Category Archives: Conventions

Dragon Con 2025 Recap – Part Two

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Day Two Continued

Geiger Counter

Our last game started at 10PM and had 9 players in a set up where we got to determine which Indy game we all wanted to play. There were 7 on the initial sheet, but with 9 players a few of them wouldn’t really work. The game I would have voted for was Little Fears which sounded interesting (and something that I need to keep on my radar down the road), but it was immediately vetoed by someone. Instead the consensus was Geiger Counter.

Geiger Counter is a narrative-based game where you build your characters for a Horror movie. It can be anything within that genre – from slasher at the summer camp to something came from space to in space no one can hear you scream… and so on. While it took a little while to actually get the hang of what we were trying to do, it became apparent that the movie we were making was not a serious one. No, it would likely have more in common with The Room than it would with Event Horizon.

Knowing that meant I could lean into it. The goal was to not only create some cool moments, but try and get the other players to laugh as much as possible.

Oh, what was the plot of our movie? We were space pirates going to assisted living stations, conning them into coming on the ship, and the ripping them off. The problem is that there was something wrong with these old people. They might be vampires. They might be figments of one of our crew members. They might just really like spaghetti. Who really knows.

This Summer OLD is spelled S.P.A.C.E.

After the game ended and I made it home, it was nearly 3 in the morning. After a quick look at the Sunday schedule, we decided that 11:30 was the target time and went to bed.

Day Three

Buffy Cast Panel

I think I’ve only been at one Buffy Panel ever. Normally it seems like it’s one of the ones that fill up and the line is around the building two or three times. Apparently those days are over. This one had Emma Caulfield (Anya) and Marc Blucas (Riley), and my biggest takeaways were:

Emma and Marc were asked about how an Anya and Riley spinoff might look, and in their discussions it came up that Anya would go through some kind of military training just quoting all the various 80s movie lines from Terminator, Rambo, etc. and Riley getting frustrated at her antics but also impressed how hard she was trying.

The actors both were kind of excited by this concept, but Emma “messed it up” by noting that she wasn’t sure about some kind of love connection with Riley… though she thought that Marc Blucas was an attractive person, she just didn’t see him that way. For the rest of the panel, he’d occasionally bring it back up, and I think she legit felt bad about saying it.

Marc was a basketball player for Wake Forrest back in the 90s. Totally did not know that. He was wearing a hat with his high school logo on it (which happened to be a Yellow Jacket) so he had to let people know it wasn’t a Ga. Tech hat.

Emma wasn’t necessarily happy with her character’s death. She noted she had asked for it, but noted that there wasn’t a lot of time in subsequent episodes for mourning. Though that was kind of the show’s M.O., death happened and life kept moving.

All in all a great panel, and it did make me want to look up if she’d said anything else about the end of her time on the show.

Back to the Future Panel

After years of opting not to sit in a line for an hour or two before a panel, Courtney and I opted to “snipe” the panel after the people waiting in line were let into the room. With this one there were about 10 or so rows left at the back, so we slid in about 10 minutes into the panel.

Side comment – I never understand why they don’t start loading the people into the room earlier. There have been so many panels we’ve been in the long line for and because they don’t start loading until 10 minutes beforehand sometimes, we miss part of the panel. As soon as a panel ends, they rush everyone out… I just don’t understand the logic behind it.

I’m assuming they noted that the panel needed to end 30 minutes early in those initial minutes while people were still filing in, but it meant that we only got about 20 minutes with Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown), James Tolkan (Mr. Strickland), and Claudia Wells (Jennifer). I wish I had more to report on this panel, but it sort of seemed like Christopher Lloyd and James Tolkan had reached their limit on convention questions. Most of the answers weren’t much more than basic answers.

I do appreciate Tolkan leaving us with a “Slackers!” quote.

Agents of Shield Panel

Another pair of Dragon Con newbies, Chloe Bennet (Daisy Johnson) and Jeff Ward (Deke Shaw) were hilarious up there. I walked out saying to Courtney, “I’m not sure if I learned anything about Agents of Shield, but my cheeks hurt from laughing so much”. Listen, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but get these two a podcast or something where they just act silly around each other.

