DDC 41 – Three Rings of Doom

Three Rings of Doom was a multi-GM multi-genre role-playing game event at Dundracon 41 on Friday evening in San Ramon, California.

My sister-in-law, Jolene had come up with an idea running three RPG tables at the same time but each with their own world setting; fantasy, modern and sci-fi. All these tables would be running with same system or similar system enough that they would be compatible if one player was able to move to another table. Of which the main idea was that they would all end up together in a final Conflict. The seeds of this idea came from where other friend & kids played in a D&D game where all the parties came together at the very end. You can find some more info & photos here at Saulster’s Blog

For my part, I will write about my portion the in the whole event which was science fiction or as my sister-in-law like to call it Space Opera.

But in a way, she is right because we actually own a role playing game called Space Opera which came out in the early 1980s. My brother and I played and GMed it for a few years back then after I figured it out. And probably in the last 10 years my brother has gamed Space Opera at SF Bay Area conventions on a semi-regular basis and myself twice.

The players started out Transcendence Station Spaceport and I explain to them a little bit about the world. Thousands of years in the future which in current events the death of the emperor was about 13 years previously. So space or the galaxy was now being run by small Confederations which make it profitable for small time traders to go from confederation to confederation to make trading runs.

It was suggested that game start off with an action scene, but myself, I thought a little bit of role-playing before any incident would help ease the players into making it feel like they were in the far future. I prepared a vinyl battlemap by drawing the port area where there spaceship was dock and nearby buildings. There was some role playing with various spaceport denizens. I introduced some decisions for the group to make and at that time a fight broke out. I thought all the characters were able to make use of their skills even though the challenge was not very difficult.

So, the game was off to the races. The game was scheduled for

  • Group assembles
  • First conflict
  • Find the next location
  • Second conflict