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.
Showing posts with label GamerNationCon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GamerNationCon. Show all posts
April 10, 2019
April 5, 2017
GamerNationCon 4 - Acheivement "A New Hope" Unlocked
Well, so much for plans of making regular updates...
It's been a couple days since I got back home from attending the fourth GamerNationCon down in Dallas, Texas, or as I prefer to think of it, the The True Best Four Days of Actual Gaming. I'd posted on Facebook my initial thoughts back on Monday, but now that I've had a bit of time to recoup and consider, I thought I'd post more of why I intend to never miss this fun little con if I have any say in the matter.
Firstly, a big thinks to Phil "Darth GM" and his brother Andrew for being willing to split the cost of a rental car to help ensure that my buddy Eric and I would have a ride not only to and from the con site, but also a ride back to the airport come Monday morning rather than have to pay for a cab. I can't fault Phil for "going Rogue" and taking a Nissan Rogue as his vehicle for a con that had a strong (or just stronger than usual) Star Wars theme.
The Wednesday before the convention is fun in and of itself. Not only did I get some really good barbecue at an old-style BBQ pit joint, but got to catch up with friends that I'd not seen since last year, on top of getting to chat a bit with Guest of Honor Katrina Ostrander (aka Kat). After dinner, spent some time in the hotel lobby chatting with Jim, Isaac, and Will about ideas for some new character types for Feng Shui 2, namely a Trick Shooter archetype that's less John Wu two-gun flash and more precision shooting with a sidearm; I'm looking forward to seeing the final product once they get it finalized. Seems they also really liked the ideas I put forth for a "Drunken Boxer" move set for the Martial Artist, as I believe Jim is actually playing that character in a campaign that Isaac is running.
Okay, so one RPG setting that I very much like but rarely get a chance to play in is that of Legend of the Five Rings, formerly published by AEG but now under the stewardship of FFG. A couple GenCons ago, I was pleased to find that Kat was herself a huge fan of the game and setting (on top of being a major anime fan), and she seemed quite intrigued at my suggestion of checking out at least the first of the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies (it's really good, and ties the disparate plots of the first several manga volumes together in an enjoyable and surprisingly coherent manner, on top of the casting for most of the characters being spot-on, especially Kenshin). Sadly, I didn't have an opportunity to register for either of the two L5R events she was running at the con, but fortune favored this mortal man and I was able to hop into her Thursday session. I mush admit, I loved her method of allowing the players to create characters as part of the introduction to the game, where in I made a Kakita Bushi as part of a group of six that included a two shugenja (Kuni and Soshi), a courtier (Crane), a monk (Dragon), and a second bushi (Unicorn). The adventure itself was more of an investigative affair, though there were a couple of scenes set up specifically for the bushi characters; I guess that Kat asking if anybody was making a duelist and her relief that I was doing so should have been a clue. I'll say no more, as I might try running this myself and I don't want to spoil anything for my friends that read this who themselves may wind up being players.
A bit more on Kat's method of quick-building PCs, which she liberally borrowed from Apocalypse World (I may need to check that out). She did a similar thing for her Star Wars sessions, one of which my long-time friend Linda got to play in, and she liked the concept as well. I have to admit it's pretty inventive, and not only does it give the player a bit more investment in the character as it's one that they've made (even if the selections available are a bit limited by necessity) but it means the GM doesn't have to work as much to fill up a four hour time slot. I'd asked Kat if she could e-mail a copy of the different character folios that she put together, one so that I could see all the different options, but also so that I could make use of them for running L5R games myself, as it'd save time that I'd have to spend creating pre-gens.
Also on Thursday I got to do a "slot zero" pick-up of my 7th Sea Second Edition adventure "An Idol Venture," which is an expansion/update of my initial 7th Sea mini-adventure "An Idol Pursuit." Apparently it wasn't quite expanded enough, as the players completed the adventure in a little over three hours. I suppose I could bolster up the combat sequences, as the PCs were generally able to crush them in a single round. The players generally had fun, though sadly I think Isaac was a bit brain-fried from having stayed up to stupid o'clock in the morning the night before, as he had a hard time wrapping his head around how 7th Sea 2e handles approaches and combat sequences, which to be fair may have also been a bit my fault as well. Still, the players had fun, even if one of them did seem determined to keep the spotlight securely on him at all times instead of letting other players have their turn to be awesome. One of my players was Kat Ostrander, and was glad that she enjoyed the adventure, even if a few things from how I did things in the adventure through her (at least according to a Facebook post of hers).
Friday got off to a bit of a quieter start. I made the walk with my long-time friend Linda over to Madness Games and Comics, which to be frank is less of a gaming store and more of a gaming mall, given the sheer size of the place and the volume of products for sale. I wound picking up a pack of 10-sided dice so that I'd have a set for my own use while being able to share a set at the table for further 7th Sea sessions. I was hoping to find a red-and-white set (colors of the Hare Clan from L5R), but settled on a gold and white set instead, as well as grabbing a couple of new shirts for myself and an Animal-themed shirt that said "Party Animal" for Linda's daughter Ari. Then it was a walk back so that I could run my Star Wars adventure "Taris City Rumble." I had tried to run a version of it at last year's GNC, but to no avail, so this year I preregistered it and wound up with a full table. I'd made a number of changes from the initial version, including totally revamping the PCs, and I think it worked out for the best. The table had fun, with an older gentleman really getting into character as the exiled Tapani noble, though I did wind up largely improvising the final leg of the module due to the players taking a rather unexpected approach to things, but it wound up being a fast-paced and suitably frantic scene with one of the PCs getting dropped and the half of the group who weren't spec'd out for combat taking on the NPC that was the major combat threat. They did a pretty good job of holding said threat at bay until the Jedi character was able to leap in and blind the adversary with a rake of their lightsaber through the eyes with a critical injury that pretty much took it out of the fight. The denouement at the end had the PCs sweating a bit, given the nature of who they had to interact with at the adventure's conclusion, which was fun. Again, the players had fun, so I'd call that winning. Still, it wound up running over, but I'm not sure if there's anything I could really trim from it without putting the party on rails, something I prefer to avoid doing if at all possible.
After that, I played in a Star Wars pick-up game run by Linda, her "Little Girl Lost" adventure which was based off an adventure she ran for the Skype group we're both part of. Sadly, I think she overestimated the capability of the pre-gens she offered, most of whom were pretty much starting PCs in terms of XP and gear, as the challenges were a whole lot tougher than they really should of been, with Hard difficulty checks being handed out like candy, especially in the early going. She did say that she spent some time talking with Keith Kappel, prolific freelance writer for FFG about things she did wrong and things that could be improved. Given how much she doubts her ability to GM games, I give her a mountain of credit for being willing and able to GM for a group that was almost entirely comprised of strangers.
And to cap off the Friday night, I played in another pick-up game, this one being a D&D 5e adventure run by Brev Tanner. I'm pretty good at improve as a GM, but I usually prefer to have some sort of outline written up ahead of time, but I was impressed at Brev for pretty much running the entire adventure by the seat of his pants. He did use a quintet of pre-gens, with my playing a High Elf Monk (personally there's a few things I'd have done differently with the character, but I tend to feel that way about most pre-gens, and I'm sure there are folks that feel the same with the pre-gens I make; nature of the beast I suppose). The adventure was a lot of fun, even if there were some things that were just plain wrong occurring, but kudos again to Brev for the different voices employed for various NPCs we encountered and interacted with. I probably stayed up way too late, but it was worth it.
Saturday started with not enough sleep, but I managed to get in a brief session of Red Dragon Inn. Normally I'm not much for board games, but I had some time to kill and the Whitson family were looking for another player to join them and Kat, and it was indeed fun. Sadly, we had to cut the game short so that we could all attend Kat Ostrander's panel. It was cool to get more of an insight into how she does her game prep, writes adventures, and the contrast of players who favor crunch-heavy RPGs as compared to those who prefer rules-lighter narrative-heavy RPGs and the contrast of what each camp sees as "winning" the game. Personally, I'm of the camp that "winning" in an RPG means that every player in the game had fun, and it would seem the majority of the Gamer Nation is of a similar mind set.
After the panel, I got into yet another pick-up game, this time a Dresden Files RPG set in Las Vegas run by long-time d20 Radio alumni Tim Rayburn, formerly of the Radio Free Hommlet (who?) D&D 4e podcast. Tim ran our group through character creation for a group that apart from myself and his wife Kate had never even seen Fate before. It was a really fun adventure, and I had to chuckle at Tim remarking that the party (three of whom were investigators of some sort or another) were about to Greyhawk one particular scene. I kind of feel like I took more of a lead than maybe I should have, but the other players didn't seem to mind, and it did help keep things moving, even if my PC did inadvertently stumble into a situation he really shouldn't have; it wasn't bad per se, just embarrassing. Of course, this being set in the Dresdenverse and involving the Fae, the whole adventure revolved around a situation that could have been far more easily resolved by a couple of NPCs simply talking to each other instead of invoking an overly-complicated chain of events, which lead to my ending the session with the frustrated exclamation of "Fucking Faeries!" to the group's mutual laughter.
Saturday night's gaming wrapped up with my running a second 7th Sea 2e adventure, this one called "Once Upon a Harvest Moon." The adventure was initially run as a one-shot for my Skype group for when our regularly scheduled game had to be put on hold due to a couple players not being available, and was itself based upon the adventure module "Lady of the Apples" for the Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG. Set in Eisen, the adventure was generally dark and creepy, and thus slated for an evening time slot. Overall, I think this session went a lot better than my Thursday session, with the chap that played the priest probably being the most memorable of the characters. The one hiccup was that during the final scene, one of the players was paying more attention to her phone (trying to order food), which certainly aggravated me but I simply dealt with it. I am seriously considering instituting a "no phones unless you're using it as a dice roller" policy at any further games I run. I'm going to give the adventure write-up one more look-through, and then will probably post it here to the blog.
While I didn't get to play in any of Phil's sessions of his much-acclaimed Fallout module (based off FFG's Star Wars system), I did get to listen in on the tail end of his Saturday night pick-up, of which most of the players were varying degrees of inebriated, as was the GM, and I'm certain that made things lively. While waiting for Phil to sober up enough to be in good enough shape to drive, I did get to converse a bit with a few different folks at the con, so it wasn't like I was hanging around bored. Still, I wonder if I should have taken Linda up on the offer of a lift back to the con so that I wouldn't have another night of minimal sleep. I did still manage to adhere to the 4-2-1 rule (4 hours' sleep, 2 full meals, 1 shower), so it's all good.
Finally we rolled into Sunday. Apart from a last minute session of Artemis, I really didn't do all that much gaming, due to being a little out of it as well as wanting to put a few different RPG adventure ideas for next year's GamerNationCon onto paper. I did stop over to where Kat was running her final L5R session, and for some reason to do a fairly decent impression of Samurai Jack's Aku, bellowing "Foolish samurai!" One of the players rolled with it, and I'm not sure if Kat was more amused or annoyed; I'm going to lean towards the later as she wasn't feeling quite so hot after drinking as much as she had during Phil's Fallout module and Aku's voice doesn't exactly lend itself towards subtlety.