Things I learned:

Chloe and Jeff are Lip Synching professionals. They don’t like it when amateurs try and join into their Reindeer Games.

Chloe has no idea what Jedd’s One Piece character’s “Chop Chop” power might be, but thinks it might have something to do with salads.

Jeff was thrown off by a fan asking if his character on One Piece, Buggy the Clown, was basically who he was in real life (attitude and personality).

Chloe is double jointed. Which Jeff delighted in telling the audience that they needed to watch 1996’s The Arrival with Charlie Sheen and see how their legs bend backwards… because that’s what Chloe’s look like as well.

Another excellent panel!

After that Courtney sat in on a Handmaid’s Tale/Apocalypse Panel, but I missed it while retrieving something we’d stored in a friend’s hotel. Once that was done, sadly, so was our 2025 Dragon Con. Overall, we had a ton of fun, and are considering trying to get a room downtown next year to maybe try and hit a couple of the later activities (and save me some driving each day).

Hope everyone else’s con was just as great!

Dragon Con 2025 Recap – Part One

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Day One

There is always the moment of worry about getting our badges when it comes to Dragon Con. Over the 30 years since my very first one, I have spent hours in the line, once having the line take so long that I missed the whole reason I’d come down to Dragon Con in the first place (it was for a Magic the Gathering Grand Prix). Since we don’t go down until Friday morning, all we have to go on for the line ride times is the horror stories from the people who go down on Thursday. I saw everything from 30 minutes to 2 hours of wait time.

I even saw someone who said it was the worst line experience they’d ever had, and they’d been coming to Dragon Con for over 30 years themselves (in fairness, someone immediately said that 2025 wasn’t even the worst year in the past 5, so the original poster might have been exaggerating somewhat).

Still, the line was what it has been for the past few years coming in around 10:30 in the morning – it took us less than 15 minutes to get our badges counting from the time we entered the hotel to the time we left (and it honestly was closer to 10 minutes, I just didn’t track it).

On Friday’s agenda we had planned on going to lunch with some friends, the Arrowverse panel, and the Vendors’ Hall. Lunch went great, got to hear some of what was going on from Rebecca who stays downtown and had been there since Thursday… and then it was onto the Arrowverse Panel.

Arrowverse Panel

After all these years, it is kind of surprising to find out that someone from one of these genre shows had never been to Dragon Con before, especially with so many things being filmed in Georgia nowadays. So it was great that we could sit in on Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak) first Dragon Con. Joining her was Colin Donnell (Tommy Merlyn), David Ramsey (John Diggle), and Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer). I must admit that I didn’t immediately recognize Colin with his full beard, but luckily someone asked a question about Tommy and it all clicked into place.

A couple of interesting little stories from the panel:

Everyone clearly were not the biggest fan of the first Arrowverse crossover due to the logistical problems it brought with scheduling.

When David Ramsey goes to direct an episode of something, he normally talks to the producers about the tone of the show. With Arrow, it is a darker show… with the Flash it is lighter and comedic… with Batwoman, it’s darker… but with Legends of Tomorrow the producer just kind of shrugged and said “Just make it look cool”. As a BIG fan of Legends of Tomorrow for exactly that reason, I felt that in my soul.

David Ramsey mentioned that upon initially meeting Stephen Amell, Stephen “thought David was a serious ‘Actor'”. During one of the scenes, Diggle is supposed to lean in and whisper something in Oliver Queen’s ear “Your car is here sir.” So when they were doing a shot for coverage, David leaned in and instead whispered “I have the biggest balls for you.”

Stephen could not keep a straight face in light of that reveal.

Vendors’ Hall

The OTHER line ride at Dragon Con is always the Vendors’ Hall. This year the line was wrapped 3 quarters of the way around the building. All told it took about 1 hour to get in, so not the worst ever, but it makes me wonder if there was any better way to do it while still obeying building capacity ordinances and the like. It is one of the big attractions, but I also hear people talk about skipping it due to the time associated with even getting in.

