I ran Diamond Geezers at the Dunedin Roleplaying Tournament on Friday night; a good time was had by all 
Hereâs the highlights of what happened, in spoiler-free fashion:
We ended up with 5 female and 5 male characters, so both Fuse and Lorry were played by females. This wasnât a problem, but it did lead to an interesting result to the game 
A couple of the characters have âcontingency envelopesâ - something they donât get to see until a certain trigger event happens. Scott tells me that generally speaking those events donât become public knowledge until half-way through the game - in this run it was casually dropped into the conversation about 5 minutes in! I think that may have accelerated the game somewhat, as the fallout from that event propelled certain characters in directions which would ultimately lead to their downfallâŚ
The questioning system in Diamond Geezers seems pretty simple on the surface - you point your gun (if you have one) at whoever you want to answer your question, and they have to answer you with (various versions of) the truth. However it gets a bit more complicated if the person youâre pointing at has a friend; if they point their gun at you, you have to back down. I was initially a little worried about this, as it seemed to me no one would ever actually get their questions answered. However, this sorts itself out nicely when people start losing allies (usually when that ally is lying on the ground, bleeding to deathâŚ)
I think in this run the questions werenât asked hard enough - people for whatever reason seemed reluctant to draw guns on anyone. As a result of that some secrets were left secret for a long time, while others simply came out through normal conversation. There was a high level of paranoia about who shot the Guv, and I asked at the end of the game for everyone to point at who they think did it - nearly everyone got a finger pointed at them (some more popular than others, due in no small part to the final accusation by a dying John BoyâŚ)
Speaking of dying⌠Everything was going pretty much swimmingly for everyone (except the poor old dead Guvânor of course) until one point where the lead really started flying in earnest. By the time the smoke cleared, 4 of the 5 male characters were dead, leaving âFicâ Finley as the only male survivor. Death speeches were had, retaliatory strikes were made, and the waters were well and truly muddied by several last-second revelations.
By the end of the game, the safe had been opened, and the girls (because letâs face it, Fic couldnât organise a piss up in a pub) were trying to sort out exactly what happens next, when the game came to a bit of stall. As Raymond Chandler once famously said, âwhen in doubt, have a man with a gun come through the doorâ. Given the amount of shooting that had taken place 20 or so minutes beforehand, I figured the man would be a nice policeman, with his Special Branch friends. Siren noises were made, panics were had, and the gang were all still in the lockup deciding what to do when they showed up. Fic lived up to his name (Heâs âficâ = thick) by blowing away the first copper to come through the door, but was then himself blown away by the rest of the force. All the girls survived, and were arrested. Some of them, through various means I wonât divulge here, managed to get off their charges⌠however, Mr Bridger will not be 'appy, and retribution is assured.
One of the players suggested a follow-up game, one in which the survivors struck out on their own - I may write that up sometime.
All in all, it was a successful (if short) game - the players all seemed to enjoy themselves, and have been talking about it over the course of today, so it must have gone OK. If I were to run it again there are some things Iâd consider changing, but overall this is a very tight little game which has all the elements for a disaster built into it - and after all, thatâs what Guy Ritchie films are all about, innit?
Hopefully this will be the first of many one-off larps run down here in Dunedin, to go hand-in-hand with the fortnightly Changeling game (Lost in Manhattan, hosted on these boards) which is currently being run.