from 2011
tomorrow, (i hope) i should have the write up for one of the best games
that i have ever run in my signature convention game, Qags-in-a-bag.
and what, pray tell, is Qags-in-a-bag? allow me to explain... gear
up kiddies, this is the long version of the origins of the fabled and
mysterious bag.
let's travel back in time to late June 2006. exactly one week before Origins '06
Saturday evening, i'm in Point Place, at the annual Summerfest and
Fireworks extravaganza. hanging out with family. for some strange
reason, my father asks me if they are to expect anymore grandchildren. i
reply, "No, it hasn't happened at this point. I'm pretty sure it's not
going to happen."
Sunday, my wife informs me that she is pregnant with our second child. Karma's a bitch, right?
so, she tells me that i should go to the con and have a good time,
and not really worry about the pregnancy situation. so i go. it is this
weekend that i discover the Qags 2nd Edition rulebook, and it's also the
first time i get into a qags event at a convention. i fell in love with
the system and wanted to run something for my friends as soon as i
could.
and i did, my group manages to do a game that we wanted to for a
long time; a superhero game in which you pull your name from a hat and
design your character around that name. it was mad fun.
so, after that, Qags became my default system for quick adventure.
but i wanted a faster delivery system. from my previous experience, i
know that gaming while having a child happens at a premium. i began to
kick around an idea of creating a true random adventure generator,
something that i could just pull out and in a matter of seconds i could
get a game going. kinda like mad libs for RPGs.
so i looked at how i did the character creation for our superhero
game. small pieces of paper. nothing special. i began to write other
things down on the paper. game mechanics, places, persons, things,
sayings, concepts, fully realized ideas, etc. after a while i had a bit
of a pile of small papers. i began to throw it into a brown paper lunch
bag to hold them all. i wrote "Qags Lunch" on the bag, just to make sure
that it wouldn't get lost in the mix of other bags.
the bag slowly filled with ideas, but it was a long process, and
after a while, i decided to try it out. i pulled out three or four
pieces of paper at once, took a look at them, then began to put together
some semblance of a theme. strangely, it worked. i pulled out three
more, then made a second theme. i thought i was on to something.
so i tried it out on friends, and it seemed to work, though i really
didn't have any specific rules for the game at this point, since i
considered it free-form.
i debuted "Qags-in-a-bag" in 2008, since "Qags Lunch" didn't cover
the concept very well, and "making $#!+ up off the top of my head" is a
little lengthy. it's first public event was at BashCon in my home town.
this was also the time that i inadvertently ran into two of the Hex
Games staffers, those who write Qags and Qags related products.
so for 4 1/2 years now , i've been running this event, and i've still never had a duplicate game. fascinating.
I say that the "Qags-in-a-bag" game that i ran at Gencon this year
was by far the best thing that i ever ran using this technique. again, i
hope to have the full write up posted tomorrow.
Qags-in-a-bag: Invented By Necessity...Designed By Insanity...
MK
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