Tag Archives: Conventions

RPGs

Gary Con 15

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March 23-26, 2023 Gary Con 15 took place in Lake Geneva, WI. I didn’t take as many pictures this year.

What I Ran

I signed up to run 4 games of 4 hours each, one each morning. I used the same scenario for each. I used Delving Deeper the Original D&D clone I describe as OD&D but organized. While not perfect and there are a few things I would change, it makes for fast character creation and is simple to run, perfect for cons.

It was a higher level scenario with 8 – 8th level (or max level PCs). 4 humans: Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief all 8th level. 2 Elves, one an 8th level magic user and the other a 4th level fighter/4th level magic user, 4th level fighter being the max level. A 6th level dwarf, max level, and a 4th level halfling, max level. The halfling saves as an 8th level fighter and gets +3 on hurled weapons, which I ruled includes slings. All fighters had magic armor and magic weapons, the others had some sort of magic item that included weapons. I randomly determined the magic items and some were quite powerful. I kept them.

My scenario is called “Rescue From Fire Island”. The evil princess of the Eternal Flame (a volcano) captured good queen Galvia of the Verdant Isles. In times of trouble, Galvia summons a dragon to help. Her advisors are keeping this quiet to avoid panic while the party, the “Special Projects Team” rescues the queen. The queen is to be sacrificed in a week to the volcano. So there is a timer. There is a hexcrawl element so the PCs can encounter various creatures on the island. Both groups I ran this for loved it.

The party would be teleported in but the princess’ castle and the dread temple on the volcano were blocked. The players got to choose where they teleported in. This difference guaranteed that no two groups would play the exact same situation.

Two things I used for this made it interesting that players in both groups appreciated. I used checkers for tracking days with the plain side being day and the crown side being night. The other thing was for each PC I had two game pieces for each player their own color. One piece went by the index card with their name and PCs name and class. The other went on the made to show marching order. I used mancala pieces to show where the party was and when they encountered certain special encounters.

I have a spoilers section at the end. Don’t read it if you want to play this scenario. I plan to write it up and will put it on DriveThru RPG [Affiliate Link].

Day 1

Sadly, no one signed up for the first day, Thursday, and no one was looking for a game, so I didn’t get to run it. Of course I was most worried about being ready for the first session, but I was ready.

Day 1 – Nearly full gaming hall with my table prepped.
Day 1 – Waiting for Players before I finish setup.
Day 1 – Ray Otus with a refurbished Castle Grayskull DM screen and dice tower. With a Forrest Aguire sans fez.
Day 1 – Pat Kilbane with the current cut of his documentary, “The Dreams In Gary’s Basement”.

Day 2

The second day, I had 3 people signed up, but they all cancelled, but three fellows were available. I had them each run two PCs, which was a good mix. They had a blast. One of them showed up and was asking about my game, and bought one of the Delving Deeper books I stock up on from Lulu. This year, I planned to use them as a roll off gift after the session. Which when he located his two buddies, I still did, and because I had more than I needed after no game the day before I did the roll off, and sold another to the other.

They loved the hexcrawl aspect and had a lot of random encounters. Their choice of where they teleported to got them quickly to the final encounter. The thief was turned to stone, but the rest of the party made some interesting choices in what they did and beat the princess and saved the queen.

They had a blast and every time I saw them they were still pumped and ready to run Delving Deeper for their home group.

Day 2 – Running “Rescue From Fire Island” for the first time.
Day 2 – Giant mini sized print of a Dyson Logos dungeon with two DMs on each end running different groups.
Day 2 – Chgowiz running his battle for the moathouse from the module “Village of Hommlet”
Day 2 – Closeup of Chgowiz’s 3-D printed Moathouse

Day 3

The third day, I had 7 signed up. Only one was a no show, but I had ran into a friend who had a younger friend looking for a game, so he joined in. They all had a blast and were also really into it.

They chose to come in closer to the pincess’ castle and encountered the Juggernaut, the toughest monster in Delving Deeper, but managed to beat it and the princess. They also had no random encounters so got to the location of the final fight and beat the princess. The elf mage saved vs petrification TWICE! Three PCs died in the end.

One of the players gave me a gift card to Target. They said they had one for each game they signed up for between $5 and $25 and they didn’t know which was which. That was a first for me, and I will use that to stock up on game materials like graph paper, etc.

Day 3 – Full table of players for second running of “Rescue From Fire Island.”
Day 3 – The Administrator himself, Merle Rasmussen of Top Secret.
Day 3 – Todd Stashwick AKA Captain Shaw of the current season of Picard. We met last year and he recalled my name and my blog.

Day 4

The final day, 3 were signed up, but one cancelled. One showed up on time, but had to leave early because of when his ride was leaving and another showed up an hour late, so we only had about an hour left. Even if I tried starting at the end fight and they each ran 3 characters, I’m not sure I could have made it work in an hour. So we played my card game. One of the players bought Delving Deeper from me a few years ago at Marmalade Dog, so instead of a roll-off, I gave the gift book to the other fellow. Sadly, both times I play tested my card game this Gary Con, I forgot to take a picture mid game. We had fun and they both enjoyed it.

I about lost my voice from talking loud enough to be heard over a crowded game room where almost every table was at play. By the time I got home Sunday evening, I felt bad and suspected if I didn’t have Covid, I had the flu. Muscle and join aches and increasing nasal drainage. I did a Covid test and I thought it might be a false positive because I didn’t notice the faint second line until after the 15-20 minute window to check it. The directions indicated that after 20 minutes if the second line showed up if is likely a false positive. So I was planning to re-test on Monday, but when my breakfast had no flavor and I felt worse, I knew I had Covid.

