Curse of the Pharaoh Halloween Party (the Wrapup)

Curse of the Pharaoh Halloween Party (the Wrapup)

Cotpbook

Yes, first off I must admit that I've been putting off composing a wrapup report for the blog.  There are 2 reasons.

1) If you were there, then the chances are that you don't need the wrapup, as we did discuss at the end of the game how everybody did, pitfalls, funny stories, missed opportunities for advancement that we had no idea about at the time, etc...

2) If you are on the internet searching the title, I don't want to give away any crucial plot points - or more accurately, if I say any plot points that I think are trivial, perhaps they just were trivial to my character and they're major to other characters...

So, no spoilers; only generalizations.  

On to the description of the game - http://www.freeformgames.com/game_details.php?30 - to quote the site, "Join us in Egypt, 1894, and determine the fate of the British Empire in a thrilling evening of mystery and murder. You will be in the middle of the action and it will be up to you to wheel and deal with the other guests. Can you achieve your goals, keep your secrets hidden and survive Curse of the Pharaoh? It's up to you."

Honestly, while describing the game accurately, those words really do not convey the immediacy - the sweaty-palmed deceptions, thefts, attacks on other players, and the hushed conversations attempting alliances which twist and turn on the windy back roads of the other player's quest to achieve their objectives.  It's hard to accurately convey the situation you are in, knowing that one or two wrong decisions on your part can get you killed off out of the game, or to a greater extent - kick you out before you achieve your goals.

The preparations were handled by Jenn since she was running the game, and there were many decisions about who should get/could handle what role.  Some of the roles are larger, more complex, maybe even more "vital" to the main story arc, and they needed to go to somebody who would take on the role and plow forward without being shy.  She did that task quite well in my opinion.  Other than that, there are a great number of paper printouts that have to be done.  The decision was made to put some of the secrets, items, information - basically everything that the character should have to carry with them on card stock and that worked out quite well.  She punched holes in the corner of the cards and tied them together, so they couldn't be lost. One recommendation however, would be that a card needs to be removed, handed to the affected player who must then tear it up in order for the first player to attempt to use it.  That way we have a clear indication that a special ability with one or two uses only gets it's one or two uses.  Along those lines, there should be 2 cards if you can use the ability twice.  We'll try that next time.

Anyway -
So, the game starts off simply enough.  We had bought the expanded version, so we had 17 people in attendance plus the host. That's a lot of people...  Some of them wound up having little to do with my goals, but it was fun asking my friends and some strangers about who they were, and what had brought them there.

Early on in the game, everybody was very careful to try and not step on any toes, because combat seemed something nobody wanted to risk, or at least not if there was a possibility of losing, and *at the absolute best* the other player is simply "knocked out" for up to 15 min.  Once desert was served and killing became an option, the energy of the game changed.  Lots more sneaky, underhanded, back-stabbing forms of trying to rid the game of characters who were believed to have contrary goals.  There were genuinely few hand-to-hand attacks.

The dig table, where the artifacts were stored was adorned with a few extra items that I had laying around the house for window dressings to the main items, and they were all decided to have absolutely no value.  Almost everything on the table was stolen by somebody at some time.  My friends are thieves; I had no idea...  I guess it would have been wise to ask a cop to watch the table, or perhaps Sir William should have had some of his dig team stand guard...  You'd think that somebody from his team would have cared, since they were *his* dig team's artifacts...  I think that could have run a bit smoother.  Or had a completely different catastrophic result.

Some of the great fun is in the later discussions, when everybody realizes just how close to failure they might have been at any moment, opportunities for advancement lost - based on the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, or information coming out too late, finding a secret about a player or thing that you have no real need for...  (or DID YOU?  Did you sell the info?  Trade the info to an interested party for something you might need?  Was it knowledge about something illegal?  Did you run to the cops?  Try and blackmail?)

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/databob/Halloween#

I gotta say we're going to try more of the games from Freeform Games, because this one was awesome, and going in with a little more experience will make the next even better.  The main change, however, is that if we have this many people again, we're going to need two people acting as hosts.