After the con ended was the auction, and the only item that I wanted (a pretty cool dice tower in the theme of a Death Star laser turret) went to somebody else, so I walked away with nothing. Ah well, but at least Linda got herself a copy of the Endless Vigil sourcebook.
The con itself pretty much wrapped up with what I've taken to calling the "dead dog dinner," largely as we're all dead-tired, yet doggedly trying to keep the fun going as we have one final group dinner. There was a bit of a hiccup, as the Italian place that Dave originally chose turned out to have been recently closed for business, causing a relocation to a different Italian place. I joked to Dave that what had happened is that when he made his Foresee power check, he'd rolled straight dark side, with Dave laughingly adding that he also rolled a Despair. If you're not familiar with those terms, they're to do with FFG Star Wars. Still, it was a good dinner, and I got to spend a good chunk of time with the Whitsons before we parted ways.
Monday was the flight back, and apart from getting to the airport quite early (necessary due to Dallas morning traffic) the trip back was without incident. No delays, no missed connecting flights, no misplaced luggage. As I joked with Phil on Facebook, it was probably an April Fool's Joke by the forces that be in order to lull us into a false sense of security about future flights.
So yes, GamerNationCon IV was a rousing success, and I'm already looking forward to next year, to GamerNationCon V: The Order of the Gamers. Got at least four adventure ideas that have a magic/mystical theme to them, with systems picked out for three of them (SWFFG, 7th Sea 2e, and Dresden Files Accelerated), which is probably where I should stop as I want to be sure that I've got enough time to play games; some folks might enjoy spending the entire con GM'ing, but I enjoy being a player as well.
It's been a couple days since I got back home from attending the fourth GamerNationCon down in Dallas, Texas, or as I prefer to think of it, the The True Best Four Days of Actual Gaming. I'd posted on Facebook my initial thoughts back on Monday, but now that I've had a bit of time to recoup and consider, I thought I'd post more of why I intend to never miss this fun little con if I have any say in the matter.
Firstly, a big thinks to Phil "Darth GM" and his brother Andrew for being willing to split the cost of a rental car to help ensure that my buddy Eric and I would have a ride not only to and from the con site, but also a ride back to the airport come Monday morning rather than have to pay for a cab. I can't fault Phil for "going Rogue" and taking a Nissan Rogue as his vehicle for a con that had a strong (or just stronger than usual) Star Wars theme.
The Wednesday before the convention is fun in and of itself. Not only did I get some really good barbecue at an old-style BBQ pit joint, but got to catch up with friends that I'd not seen since last year, on top of getting to chat a bit with Guest of Honor Katrina Ostrander (aka Kat). After dinner, spent some time in the hotel lobby chatting with Jim, Isaac, and Will about ideas for some new character types for Feng Shui 2, namely a Trick Shooter archetype that's less John Wu two-gun flash and more precision shooting with a sidearm; I'm looking forward to seeing the final product once they get it finalized. Seems they also really liked the ideas I put forth for a "Drunken Boxer" move set for the Martial Artist, as I believe Jim is actually playing that character in a campaign that Isaac is running.
Okay, so one RPG setting that I very much like but rarely get a chance to play in is that of Legend of the Five Rings, formerly published by AEG but now under the stewardship of FFG. A couple GenCons ago, I was pleased to find that Kat was herself a huge fan of the game and setting (on top of being a major anime fan), and she seemed quite intrigued at my suggestion of checking out at least the first of the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies (it's really good, and ties the disparate plots of the first several manga volumes together in an enjoyable and surprisingly coherent manner, on top of the casting for most of the characters being spot-on, especially Kenshin). Sadly, I didn't have an opportunity to register for either of the two L5R events she was running at the con, but fortune favored this mortal man and I was able to hop into her Thursday session. I mush admit, I loved her method of allowing the players to create characters as part of the introduction to the game, where in I made a Kakita Bushi as part of a group of six that included a two shugenja (Kuni and Soshi), a courtier (Crane), a monk (Dragon), and a second bushi (Unicorn). The adventure itself was more of an investigative affair, though there were a couple of scenes set up specifically for the bushi characters; I guess that Kat asking if anybody was making a duelist and her relief that I was doing so should have been a clue. I'll say no more, as I might try running this myself and I don't want to spoil anything for my friends that read this who themselves may wind up being players.
A bit more on Kat's method of quick-building PCs, which she liberally borrowed from Apocalypse World (I may need to check that out). She did a similar thing for her Star Wars sessions, one of which my long-time friend Linda got to play in, and she liked the concept as well. I have to admit it's pretty inventive, and not only does it give the player a bit more investment in the character as it's one that they've made (even if the selections available are a bit limited by necessity) but it means the GM doesn't have to work as much to fill up a four hour time slot. I'd asked Kat if she could e-mail a copy of the different character folios that she put together, one so that I could see all the different options, but also so that I could make use of them for running L5R games myself, as it'd save time that I'd have to spend creating pre-gens.
Also on Thursday I got to do a "slot zero" pick-up of my 7th Sea Second Edition adventure "An Idol Venture," which is an expansion/update of my initial 7th Sea mini-adventure "An Idol Pursuit." Apparently it wasn't quite expanded enough, as the players completed the adventure in a little over three hours. I suppose I could bolster up the combat sequences, as the PCs were generally able to crush them in a single round. The players generally had fun, though sadly I think Isaac was a bit brain-fried from having stayed up to stupid o'clock in the morning the night before, as he had a hard time wrapping his head around how 7th Sea 2e handles approaches and combat sequences, which to be fair may have also been a bit my fault as well. Still, the players had fun, even if one of them did seem determined to keep the spotlight securely on him at all times instead of letting other players have their turn to be awesome. One of my players was Kat Ostrander, and was glad that she enjoyed the adventure, even if a few things from how I did things in the adventure through her (at least according to a Facebook post of hers).
Friday got off to a bit of a quieter start. I made the walk with my long-time friend Linda over to Madness Games and Comics, which to be frank is less of a gaming store and more of a gaming mall, given the sheer size of the place and the volume of products for sale. I wound picking up a pack of 10-sided dice so that I'd have a set for my own use while being able to share a set at the table for further 7th Sea sessions. I was hoping to find a red-and-white set (colors of the Hare Clan from L5R), but settled on a gold and white set instead, as well as grabbing a couple of new shirts for myself and an Animal-themed shirt that said "Party Animal" for Linda's daughter Ari. Then it was a walk back so that I could run my Star Wars adventure "Taris City Rumble." I had tried to run a version of it at last year's GNC, but to no avail, so this year I preregistered it and wound up with a full table. I'd made a number of changes from the initial version, including totally revamping the PCs, and I think it worked out for the best. The table had fun, with an older gentleman really getting into character as the exiled Tapani noble, though I did wind up largely improvising the final leg of the module due to the players taking a rather unexpected approach to things, but it wound up being a fast-paced and suitably frantic scene with one of the PCs getting dropped and the half of the group who weren't spec'd out for combat taking on the NPC that was the major combat threat. They did a pretty good job of holding said threat at bay until the Jedi character was able to leap in and blind the adversary with a rake of their lightsaber through the eyes with a critical injury that pretty much took it out of the fight. The denouement at the end had the PCs sweating a bit, given the nature of who they had to interact with at the adventure's conclusion, which was fun. Again, the players had fun, so I'd call that winning. Still, it wound up running over, but I'm not sure if there's anything I could really trim from it without putting the party on rails, something I prefer to avoid doing if at all possible.
After that, I played in a Star Wars pick-up game run by Linda, her "Little Girl Lost" adventure which was based off an adventure she ran for the Skype group we're both part of. Sadly, I think she overestimated the capability of the pre-gens she offered, most of whom were pretty much starting PCs in terms of XP and gear, as the challenges were a whole lot tougher than they really should of been, with Hard difficulty checks being handed out like candy, especially in the early going. She did say that she spent some time talking with Keith Kappel, prolific freelance writer for FFG about things she did wrong and things that could be improved. Given how much she doubts her ability to GM games, I give her a mountain of credit for being willing and able to GM for a group that was almost entirely comprised of strangers.
And to cap off the Friday night, I played in another pick-up game, this one being a D&D 5e adventure run by Brev Tanner. I'm pretty good at improve as a GM, but I usually prefer to have some sort of outline written up ahead of time, but I was impressed at Brev for pretty much running the entire adventure by the seat of his pants. He did use a quintet of pre-gens, with my playing a High Elf Monk (personally there's a few things I'd have done differently with the character, but I tend to feel that way about most pre-gens, and I'm sure there are folks that feel the same with the pre-gens I make; nature of the beast I suppose). The adventure was a lot of fun, even if there were some things that were just plain wrong occurring, but kudos again to Brev for the different voices employed for various NPCs we encountered and interacted with. I probably stayed up way too late, but it was worth it.
Saturday started with not enough sleep, but I managed to get in a brief session of Red Dragon Inn. Normally I'm not much for board games, but I had some time to kill and the Whitson family were looking for another player to join them and Kat, and it was indeed fun. Sadly, we had to cut the game short so that we could all attend Kat Ostrander's panel. It was cool to get more of an insight into how she does her game prep, writes adventures, and the contrast of players who favor crunch-heavy RPGs as compared to those who prefer rules-lighter narrative-heavy RPGs and the contrast of what each camp sees as "winning" the game. Personally, I'm of the camp that "winning" in an RPG means that every player in the game had fun, and it would seem the majority of the Gamer Nation is of a similar mind set.
After the panel, I got into yet another pick-up game, this time a Dresden Files RPG set in Las Vegas run by long-time d20 Radio alumni Tim Rayburn, formerly of the Radio Free Hommlet (who?) D&D 4e podcast. Tim ran our group through character creation for a group that apart from myself and his wife Kate had never even seen Fate before. It was a really fun adventure, and I had to chuckle at Tim remarking that the party (three of whom were investigators of some sort or another) were about to Greyhawk one particular scene. I kind of feel like I took more of a lead than maybe I should have, but the other players didn't seem to mind, and it did help keep things moving, even if my PC did inadvertently stumble into a situation he really shouldn't have; it wasn't bad per se, just embarrassing. Of course, this being set in the Dresdenverse and involving the Fae, the whole adventure revolved around a situation that could have been far more easily resolved by a couple of NPCs simply talking to each other instead of invoking an overly-complicated chain of events, which lead to my ending the session with the frustrated exclamation of "Fucking Faeries!" to the group's mutual laughter.
Saturday night's gaming wrapped up with my running a second 7th Sea 2e adventure, this one called "Once Upon a Harvest Moon." The adventure was initially run as a one-shot for my Skype group for when our regularly scheduled game had to be put on hold due to a couple players not being available, and was itself based upon the adventure module "Lady of the Apples" for the Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG. Set in Eisen, the adventure was generally dark and creepy, and thus slated for an evening time slot. Overall, I think this session went a lot better than my Thursday session, with the chap that played the priest probably being the most memorable of the characters. The one hiccup was that during the final scene, one of the players was paying more attention to her phone (trying to order food), which certainly aggravated me but I simply dealt with it. I am seriously considering instituting a "no phones unless you're using it as a dice roller" policy at any further games I run. I'm going to give the adventure write-up one more look-through, and then will probably post it here to the blog.