I am so mad at myself. I still wear a mask going to the store or to pick up restaurant take out. At Gary Con they only required a negative Covid test or proof of vaccination, but did not require masks. I only wore a mask in line at registration, because we were packed tightly. I’m feeling a lot better today. My voice is worse due to all the drainage, but the random aches and pains are gone and I have a lot more energy.

I’m resolved to wear a mask next year as I don’t every want to feel this bad again. It saddens me that I helped expose others to Covid. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone as I feel terrible. It’s only because of being fully vaxed and boosted that I’m already feeling better.

I’m really disappointed in those who were sick or had been exposed who showed up and didn’t wear a mask. That is so selfish. I don’t like that I can’t trust anyone with my health and that it’s all on me. The world will never be like it was pre-Covid. At least not for a long time.

But other than almost losing my voice and getting Covid, I had an awesome time. Gary Con is still my favorite convention. Not too big and everyone is happy to be there.

Spoilers

Don’t read this if you’d rather discover these things as a player in this scenario.

The dread princess is a lich and the queen is the dragon. She has a magical collar that prevents her from transforming. The volcano will explode and destroy the island by the end of the 7th day if the queen isn’t sacrificed.

Inspiration

My granddaughter and I play a free-form RPG we made up called “Dragon” where she is a dragon. My son and his family lives with me, so she will come to my room and say, “Grandpa, let’s play ‘Dragon’!”

So I thought for a moment and said, “OK, one day you wake up to the mocking laughter of the evil princess and find yourself in a dragon proof cage.” When I was thinking about what I could run at Gary Con this year, I easily made a more coherent scenario that would make for an interesting and challenging session.

RPGs

Garage Con

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The Idea

On April 30, 2021 I posted on Twitter:

Soon people commented that they liked that idea, so I took the plunge and created a private group on Facebook and invited people who live in Michigan, in other states near Southwest Michigan, and others who might make the trip, plus family. I invited over 50 people and nine showed up, making ten with me, eleven when my granddaughter helped roll dice for my character in Numenera.

Mark Clover suggested the name right in front of me, Garage Con.

I found a public domain image of a garage from Unsplash and a font based off of the outlines of tools.

Clayton Williams provided an image based on the picture and font that I used to make a T-shirt signs and posters.

I put up an FAQ, and a poll listing the dates I would be available. The date most voted for was Saturday, July 17.

I also ordered a port-a-potty since my 10 year old house only has one bathroom.

I updated the group page with more information and progress on getting the garage ready.

I then spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning and organizing my garage. Long story about why it was so bad. I lost track of how many hours I put into it.

I planned to be done with the heavy lifting long before the day of the event, but I was still moving stuff to the basement the day before, but I finally got it all done with some help for a couple hours at different times from each of my two sons.

The Big Day

The day arrived and I, of course, kept waking up thinking about all the things I hadn’t done yet. None of which were critical. All of those things could be done as they came up during the day.

But I was awake and not falling back to sleep at 5:30 AM. This made for a very long day and running out of steam a few times, once almost falling asleep during a game.

I set up two shop fans to keep the air moving and they did a great job keeping us cool. thankfully it was a mild sunny day that got better as the humidity decreased once the rain stopped about 8:00 AM

Nine guest showed up, plus me. My granddaughter helped roll dice for my character in the Numenera game. She also joined in the final game of the evening, Lizards & Wizards [Affiliate Link].

I ran the first game, my Boot Hill 2e [Affiliate Link] scenario, A Posse For The School Marm.

There were two games in the afternoon, Numenera [Affiliate Link]with 4 players plus the GM, and Weird Frontiers [Formerly Dark Trails] with 4 players plus the GM.

I closed out the day with Lizards & Wizards [Affiliate Link] by James V. West. My granddaughter played in that and had a great time. I wrote up a review about it a few years ago.

We ordered burgers for lunch from the local chain restaurant, and pizza for supper from the local pizza place. Both are less than a mile from my house.

People chipped in to help with the cost of the port-a-potty and food even though I told them it was cheaper than a weekend at a convention. All I really wanted was people to come and game.

Gaming started about 10:00 AM and the last guests left about 10:00 PM, about an hour earlier than initially planned. It was a full day, so that was a good point to end it.

By 10:30 pm I had finished bringing my game materials into the house, along with the leftover food items. The final sweeping and putting the folding tables away can be done tomorrow.

By 11:30 PM I had this article written.

The Future

All agreed it was a fun time and that my garage was perfect for a one day con. Talk soon turned to next year before the day was half over.

I had a great time and the stress and frustration of getting my garage in shape to host this event were well worth it. I had to get my garage organized so I can have an appraisal to re-finance while the mortgage rates are still so low. It was a win-win for me.

I am definitely planning to do this again. Next year will be a lot easier because I can focus on preparing to run games instead of making room to play games.

Others have commented that some well established conventions started as self hosted gaming events. I’m not looking to grow into the next big convention. I just like having people to game with. My normal gaming happens online via Roll20.

I much prefer in-person gaming, but I just can’t seem to get a group together, or find a group that lasts so I stick with Roll20 for regular gaming. But over a year without in-person gaming has been really tough.

Today did a lot to re-set my attitude and re-charge my batteries.

I cancelled my weekly Sunday AD&D game on Roll20 because I knew I would be exhausted and need to rest. While I could probably run a game tomorrow, it would not be wise to keep pushing. That leads to stress and increased chance of getting sick. I’d much rather take a break and re-charge my batteries and rest up after pushing so hard for the last several weeks to get ready.

RPGs

Registration Chaos For Gary Con 12

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Today, February 22, 2020, at Noon Central U.S. time, Silver Badge registration opened for Gary Con 12.

