Facilitator: Alex Jerabek
Players: Alex Jerabek, Karen Twelves, Sean Nittner, and a fourth player that I lost the name of (arg!)
System: Conspire
On our way out out of the con Karen and I did a pass through the dealers room and Alex was in there demoing games. He told me that Conspire was an RPG that you could play in 20 minutes and I was really curious what that would look like.
The format of the game (in short) is that you create a conspiratorial scenario and play out people trying to take advantage of the mystery and deception ever present. Also, while the characters are created communally, who is playing who, and what their final goals are or only known to certain people at the table.
Our setting was that of powerful lords who kept the peasants inline by keeping the monsters at bay and monster hunters that arrived, who promised to rid the people of the monsters once and for all. Of course there were no monsters, and just about everyone involved knew that, including the actual werewolf who didn’t want anyone to find them out!
We argued, established facts (using the in game currency) and generally speaking pointed all our fingers at each other. In the end each of us had met some, but not all of our secret goals. Good times, especially for how quick game setup and play is!