While I didn't get to play in any of Phil's sessions of his much-acclaimed Fallout module (based off FFG's Star Wars system), I did get to listen in on the tail end of his Saturday night pick-up, of which most of the players were varying degrees of inebriated, as was the GM, and I'm certain that made things lively. While waiting for Phil to sober up enough to be in good enough shape to drive, I did get to converse a bit with a few different folks at the con, so it wasn't like I was hanging around bored. Still, I wonder if I should have taken Linda up on the offer of a lift back to the con so that I wouldn't have another night of minimal sleep. I did still manage to adhere to the 4-2-1 rule (4 hours' sleep, 2 full meals, 1 shower), so it's all good.
Finally we rolled into Sunday. Apart from a last minute session of Artemis, I really didn't do all that much gaming, due to being a little out of it as well as wanting to put a few different RPG adventure ideas for next year's GamerNationCon onto paper. I did stop over to where Kat was running her final L5R session, and for some reason to do a fairly decent impression of Samurai Jack's Aku, bellowing "Foolish samurai!" One of the players rolled with it, and I'm not sure if Kat was more amused or annoyed; I'm going to lean towards the later as she wasn't feeling quite so hot after drinking as much as she had during Phil's Fallout module and Aku's voice doesn't exactly lend itself towards subtlety.
After the con ended was the auction, and the only item that I wanted (a pretty cool dice tower in the theme of a Death Star laser turret) went to somebody else, so I walked away with nothing. Ah well, but at least Linda got herself a copy of the Endless Vigil sourcebook.
The con itself pretty much wrapped up with what I've taken to calling the "dead dog dinner," largely as we're all dead-tired, yet doggedly trying to keep the fun going as we have one final group dinner. There was a bit of a hiccup, as the Italian place that Dave originally chose turned out to have been recently closed for business, causing a relocation to a different Italian place. I joked to Dave that what had happened is that when he made his Foresee power check, he'd rolled straight dark side, with Dave laughingly adding that he also rolled a Despair. If you're not familiar with those terms, they're to do with FFG Star Wars. Still, it was a good dinner, and I got to spend a good chunk of time with the Whitsons before we parted ways.
Monday was the flight back, and apart from getting to the airport quite early (necessary due to Dallas morning traffic) the trip back was without incident. No delays, no missed connecting flights, no misplaced luggage. As I joked with Phil on Facebook, it was probably an April Fool's Joke by the forces that be in order to lull us into a false sense of security about future flights.
So yes, GamerNationCon IV was a rousing success, and I'm already looking forward to next year, to GamerNationCon V: The Order of the Gamers. Got at least four adventure ideas that have a magic/mystical theme to them, with systems picked out for three of them (SWFFG, 7th Sea 2e, and Dresden Files Accelerated), which is probably where I should stop as I want to be sure that I've got enough time to play games; some folks might enjoy spending the entire con GM'ing, but I enjoy being a player as well.
December 31, 2016
As one year closes, another year awaits
Okay, so been a while since I last updated this. This post will probably fall into the "& Etc" part of the blog's title, so bear with me.
I can't be fully honest as to what I expected out of 2016, but I think I can say there were a lot of surprises, and only a few of them good.
First off, there were the sheer volume of celebrity deaths, many of whom were far too young to be taken from us, running the gamut from David Bowie and Prince to Alan Rickman and most recently Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds. There others to be sure, sadly far too many for a single year. Being the life-long Star Wars fan that I am, it's safe to say that Carrie Fisher's passing is probably the one that hit me the hardest. And while her "Hutt slayer" ensemble was indeed memorable, I remember her more as the sassy, spirited princess in a white gown with buns in her hair, who took charge of her own rescue. Carrie's own life was a roller coaster to be sure, with ups and downs, but it's impossible to deny the influence that one role had in terms of the movie industry. From what I've heard, she did finish up her work for Episode 8, so it'll be interesting to see how they address her absence come time for Episode 9. May the Force be with you Carrie, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra. To us, she'll always be royalty.
To address the political elephant in the room, there's the very unwelcome surprise of the election of the thin-skinned narcissistic orange-skinned man-child Donald Trump, a man so unqualified to be leader of the free world he makes George W. Bush look like Franklin D. Roosevelt by comparison. And on the backs of Trump's campaign of racism, misogyny, and ignorance rode a crop of Republican senators who failed to do their jobs under the Obama administration, stymieing if not outright blocking President Obama's efforts for no reason other than political affiliation and (if leaked details from former high-ranking Republicans are to be believed) the color of the man's skin. I make no secrets about my being a liberal in terms of political views, and ascribe to Bernie Sanders' views in regards to democratic socialism (something this country already makes extensive use of). And while Hillary Clinton was not my first choice, I still voted for her as she was probably one of the most qualified Presidential nominees we've seen in the past few generations. But because of a screwed up Electoral College, we instead got a loud-mouthed braggart that has openly admitted to sexual abuse whose only "qualifications" was that he was white and that he was rich. And to the surprise of nobody that actually bothered to look past Trump's rhetoric, he's breaking just about every promise he made on the campaign trail, and because of one comparatively small group of Americans that bought into his many hate-fueled lies, the whole nation and probably the world itself is going to suffer as that buffoon abuses the office of President to further enrich himself and leave the rest of us holding the bill. As I mentioned to my dear friend Adie from across the pond, while I'm hoping for 2017 to feature a return of the reason and sanity that the world seems to have lost as 2016 comes to a close, I'm not holding my breath for a speedy return and expect it's going to be on hell of a bumpy ride. Admittedly, as a white male in a solidly Democratic state I probably have less to worry about under a Trump presidency (ye gods I feel sick just typing those two words together), I'm more worried about my friends in the LGBTQ+ community as well as those who rely upon the Affordable Care Act, two groups the GOP have made no bones about putting in their crosshairs.
Okay, enough of that topic; it's a sunny day outside and I don't want to spend the last day of the year in a foul mood because of a ferret-wearing shit-gibbon and the dimwitted monkeys that support him.
Some of the good things that 2016 brought for me were the movies Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange. Both were solid and fully entertaining movies, with Strange being far better than I was originally anticipating. And while I was pretty much TeamCap in regards to Civil War, the Russo brothers were able to present the issue as not being entirely clear-cut, with both sides having valid points. The major highlight of the film for me was of course the introduction of Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing Spider-Man: Homecoming next year. Also looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, especially after seeing the trailers. Still unsure about Thor: Ragnarok, but I'll still probably go see it in the theater, but I'll admit that Thor: Dark World is probably one of my least favorite of the MCU entries; Norton's Incredible Hulk takes the cake there for me, and I find Mark Ruffalo to be a much better Banner. Also on the movie front was the new Ghostbusters movie. While it's not as good as the original Ghostbusters, this female-lead reboot of the franchise was very enjoyable, making me and Amy and Tiffany all laugh at various points, especially at many of the cameo appearances of the original movie's cast (I think my favorite was Dan Akroyd as a cabbie with Sigourny Weaver's scientist/mentor being a close second). I really do hope this movie gets a sequel, as I really enjoyed watching this new crew go bust some ghosts.
As for Rogue One... I'll admit that while I did like the movie, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoyed The Force Awakens, Probably for the fact that (SPOILERS!) that none of the new heroes introduced survived to the end. And while that sort of "kill em all!" approach might work for horror movies, I still don't care for that plot path. It may not have been the screenwriters' intent, but the fate of the Rogue One crew honestly felt like they decided "well, this is the easiest way to explain why they weren't around in ANH" and thus avoid "so what was Jyn/Caspian/Chiffut/Baze/etc doing during the rest of the Galactic Civil War after that mission?" questions. Now, I knew going in this was going to be more of a war movie, and that there was no way that everybody was going to make it out alive; if nothing else I figured Jyn Erso (died to redeem her father in wake of his role in building the Death Star), K2-SO, Chiffut (too cool to live), and Bodhi the pilot were going to be toast, but I was figuring at least Caspian would make it out with the plans, even by the skin of his teeth. Apparently there was a different ending, which reportedly revolved around the Rogue One crew getting decimated by Lord Vader, but that got re-shot as it was found too dark/depressing. As for Darth Vader, I think they did a great job bringing him to life on the big screen. He didn't have a lot of screen time, but he made the most of what he did have, especially that end sequence where he just demolishes a squad of Rebel Troopers, and you can tell from their reactions that they know full well that they are completely screwed at that point. I didn't have any problem with the CGI used to bring Tarkin and young Leia to the screen either; what little uncanny valley effect there was with Tarken worked to make him seem even creepier than Peter Cushing's incredible performance in ANH already did.
Back towards the end of March, when the horrors to come of 2016 were still far off and there was hope that a Russian-backed lunatic wouldn't be installed as this nation's leader, there was GamerNationCon 3: Beyond Thunderdrome. I got to play in a number of Star Wars RPG sessions, including a fun adventure run by Christopher West set just prior to The Force Awakens with the PCs all being Resistance operatives, a pick-up run by Sam Stewart with a whole crap load of players, a pick-up run by Sterling Hershey based around material he wrote for the Nexus of Power supplement. I was able to play in three of my good friend Eric's sessions, one being a D&D pick-up where I had a lot of fun playing a Human Paladin as well as two of his Star Wars games, playing a Jedi-type in each one, even if the PCs were very different builds. Though the coolest moment for me was getting to help induct Rodney Thompson as an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion for all the time and hard work he put into the Star Wars Saga Edition RPG, the game that pretty much was responsible for the creation of the d20 Radio Network and with it the Gamer Nation, a large extended family of which I am proud to call myself a member. There was a lot of concern that GNC3:BT would be the final con, as the venue was due to lose it's lease and options for a new venue were not promising, but the Force was with the Gamer Nation as GamerNationCon 4: A New Hope will be happening, as the original venue was able to renew their lease for the foreseeable future. So that's at least one thing occurring in 2017 that I can honestly look forward.
Another cool thing from 2016 was the unexpected early preview release of Evil Hat Production's Dresden Files Accelerated game. This was a last-minute "why the heck not?" backer goal from Fred Hicks' wildly successful FATE Core Kickstarter, and apart from a general announcement of "hey, we're looking for playtesters!" not a peep had been heard. And then, in the final weeks of the year, backers get an e-mail notice of "Hey, we've got an early preview PDF of DFA with your name on it!" While I generally like FATE as a system, and liked the general simplicity of Fate Accelerated Edition, I am seriously loving Dresden Files Accelerated. The changes made to both streamline the old Dresden Files game and account for new information has made for a very interesting game. The concept of using Mantles to define your character is very cool, especially in light of the information on mantles in the Dresden Files setting that came to light during the Cold Days novel. Wizards (or Magical Practitioners as their Mantle is called) no longer stand quite so tall above vanilla mortals in DFA, which is nice in terms of general balance, and the concept of scale in terms of rating levels of power works out very nicely, allowing for PCs to have a chance against heavy-hitters like Senior Council members and even the Queens of Faerie, even if that chance is slimmer than a pipe cleaner. My buddy Doran has expressed interest in running a one-shot at some point in time, and I'm very much eager to step into the shoes of my old Dresden!Lite character Danny Copperfield, a Young Wizard of the White Council. To my surprise and delight, it was amazing easy to convert Danny from his original Dresden File starting point (Submerged) to DFA and still be fundamentally the same character in terms of what he can accomplish. I will most certainly be purchasing this in dead tree format when it comes out.