The server almost immediately had issues and no one could stay logged in. The company that runs the online even registration service, TableTop Events indicated that their Cache servers had an unanticipated issue, even though they had prepared for the load of all the badge holders signing up simultaneously.

Sadly, that effort was short-lived. A few individuals, such as myself, were able to select events into their carts and complete checkout.

Thankfully, the decision was made to allow those few who checked out to keep their registration.

Later the decision was made to keep items in the carts of those who did not complete checkout. Normally, they expire after two hours.

Direct Link to Facebook post with the link contents below plus a screenshot.

https://www.facebook.com/GaryConLLC/posts/2791721214229655

Full Text:

Greetings Seekers,

Today, TTEs server had an unprecedented error and were disabled. We suspended sales at that time to take the load off the servers while they were repaired. No tickets were able to be sold before then, to our knowledge. The president of TTE released a statement regarding the error at that time and repaired the error. We attempted to reopen, but more errors kept popping up and the servers, despite adequate load, were still not functioning.

At this time, it seems our best option is to reschedule the launch. We understand that this is incredibly inconvenient and disappointing. We don’t quite know when we will reopen, but we promise to notify you by update through TTE at least 24 hours in advance. Some attendees were able to get tickets. We are unsure whether we will reset tickets at this time, but we promise to give you notice on our decision soon.If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me. It may take me a little longer than normal to answer as I have many, many emails to sort through already, but I will personally respond to each and every email I receive.

Update @ 1:43pm: The staff has made a decision regarding tickets already sold: you will certainly get to keep those. We believe very few were actually able to accomplish this feat and it seems inequitable to take those tickets away from the lucky few. TTE normally empties carts after 2 hours, but TTE has disabled cart expiration, so events in your cart right now SHOULD stay in your cart.

Thank you,
—
Caroline Burks
Director of Guest Relations
Gary Con Gaming Convention
Caroline@garycon.com

History

Registration for Gary Con has had issues in the past. They have used TableTop Events for the past several years. This year’s issues have been the worst that I’ve seen it. The history of past issues has not helped.

When the registration failed the first time, Table Top Events shared this through the Gary Con Facebook page. Direct Link.

https://www.facebook.com/GaryConLLC/posts/2791673430901100

Full Text:

An explanation of the TTE problem today and an apology from the head of TTE, JT Smith. Thanks to JT and his crew for their quick response and resolution today.

“Tabletop.Events were prepared well in advance of the launch of Silver tickets today. We had fired up over 20 extra web application servers and nodes to the database. Unfortunately, something we could not anticipate was that our cache server was about to be overloaded. The cache server is used to maintain user login sessions. We’ve handled conventions double the size of Gary Con on it, and even Gary Con itself on it without issue in the past. We’re still trying to diagnose what went wrong there. Needless to say we have replaced it with larger servers that are 12 times the size of the current servers just to make sure that it can’t happen again.

“Even though we had done everything we thought we could do in this case, Tabletop.Events still takes full responsibility for this outage. We are sorry we caused a delay in your registration. We apologize to both Gary Con and the attendees. Moreover, as the owner of Tabletop.Events, I am also personally sorry for this mishap. We will do better.

-JT”

All Over Again

Unfortunately, the re-try at 1:00 PM Central had issues again. Thankfully, as mentioned above, those with successful completion get to keep their registration. Also those with items in their cart will keep their cart when it goes live again.

On top of issues with the hotel overbooking some rooms that lead to confusion and anger among some, this has lead to a lot of harsh criticism across social media.

My Experience

My first Gary Con was number 8, and I’ve been every year since. Registration hiccups have been minor, to me. Other things, like no alert of cancelled games, table service being slow or occasionally not happening. Overall, they have been great experiences and the minor issues are fairly easy to overlook.

Growing Pains

This year, Gary Con is the biggest ever. It has morphed from a con focused on older games and miniature war games to having a large contingent of newer D&D 5e with Adventurer’s League and official Wizards Of The Coast support. Some have called this selling out to the big money, or big names, as more D&D celebrities are attending.

D&D 5e and all the rest is not a problem in itself. The real issue is that the family is committed to keeping it in Lake Geneva, home to D&D and the original TSR. This results in the reality that there is only one location big enough to hold it, and that location has exceeded capacity to house it under one roof.

It is a huge roof with the boonies at the far end of connected structures. This year, some events are occurring on the grounds of the venue but in detached buildings that are 20 minutes by available transport away. Some comments online indicated they were not sure if there was a walking path available for that.

This year will be a real test for Gary Con. Will it be capped at a certain size? Will Gary Con really be able to stay in Lake Geneva?

I certainly hope it can stay in Lake Geneva. I really like going to Gary Con as I get to see some people I don’t see anywhere else, other than other similar cons. Sadly, there is a limit to how many cons I can attend each year.

Suggestions For Improvement

I suggest getting the word out across all social media, and not just Facebook. There are lots of people who avoid Facebook and were left in the dark on other social media until those of us on Facebook could fill them in.

Such instances of “telephone” can lead to inadvertent misinformation being introduced.

Gary Con is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and perhaps others. I suggest coping & pasting the message from one social media to all the others so those who only follow on one get it.

Also, Table Top Events should have a way to put up a message on the website so we all see it.

I’m no expert on running a busy website, but I know there are ways to deal with this. I hope they can keep a list of the issues that occurred this time, and all prior times, and verify that all of those issues are resolved before trying again. It makes both Table Top Events and Gary Con look bad.

I’ve gone to other, smaller cons that use Table Top Events and had no issues. Table Top Events handles conventions larger than Gary Con. I am not aware of the other cons using Table Top Events having these types of issues.

