both games is that I put a little more of myself in both Clamps and Eve than I initially intended. Had a little bit of bleed going on there.
Hydro Hackers played a bit with "current" me, feelings of responsibility and balancing that with personal care. A lot of my general frustration at the world and the feeling of needing to do something while needing to not be responsible for doing something came through.
Monsterhearts just flat up let me tap into that part of me that feels like I really am more of a detriment to those around me than a boon, unless I'm actively providing some value, and how I can screw up when I try to provide that value. That's been a long-term thing with me.
@veceyoung's Shadow of the Demon Lord game was an interesting gamble. I don't want to ruin it, if anyone one signs up to play it going forward, but there was a nice twist to that story that was a great payoff and very in keeping with the setting. It's worth the 6 hour investment.
Playing in one of @hobbsindeed's Kalmatta games doesn't do the whole concept justice. I enjoyed my GaryCon session, but it was really interesting to see different resolutions to the concept of heading out on rumors and seeing what happens.
I've now seen a game where we went off looking for one thing and finding another, a session where we had a general rumor of treasure and found it, and a session where we had essentially a story hook that we kind of resolved.
Seeing multiple sessions also helped to get a better feel for the very specific structure and procedure that @hobbsindeed uses for his hexcrawls, and the procedure helps to make it feel less like aimless wandering and more like a focused, emergent story in bite-sized bits.
My Shadowrun Anarchy game didn't include anyone I knew, either personally, or from online interactions, but we had a great GM, and everyone warmed up to the narrative style nicely. It probably helped that everyone at the table was pretty comfortable with cyberpunk tropes.
The only slight hiccup we had was that one player was having a hard time playing an NPC when the GM delegated that role to the player, but the GM didn't try to force it, the player just admitted they couldn't roll with it, and we moved on. It was really fun.
My Adventurers League games lead me to a whole other direction of analysis, so I'm going to save those for another thread.
