What's a roleplaying game (RPG)?
Do you remember playing 'Let's pretend' when you were a younger? Same thing, only with more rules. Have you ever watched a movie or TV show, or read a book, where you wanted to be a person in that setting? Or one of the main characters? Did you ever want to show them how it would be done properly? That's roleplaying.
In most RPGs:
- You have an invented persona, your character, who participates in a fictitious world via your interactions with the other players in the game.
- One player makes up the world and arbitrates any challenges the world may throw at your character, or conflicts between your character and other characters. We tend to call this heroic soul a GM (short for game moderator or mistress or master or Morph).
- There is no winner. You play to invent/tell a shared story and to have a good time with your friends. When everyone has a good time, everyone wins.
Although RPGs have no winners and losers, most Pheno games are judged competitively. The GMs (who mostly, have written their own games) are looking for the players that best depict their characters and that entertain them – and the players you're with – the best. They will give trophies or certificates to these players at The Prizegiving on the last day.
But that's only one aspect to playing in games at a convention like Pheno. If you have fun, if you meet new people, if you laugh, you cry, you swap toasts with your (fictitious) new arch-enemy, then you're doing it right.
So what now?
Watch this space for the games on offer in 2025.
Pre-registering and teams
Pheno encourages players to pre-register to play games via this site (the rego form will go live in early September). This helps us schedule games and make sure we have enough GMs and rooms.
You don't have to have a team!
Even though many games are designed for teams of 5 (or so), you can enter as an individual and Pheno's Mysterious Celestial Scheduling Astrolabe will put you into team games before the Con. Freeforms are all individual entry, so no problem there.
This helps everybody: part-filled teams will be really keen to meet/recruit you. This is a fabulous way to meet new friends and try out new games.
What is a team and how do we schedule?
At Pheno, our gaming experience usually revolves around teams of five. These five people have traditionally gotten together, decided on which games they want to play together and all register for those games, sometimes with only a few differences where the people split into different games (often freeforms). These teams often have names as well which you might see appear on our Tryptich and Diptych Perpetual trophies.
What is a Triptych / Diptych team?
This year in registration we have given you the chance to register your intent to “go for” the Triptych or Diptych Trophies.
To qualify for the Triptych or Diptych trophies you need to be in the same group of players for each session.
So, if you tick the box, then you (and your team if they also tick the boxes) will be listed as a priority for those games, and the schedulers will work to ensure that you are grouped with the same people for each Triptych and / or Diptych session. This works for individual entries or teams with fewer than five.
If you want to play those games but don’t want to go for the trophy, that’s fine too! Just don’t tick the box and we’ll do our best to schedule you in.
About that scheduling thing?
Phenomenon doesn’t schedule like most cons. We’ve never used a “first in best dressed” booking system as we try to ensure that everyone who attends our con gets the chance to play as many games as they would like. We usually aim for 80% of the games you ask for, but in most cases we get you into everything! This is entirely dependent on the information you give us for the process below.
Remember that registration isn’t your final chance to get in a game. Our GMs are often scheduling extra sessions at the Friday night rego session and are looking for one or two players to fill a slot that might be missing people.
The Process
Once rego closes, our schedulers then work towards putting teams into the same sessions, and for the players with different games on their list we put them into scratch teams made up of smaller groups or individual entries.
This is why we’re giving you a peak behind the scenes of how scheduling works to help make your registration a more informed experience.
The first thing we usually schedule are freeforms. These are the big events with at least 10-30 players and we often only have a single room so making sure these sessions don’t impact each other and they get to their maximum amount of players is a priority. Having one player missing from a 5 player game is often able to be covered by the GM. Missing 3-4 players from a freeform can often heavily impact the plot lines of multiple characters.
The next thing we aim to schedule are the Triptych Teams, Diptych Teams and Five player teams (including scratch teams we’ve made)
Why? Because they’re the easiest groups to slot in and lock a session. The majority of our games are for groups of five, and being able to guarantee a session for both the GM and players is the primary goal of scheduling.
After that, we do our best to fit in everything else. This is also factoring in sessions that players and GMs have requested to not do which is an option for you at Rego.
Every bit of information you can provide our scheduling team is important to them being able to give you the best experience at Pheno they can, so please double check your registration before the portal closes in September. You can always log in again to change things right up until rego closes.
By submitting your registration you’re also giving the scheduling team permission to email you about your registration in case we need more info, but hopefully by double checking your registration and with your team about the games you want to play together we’ll have everything we need.
Can I write a game for Pheno?
Yes. We'd love you to! While our call for games for 2025 has closed, we will be looking for more games in future years. Pheno welcomes and encourages new designers. There is even a shiny New Designer award .