KUDOS

Caroline is the Director of Guest Relations and she is the best person for that job. She remains cool under pressure and handles the chaos of stressed out gamers. We should all show our appreciation to Caroline, as she is a key member of the Gary Con team. We should all chip in and get her something nice, like a vacation in a place without internet, or at least a gift card to a business she wants to patronize.

RPGs

UCon 2019 Post-Con Post

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UCon 2019 ended on Sunday, November 24 and I am finally writing about what happened. I mentioned what was on my schedule in my last post.

Pick Up Games

Brendan LaSalle, Clayton Williams, Laura Pirkola

I met up with friends Thursday night and we had a pick up game of my card game. Laura Pirkola and Clayton Williams invited me to join in a pick up DCC [Affiliate Link] game with Brendan LaSalle. It had a hard start time so we didn’t get through the full card game as we had many interruptions. The most important of which was ordering a pizza. This was critical as I got so busy with packing and so forth before the two hour drive, that I didn’t have lunch.

Brendan describing the situation.

The DCC scenario was play testing something that should be appearing as a new module sometime in the future. I don’t recall if there was a specific time frame or not. We ended up playing two characters each, until we were joined by another husband and wife who joined in at the halfway point. It was a great time, as always with Brendan.

I stayed up way too late visiting with friends in the lounge. I didn’t get to my room until 2:30 AM, and took forever to fall asleep. Then I kept waking up. Part of the issue was being dehydrated as I hadn’t had enough water during the day, then had a tall glass in the bar, after a short glass during DCC and pizza.

Hommlet

My copy of Village of Hommlet

I slept as long as I could before going down for breakfast before my morning game, where I ran Village of Hommlet [Affiliate Link]. I realized I had forgotten to grab my 1e DM screen when I packed up all my table copies of the Player’s Handbook. It seems I no longer had the PDF of the DMG [Affiliate Link] on my Dropbox nor my I got on my Google Drive. So I got on my DriveThruRPG account, since I purchased the PDF, I can just download it again…. NOT.

For some reason, I could not find it in my library. Next, I tried pulling up the PDF on its listing. Turns out I found a bug in the mobile site. On the desktop version of the website, you can click on the product listing for something you’ve already purchased, and it gives a link labeled, “Click to get it.” I got on Discord and mentioned it to the DriveThruDiscord and they said to report the issue, it’s probably a bug. [Which reminds me, I need to report it if it is still an issue after I finish this post.]

I only needed it for the combat charts. I then looked up the Target 20 System mechanic. When we were at the table, one of the players had the DMG on their tablet, so I used that to track combat, turning undead, etc. I planned on 8 players, but one person really wanted in, so we squeezed in nine players plus me around the table.

My PHB I got for Christmas the year it was released.

All of my other preparations were in place. I had five table copies of the Players Handbook [Affiliate Link] for players, plus my copy. I had them all sign my copy. This is the original, well-worn copy I got for Christmas back in the day. I’ve also gotten it signed by several TSR notables from back in the day. Sadly, not Gary or Dave.

Players in the Hommlet game.

I also have 18 AD&D Characters I created. I have form-fillable PDF character sheets for each one, and I update their information for each level. So I always have a stock of characters for whatever AD&D adventure I run at a con.

The players had a great time. I started them at the gate house instead of making them start at the edge of town and figure out where to go. Most of my rolls were in the party’s favor. Things such as surprise, finding secret doors, etc. While they did not manage to find the big bad and his minions, they did find the ghouls and it was a near fought thing. The best fighters were getting paralyzed and they were just not hitting the ghouls. In the end, they bested the ghouls and we were out of time.

In the various instances of combat, some had been knocked down and I used the -10 HP is death in AD&D. They were stabilized and clerics were able to give them enough HP to have positive HP. I handle negative HP as serious and the player is unconscious for one hour per point of negative. This forces characters to be encumbered with an unconscious character, if they push on, or having to find a place to rest in relative safety. They were all experienced players and chose to hole up and rest each time players were incapacitated.

During the ghoul fight, several characters went into negative HP. They were pretty chewed up, but had find some nice treasure. I didn’t keep track, but I don’t think it would have been enough XP for 9 characters to level.

Boot Hill

Boot Hill sequel to last year’s game. The two in the middle played last year.

Last year, I ran a Boot Hill 2e [Affiliate Link] game, A Posse For The School Marm. All of the players asked for a sequel for next year. So I brought a sequel, Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch , that we played Friday night at the same table as Hommlet that morning.

Two of the players from last year made it, and brought their character sheets. The group played smart and rolled well. The rules for Boot Hill 2e [Affiliate Link] are very light. I realized I was not using an option that would have made the gunfights last longer. I made the big bad tough, but not fast enough. The players grabbed the pregens that had the fastest characters, which I forgot I rolled some really nice scores for the pregens. (Why can’t I roll that well for my own characters?)

We had a lot of fun and there were requests for another sequel, so I will have to scratch my head on that one. I didn’t have a ready made scenario like I did after last year.

I ended the day in the bar, but went to bed earlier. I was able to sleep in as I didn’t have my first scheduled game until 8:00 PM Saturday.

Macchiato Monsters

I slept in Saturday and got in on a game of Macchiato Monsters [Affiliate Link] ran by Brett Slocum. I had a play games all weekend pass, which makes it easy to slip into games with openings.

I had never played Macchiato Monsters [Affiliate Link] , but it is described as a cross between Black Hack [Affiliate Link] and White Hack. I’ve played Black Hack and have both 1st and 2nd edition. I’ve never seen nor played White Hack.

It has a great deal of freedom in character creation and requires players to be creative, as one chooses a self-defined character within the parameters set by character creation.