Cool RPG Thing #2 has been the Star Wars campaigns that I've been running and playing using Fantasy Flight Game's amazing system. To be honest, I think FFG's Star Wars RPG is one of the most fun and mechanically interesting RPGs that I've ever played, and I've played a LOT of different RPG systems. Admittedly, most of my recent characters have been Jedi of some stripe or another, with my TFA era rebuild of Valin Starsmor perhaps being my favorite, if only as I've seen him grown from a starting PC with only a few shreds of confidence to having just recently built his own lightsaber. But also fun has been the Force and Destiny campaign that I've been running, set during the classic Rebellion Era. The cast of characters is quite diverse and none of them are even remotely similar to one another; the three Force users are as different as can be. After life circumstances caused us to take a brief break from the campaign, it was nice to get back into the swing of things last night. I'm currently running a tweaked version of the Beyond the Rim adventure module (written by Mister Silver Chocolate himself, Sterling Hershey), and the group's had a lot of fun. I've had to tweak a few combat encounters as the PCs have earned close to 400 XP by this point, so they're vastly more capable than what the module is written for. For instance, Nolt (Zabrak Seeker/Hunter/Hermit) was able to legitimately one-shot an arboreal octopus that had completely gotten the drop on the party with a single shot from his generally unmodded blaster rifle; after what happened to Eric earlier in the month, I was glad to see him have such an awesome moment, along with a number of group laughs about how his character is already planning a summer home on Cholganna given how much of an untamed and hazardous place the world is.
And last but not least in cool RPG things has been the release of the second edition of 7th Sea. I've discussed this before, but I had a lot of love for 7th Sea when it came out over a decade ago. When you've got a game about swashbucklers, pirates, and magic, that's something that's hard not to love. Now I'll admit in retrospect that the first edition of 7th hasn't exactly aged well in terms of mechanics, as a number of things were a lot clunkier than they probably needed to be and the product line was kinda strangled by a huge metaplot that players generally couldn't effect. But the second edition is a very welcome addition to my RPG library, and I've had a lot of fun running and playing this game. While it's very unusual, I do like that the moment you choose to pick up dice, your Hero is generally going to succeed at whatever task they're attempting, and that your dice results help determine how well you were able to avoid the consequences of your risky actions. And yes, I am intentionally using a capital H for Hero, because in this game your character is very much a heroic figure of the likes you seen in the movies, being highly capable and thus far less prone to failing simply because of the vagaries of fate (i.e. bad roll of the dice). The game's not 100% perfect as there's a few bits that still feel a little rough around the edges to me, but that's probably more still getting a feel for this system. I do like the concepts of Pressure and Opportunities as they can be applied to Action sequences such as combat; we've got a Fate Witch in the Wednesday night game I play in that is able to create and employ Opportunities with impressive results without having to mechanically employ her magic simply by using her mundane skills but adding the narrative slant of her tugging/pulling/twisting the strands of Fate to get the desired results, which itself adds a creepily cool element to the character, reinforcing to the rest of the group just why people in her native Vodacce are generally afraid of drawing the ire of a Fate Witch.
Naturally, I am of course thankful for the friends I have, ranging from local folks such as Amy and Tiffany, who were kind enough to invite me into their home for a Christmas Eve dinner for another year, with the night ending my getting roped into helping Amy put together her LEGO Ghostbusters set, to the members of my Friday Night Skype group, with whom I've had many a fun night rolling dice and sharing laughs as we guide our characters through various adventures.
I do have some RPG mechanical stuff that I've been tinkering with off-and-on, ranging from converting a number of 7th Sea Swordsman Schools from their first edition versions to be used in second edition to some Dresden Files Accelerated characters. The DFA characters I'll wait on posting until after the PDF becomes available for sale to the general public. If you're a fan of the Dresden Files books or just the setting in general, then DFA is very much worth checking out as by all signs it looks to be a fantastic RPG.
Well, I think that's enough for me for this entry. To be honest, I'm not sure when the next update will be, or what it'll cover. Until next time, thanks for reading and let's hope 2017 becomes a year to earnestly look forward to unfolding instead of dreading what's to come.
I can't be fully honest as to what I expected out of 2016, but I think I can say there were a lot of surprises, and only a few of them good.
First off, there were the sheer volume of celebrity deaths, many of whom were far too young to be taken from us, running the gamut from David Bowie and Prince to Alan Rickman and most recently Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds. There others to be sure, sadly far too many for a single year. Being the life-long Star Wars fan that I am, it's safe to say that Carrie Fisher's passing is probably the one that hit me the hardest. And while her "Hutt slayer" ensemble was indeed memorable, I remember her more as the sassy, spirited princess in a white gown with buns in her hair, who took charge of her own rescue. Carrie's own life was a roller coaster to be sure, with ups and downs, but it's impossible to deny the influence that one role had in terms of the movie industry. From what I've heard, she did finish up her work for Episode 8, so it'll be interesting to see how they address her absence come time for Episode 9. May the Force be with you Carrie, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra. To us, she'll always be royalty.
To address the political elephant in the room, there's the very unwelcome surprise of the election of the thin-skinned narcissistic orange-skinned man-child Donald Trump, a man so unqualified to be leader of the free world he makes George W. Bush look like Franklin D. Roosevelt by comparison. And on the backs of Trump's campaign of racism, misogyny, and ignorance rode a crop of Republican senators who failed to do their jobs under the Obama administration, stymieing if not outright blocking President Obama's efforts for no reason other than political affiliation and (if leaked details from former high-ranking Republicans are to be believed) the color of the man's skin. I make no secrets about my being a liberal in terms of political views, and ascribe to Bernie Sanders' views in regards to democratic socialism (something this country already makes extensive use of). And while Hillary Clinton was not my first choice, I still voted for her as she was probably one of the most qualified Presidential nominees we've seen in the past few generations. But because of a screwed up Electoral College, we instead got a loud-mouthed braggart that has openly admitted to sexual abuse whose only "qualifications" was that he was white and that he was rich. And to the surprise of nobody that actually bothered to look past Trump's rhetoric, he's breaking just about every promise he made on the campaign trail, and because of one comparatively small group of Americans that bought into his many hate-fueled lies, the whole nation and probably the world itself is going to suffer as that buffoon abuses the office of President to further enrich himself and leave the rest of us holding the bill. As I mentioned to my dear friend Adie from across the pond, while I'm hoping for 2017 to feature a return of the reason and sanity that the world seems to have lost as 2016 comes to a close, I'm not holding my breath for a speedy return and expect it's going to be on hell of a bumpy ride. Admittedly, as a white male in a solidly Democratic state I probably have less to worry about under a Trump presidency (ye gods I feel sick just typing those two words together), I'm more worried about my friends in the LGBTQ+ community as well as those who rely upon the Affordable Care Act, two groups the GOP have made no bones about putting in their crosshairs.
Okay, enough of that topic; it's a sunny day outside and I don't want to spend the last day of the year in a foul mood because of a ferret-wearing shit-gibbon and the dimwitted monkeys that support him.
Some of the good things that 2016 brought for me were the movies Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange. Both were solid and fully entertaining movies, with Strange being far better than I was originally anticipating. And while I was pretty much TeamCap in regards to Civil War, the Russo brothers were able to present the issue as not being entirely clear-cut, with both sides having valid points. The major highlight of the film for me was of course the introduction of Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing Spider-Man: Homecoming next year. Also looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, especially after seeing the trailers. Still unsure about Thor: Ragnarok, but I'll still probably go see it in the theater, but I'll admit that Thor: Dark World is probably one of my least favorite of the MCU entries; Norton's Incredible Hulk takes the cake there for me, and I find Mark Ruffalo to be a much better Banner. Also on the movie front was the new Ghostbusters movie. While it's not as good as the original Ghostbusters, this female-lead reboot of the franchise was very enjoyable, making me and Amy and Tiffany all laugh at various points, especially at many of the cameo appearances of the original movie's cast (I think my favorite was Dan Akroyd as a cabbie with Sigourny Weaver's scientist/mentor being a close second). I really do hope this movie gets a sequel, as I really enjoyed watching this new crew go bust some ghosts.
As for Rogue One... I'll admit that while I did like the movie, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoyed The Force Awakens, Probably for the fact that (SPOILERS!) that none of the new heroes introduced survived to the end. And while that sort of "kill em all!" approach might work for horror movies, I still don't care for that plot path. It may not have been the screenwriters' intent, but the fate of the Rogue One crew honestly felt like they decided "well, this is the easiest way to explain why they weren't around in ANH" and thus avoid "so what was Jyn/Caspian/Chiffut/Baze/etc doing during the rest of the Galactic Civil War after that mission?" questions. Now, I knew going in this was going to be more of a war movie, and that there was no way that everybody was going to make it out alive; if nothing else I figured Jyn Erso (died to redeem her father in wake of his role in building the Death Star), K2-SO, Chiffut (too cool to live), and Bodhi the pilot were going to be toast, but I was figuring at least Caspian would make it out with the plans, even by the skin of his teeth. Apparently there was a different ending, which reportedly revolved around the Rogue One crew getting decimated by Lord Vader, but that got re-shot as it was found too dark/depressing. As for Darth Vader, I think they did a great job bringing him to life on the big screen. He didn't have a lot of screen time, but he made the most of what he did have, especially that end sequence where he just demolishes a squad of Rebel Troopers, and you can tell from their reactions that they know full well that they are completely screwed at that point. I didn't have any problem with the CGI used to bring Tarkin and young Leia to the screen either; what little uncanny valley effect there was with Tarken worked to make him seem even creepier than Peter Cushing's incredible performance in ANH already did.
Back towards the end of March, when the horrors to come of 2016 were still far off and there was hope that a Russian-backed lunatic wouldn't be installed as this nation's leader, there was GamerNationCon 3: Beyond Thunderdrome. I got to play in a number of Star Wars RPG sessions, including a fun adventure run by Christopher West set just prior to The Force Awakens with the PCs all being Resistance operatives, a pick-up run by Sam Stewart with a whole crap load of players, a pick-up run by Sterling Hershey based around material he wrote for the Nexus of Power supplement. I was able to play in three of my good friend Eric's sessions, one being a D&D pick-up where I had a lot of fun playing a Human Paladin as well as two of his Star Wars games, playing a Jedi-type in each one, even if the PCs were very different builds. Though the coolest moment for me was getting to help induct Rodney Thompson as an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion for all the time and hard work he put into the Star Wars Saga Edition RPG, the game that pretty much was responsible for the creation of the d20 Radio Network and with it the Gamer Nation, a large extended family of which I am proud to call myself a member. There was a lot of concern that GNC3:BT would be the final con, as the venue was due to lose it's lease and options for a new venue were not promising, but the Force was with the Gamer Nation as GamerNationCon 4: A New Hope will be happening, as the original venue was able to renew their lease for the foreseeable future. So that's at least one thing occurring in 2017 that I can honestly look forward.
