Man O War O Rama - ConQuest SF 2007

In just two short weeks, it's time for another fun-filled 3 full days of gaming for me. ConQuest SF will be August 31st through September 3rd at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel. I plan to be there from Friday around 12 noon through Sunday evening.

As usual, I'll be running a game - and as usual for ConQuest, it will be Man O War. I'm trying something different this year. Usually I create a special scenario for 6-8 players that runs from 6-9 hours and seldom gets finished - even with me speeding things along as the Game Master, but this year will mark the first ever Man O War O Rama!

What the heck is a Man O War O Rama you say? Well, I had a few specific goals in mind this year:

1. I wanted there to be more than 1 game.
2. I wanted the games to be 2 player.
3. I wanted the games to be fast.
4. I wanted to give the players the option to continue playing if they won.

So I decided to run 3 tables at once. Each table will have it's own scenery and will feature small fleets of up to 1000 points for each player. Games of this size should take 2-3 hours tops and some of the smaller games will be only around 500 points a side which should make them even faster.

Players will be given a similar sized random fleets (for balance) and turned loose at one of the 3 tables. I'm still working on the details, but so far I'm thinking it will work like this:

Points will be awarded by Battle Honors and you'll get the points you earned even if you lose. There will also be extra points for winning. If you win your game, you will have a good chance to stay at the table to take on the next player. A die roll will determine if you stay or go - players will roll a d20 and add in the Battle Honors they earned with the high roll staying at the table. If you are forced to sit out as a winner, you will be put into the rotation for the next available table and receive a few bonus points for having to wait.

This will continue for 8 or so hours at which time the person with the most points will be the winner and declared the "Best Admiral on the Sea of Claws". I'm hoping to be able to provide some sort of prize for the winner. Being this starts on Friday afternoon at 3pm and runs until 11pm, I'll have all day Saturday and Sunday to play whatever I want.

With all that in mind, I've been busy making some new scenery for one of the tables as well as touching up some of my older scenery as well. Making scenery is very therapeutic - it's been so long since I last did it, I forgot how enjoyable it can be. I'll add some pictures tomorrow of the work so far so you can get some idea of what the game is all about.

Until then...