It was a fun time and a full table. We all played as a team and ended with a whirlwind wrap up by the GM, as there was more module than time would allow, but we got a feel for the rules. It is much more reliant on role play but dice do come into play. Creativity and an open mind are key. I’m definitely intrigued and will look into picking up both Macchiato Monsters [Affiliate Link] and White Hack.

NOTE: White Hack is only available on Lulu and does not have a PDF.

Playtesting The Card Game

Ready and waiting for the players.

While I have had lots of playtesting of the card game at two game stores, two Gary Cons, two Marmalade Dogs, and now two UCons, this was the first time I had a playtest on the official schedule at a con. This was also the first time I had played in the board game area. I had strolled through it just to see what was going on in prior years.

I had one person pre-registered, and two other players for the first round of playtesting. One player, the youngest, in his 20’s left before the first hand was played. He went to join a game one of his friends was running. I had one person walking by who we invited to join the second game.

The consensus was that they all liked it, but felt it needs something more. The big thing is the game lasted nearly an hour. This is because the end condition for the game is dependent on how long it takes for a control card to come up twice. In this case, it was very late in both halves of the game.

While I understand the suggestions, it runs the risk of either breaking something that works, or making a very simple game more complex. It is interesting that about half the players who have played it, likes the rules as is, and the other half want something more.

I have some ideas for how to have two ways to play, a simple rules default and a full rules option.

In the current rules, each card does one thing. That is the strength of the rules. The challenge is to have additional rules and options for some cards that will not break the game or make it overly complicated.

I also honed my elevator pitch for the card game: Each player is building their own army in the midst of challenges. The player with the largest army (most points) wins.

All in all, I had great feedback from people who play a lot of games, and one of them also designs his own games. He had a WWII war in the Pacific naval simulation that I and another player from the playtest played after the time was up. It was a lot of fun and while it needs a bit of polish, I look forward to seeing it again next year.

The game developer player’s game partner stopped by midway through the WWII game and they are working on a space combat game that they have been playtesting at conventions for several years, including Gencon. They had a game slated for the next morning and invited me to join. I was very intrigued by their description.

[Earlier today I got the first piece of complete line art in preparation for the coming Kickstarter. I’ve got concept sketches for over a dozen cards, and hope to have many more soon.]

Space Combat Game

Setting up for the battle.

The name of the game is Star Blast. This was the last play test prior to publishing. Their plan it to put the rules on DriveThruRPG to get it out there, then do a Kickstarter to make a board game out of it.

They use Excel to make the ship sheets. Each ship has sensors, power, shields, weapons, etc. This very loosely reminds me of the original Star Fleet Battles from the mid 80s. I played a lot of Star Fleet Battles with my brother, Robert, and our friend Darryl.

Another player and I were space pirates out for resources. The other team represented the system with the resources. We had a railgun battle cruiser and a torpedo cruiser and a beam cruiser. They had a carrier with two fighter squadrons and a frigate. Our ships outclassed theirs.

We won almost all of the rolls to determine turn order. The first turn we elected to let the other team go first, so we could react to them. We then tried to move in and find a clear shot. There were lots of asteroids and gas clouds that limited the effectiveness of long shots.

I commanded the torpedo cruiser and beam cruiser. I moved to intercept and fired on their frigate and got a long range hit. Their carrier moved to a certain range and released fighters, then it got behind a gas cloud. The fighters and the frigate did some damage to one of the light cruisers, but damage control repaired it.

Our side focused on the fighters before they could get back to the carrier to get more torpedoes. We managed to hurt them a bit. Another few shots on the frigate and it had “fires”. Since a fire in space could easily be put out, it was explained that fire was shorthand for cascading system failures.

The damage control rules required a certain roll on a d6 to repair. One either failed to repair, or the roll revealed that damage control discovered the system was irreparable. The problem with fires is if you don’t put them out, there is a chance they spread.

That is what too out the frigate. It had a huge number of fires and eventually it fell apart.

My torpedo cruiser took a few hits as it went in to help the battle cruiser against the carrier and the fighters. The battle cruiser just couldn’t line up a killing shot on the carrier. We managed to shrink one fighter squadron, but the weapon on the carrier plus the speed and torpedoes of the fighters started fires on the torpedo cruiser and those fires multiplied until it was weakened enough that it basically fell apart.

We reduced the fighters some more, but time ran out before we could line up fatal blows to the carrier. The pirates won the scenario as we had the most ships remaining.

The frigate was no match for our ships and was better suited to screening the carrier than trying to face us. The fighters with their speed and torpedoes were killer if the carrier was in a safe position to launch and able to recover them for re-arming with their tough weapons. Fighter also had beams, but had to be in close.

I had a lot of fun, and had not played any sort of miniatures battle since the early 90’s. I am looking forward to seeing this released. When I know more, I will be sure to mention it hear and on the podcast.

Final turn of the battle before one of my ships was destroyed.

Farewells

I said my goodbyes to those who left before I did. I joined friends in the lounge to chat for a couple hours before I decided I better head home before dark. I really didn’t want to leave. I’m looking forward to next year.

You can hear the companion podcast here.

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UCon 2019

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I will be at UCon 2019 in Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor, Michigan this weekend (November 22-24). I leave today and will enjoy the pre-con catch up with friends and pick-up games. Here’s a link to the PDF of the Con Book.

Friday morning, I will be running the AD&D [Affiliate Link] module, Village of Hommlet T-1 [Affiliate Link] . This is an homage as this was the first thing I ever ran as a DM/GM at a convention. That was at Marmalade Dog, here in Kalamazoo, a few years ago. I am now much better at running convention games. Since I put in the time to learn this module all those years ago, I wanted to give it a go and do a better job. I know I can do a lot better than when I ran it the first few times at Marmalade Dog. [You can see all my posts that mention Hommlet here.]