Another cool thing from 2016 was the unexpected early preview release of Evil Hat Production's Dresden Files Accelerated game. This was a last-minute "why the heck not?" backer goal from Fred Hicks' wildly successful FATE Core Kickstarter, and apart from a general announcement of "hey, we're looking for playtesters!" not a peep had been heard. And then, in the final weeks of the year, backers get an e-mail notice of "Hey, we've got an early preview PDF of DFA with your name on it!" While I generally like FATE as a system, and liked the general simplicity of Fate Accelerated Edition, I am seriously loving Dresden Files Accelerated. The changes made to both streamline the old Dresden Files game and account for new information has made for a very interesting game. The concept of using Mantles to define your character is very cool, especially in light of the information on mantles in the Dresden Files setting that came to light during the Cold Days novel. Wizards (or Magical Practitioners as their Mantle is called) no longer stand quite so tall above vanilla mortals in DFA, which is nice in terms of general balance, and the concept of scale in terms of rating levels of power works out very nicely, allowing for PCs to have a chance against heavy-hitters like Senior Council members and even the Queens of Faerie, even if that chance is slimmer than a pipe cleaner. My buddy Doran has expressed interest in running a one-shot at some point in time, and I'm very much eager to step into the shoes of my old Dresden!Lite character Danny Copperfield, a Young Wizard of the White Council. To my surprise and delight, it was amazing easy to convert Danny from his original Dresden File starting point (Submerged) to DFA and still be fundamentally the same character in terms of what he can accomplish. I will most certainly be purchasing this in dead tree format when it comes out.
Cool RPG Thing #2 has been the Star Wars campaigns that I've been running and playing using Fantasy Flight Game's amazing system. To be honest, I think FFG's Star Wars RPG is one of the most fun and mechanically interesting RPGs that I've ever played, and I've played a LOT of different RPG systems. Admittedly, most of my recent characters have been Jedi of some stripe or another, with my TFA era rebuild of Valin Starsmor perhaps being my favorite, if only as I've seen him grown from a starting PC with only a few shreds of confidence to having just recently built his own lightsaber. But also fun has been the Force and Destiny campaign that I've been running, set during the classic Rebellion Era. The cast of characters is quite diverse and none of them are even remotely similar to one another; the three Force users are as different as can be. After life circumstances caused us to take a brief break from the campaign, it was nice to get back into the swing of things last night. I'm currently running a tweaked version of the Beyond the Rim adventure module (written by Mister Silver Chocolate himself, Sterling Hershey), and the group's had a lot of fun. I've had to tweak a few combat encounters as the PCs have earned close to 400 XP by this point, so they're vastly more capable than what the module is written for. For instance, Nolt (Zabrak Seeker/Hunter/Hermit) was able to legitimately one-shot an arboreal octopus that had completely gotten the drop on the party with a single shot from his generally unmodded blaster rifle; after what happened to Eric earlier in the month, I was glad to see him have such an awesome moment, along with a number of group laughs about how his character is already planning a summer home on Cholganna given how much of an untamed and hazardous place the world is.
And last but not least in cool RPG things has been the release of the second edition of 7th Sea. I've discussed this before, but I had a lot of love for 7th Sea when it came out over a decade ago. When you've got a game about swashbucklers, pirates, and magic, that's something that's hard not to love. Now I'll admit in retrospect that the first edition of 7th hasn't exactly aged well in terms of mechanics, as a number of things were a lot clunkier than they probably needed to be and the product line was kinda strangled by a huge metaplot that players generally couldn't effect. But the second edition is a very welcome addition to my RPG library, and I've had a lot of fun running and playing this game. While it's very unusual, I do like that the moment you choose to pick up dice, your Hero is generally going to succeed at whatever task they're attempting, and that your dice results help determine how well you were able to avoid the consequences of your risky actions. And yes, I am intentionally using a capital H for Hero, because in this game your character is very much a heroic figure of the likes you seen in the movies, being highly capable and thus far less prone to failing simply because of the vagaries of fate (i.e. bad roll of the dice). The game's not 100% perfect as there's a few bits that still feel a little rough around the edges to me, but that's probably more still getting a feel for this system. I do like the concepts of Pressure and Opportunities as they can be applied to Action sequences such as combat; we've got a Fate Witch in the Wednesday night game I play in that is able to create and employ Opportunities with impressive results without having to mechanically employ her magic simply by using her mundane skills but adding the narrative slant of her tugging/pulling/twisting the strands of Fate to get the desired results, which itself adds a creepily cool element to the character, reinforcing to the rest of the group just why people in her native Vodacce are generally afraid of drawing the ire of a Fate Witch.
Naturally, I am of course thankful for the friends I have, ranging from local folks such as Amy and Tiffany, who were kind enough to invite me into their home for a Christmas Eve dinner for another year, with the night ending my getting roped into helping Amy put together her LEGO Ghostbusters set, to the members of my Friday Night Skype group, with whom I've had many a fun night rolling dice and sharing laughs as we guide our characters through various adventures.
I do have some RPG mechanical stuff that I've been tinkering with off-and-on, ranging from converting a number of 7th Sea Swordsman Schools from their first edition versions to be used in second edition to some Dresden Files Accelerated characters. The DFA characters I'll wait on posting until after the PDF becomes available for sale to the general public. If you're a fan of the Dresden Files books or just the setting in general, then DFA is very much worth checking out as by all signs it looks to be a fantastic RPG.
Well, I think that's enough for me for this entry. To be honest, I'm not sure when the next update will be, or what it'll cover. Until next time, thanks for reading and let's hope 2017 becomes a year to earnestly look forward to unfolding instead of dreading what's to come.
April 5, 2016
The REAL Best Four Days of Gaming - my thoughts on GamerNationCon 2016
Yeah, the title is sure to piss some folks off. But to be honest, after the amount of fun I had this past weekend, at this point GenCon can go screw itself.
So this past Wednesday, I flew down to Texas to attend the 3rd GamerNationCon, a fairly small gaming convention/gathering of various d20 Radio members. This year's Guests of Honor were Rodney Thompson, formerly of WotC (now working for Bungie) and the man largely responsible for Star Wars Saga Edition as well as mapmaker extraordinaire Christopher West. Other important folks (aside from GMs Chris, Dave, and Phil) were Sam Stewart and Sterling Hershey, both returning for another round of gaming goodness.
My trip down was mostly uneventful, with a slight delay due to windy conditions in the Plano area. I will admit that Texas drivers take a bit of getting used to, and that I don't exaggerate that I nearly got hit three times just on my way to the hotel. Of course, getting to the hotel was its own adventure, due to Google Maps wanting to take me to some entirely different location. But, I got to the hotel in my rental car, though a tad more frazzled than I would have preferred. Still, the Wednesday Dinner get-together was great, as I got to sit and chat with the ever-so-sweet Adi, who flew over from Scotland to attend the convention. It's a shame that Chris Brinkley went through the trouble to arrange things, but then couldn't attend due to a combination of food poisoning and exhaustion from having to do all the driving he did to get down there. Also got to meet GM Hooly, which was very cool, and of course meeting up with folks from last year's GamerNationCon.
I won't go into too many details, but the con was rightly billed as "Four Days of Gaming Goodness." I got a chance to play in two games run by Christopher West, that being his Deep Cover adventure, which was set during the Force Awakens era. Second time around was a lot more fun, with me playing a BB unit that had formerly been property of the First Order. I also got to play in an eight player pick-up game run by Sam Stewart, which was such a laugh riot, due in no small part (just the tip) to GM Chris playing Dorbecca the Mad Claw and really getting into character. My buddy Eric Brenders ran a slew of games, earning his Iron GM badge the day before the con ended (way to go!), and I got to play in two of his Star Wars sessions and a D&D 5e pick-up game he ran, playing a 3rd level Human Paladin and having a blast with all three, though sadly I kinda had to duck out in the midst of his "Save the Princess" module due to an issue I'll touch upon later. Also played a 3rd level version of a Human Monk I'm playing in a local game (running through the "Curse of Strahd" adventure) in a 5e pick-up run by one of the Canadian Contingent, which was fun. Both D&D sessions were played with a lass by the name of Jody Kinkaid, and the session that Eric ran was one of the few times where a player (her) ran a halfling thief in the vein of a kender without being a jerk about it. With the child-like way her character was acting, it was very easy for my paladin to be very protective of her, even if she was dishing out heavy damage almost every round. For the final day, I played in a Star Wars pick-up game run by Sterling Hershey, and while we didn't get to properly finish the adventure due to a lot of fun conversations side-tracking us, it was still a fun adventure, with a very interesting development about half-way through, one that I won't spoil here.
I also got to play a couple rounds of Artemis with GM Phil as our captain, and had a lot of fun. Just re-inforced the idea that game can be a lot of fun if you've got the right group of people. I got to play tactical (much fun) and communications (not so much). I think I'm best suited for tactical, as during that first session I was largely on top of things with keeping the right missiles in the tube and flipping laser frequencies to best punch through enemy shields.
One of the highlights of the convention was the opportunity to help induct Rodney Thompson as an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion. To provide a bit of background as to why this was such a highlight, I myself am an Honorary Member, thanks entirely to Rodney willing to give me a shot at doing some freelancer work for Star Wars Saga Edition, first for Galaxy at War and then again for Unknown Regions, where I got to add two entirely new planets to Star Wars lore as well as sneak in a reference to a Jedi General Morningfire, who for a time was indeed canon (low level canon, but canon all the same). So back in March of 2012, my dear friend Linda Whitson arranged for me to be named a Friend of the Rebel Legion, with GM Phil backing the nomination.
However, upon further review by Phil, it turned out that they'd overlooked something. I was considered a writer for Star Wars thanks to those freelancing gigs, and as such qualified for Honorary Member status. So, in GenCon of 2014 at the GamerNation Pre-GenCon Dinner my status was officially upgraded from Friend of the Legion to Honorary Member (occurring the day after my birthday). Apparently that upgrade was meant to happen during the first GamerNationCon, but a freak blizzard that shut down the airport the morning I was due to fly out nixed that idea. Sterling Hershey was named an Honorary Member on the following Saturday, and given the sheer amount of history the man has with Star Wars RPGs, I feel it was an honor that was long overdue.
And at GamerNationCon 2015, Sam Stewart was named an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion, and as of this year's GamerNationCon, Rodney Thompson joins the ranks. Being the one to hand Rodney his plaque and gold badge was great... and almost didn't happen.
The Saturday that his induction was planned, I'd overslept and in my rush to make sure I had everything I forgot the most important thing... his badge and plaque. I had packed them, but they were sitting back in my hotel room, along with the boots for my Jedi costume. A huge thanks to GM Chris for being willing to ferry my dumb ass back to the hotel so I could grab those items, since he was also grabbing Christopher West and Rodney Thompson; I was able to hide plaque and badge in one of my boots, keeping Rodney in the dark about what was in store for him.
