For the first time, a game with no female players was noticeable for that reason. There’s one game where I genuinely cannot remember, but I very much get the vibe that the gender ratio is very slowly shifting.
Two different games had pre-teen players. That’s a new one on me.
First time I’ve seen the X-Card used outside of an ‘indie’ games group. This was regular old transhumanist sci-fi horror game, … you know, I’ll just end that one there
The X-Card is more or less what it sounds like; A card with an X on it.
The idea is that if anyone finds something in a game uncomfortable, they can tap or gesture to or pick up and wave the X-Card, and we all move on, no questions asked.
I’ve never seen it used, but I damn near ran an opening session of a game which would have had one of the players lunging wildly for said card. Fortunately, a chance remark gave me time to re-write it.
First time I had to bail on an event due to poor spoon-management.
First time I’ve had a GM list their preferred pronouns on a little name card. I’d seen the occasional person who had them on a badge ribbon; No idea where the ribbons came from.
First time I’ve not been the person who traveled the furthest. I wasn’t even #2 on the list, as there was someone from sonewhere in Sweden, and someone from Rome.
From NZ, it was possible to have come from further away, if you were from Australia.
From the UK, … Pretty easy.
The person who traveled the furthest is almost certainly from Western Australia.
First time making characters at the game table; Normally it’s pre-gens all the way, but given that the two games were Masks & QAGS, there wasn’t much chance of character Gen eating up the session.
Masks uses the Apocalypse Engine, so Character Generation is mostly ‘circle the option’ + ‘fill in the blank’.
QAGS is a very simple system; The hard part is the concept. Once you have THAT, the rest is pretty easy. In the game of it I ran, a player known for analysis paralysis was able to make a character, from initial concept to being ready to go, in about 15 minutes.
And because I’d like to put in an image; I never saw this guy, but I did see a soapbox literalist ranter. Me, I prefer this approach;