Friday evening, I will run a follow up scenario to last year’s Boot Hill 2e [Affiliate Link] adventure, “A Posse For The School Marm.” At the conclusion of the game, all the players asked for a sequel. I just had to oblige them. I hope I do it justice. [You can see all my posts about Boot Hill here.]

Saturday evening, I’m scheduled for 4 hours to have play testing of my card game. I will also be available for pick up games for those who are interested. The art is not moving as fast as I want it to, so I’m trying not to get ahead of myself.

As always, I look forward to some me time out of the house and away from work. Visiting with friends, making new friends, and playing games is a great mini vacation. If you’ll be there and we haven’t met, I’m the one with the black Follow Me, And Die! T-Shirt. I have several of them so I can wear one each day.

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Gary Con XI Recap

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Gary Con XI in 2019 was yet another awesome experience! Here’s the companion podcast episode.

I rode with Steve Fridsma, from Grand Rapids, MI who I met last year. We were supposed to play in two AD&D [Affiliate Link] games, but the first one was unexpectedly cancelled, so I offered to run the
Gamma World [Affiliate Link] scenario I was running the next day, and some of the players elected to do that and we had a blast. Then we played in Chgowiz’s AD&D [Affiliate Link] game the next day. We kept in touch on social media and tried to coordinate rides that included one of my con roommates, but the travel days didn’t work out.

Steve and I arrived Wednesday right around check in time and I unloaded my bags to my room ASAP then picked up my badge and GM packet. We again got a lot of books, some duplicates of others. I may use them for a giveaway.

I had my card game and notebook with me, and met up with Steve and some others who wanted to play my game, and drummed up some interest from some others. We had a UX designer, architect, and game designer among that play test. This is rules that are basically the rules I had as of the end of play testing last year at Gary Con X. The deck had a few tweaks from last year, 5 cards were swapped out for some other cards to add some more interest to the game. Most importantly play text deck number 2 fixed the font color and placement of the numbers and added some explanatory verbiage to some cards. This group had lots of great suggestions.

After the game, Thaddeus Moore asked me to sign his copy of
The Front [Affiliate Link], as Mark credited me as proofreader. This is the first time I’ve ever signed a book in my life, other than to indicate it was my book.

Thursday morning I ran a scenario for The Front [Affiliate Link], a WWII RPG based on The Black Hat 1st edition [Affiliate Link] , by Mark Hunt. See here for The Black Hat 2nd Edition [Affiliate Link] . Mark joined in the game and had a copy of the rules from Lulu for everyone. Mark signed them all, and since Thaddeus got me started, I did the same.

With Mark there, we did a lot of belly laughing and had a great time! Mark and the other players had a laser focus on the objectives to “win” and we were done early. The players didn’t care as they had a blast. I now see a need for a few more modular encounters/events to bulk up this scenario to take up more of the slot. I plan to start publishing my con adventures on DriveThruRPG [Affiliate Link] , but it won’t be my scenario for The Front [Affiliate Link].

Thursday evening I sat in on a seminar by Satine Phoenix and Ruty Rutenberg which was different aspects of GM issues.

I then got in some more card game play testing and had a lot of fun. Some events I don’t recall which day they happened as I was so busy with running or playing and visiting, I didn’t keep track of what day I did which thing.

Friday morning I played in The Brazen Mask of Zenopus by Zach Howard of the Zenopus Archives blog. It was the Holmes Blue Box Basic, which is what started me on this whole RPG journey. I had not played those rules since the final AD&D book, the DMG came out over 35 years ago. It was a cool scenario that used characters from a book Dr. Holmes wrote. I played the hired help, two vikings, Olaf & Haldor. The dungeon in the back of the Basic rules was used, with some changes due to the passage of time.

We worked together and managed to avoid the death of all characters, and avoided a situation that could have been a TPK. For the first time in play, I encountered a purple worm and Olaf was swallowed! How cool is that! The halfling, Boinger was also swallowed. It was entirely a bonus that the worm was killed and the party cut both of them free, so that they lived to continue the adventure with minimal injury.

We found the baddies and had the boss fight and so not to spoil it we were within a few bad dice rolls of disaster, but we made the crucial rolls needed and prevailed. I really enjoyed it and would play a game with Zach again!

Friday afternoon I ran my DCC funnel, A Fungus Among Us. I had seven players, two of whom had played funnels before. One teenage boy, a young woman, and two fellows that I am pretty sure were older than I. I am used to being the oldest one in the game in recent years, so this was great. The father of the teenager made decisions and dice rolls that had three of his four 0 level characters dead in less than an hour into the session. He then had his last stay out of the way, and he survived the final encounter. Of course in the boss fight at the end, my poor BBEG had a fumble that had him on his back and unable to attack for a round. His attacks that hit only had minimal effect. The two older gentlemen must have double-booked their time as they could only stay for half the session. The remaining players did well, and lost a few more of their characters. Everyone survived with at least one character.

Friday night I saw, Eye of The Beholder about the artists of TSR who formed the image most of us have of what D&D is. I backed the Kickstarter and had seen the film online. Several of the artists were there and there was a Q&A. Just before the con they sent out a note that the CDs and other things were in the shipping process, but I didn’t have my CD waiting for me. and my CD was waiting in an unexpected location when I got home.

Friday night I ran more play tests. I finally remembered to have my 5 x 7 index cards with the quick rules on one side and what the cards to on the other. I made the players read it to ensure they could learn the rules from that, since most people will learn a game that way. I also have index cards I cut to playing card size with bullet points of the steps of one’s turn and what the cards do on the back. Of course, they identified typos of words that I spelled right, but were in the wrong context. They also identified things I need to clarify. So the cards worked, but need some improvement.