The induction ceremony was something of a "seat of the pants" operation, with GM Phil having to step away from the middle of a game he was running, and GM Dave nearly missing the ceremony (and not being able to do music) as he was in the midst of running an event as well. But, in the end we pulled it off, with Chris Bradshaw in a very awesome Tusken Raider costume and another member of the Rebel Legion in attendance in her Rebel trooper costume. I don't think I looked too bad in my Jedi robes, and a few folks joked that they had finally gotten to meet the real Donovan Morningfire as opposed to the New Yorker that used that name as a forum handle. I think it was safe to say that Rodney's gob was indeed smacked when the four of us walked in at the tail end of a panel that he was hosting. What a found out not long after was that Rodney had noticed Sterling wearing his RL Honorary Member badge, and being impressed asked about how one went about getting one. Well, he found out, and was very appreciative of the accolade. For the Sunday Auction, there wasn't anything that I really wanted and would have had a chance to actually win, so I opted to donate my points all to Phil to boost up his chances to win the Star Wars Armada starter box and still have points left for him and his brother Andrew to use to bid on other items they may have wanted. Seems I wasn't alone in that, with Eric and Sam Stewart also donating some of their points so that Andrew could get the trio of custom Star Wars minis that he really wanted.
It was kind of sad that 4DoGG had to come to an end, but it was a memorable experience, and left me eagerly looking forward to doing it again next year. As was officially announced at the end of the convention, issues with the space we used prevented GNCon 2017 from being held in that same spot, but it does seem that Chris and Dave have plans to help ensure the GamerNation can gather up again next year. The whole thing was capped off with a Mexican restaurant that Dave suggested, with us having many more laughs at the dead dog dinner as we enjoyed some really good food.
About the only downer to the whole thing (apart from it ending) was flying back to the northeast to learn that Mother Nature had decided to dump a whole lot of snow on the area, in spite of it being April and thus the early stages of spring. The snow's slowly fading away, but I was not expecting to come home to freezing temps and having to dig my car out.
Well, that's my general experience with GamerNationCon 2016: Beyond Thunderdome. As I expected, it was a lot of fun, even if my one attempt at a PUG flopped simply due to bad timing. And hopefully there will indeed by GamerNationCon 2017: A New Hope, for which I will most certainly be posting up some pre-registered games. What those games will be, I'm not 100% certain beyond that there will be FFG Star Wars, and maybe one or two other things. I could be balls-out crazy like Eric and Phil and try for the Iron GM badge, but since I also like playing RPGs and I go to these things to relax, that's probably not gonna happen.
So this past Wednesday, I flew down to Texas to attend the 3rd GamerNationCon, a fairly small gaming convention/gathering of various d20 Radio members. This year's Guests of Honor were Rodney Thompson, formerly of WotC (now working for Bungie) and the man largely responsible for Star Wars Saga Edition as well as mapmaker extraordinaire Christopher West. Other important folks (aside from GMs Chris, Dave, and Phil) were Sam Stewart and Sterling Hershey, both returning for another round of gaming goodness.
My trip down was mostly uneventful, with a slight delay due to windy conditions in the Plano area. I will admit that Texas drivers take a bit of getting used to, and that I don't exaggerate that I nearly got hit three times just on my way to the hotel. Of course, getting to the hotel was its own adventure, due to Google Maps wanting to take me to some entirely different location. But, I got to the hotel in my rental car, though a tad more frazzled than I would have preferred. Still, the Wednesday Dinner get-together was great, as I got to sit and chat with the ever-so-sweet Adi, who flew over from Scotland to attend the convention. It's a shame that Chris Brinkley went through the trouble to arrange things, but then couldn't attend due to a combination of food poisoning and exhaustion from having to do all the driving he did to get down there. Also got to meet GM Hooly, which was very cool, and of course meeting up with folks from last year's GamerNationCon.
I won't go into too many details, but the con was rightly billed as "Four Days of Gaming Goodness." I got a chance to play in two games run by Christopher West, that being his Deep Cover adventure, which was set during the Force Awakens era. Second time around was a lot more fun, with me playing a BB unit that had formerly been property of the First Order. I also got to play in an eight player pick-up game run by Sam Stewart, which was such a laugh riot, due in no small part (just the tip) to GM Chris playing Dorbecca the Mad Claw and really getting into character. My buddy Eric Brenders ran a slew of games, earning his Iron GM badge the day before the con ended (way to go!), and I got to play in two of his Star Wars sessions and a D&D 5e pick-up game he ran, playing a 3rd level Human Paladin and having a blast with all three, though sadly I kinda had to duck out in the midst of his "Save the Princess" module due to an issue I'll touch upon later. Also played a 3rd level version of a Human Monk I'm playing in a local game (running through the "Curse of Strahd" adventure) in a 5e pick-up run by one of the Canadian Contingent, which was fun. Both D&D sessions were played with a lass by the name of Jody Kinkaid, and the session that Eric ran was one of the few times where a player (her) ran a halfling thief in the vein of a kender without being a jerk about it. With the child-like way her character was acting, it was very easy for my paladin to be very protective of her, even if she was dishing out heavy damage almost every round. For the final day, I played in a Star Wars pick-up game run by Sterling Hershey, and while we didn't get to properly finish the adventure due to a lot of fun conversations side-tracking us, it was still a fun adventure, with a very interesting development about half-way through, one that I won't spoil here.
I also got to play a couple rounds of Artemis with GM Phil as our captain, and had a lot of fun. Just re-inforced the idea that game can be a lot of fun if you've got the right group of people. I got to play tactical (much fun) and communications (not so much). I think I'm best suited for tactical, as during that first session I was largely on top of things with keeping the right missiles in the tube and flipping laser frequencies to best punch through enemy shields.
One of the highlights of the convention was the opportunity to help induct Rodney Thompson as an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion. To provide a bit of background as to why this was such a highlight, I myself am an Honorary Member, thanks entirely to Rodney willing to give me a shot at doing some freelancer work for Star Wars Saga Edition, first for Galaxy at War and then again for Unknown Regions, where I got to add two entirely new planets to Star Wars lore as well as sneak in a reference to a Jedi General Morningfire, who for a time was indeed canon (low level canon, but canon all the same). So back in March of 2012, my dear friend Linda Whitson arranged for me to be named a Friend of the Rebel Legion, with GM Phil backing the nomination.
However, upon further review by Phil, it turned out that they'd overlooked something. I was considered a writer for Star Wars thanks to those freelancing gigs, and as such qualified for Honorary Member status. So, in GenCon of 2014 at the GamerNation Pre-GenCon Dinner my status was officially upgraded from Friend of the Legion to Honorary Member (occurring the day after my birthday). Apparently that upgrade was meant to happen during the first GamerNationCon, but a freak blizzard that shut down the airport the morning I was due to fly out nixed that idea. Sterling Hershey was named an Honorary Member on the following Saturday, and given the sheer amount of history the man has with Star Wars RPGs, I feel it was an honor that was long overdue.
And at GamerNationCon 2015, Sam Stewart was named an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion, and as of this year's GamerNationCon, Rodney Thompson joins the ranks. Being the one to hand Rodney his plaque and gold badge was great... and almost didn't happen.
The Saturday that his induction was planned, I'd overslept and in my rush to make sure I had everything I forgot the most important thing... his badge and plaque. I had packed them, but they were sitting back in my hotel room, along with the boots for my Jedi costume. A huge thanks to GM Chris for being willing to ferry my dumb ass back to the hotel so I could grab those items, since he was also grabbing Christopher West and Rodney Thompson; I was able to hide plaque and badge in one of my boots, keeping Rodney in the dark about what was in store for him.
The induction ceremony was something of a "seat of the pants" operation, with GM Phil having to step away from the middle of a game he was running, and GM Dave nearly missing the ceremony (and not being able to do music) as he was in the midst of running an event as well. But, in the end we pulled it off, with Chris Bradshaw in a very awesome Tusken Raider costume and another member of the Rebel Legion in attendance in her Rebel trooper costume. I don't think I looked too bad in my Jedi robes, and a few folks joked that they had finally gotten to meet the real Donovan Morningfire as opposed to the New Yorker that used that name as a forum handle. I think it was safe to say that Rodney's gob was indeed smacked when the four of us walked in at the tail end of a panel that he was hosting. What a found out not long after was that Rodney had noticed Sterling wearing his RL Honorary Member badge, and being impressed asked about how one went about getting one. Well, he found out, and was very appreciative of the accolade. For the Sunday Auction, there wasn't anything that I really wanted and would have had a chance to actually win, so I opted to donate my points all to Phil to boost up his chances to win the Star Wars Armada starter box and still have points left for him and his brother Andrew to use to bid on other items they may have wanted. Seems I wasn't alone in that, with Eric and Sam Stewart also donating some of their points so that Andrew could get the trio of custom Star Wars minis that he really wanted.
It was kind of sad that 4DoGG had to come to an end, but it was a memorable experience, and left me eagerly looking forward to doing it again next year. As was officially announced at the end of the convention, issues with the space we used prevented GNCon 2017 from being held in that same spot, but it does seem that Chris and Dave have plans to help ensure the GamerNation can gather up again next year. The whole thing was capped off with a Mexican restaurant that Dave suggested, with us having many more laughs at the dead dog dinner as we enjoyed some really good food.
About the only downer to the whole thing (apart from it ending) was flying back to the northeast to learn that Mother Nature had decided to dump a whole lot of snow on the area, in spite of it being April and thus the early stages of spring. The snow's slowly fading away, but I was not expecting to come home to freezing temps and having to dig my car out.
Well, that's my general experience with GamerNationCon 2016: Beyond Thunderdome. As I expected, it was a lot of fun, even if my one attempt at a PUG flopped simply due to bad timing. And hopefully there will indeed by GamerNationCon 2017: A New Hope, for which I will most certainly be posting up some pre-registered games. What those games will be, I'm not 100% certain beyond that there will be FFG Star Wars, and maybe one or two other things. I could be balls-out crazy like Eric and Phil and try for the Iron GM badge, but since I also like playing RPGs and I go to these things to relax, that's probably not gonna happen.
March 13, 2015
3DoGG lived up to the name!
Sorry for the lengthy silence.
February was something of a crazy month, and the first few days of March were spent trying (and to some extent failing) to get everything together for GamerNationCon 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Those who know me also know how crushed/pissed I was when my flight plans to go to the inaugural GamerNationCon in 2014 got squashed by the Albany area getting slammed with a massive snowstorm that pretty much shut down all flights leaving the Albany International Airport for the entire morning and probably well into the afternoon as well.
Well, luckily there was no report performance of that, and I was able to attend this year's GNCon. And the tag of "3 Days of Gaming Goodness" lives up to the name, as I had an absolute blast.
Most of my time was spent playing various RPGs, including a couple that I'd never played before, such as ICONs run by my friend Eric "oghen" Brenders. It was a fun system, and I felt kind of bad ditching them for a rare chance to play the Dragon Age RPG, but from what I'm told the ICONs session wrapped up pretty shortly after I left. The Dragon Age game was fun, though sadly my dice couldn't roll for crap, which was a trend that also continued into the Feng Shui 2 session I participated in. All three sessions were fun, but I think playing a Maverick Cop by the name of Jacob McFoley was probably the highlight of the non-Star Wars RPG sessions I played in.
