I talked about my Ucon 2018 experience on my podcast. But I want to share pictures, so here’s a blog article. I did share pictures to various social media, but I wanted to have them all in one place so they are found more easily. I also have some pics I didn’t get shared to social media.

While the lobby restaurant/bar was not as packed as years past, the con itself was well attended. There were three other cons this weekend, the two closest were Gamehole Con in Madison, WI and Con On The Cob in Ohio, and the Mace convention in North Carolina [EDIT 13 Dec 2022 – URL no longer exists & not in the Internet Archive]. On the podcast, I incorrectly said it was Pax Unplugged in PA. PAX Unplugged is the last week of November.

I got busy and didn’t sign up for games before the con. I got an all access pass, so any game with an opening, I could drop in and play.

I saw several old friends, and met some new friends face to face, and made more friends.

Thursday night, I ran into a couple of friends and made a new friend, and the four of us played my card game. They liked it, and had some suggestions for the two player game. I also played a two player game Friday night with one of the 3 players who played in the first two games at Gary Con 10 in the spring. Since the last rough edge was knocked out in the third game, he hadn’t played it in it’s current form. He really liked the change, as it dealt with the one issue I hadn’t worked out yet.

I ran my Gamma World [Affiliate Link] scenario, Vault of the Ancients at 9 am Friday morning I had a sold out table of 8 players, and one of them didn’t show. Last year in that time slot, I was going to run Metamorphosis Alpha and had one player, who decided to go to another game rather than attempt a solo game. I forgot to get a picture of the table during play. We had a blast and lots of laughs.

Friday Afternoon, I ran my DCC [Affiliate Link] funnel, Amongst the Fungus, with 6 players and they all had a blast and liked the weirdness of it. I had calls to publish it, which I am considering, but need a lot of writing, polishing, and play testing.

Saturday morning, I slept in and took my time to review things for my evening Boot Hill game, since I hadn’t played it in at least 35 years.

Saturday Afternoon, I ran my DCC [Affiliate Link] funnel, Amongst the Fungus with 5 players and they also enjoyed it. I love how the play test on Roll20 ended one way, and each con game was also a different game. For both games, I used a table of 200 items from Doug Kovacs, that Doug and Adam Muszkiewicz, and some other DCC game masters use. It’s up to the players to decide what those items do and can be used for. For some, it’s just a role playing device, for others, they might help advance the adventure, or solve problems. It’s all up to the players to be creative and use their imaginations.

Saturday Evening, I ran my Boot Hill 2e [Affiliate Link] game, A Posse For the School Marm. The 6 players were ready for the game. All but one, a young woman, had played before. The young woman I think her name was Laura was so excited to play that she bought the PDF, printed it off, read the rules, and generated a character. She had read the rules and understood them, and was so eager she was looking up things as part of our prep before I could get to them. I had pregens, but gave her the choice to use a pregen or her self made character, and she chose her self made character. The players accomplished their goals and ended up with a lot of money and decided to pool it and buy a ranch. They has so much fun that they asked if I could run a game next year to find out what happens to their cattle ranch. I’ve always had players like the games I run, but this is the first time that any have asked for a sequel! I am pumped and am definitely starting to think how that might work.

Sunday Morning, I finally played in an RPG session at UCon. I played my first game in the Contessa track.

Stacy Delorfano was the UCon special guest two years ago, and I was there Thursday night and was asked to help give guests a ride to the guest welcome dinner, since I’m friends with a couple of the con staff, and my youngest son was with me and we gave Stacy a ride. So she remembered me when we ran into each other either Friday or Saturday night this year between games.

She played in the game ran by Emily Danvers, in a game they are working on. I found out that Contessa plans to open a publishing arm and will help those who are marginalized get their name on a published item, to give them a leg up with larger publishers.

The game is an OSR based system, using the standard 6 abilities, but wisdom was renamed to Spirit. The game is a werewolf theme, where the players are all werewolves in addition to having classes. Character generation was easy. We each got a note card that had the name of our class, and only the abilities that had positive bonuses. Abilities not listed were +0. Each class also had a couple of skills they could use, like hacking, healing, combat, and one skill that could be used to give a player advantage. There was also a Rage track where if you failed something miserably, you had to roll a DC to see if you lost control and became a wolf. To start the DC is 2, and each time you check it goes up. Some particularly challenging things cause the DC to go up before you roll the check. We also got to pick from a group of cards a personality trait and two background cards. My character was a spiritualist with an anxious personality and was a conspiracy theorist and had a spiritualist background. A spiritualist can identify paranormal, non-human things and communicate with the magical overlay on the WWW.

We had a good time with lots of laughter. One round of play, everyone was rolling 1’s and failing miserably. I rolled a 1 on my Rage check and became a wolf, and chomped onto a chain of a possessed whirly theme park ride and was struggling like a dog you can pick up on the end of a rope in tug of war. I may have been the only straight guy there, I guess the term is cis, and was definitely the oldest. I think the ones who didn’t know me were a little skeptical of my presence until they got to know me.

This was the first time I had ever played in a game that used the X card. I understand it better, but not enough to explain it properly. 

I caught up with several friends, I’ve lost track of what days I spoke with each of them.

Donn Stroud author of Dead Planet [Affiliate Link] for the Mothership game
[Affiliate Link]is a friend I knew online. UCon is his local con as he only lives a few miles away. I bought Mothership [Affiliate Link] and Dead Planet 
[Affiliate Link]. Then he signed them. I have yet to find time to read them. Donn is working on more adventures for Mothership [Affiliate Link]. Donn flattered me by telling me he had my PDFs from DriveThruRPG and liked them!

Adam & Katie Muszkiewicz and Stanley made it and Adam & Donn talked a bit. They have several episodes recorded of Drink, Spin, Run, and may release them. Life gets in the way, so they haven’t recorded new episodes.

My schedule didn’t match up with Brendan LaSalle’s until Sunday afternoon, but he was running the scenario he ran at UCon two years ago, so I didn’t get to play, but we did catch up a bit between games.

I also saw BJ Hensley and got to talk with her briefly, She was another special guest. I met her at Gary Con 10 earlier this year.

One of the vendors, whom I know, John Reyst of D20PFSRD had something come up and had to cancel last minute, so the small room full of vendors was a bit less crowded than in years past.

I had a great time. I’m tired and thinking about what is next, which is submitting games for Marmalade Dog before December 31, and getting my Gary Con submissions in.

If you’ve never been to a convention, I recommend it. Keep in mind that a small local convention may not be an example of a great convention, but they are more affordable and give you an opportunity to play with new people and new GMs and new game systems. If you like board games, you can get your fill of them at cons.