Saturday morning my schedule was clear. I met up with Ray Otus of the Plundergrounds podcast and Coddy Mazza of the No Save For You podcast. Ray’s first Gary Con was last year, but we never crossed paths. This was Cody’s first. We played my card game in the open gaming area and a father and 13 year old son joined us. The son was the youngest play tester yet, so I was really interested in his reaction. Ray and Cody loved my game, and had some suggestions. The boy liked it and thought the placeholder art was cool and thought I could just use that. He also will have a credit as a play tester so he will have some extra cool factor with his friends when he gets home.

Ray, Cody, and I did a joint podcast on Ray’s Plundergrounds and they both were too kind about what they thought of my card game. You can catch that episode here.

Saturday afternoon I ran my Boot Hill [Affiliate Link] scenario, A Posse For The School Marm. I had a lot of players who had never played it, but they all had fun. One character was injured and stunned by dynamite. Another got one bad guy and almost got the last one, but he shot her character in the chest for a mortal wound. She thought it was epic and fitting to go down fighting. She later told me that she hadn’t played an RPG in 30 years and I made it easy and walked them through what to do and she felt comfortable and welcome at the table. Also they said up front that they had another game and would have to leave early. They ended up not leaving early because they were having so much fun. Her husband is not much of a gamer, but he had a blast. I just love hearing that sort of thing.

Saturday night was supposed to be a showing of The Dreams In Gary’s Basement by Pat Kilbane, but unfortunately he was sick and it was cancelled. I backed that Kickstarter and have been cheering it on since I met Pat at Gary Con VIII when he premiered an early showing of a few interview snippets. You can read about that here.

Saturday evening I went to a party to see the teaser and a behind the scenes of Peter Adkinson’s Chaldea. It is a series of videos to highlight a campaign world setting of Chaldea. Very cool effects. Met some new people, and a player from my Gamma World [Affiliate Link] game last year and he was gushing about that memory, which is so cool!

Matt Mercer was at the con and was in the lounge, I was able to tell him a Vecna story and congratulate him on the Kickstarter and get a picture with him. Unfortunately, someone from the party who I only met at the party was drunk and not taking the hint to give people space. I was asked to escort him away from the celebrities since I knew him better than some. The fellows social intelligence was gone and he obviously wanted to communicate something, but was unable to do so beyond repeating an innocuous platitude.

Unfortunately, he was stumbling into people and flopping his arm into them. He did not react well, but we got him out of the lounge and then out of the building. We had to call for security to ensure he didn’t try to drive or something. I heard nothing more about that, but if you go to a con, don’t go past your limit to control your motor skills or communication ability. That’s how you get banned from cons. I don’t know if it got to the level of the con knowing about it or not, as I was no longer privy to the situation. I have not witnessed anything like that at a con. In the current environment, I was disheartened to witness such a thing. Please don’t drink and be stupid, it is not fun to witness nor to be the problem person who sobers up and finds they’ve got a bad reputation. I almost didn’t report this, but I don’t want to whitewash a bad situation.

I also told Vecna stories to Joe Manganiello and got a picture with him. I showed him my shirt that says, Follow Me, And Die! and he said it and then said, “Nice!” I knew he’d get a kick out of that.

Another thing that occured at the con was rumors. Someone told me X about so and so. I will not repeat that as that does no good. I will only repeat facts I can verify or I witness personally. Rumors of game stuff and game personalities always occur, sometimes there is a grain of truth, but I won’t spread something I can’t verify.

Sunday I did not sign up for any games. I was in the lounge all day apart from moving my bags from the room I shared with my normal con roommates, to that of my ride.

I played my card game at least a dozen times. One player from earlier in the weekend really latched onto the game and has probably played more than anyone but me, and knows the rules as well or better than I do. She played nine games on Sunday, and was teaching the new players and we worked on how to cut the deck in half. Since there are an odd number of some cards we did a large half and small half deck. We played one hand with the large half deck as a two player game and it feels like the full deck and is faster. One game is not enough, but it does tell me I have the numbers of each card right.

After all the play testing and suggestions for little things to improve the cards, I know I need a third play test deck and more play testing. I don’t have an artist lined up, since the rules and cards are not locked in. Unfortunately, my hopes of Kickstarting this year are not realistic. I want to avoid rushing things, as I want to do it right. I will do all I can to make launching during the first quarter of next year. This means that I need to go to more cons and FLGS’ for more play tests. Once I have a new test deck and play it a few times I will know if the cards need any more game play tweaks or only need art. The rules are really close, and I think we have to options for play, one that will be perfect for learning the game. Two player play may be as simple as a half deck, but more play test will tell.

If you are interested in knowing when the Kickstarter is launched, you can click this link to join the mailing list. It is ONLY for announcing the Kickstarter launch, and possible future launches.

Wednesday night, my roommates and I went to the same restaurant as last year and while waiting for a table, someone behind us saw my Follow Me, And Die! T-Shirt and asked if I was the guy behind the blog. I believe his name was John Zach from Atlanta (He messaged me on social media to correct me. I then recalled that I used the mnemonic that his name is the same as my youngest son’s.). I didn’t think to get a picture together. A couple other people told me they liked my blog and/or podcast. Erik from the Chicago area, as I recall said he’s been reading my blog for the last seven months. I did have the presence of mind to get a picture with him.

I got pictures with many others and posted a lot of them on social media. I need to find time to make an album to share to make it easier to have all the pictures in one spot. Not sure when I’ll get to that.

I had a blast at Gary Con and I will be back next year!

I will have my card game there from hopefully the final pre-Kickstarter test deck and can play with those who want to see what it’s all about. I will have it at every other con I attend.