I did get to play in 2 (well, technically 3) Star Wars sessions, all using the FFG system. The first one was run by author Keven "Rikoshi" Frane, who I was glad to finally be able to meet and hang out with, even going so far as to having dinner with him and his friend Paul at Red Hot and Blue. Rikoshi's adventure was fun, but needed some work as it probably could be run as two 3+ hour slots instead of trying to cram it into a single 4(ish) hour slot. He did say this was his first time running it, and nobody really gets their written con modules right the first time out. Even GM Chris makes used of "slot zero" to iron out the bugs in his assorted con modules. It was also great to meet and game (even if briefly) with Wayne Basta, who I've also known through the d20 Radio forums for quite some time. He did a bang-up job at making the Trandoshan Doctor PC be quite creepy, particularly with some of the wild facial expressions he did. And Paul giving the female Twi'lek Politico the air of an uptight diva was also entertaining, but just not quite to the same extent. I'd certainly play in a game run by Rikoshi again, as he's a fun GM and pretty good at keeping things moving; the only flaw with the adventure was that it was too ambitious for a 4 hour con slot.
The other Star Wars game I played in was Sunday, and that was probably the highlight of the whole convention for me. Phil aka "DarthGM" is a great GM, even when (or perhaps especially when) he's sleep deprived from the shenanigans of the night before, particularly when combined with Daylight Savings Time pushing the clocks an hour ahead. What made that session particularly cool was getting to share the gaming table with FFG Lead Developer and the con's Guest of Honor Sam Stewart. I've played under Sam as a GM a few times at GenCon, and while those were fun, he really shined as a player, being quite entertaining and creative as the Duros Scholar/Saboteur. I was playing the "lucky charm" build that Phil described on the Order 66 episode discussing the Force Sensitive Emergent, who was also a Soldier/Sharpshooter and a fun character to roleplay; I got to be annoyingly chipper around a bunch of people in various degrees of sleep deprivation :D I am curious to see how my dice roll after sharing them with Sam and rolling them in Phil's dice tray.
Also, I got to make two trips (the second one being much shorter) to Plano's FLGS, Madness Games and Comics. If you listen to the Order 66 podcast, then in the past you've heard Chris and Dave mention and rave about the place. I think Eric put it best when said "it's not a gaming store, it's a geek hobby warehouse!" Seriously, the place is HUGE, befitting as I believe it was a supermarket that got retrofitted into a game store. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves of comics, RPG books, minis, dice, statues... I could have sworn I actually heard a choir of angels sing the first time I crossed the threshold, and were it not for packing concerns (I intentionally used a smaller suitcase), I could have easily spent a bunch of money I really didn't have to spend at that place.
The convention itself wrapped up with dinner at a Texas steakhouse, and man was that steak goooooood. In fact, most of the food I had down there was good, ranging from a joint that was a combination BBQ pit and gas station to Red, Hot, and Blue (a small chain that also had yummy BBQ). Sadly, I made the mistake at eating at a tex-mex buffet called Panchos, and I will never, ever make that mistake again. Also ate at IHOP a couple times, which was good as usual (though I may have overdone it on Monday morning in terms of the amount of food I ate).
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other cool people I got to hang out with, such as Adie/R2DToots all the way from the UK, who was a piggin' sweetheart of a person and newly-minted Queen of the Keg Stand. I really do hope she can make it to GNCon next year, as I'd love a chance to game with her, though she seems to be more of a boardgame type of gal where I'm more of an RPG kind of bloke. Also enjoyed getting to talk campaign ideas with Eric without having to deal with the hassle of us being on Skype at the same time. And it was great to finally meet and talk to Doran "Doctor Xerox" in the flesh, and he's about as quiet in person as he is in Skype, though part of that might have to do with me and Eric being such boisterous personalities when it comes to gaming ideas. It was great to see and talk with GM Chris, GM Dave, Brev, Krista, and Kat as well. Didn't get a lot of time to hang/talk with Phil or Sterling Hershey, but that's how it goes, particularly since Phil seemed to do nothing but run Star Wars games, such as his "The Big Leagues" module or his newly-crafted "Guns of Nova Rain" (which is what I played on Sunday). Sterling ran an adventure on Sunday morning, but I didn't get a chance to check that out due to being in Phil's game; maybe next year if Sterling can make it.
The "Yes, And..." panel was a lot more interesting than I'd though it'd be, with Sam, Sterling, Phil, and Keith Kappel discussing various ways that players aka "those jerks" can derail a pre-written adventure and how you as the GM can put things back on track without having to completely scrap what you've written.
The flight back home had a bit more drama than I would have liked, but I made it home safe and sound, with my luggage showing up the next morning equally safe and sound. A big vote of thanks to the Gamer Nation folks that were willing to ferry me not only back and forth between the hotel and con site, but also pick up and drop off at the airport.
I won't go into too much more detail, but I have to say of all the various conventions that I've gone to, including GenCon, this one was by far the most fun. GenCon has its perks (dealer hall for one), but in terms of things to do, GamerNationCon is one tough act to beat, and was far less expensive for me in terms of travel and hotel costs to boot. And truthfully, I didn't pre-reg for a single event at GNCon, and the only times I wasn't gaming was because I was eating or had removed myself from the hustle and bustle to give my social anxiety meter a chance to zero out.
Overall, it was one hell of a weekend, and I so can't wait to do it again next year. Early word is that they're looking to move the con to April, which I think will go a long way towards alleviating some of the travel problems that a few folks had; a number of folks flying in from the northern parts of the country had weather-related delays.
Now, as to that "fail" part I mentioned earlier? Well, I had initially planed to bring the materials to run three possible RPG modules. The first of these was my Saga Edition version of Operation: Jailbreak, the second was Dragon Age's Duty Unto Death (as seen on TableTop), and an unspecified EotE module. Sadly, I rolled a Despair at properly managing my time, and simply couldn't get the characters and core plot idea to properly gel for the EotE module in time for the con, so I wound up scrapping it entirely. Which was probably just as well as enough folks were running EotE and AoR that anyone that needed their Star Wars fix wasn't hurting for options. Next year, I'll probably just bring the stuff for Dragon Age (which folks seemed to enjoy even though I'm sure I forgot all sorts of rules and had to look up skill specializations to see what sort of check I should be asking for) and the FFG Star Wars module that I'm currently working on. Said module should be good to go in time for GNCon3, as I've got the characters set and ready (just need to tweak one a bit and fine tune the stats for another) and a pretty solid plot layout that just needs some polish and embellishing; it likely won't be a formally written module (as dear gods do I suck at doing those) but will have enough structure that I'll know where it's going but flexible enough that I won't be at a loss for the palyers' inevitable right turn at Albuquerque. It's a pretty fun cast of characters, or at least they look like a pretty fun cast of characters; I'll have to run the module first to see if that holds true.
Well, that's enough blabbering from me for one night. If I don't stop now, I'm likely to keep going on and on about how fun this year's GNCon was. Unless things go totally pear-shaped for me, I should be all set to attend next year's con, especially if it's being held in April due to a severe lack of weather-related shenanigans that frequently occur in March. After all, there's plenty of shenanigans at GamerNationCon already.
February was something of a crazy month, and the first few days of March were spent trying (and to some extent failing) to get everything together for GamerNationCon 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Those who know me also know how crushed/pissed I was when my flight plans to go to the inaugural GamerNationCon in 2014 got squashed by the Albany area getting slammed with a massive snowstorm that pretty much shut down all flights leaving the Albany International Airport for the entire morning and probably well into the afternoon as well.
Well, luckily there was no report performance of that, and I was able to attend this year's GNCon. And the tag of "3 Days of Gaming Goodness" lives up to the name, as I had an absolute blast.
Most of my time was spent playing various RPGs, including a couple that I'd never played before, such as ICONs run by my friend Eric "oghen" Brenders. It was a fun system, and I felt kind of bad ditching them for a rare chance to play the Dragon Age RPG, but from what I'm told the ICONs session wrapped up pretty shortly after I left. The Dragon Age game was fun, though sadly my dice couldn't roll for crap, which was a trend that also continued into the Feng Shui 2 session I participated in. All three sessions were fun, but I think playing a Maverick Cop by the name of Jacob McFoley was probably the highlight of the non-Star Wars RPG sessions I played in.
I did get to play in 2 (well, technically 3) Star Wars sessions, all using the FFG system. The first one was run by author Keven "Rikoshi" Frane, who I was glad to finally be able to meet and hang out with, even going so far as to having dinner with him and his friend Paul at Red Hot and Blue. Rikoshi's adventure was fun, but needed some work as it probably could be run as two 3+ hour slots instead of trying to cram it into a single 4(ish) hour slot. He did say this was his first time running it, and nobody really gets their written con modules right the first time out. Even GM Chris makes used of "slot zero" to iron out the bugs in his assorted con modules. It was also great to meet and game (even if briefly) with Wayne Basta, who I've also known through the d20 Radio forums for quite some time. He did a bang-up job at making the Trandoshan Doctor PC be quite creepy, particularly with some of the wild facial expressions he did. And Paul giving the female Twi'lek Politico the air of an uptight diva was also entertaining, but just not quite to the same extent. I'd certainly play in a game run by Rikoshi again, as he's a fun GM and pretty good at keeping things moving; the only flaw with the adventure was that it was too ambitious for a 4 hour con slot.
The other Star Wars game I played in was Sunday, and that was probably the highlight of the whole convention for me. Phil aka "DarthGM" is a great GM, even when (or perhaps especially when) he's sleep deprived from the shenanigans of the night before, particularly when combined with Daylight Savings Time pushing the clocks an hour ahead. What made that session particularly cool was getting to share the gaming table with FFG Lead Developer and the con's Guest of Honor Sam Stewart. I've played under Sam as a GM a few times at GenCon, and while those were fun, he really shined as a player, being quite entertaining and creative as the Duros Scholar/Saboteur. I was playing the "lucky charm" build that Phil described on the Order 66 episode discussing the Force Sensitive Emergent, who was also a Soldier/Sharpshooter and a fun character to roleplay; I got to be annoyingly chipper around a bunch of people in various degrees of sleep deprivation :D I am curious to see how my dice roll after sharing them with Sam and rolling them in Phil's dice tray.
Also, I got to make two trips (the second one being much shorter) to Plano's FLGS, Madness Games and Comics. If you listen to the Order 66 podcast, then in the past you've heard Chris and Dave mention and rave about the place. I think Eric put it best when said "it's not a gaming store, it's a geek hobby warehouse!" Seriously, the place is HUGE, befitting as I believe it was a supermarket that got retrofitted into a game store. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves of comics, RPG books, minis, dice, statues... I could have sworn I actually heard a choir of angels sing the first time I crossed the threshold, and were it not for packing concerns (I intentionally used a smaller suitcase), I could have easily spent a bunch of money I really didn't have to spend at that place.
