Post-GamerNationCon 6

And once more, another GamerNationCon has come and gone.  As was the norm for me, I had a lot of fun, got to play a lot of games, catch up with old faces, and make some new acquaintances.  It was pretty cool to meet the members of the Dice Pool Podcast, most of whom made the very long trek from Australia just to attend the convention.  And naturally getting to see Linda and her family in person, as well as having at least a couple chances to sit down and share a meal with them.  It was a major shame that Eric couldn't make the trip, as the con's theme was superheroes and he's a big-time superhero fan.

One thing that helped the mood for me was that this year, I'd opted to spring for the MVG pledge on the Kickstarter.  Granted, it was a few hundred bucks, but the pledge got me a guaranteed seat in two games as well as first dibs on getting into scheduled games when even sign-up went live.  This was a marked difference from previous years where I wound up getting locked out of a number of games that I really wanted to play in, such as GM Phil's always entertaining Fallout sessions.

Highlights for me were playing in the Star Wars D6 1st edition session run by convention Guest of Honor Michael Witwer, who is a very enthusiastic GM, with our group having a blast all around playing through the classic module Starfall.  We had to speed things up a bit, but my smuggler did get a chance to shine by engaging the big bad in a one-on-one AT-ST duel, which ended with my character ramming into the overly chatty Imperial officer's vehicle to end the fight.

There was of course GM Phil's Fallout session, run using the Genesys system with the theme of the PCs having adopted heroic personas in the post-apoc wasteland.  In this one, I played a Protectotron that due to a programming glitch believed it actually was the space-faring hero Captain Cosmos, accompanied by a robot companion that had a stuffed toy hanging off the front of it to play the roll of the Captain's loyal space monkey companion (and was apparently not happy about it).  Phil is probably one of the most fun and energetic GMs that I've had the privilege to play under, so any time spent in one of his sessions is sure to be a lot of fun.

Another major highlight was playing in a GI Joe session again using the Genesys system (detecting a theme for the con yet?), this one run by Dustin of the Staggering Dragon crew.  In this one, I played Spirit, who was the team's tracker and sharpshooter as our team of Joes (Flint, Mainframe, Chuckles, and Snake-Eyes) got dropped into Transylvania to see what mischief Cobra was getting up to in Castle Dracula.  Playing Snake-Eyes was my Texas friend Will, who got seriously into character and never spoke once until the session had concluded, which for those who know Will is a major achievement as by his own admission he is an incredibly chatty fellow, and communicated by way of writing on index cards.  We each got a number of cool moments, starting up with the two of us coordinating to flawlessly take down a Cobra sentry without raising an alarm, starting with Spirit timing his rifle shot (normally a very loud crack) to fire in time with a peal of thunder to mask the sound, and Snake-Eyes being right next to the guy to catch him before the sentry hit the ground and noiselessly tuck away the body.  Next was Snake-Eyes taking out a bunch of Cobra soldiers while hanging from a chandelier without scratching Chuckles (who was wearing a Cobra uniform) with his sub-machine gun.  And finally, after completing our objectives and bugging out of the castle in a stolen Cobra Stinger jeep, while being pursued by a pack of some sort of serpent-themed lycanthrope/Frankenstein's monster crossbreeds, we worked together to take down all but one of them while Mainframe got an old Russian helicopter up and working.  Snake-Eyes did most of the work with using the jeep's on-board missiles, while I got to take down the very last monster while quoting an appropriate line from Dresden Files, that being "Mother says you don't belong here. *crack of thunder* Father says you're ugly too" before putting a rifle round into the thing's gaping maw and out the back of its freakish head as it leapt to attack the group, and stopping its sliding body with my boot before we boarded the repaired helicopter and made our exit.

A couple of unexpected highlights came from a pair of pick-up games, both being Genesys games.  The first of these had the group playing members of Marvel's Alpha Flight, the Canadian government's sponsored team of superheroes, as run by Canadian Chris Hunt, which pretty much wound up with myself and another lady playing Canadian superheroes in a game run by a Canadian GM with other members of the Canadian contingent.  Also in the group was convention guest Andy Hurley of Fall Out Boy, who is a pretty chill guy and fun to game with.  We were probably one of the few teams of superheroes to shut down a bad guy's operation by way of government regulations.  It was also amusing to be witness to the Canadians dropping cultural references that we Americans are generally unaware of.

The other unexpected highlight Genesys pick-up game that I got into was Sunday morning, due to the GM for the scheduled 7th Sea game being "under the weather," which I'm sure had nothing to do with the night prior being "GamerNation After Dark" (i.e. booze being served and shared liberally).  Said game was run by Brett Bowen, one of GM Phil's longtime friends, and was using the Earthdawn setting.  Now Earthdawn is a setting that I've always liked (post-apoc high fantasy), though sadly the game's mechanics were in short a total mess.  Heck, I liked this enough that when a printed copy of the theme (signed by Brett) came up for bid in the post-con auction, I largely made sure it was mine to take home by effectively squashing the bidding war by doubling what was the current bid at the time.  I've skimmed through the book a couple times, and may well try running some one-offs for some of the gaming groups I'm in.  The look of the document is very slick, and you can tell from looking at it that Brett is not only a major fan of the setting but put a lot of work into this.

Other gaming included playing in both parts of the Android two-part module that FFG released for their Shadow of the Beanstalk Genesys supplement.  This one I didn't find quite as enjoyable, but I think that was more circumstances than anything Darren West (the GM) did specifically.  First part, we had one player pretty much commandeer the group at a critical point and effectively tell half the group (which I was in) to sod off in terms of how to resolve a particular dilemma and instead make things a whole lot worse for us.  In the second part, we got hung up in a combat encounter that the module intended for us to avoid, except that the way things played out there was no way for us to really avoid it, which in turn effectively lead for a TPK with the exception of the medic PC.

In terms of food, I got to try out a couple of places that I'd never eaten at before, which were generally good, although one of them was a Chinese place where the food smelled good was way too spicy for me to really stomach.  The pre-con barbecue feast provided by the Rayburns was just as delicious as last year's, and was a great way to start things.  I wound up not going with the majority of the remaining con attendees to the post-con dinner, and instead headed with Lin, her family, and our friend Doran to a Chinese buffet that was pretty solid in terms of food, and it was nice to have a chance to wind down after four solid days of gaming goodness.

So yeah, a whole lot of fun was had, and I've already got at least a couple ideas for things I could run for next year's GNCon, from a Genesys major cross-over using various fan-made themes to a 7th Sea adventure whose roots can be drawn from a pick-up session I played during this recent con.