Years ago, when I was young and somehow even more clueless, I attended my first and so far only GenCon. The short form is that a month of missed sleep due to school, laundry, and con all added up and I passed out while running a game in a hotel room. But you're not here for the short version of the story are you?
the long version of how I fell asleep while *running* a game; set up
Two parts of my life at the time were about to collide.
At the time I was lived off campus in a house with my gaming group. W's father worked as a games distributor and kept a house in Ann Arbor, which meant he could stay there for basketball games, his kids could stay there, and it'd bring in a little more income from tenants. W basically had all the responsibilities of a landlord with none of the perks so of course the easy people to vet were his game group. So W's father recruited us all to work GenCon.
I also spent summer studying at UM's Biological Station. Back in the early 1900s a logging company got rid of their deforested plot of land by donating it to the University. UM kept the old tin sided cabins with their pot bellied stoves - undergrads stayed there - but built new cabins and a winterized dorm for grad students and faculty, and a big set of new buildings for classes and research. Classes were smaller and more intense than on campus - your course load was 2 classes for a half-semester - and a lot of UM's museum staff fulfilled their teaching requirements at Bio Station. Which pretty much everyone referred to as "Bug Camp."
re: the long version of how I fell asleep while *running* a game; end of half-term, laundry, and Ed's D&D stats
The last 2 weeks of Bio Station, everyone studies for exams, finishes collections if their classes require them, finish experiments, and do what 20somethings do in the middle of rural nowhere. So drink and I assume get laid or get baked. Nobody slept much.
So I eventually get back to Ann Arbor after a day of riding around in someone's van, grubby, unshaven and needing sleep, and naturally my first question was "when do we leave for GenCon?"
The answer is "tomorrow." I start doing my laundry, figuring I can grab 2-4 hours of sleep and make up the rest in the car to Wisconsin.
So it's about 2 AM, with the last loads of wash going, is when M tells me about Ed's AD&D Stats. Ed wasn't a housemate, but we played AD&D with him (1990s remember). He was the archtypical metalhead - scrawny, mullet and scrubby mustache, beat up Honda Civic (none of the rest of us actually owned a car), butterfly knife to prove badass character. Pretty much every character he played had red glowing eyes and stomped around in black armor, regardless of class or alignment.
At some point, he and M are going to White Castle *again* and Ed waxes rhapsodic about what he, the player, would be like in AD&D. 18:00 strength, because he does Martial Arts (style unspecified). 18 Intelligence. 8 Wisdom as the dump stat. 18 Dexterity (the butterfly knife, remember?). 18 Constitution, because he eats at Taco Bell all the time with no ill effects. And 14 Charisma. It would be higher but nobody understands him.
This is the point where me laughing became lying on the floor gasping for breath with tears rolling down my cheek.
re: the long version of how I fell asleep while *running* a game; GenCon and Werewolf the Apocalypse
So one long night of doing laundry and one more day worth of bumping around in the back of someone else's van later I am at GenCon. Mythical gaming convention of legend and lore. In between tabling for ICE, tabling for Mayfair Games (makers of DC Heros, a batch of railroad themed boardgames etc) and Koplow Games (makers of dice, dice, and also dice), I watch W play his way to the end of the "Moonwalker" arcade game in the con hotel lobby, play some AD&D with total strangers, and go shopping.
None of this I really remember. It was GenCon. I really really hadn't slept much for the last more than two weeks.
I get some new Werewolf the Apocalypse stuff and laugh like a 12 year old at the klaive dueling rules ("the attacker commits himself completely to giving a devastating blow!"). Naturally my new WtA splatbooks are practically burning a hole in my backpack. I recruit my housemates, I think a couple of strangers, find a hotel room to run in... and start GMing.
re: the long version of how I fell asleep while *running* a game; WtA Tokyo Drift
I quickly stat out an NPC, a manifested Wyrm spirit, and some Black Spiral punching bags. The player characters rescue a young Japanese visitor from the Spirals and discover that he's a kitsune transporting an ancestral tachi. They take a moon bridge to Osaka and meet with the kitsune clan elder, a tiny, ancient woman with hair as white as her multiple tails. She offers them dried persimmons and invites them to take tea with her, in her garden.
This is not a scenario western Garou are made for. They're bruisers, not diplomats. They're all terrified that any moment they'll make some sort of horrible social mis-step and any chance of negotiating with the kitsune will vanish forever. Not to mention they're surrounded by fox-folk who own 'way more sharp weapons than they do. I'm playing out the old lady's wry humor at their discomfort before she sends them packing to do something werewolfy at an abandoned shrine in the mountains or something like that and
At this point, something like 18 days of not sleeping much takes over, and I realize I'm saying *something*, which wakes me up. My players are staring at me.
Apparently the ancient fox has just told them "it's some kinda Mayfair sort of dice game."
At this point all of us decide yeah, the GM falling asleep means let's wrap up the game. I don't remember much of the rest of that night, or GenCon actually.
And that's it, that's the epic gaming story.
re: the long version of how I fell asleep while *running* a game; WtA Tokyo Drift
@Leucrotta I don't have nearly as good of a story, but one of my gaming buddies did fall asleep during a ttrpg session (as a player), woke up just long enough to quite clearly say "Commas come before cops," then went right back to sleep.
We were playing Torg. There were no cops involved, and probably no commas either.
re: the long version of how I fell asleep while *running* a game; WtA Tokyo Drift
@Leucrotta It... yeah. I have very long and detailed opinions about Torg. Incredibly ambitious game with inspired, fun mechanics and a very clever attempt at making a player-influenced metagame out of the grand campaign... but the splatbooks tended to be godawful and in some cases (like the "Nippon Tech" sourcebook) arguably pretty racist at worst, utterly uninformed at best -__-
and then once they had a good thing going, they completely poochscrewed the entire game balance with the bizarre space gods and incredibly edgy-bland tharkold sourcebooks, with weapons so powerful that nobody would ever want to be from anywhere else again. munchkin dreams come true. rubbish. still bitter.
re: the long version of how I fell asleep while *running* a game; WtA Tokyo Drift
@zebratron2084 oh wow Torg. That's a game I haven't heard of in half of forever, and I never got to play!