I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going.
- Avon [Blakes 7]

T.W.A.T. Please Enter

A single session, silly, senseless, sadistic, stimulating freeform
for 30 players
by Richard Canning & Sara Hanson

Why?

This game was conceived at the British Loin Hotel, after MacquarieCon 1994. At this after party there was a lot of complaints about the fact that some designers gave trophies to their friends, or that they seemed biased. Sara and I decided to write a freeform for a large number of players and to give every person who played a trophy. Partially because it hadn't been done before, partically because it would be hard for them to complain about favouritism, but mainly becuase it would be fun.

We wrote the game, starting with a list of over 150 characters, and then trying to get it down to 30. That was the hard bit. Writing the freeform was easy, there was hundreds of hours of video watching, erm, sorry, research. After that the writing was easy. I still feel that anyone who looks at the character list in detail can figure out 80-90% of the plots. Oh well, you can't be creating all of the time.

Writing the final bit of the game was fun; we held a party! Yep, we held a party, put on munchies and asked people to critique our plots and offer other ones that might work better. Talk about getting out of the hard work. If you ever want to write a big game, and don't think you can do it, hold a party and invite a heap of game authors, you will end up with a game. Not necessarily a good one, but ideas will sprout.

But do not tell anyone that I told you.

When ran this game at Saga we did not tell any of the players who the other characters were. It was run blind and the game started without anyone knowing who the other characters were. (Well at least we tried for that, in truth it was probably not quite what happened but what the hell) We decided not to bother the next time, so we took character bookings for Conquest '98 for several months prior to the Con and published the list of characters in the Entry Form. It was fun watching people discover what characters were in the game.

We ran the game at Saga '95, had lots of fun, and asked people what they thought T.W.A.T. stood for, the list of what they came up with is below. We did not reveal, even at the end of the game, what T.W.A.T. really stood for. It was not until the prize giving when we dropped the punch line. With a list ready and 2 GMs ready to track it all, I stood on the stage and started reading the names. The first name I read was that of a GM and there was a slight mumble in the crowd. I then proceeded to read out all of the players names, in the order they entered the convention, with the names of the GMs dispersed throughout the list; Sara Hanson, Richard Dennis, Nick Gaut and Richard Canning. I also included Dennis Ashelford and Wes Nicholson dispersed throughout the list. Dennis for approving the game to be run and for ordering the tophies, and Wes Nicholson for supporting the project. As I got down the list, the clapping started. When I got people standing and clapping by the end when I awarded the trophy to myself, Sara and I knew it was a good idea to have written this game.

Even if the game did not work well.

When the game ran at Conquest '98, we knew that we had made a big mistake. The game did work well. We were watching it all unfold in front of us, and everyone seemed to be having fun. The plots worked. The characters interacted. The game was working!

At Saga when the game had not run to full time and people said that things did not seem to flow well, we thought that the game didn't work. But as the players had said that they had fun anyway, and that we had a large number of people from Melbourne saying that they wanted to play T.W.A.T. we decided to try it again. We spread the word that the game did not work, but that the previous players had said they had fun, and let them decide to play. We got more entrants that we could accomodate.

Then the game started to work. I think that Sara and I (the only people who GMed it both times) were amazed. Madi, who played at Saga and GMed at Conquest did not seem surprised at all, but maybe that is just Madi. So ladies and gentlemen (or whatever type of boys and girls spend their time reading pages like this on the WWW), we have a game that works, and that everyone seems to enjoy, and that we may run again......

Richard Canning