If you will be at Gary Con next year, or any other con this year that I attend, be sure and say, “Hello!” I’d love to meet you and get a chance to game together!

RPGs

UCon 2018 Recap

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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.

Thursday night play test of the card game at the bar.

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.

1st session of my DCC funnel.

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.

2nd session of my DCC funnel.

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.

My Boot Hill 2e session.

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.

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Locating A Convention

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I’m always advocating attendance at game conventions, especially the ones in your home state, or even in the town where you live.

Today’s podcast talks about UCon and Gamehole Con, and shares links to websites that list known conventions. I include the past two posts on the blog, plus one new to me site. If you know about a convention listing site not listed below, please let me know.

My most recent prior post on this is Where Can I Find A Gaming Convention? and Gaming Convention Clearing House.

List of Sites

Here’s the list of sites, so you don’t have to pick them out of the above blog posts:

I also talk about conventions on today’s Podcast.

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Origins 2018

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Origins is one of the oldest gaming conventions. This was the first time I had ever attended. It is very big and a long distance from end to end. I spent a lot of time in open gaming, which was furthest from anything else.

I had toyed with the idea of going the last few years, and this year, I took the plunge last minute and was able to attend Friday and Saturday.

I met up face to face with several people from online. It was good to chat with some, and a quick “Hey!” from others. My last minute plans led to no coordination of meet ups.

I mostly wandered the venue and checked out the vendor hall. I played in two sessions of a Basic D&D game using the module Horror On The Hill. Our DM, Kelly Davis, tweaked it a bit to add some backstory and NPCs. We were too poor back in the day to buy modules, so most of them are new to me. I’m not sure how long they played before I stepped in to play a dwarf. In the two sessions that I played, we did about seven hours. Jason Hobbes kept coming by to harass us. It was fun playing with a lot of OSR grognards. The cool thing about the module is that we didn’t finish, and our DM offered to run it on Roll20, so we are working to coordinate a mutual time. This will be the first time I have played on Roll20 with anyone I have met face to face.

Before the final session I arrived in time to see Jason Hobbes wrap up the DCC game he was playing. I got sidetracked and didn’t make it there in time to join in. It was a lot of fun to watch, and lots of laughs.

The size of the con and the location make a strong argument for getting a hotel room on site, or using a driving service/taxi to get there from a more distant hotel.

I learned something to add to my pre-con checklist. There was a parade on Saturday, and I was forced to enter a parking garage and park other than where I had planned, and had a lot of unexpected walking to do to get to the con. So next time I go to a con, I will research other events on that city’s calendar to verify what might hinder travel to and from the con.

I also suggested to Origins that they let new people know about the parade that happens the same weekend almost every year. I think Google Maps should mention such things. Most cities this size have websites with calendars, and newspapers with events sections.

Origins does have its own app, GAMA, that has partial maps of the venue and the ability to search for the events in the catalog. I found it took a bit of digging to locate the search function. The maps did not clearly list the open gaming area. Overall the app was not as intuitive as I would like. There is a notes feature, but only works for events you attach the notes to, such as those you are interested in or signed up for.

Of the two books they passed out with registration, one mentioned Open Gaming, but the other didn’t. All areas should be mentioned in one book that includes all maps of the venue. Searching for open gaming in the app was no help. Open gaming seemed to be too far out, and the water jugs were dry.

The distance between open gaming and wider food choice was extreme. Snacks and a water bottle are a must.

Overall, I liked the con and will probably attend next year. It’s only a 4 1/2 hour drive from where I live, and is mostly interstate. It’s the first con that I’ve done open gaming that wasn’t the night before the con started.

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Marmalade Dog 23 – Kalamazoo’s Local Con 2018

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Marmalade Dog 23 was a lot of fun. I signed up to run two games, Metamorphosis Alpha and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Friday afternoon I signed up to play Red Box Basic, our DM didn’t show, so +Adam Muszkiewicz volunteered to run it, since I was scheduled to run Metamorphosis Alpha that evening. Adam looked up the module on his phone and ran it for us. That’s one cool thing about OSR rules, they are simple enough you can do stuff like that.

Adam Muszkiewicz fills in as DM
Adam Muszkiewicz fills in as DM

No one signed up for my Metamorphosis Alpha game, so I joined in a DCC game ran by Joel Davidson. It was his first time running DCC and he did a great job. We had a lot of fun, and only a couple 0 levels died.

Joel Davidson Running DCC
Joel Davidson Running DCC

Saturday morning, I played in +Del Tiegeler’s AS&SH game and had a blast. We made a wrong choice and missed a clue and had a TPK, all trapped in the tomb. I walked away with some art Del drew just for the session!

Del Teigeler's AS&SH Game
Del Teigeler’s AS&SH Game

I then ran AD&D, with a scenario from my Sunday Roll20 game. It was fun seeing how a different group of players approached the scenario and made different choices. I had two first time players and they both did great! One young couple is local, so perhaps we can do some gaming at the FLGS.

Players from my AD&D Game
Players from my AD&D Game

Friday evening, I played my card game with play testers one and two and they really liked the changes that came from play testing at Gary Con. I had a couple things happen that had not yet happened. It was just interesting to see them happen.

I got in another play test with play tester number one on Saturday evening, and had a couple things happen that hadn’t happened. One required a ruling, the other was just interesting.

I’ve now had 17 play tests, 15 with the current rules. I’m debating about some modifications to the rules to add in a bit more variety. I’m wondering if there’s a rule of thumb for the number of play tests a new card game needs. The two play tests at Marmalade Dog are the only ones I forgot to take pictures.

We won’t know when Marmalade Dog 24 will be until the schedule for next yet is set. It is dependent on the sports schedule. If it isn’t the same weekend as Gary Con, I’ll be there running games!