Hi all.
I'm not going to go into the story behind the creation of "Another Twist of the Knife" (ATOTK). Some of you know it already. If you run into me at the convention I may tell you the story. Suffice to say, its creation is as twisted as the story lines it creates--and it backfired on me.
The first game of ATOTK was run at DunDraCon 22 (1998) and had some
of the most amazing players I've ever encountered. At times the whole
group was laughing so hard there were tears. I vaguely recall someone
falling out of their chair they were laughing so hard.
Mogar, who is a local disk jockey for a radio station, set us all up with a good joke. Since Deanna Troi can "read minds" by intercepting passed notes in the game, the players started passing a real note which was quickly followed by a bogus one that the Troi player would intercept. Eventually I got used to seeing poetry, songs, etc. in the notes so I would just have the player read it out loud. We were treated to a good song solo by Ray Nasir. Mogar was busy for a while writing a very long note. He then passes me a short note that said something rather unimportant. It was quickly followed by the long note which I noted was a fake and passed it back in time for Troi to intercept it. In a blase tone I asked Mogar to read the note. He stood up, cleared his throat and for the next minute or so read a very monotonous string of what was perhaps toilet humor: "Loaf fold. I fold a loaf..." After a minute or so, with his smooth deejay voice at 1:30 in the morning, everyone is almost asleep. Suddenly he yells, "I hate Riker!" and without a beat goes back to the monotonous rhyme. Well that shocked everyone and caused them all to burst into laughter. My sides hurt afterwards.
After running ATOTK three times in 2000, once at each Bay Area convention I attended that year, I was getting a little burned out on running it. Plus I wanted to explore some other unusual games that were sitting on my shelves. I didn't want to set ATOTK aside as it was still wildly popular (I usually had to turn away about three players at each session). At that point I made the decision to make ATOTK a DunDraCon Gaming Convention exclusive and only run it once a year. I figured this might be enough to prevent it from getting stale for me. I did this for DunDraCon 25 (in 2001) but even then wanted a change.
For DunDraCon 26 (in 2002) I tried to shake things up a bit by running ATOTK in the setting of "The Original Series." I was fortunate to have several members of The Six Siders Radio Show show up for this session. Their radio show featured gamers and anything gamers tend to like. They're a great bunch of people and great gamers as well. (I hoped their radio show gets back on the air soon but it has been many years since I last heard from them.)
DunDraCon 26 was a great session but I still wanted to set it aside for a bit. At the next two DunDraCons I ran Space 1889 with some success. I left ATOTK alone for the next two and a half years.
At DunDraCon 28 (2004) a number of people came up to me and asked if I would run ATOTK again. One (Jason Gibbs?) even wanted to shake my hand. At this point I had to bring it back.
ATOTK resurfaced when I ran it at
Nuke Con 2004.
Nuke Con is a very friendly midwestern convention. I still
intended to keep it a
DunDraCon exclusive while in California. I wasn't sure how ATOTK would
do at a convention like that but I went ahead and used the original
game description: "Betrayal, treachery and a Deanna Troi in black
leather." This caused the RPG coordinator to search the web to find out
more about the game, but he okayed it anyway. The game went well.
I have to say that the success of ATOTK lies mainly with all the great players its had over the years. You've all been wonderful.
Since ATOTK went well at Nuke Con I decided to bring it back for
DunDraCon 29 (in 2005). I was rather nervous that it wouldn't go off
well. Many of the regulars weren't there, I had four "no shows" for the
game (probably as a result of the convention's weird game sign up
system this year) and I only turned one person away. It seems most
players enjoyed it. Cody Hudson from
PolyCon asked me to
come run it at PolyCon 23. So I will. The adventure continues...
At Cody's invitation I ran ATOTK at PolyCon 23. I had no one sign up for the game--probably due to the small size of the convention, no one there was familiar with the game and PolyCon had a great selection of games to play. The guy playing Picard had to leave half way through the game, which really breaks the flow of the game. Most everyone was very tired, including myself.
In any case, I am finally retiring ATOTK, for good. Really...
As I clean out the plastic carrying case that I've carried the game in all these years, type up written notes for electronic storage on the webpage and discover the little slips of paper stuffed in the character envelopes with secret notes from players on them, I feel I'm saying goodbye to an old friend for the very last time. I hope to continue seeing all the human friends I've made through this game for many years to come.
Refereed and maintained by: Kris Miller (Email: kris at this domain)