The convention itself wrapped up with dinner at a Texas steakhouse, and man was that steak goooooood. In fact, most of the food I had down there was good, ranging from a joint that was a combination BBQ pit and gas station to Red, Hot, and Blue (a small chain that also had yummy BBQ). Sadly, I made the mistake at eating at a tex-mex buffet called Panchos, and I will never, ever make that mistake again. Also ate at IHOP a couple times, which was good as usual (though I may have overdone it on Monday morning in terms of the amount of food I ate).
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other cool people I got to hang out with, such as Adie/R2DToots all the way from the UK, who was a piggin' sweetheart of a person and newly-minted Queen of the Keg Stand. I really do hope she can make it to GNCon next year, as I'd love a chance to game with her, though she seems to be more of a boardgame type of gal where I'm more of an RPG kind of bloke. Also enjoyed getting to talk campaign ideas with Eric without having to deal with the hassle of us being on Skype at the same time. And it was great to finally meet and talk to Doran "Doctor Xerox" in the flesh, and he's about as quiet in person as he is in Skype, though part of that might have to do with me and Eric being such boisterous personalities when it comes to gaming ideas. It was great to see and talk with GM Chris, GM Dave, Brev, Krista, and Kat as well. Didn't get a lot of time to hang/talk with Phil or Sterling Hershey, but that's how it goes, particularly since Phil seemed to do nothing but run Star Wars games, such as his "The Big Leagues" module or his newly-crafted "Guns of Nova Rain" (which is what I played on Sunday). Sterling ran an adventure on Sunday morning, but I didn't get a chance to check that out due to being in Phil's game; maybe next year if Sterling can make it.
The "Yes, And..." panel was a lot more interesting than I'd though it'd be, with Sam, Sterling, Phil, and Keith Kappel discussing various ways that players aka "those jerks" can derail a pre-written adventure and how you as the GM can put things back on track without having to completely scrap what you've written.
The flight back home had a bit more drama than I would have liked, but I made it home safe and sound, with my luggage showing up the next morning equally safe and sound. A big vote of thanks to the Gamer Nation folks that were willing to ferry me not only back and forth between the hotel and con site, but also pick up and drop off at the airport.
I won't go into too much more detail, but I have to say of all the various conventions that I've gone to, including GenCon, this one was by far the most fun. GenCon has its perks (dealer hall for one), but in terms of things to do, GamerNationCon is one tough act to beat, and was far less expensive for me in terms of travel and hotel costs to boot. And truthfully, I didn't pre-reg for a single event at GNCon, and the only times I wasn't gaming was because I was eating or had removed myself from the hustle and bustle to give my social anxiety meter a chance to zero out.
Overall, it was one hell of a weekend, and I so can't wait to do it again next year. Early word is that they're looking to move the con to April, which I think will go a long way towards alleviating some of the travel problems that a few folks had; a number of folks flying in from the northern parts of the country had weather-related delays.
Now, as to that "fail" part I mentioned earlier? Well, I had initially planed to bring the materials to run three possible RPG modules. The first of these was my Saga Edition version of Operation: Jailbreak, the second was Dragon Age's Duty Unto Death (as seen on TableTop), and an unspecified EotE module. Sadly, I rolled a Despair at properly managing my time, and simply couldn't get the characters and core plot idea to properly gel for the EotE module in time for the con, so I wound up scrapping it entirely. Which was probably just as well as enough folks were running EotE and AoR that anyone that needed their Star Wars fix wasn't hurting for options. Next year, I'll probably just bring the stuff for Dragon Age (which folks seemed to enjoy even though I'm sure I forgot all sorts of rules and had to look up skill specializations to see what sort of check I should be asking for) and the FFG Star Wars module that I'm currently working on. Said module should be good to go in time for GNCon3, as I've got the characters set and ready (just need to tweak one a bit and fine tune the stats for another) and a pretty solid plot layout that just needs some polish and embellishing; it likely won't be a formally written module (as dear gods do I suck at doing those) but will have enough structure that I'll know where it's going but flexible enough that I won't be at a loss for the palyers' inevitable right turn at Albuquerque. It's a pretty fun cast of characters, or at least they look like a pretty fun cast of characters; I'll have to run the module first to see if that holds true.
Well, that's enough blabbering from me for one night. If I don't stop now, I'm likely to keep going on and on about how fun this year's GNCon was. Unless things go totally pear-shaped for me, I should be all set to attend next year's con, especially if it's being held in April due to a severe lack of weather-related shenanigans that frequently occur in March. After all, there's plenty of shenanigans at GamerNationCon already.
March 18, 2014
GamerNationCon: An Opportunity Missed...
If you follow me on Twitter (and haven't been chased away by all the cute critter retweets), then you probably saw that the past few days have had some major ups and downs for me.
For months, I'd been eagerly anticipating going to the first (and hopefully not only) GamerNationCon, or 3 Days of Gaming Goodness as it had also been called. A big part of it was the opportunity to met folks from the d20 Radio forums, such as Wayne "Maarkeen" Basta and Kevin "Rikoshi" Frane amongst others. The first blow was finding out that Ben "Cyril" Erikson couldn't make it down as his employer didn't approve his time-off request, though that itself had been preceded by the disappointment that his wife Nateal wouldn't make it due to the cost of plane tickets for them.
Well, this past Thursday, the Capital District of the semi-glorious state of New York got hammered with a major winter storm that forecasts had been saying "wouldn't be all that bad" up until the night before. Now, my flight was scheduled to head out Thursday morning and get me to Dallas in the afternoon. So I was a bit upset to find that my flight had been cancelled, though I was able to rebook to a later flight that would have gotten me there in the late evening instead, but still there on Thursday so that I could enjoy the con and be there to run my two events. Well, I show up at the airport, after driving through barely-cleared roads and spending 10 minutes trying to find a parking spot in the long-term parking lot, only to learn that my re-booked flight has also been cancelled, as had a bunch of other morning flights. I tried just about every option I could think of, including seeing if they could get me to Little Rock that night, hoping that my friend Linda and her husband Mark wouldn't object to me catching a ride down to Dallas with them. But the only way I was getting to Dallas would be through doing a lot of plane-hopping and overnight stays at either airport hotels or airports themselves, and without some extreme amounts of luck, I'd get there late evening on Saturday. So yeah, not really worth the sheer volume of aggravation just to show up when the convention was pretty much over. At least I've got a voucher for my flight that I can put towards the air fare of my trip to GenCon this August.
And from what I've seen on Twitter and heard from Linda, the 3DoGG was a blast, with some of the highlights being Jay "Ynnen" Little being made an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion. Part of the set-up to surprise him was that I was scheduled to co-host a seminar with him about "RPG Writing." From what I've been told, he was quite surprised when a bunch of Rebel Legion folks came out and presented him with this plaque. I really wanted to be there, as Jay Little is a very cool guy, but alas.
Rikoshi and one his friends also ran an Age of Rebellion module which I can only assume will be a blast to run/play given how much Linda was gushing about it when I talked with her last night. It does require two GMs to run it, although a really good GM could probably handle the two separate tables that the adventure has. Said GM will probably need a mental break afterwards though.
I'd been looking forward to running my Star Wars convention module "Tales of the Blue Zephyrs" at the convention. I've run it a bunch of times, including as a pick-up at GenCon (which infamously was the only time the players got wiped out), and it's a pretty fun adventure, having started out under the Revised Core Rules then being converted to Saga Edition. I also had a Dragon Age adventure, this being "Duty Unto Death" which was what Chris Pramas ran for Wil Wheaton and his crew on the "Table Top" web series, only I'd opted to create my own set of pre-gen characters. And I'd plenty of folks looking forward to playing both of those. But, thanks to the wonderful Northeast weather, those plans got scuttled.
As the Jedi adage goes, "we accept what we are given, we take what is offered." I wasn't able to go to GamerNationCon, but I might just be able to pull it off for next year, and will probably adjust my plans to hopefully account for any weather issues so that I can avoid a repeat of this year's fiasco.
For months, I'd been eagerly anticipating going to the first (and hopefully not only) GamerNationCon, or 3 Days of Gaming Goodness as it had also been called. A big part of it was the opportunity to met folks from the d20 Radio forums, such as Wayne "Maarkeen" Basta and Kevin "Rikoshi" Frane amongst others. The first blow was finding out that Ben "Cyril" Erikson couldn't make it down as his employer didn't approve his time-off request, though that itself had been preceded by the disappointment that his wife Nateal wouldn't make it due to the cost of plane tickets for them.
Well, this past Thursday, the Capital District of the semi-glorious state of New York got hammered with a major winter storm that forecasts had been saying "wouldn't be all that bad" up until the night before. Now, my flight was scheduled to head out Thursday morning and get me to Dallas in the afternoon. So I was a bit upset to find that my flight had been cancelled, though I was able to rebook to a later flight that would have gotten me there in the late evening instead, but still there on Thursday so that I could enjoy the con and be there to run my two events. Well, I show up at the airport, after driving through barely-cleared roads and spending 10 minutes trying to find a parking spot in the long-term parking lot, only to learn that my re-booked flight has also been cancelled, as had a bunch of other morning flights. I tried just about every option I could think of, including seeing if they could get me to Little Rock that night, hoping that my friend Linda and her husband Mark wouldn't object to me catching a ride down to Dallas with them. But the only way I was getting to Dallas would be through doing a lot of plane-hopping and overnight stays at either airport hotels or airports themselves, and without some extreme amounts of luck, I'd get there late evening on Saturday. So yeah, not really worth the sheer volume of aggravation just to show up when the convention was pretty much over. At least I've got a voucher for my flight that I can put towards the air fare of my trip to GenCon this August.
And from what I've seen on Twitter and heard from Linda, the 3DoGG was a blast, with some of the highlights being Jay "Ynnen" Little being made an Honorary Member of the Rebel Legion. Part of the set-up to surprise him was that I was scheduled to co-host a seminar with him about "RPG Writing." From what I've been told, he was quite surprised when a bunch of Rebel Legion folks came out and presented him with this plaque. I really wanted to be there, as Jay Little is a very cool guy, but alas.
Rikoshi and one his friends also ran an Age of Rebellion module which I can only assume will be a blast to run/play given how much Linda was gushing about it when I talked with her last night. It does require two GMs to run it, although a really good GM could probably handle the two separate tables that the adventure has. Said GM will probably need a mental break afterwards though.
I'd been looking forward to running my Star Wars convention module "Tales of the Blue Zephyrs" at the convention. I've run it a bunch of times, including as a pick-up at GenCon (which infamously was the only time the players got wiped out), and it's a pretty fun adventure, having started out under the Revised Core Rules then being converted to Saga Edition. I also had a Dragon Age adventure, this being "Duty Unto Death" which was what Chris Pramas ran for Wil Wheaton and his crew on the "Table Top" web series, only I'd opted to create my own set of pre-gen characters. And I'd plenty of folks looking forward to playing both of those. But, thanks to the wonderful Northeast weather, those plans got scuttled.
As the Jedi adage goes, "we accept what we are given, we take what is offered." I wasn't able to go to GamerNationCon, but I might just be able to pull it off for next year, and will probably adjust my plans to hopefully account for any weather issues so that I can avoid a repeat of this year's fiasco.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)