The things I noticed this year:

An increase in the number of Food related booths. Lots of chocolate, fudge, snack, etc. booths.

An increase in author booths. They were spread around so it is hard to really have a headcount, but it seemed like there were a few more.

An decrease in comic book related booths. There were still the one booth which had $5 trades, and a couple of others which had $1 and $3 boxes, but most had much smaller selections.

Felt like there were a few additional artists on the 4th floor which is the Pop Art (Comic) floor. Though there apparently were a couple of A.I. artists (I must have glanced past them) that at least one was asked to leave the convention early (good for Dragon Con). It’s hard enough to scrap together a couple of bucks at conventions without having to deal with the A.I.

After dinner at Ted’s Montana Grill where a group of 6 recapped their own days, we briefly debated staying for the Comedy show, but Courtney had officially “hit the wall” (trademark pending), so we called it a successful first day and headed home.

Day Two

After years and years of either fighting through crowds on Saturday or sometimes skipping it entirely (due to family commitments mostly), last year I threw out the suggestion to just roleplay all day. It seemed like all upside as we wouldn’t have to deal with crowds and lines since all the gaming is in one of the America’s Mart buildings, and we’d have the opportunity to do a little bit more of what we do at Gen Con – play games we don’t normally get to play.

Alien RPG

Free League’s D6 system just works for us. Whether it is Tales from the Loop or the Alien RPG, everything seems to click right into place. Of course, every time we play it makes me want to play a longer campaign of something using that system. On top of that, the Alien setting works exceptionally alongside it with the Stress rolls and potential for Panic building with each encounter.

Eric, our GM, set up this game as a little more powerful than the other time I played, but it made sense as we were mercenaries hired to go through an especially dangerous jungle to retrieve whatever it was the local forces had uncovered. There was lots of opportunities for strategy and planning to try and obtain our goals throughout, with a little bit of roleplaying on the front end.

Marvel Superheroes (TSR)

It has been 30ish years since I’ve played the old TSR Marvel Superheroes game. What I remember at the time was the multicolored chart and the time it took to figuring out whether an action succeeded or failed. While it wasn’t a difficult task, it was a little bit unwieldy (and compared to current RPG designs with plus modifiers, it seems like the chart could be updated and streamlined.

All that said, our GM, Daimen, was a Flash programmer and had a monitor along with a touch screen on his side, so we could immediately see what we rolled versus what we needed to get to achieve. We noted in our discussions afterward that he might have been the most prepared GM we’ve ever played with, as that screen was not only super easy to see, but his adventure also eased us into the adventure perfectly.

We were playing the New Warriors, a 90s super team that were kind of the junior Avengers. I’m a huge fan of that comic book, and would probably put the first 25 issues up against anything in the fun to read category. Now normally, when it comes to picking pregenerated characters in games, I’m mostly content with just going with whatever is left over. Not with the New Warriors, though. I had my eye on Nova, so when there was a slight pause, I jumped at the chance to grab him. With Egg playing Speedball and inventing the catchphrase “You just got Speedballed!”… we were off.

The GM ran us through a training exercise (which fit the feel perfectly, since all the comics were doing that back in the day) before then getting involved in an intergalactic incident with pirates, Dire Wraiths, and the most helpful PA operator in the galaxy. A ton of fun was had, and it not only made me want to play the game again, but I now want to go upstairs and dig out my long box with all my New Warriors comics!

That’s it for this week. Next week we’ll talk a little bit about the greatest horror movie never made and a handful of panels that made me laugh to the point my cheeks hurt

Dragon Con Memories

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Dragon Con is this weird thing for me because it has always been there. I believe the very first time I went I was 15 or 16 and Chad’s dad dropped us off and then picked us up some time later. It is where I first realized that there were these comic book conventions, and where I got my very first comic autographed (issue 300 of Amazing Spider-Man by Todd McFarlane). We were only there for a few hours, but my mind was blown, and I resolved to come back again the following year.

Of course that promise was blown away the very next year when family commitments meant I couldn’t attend and ended up missing a D&D session run by Tracy Hickman (of Dragonlance fame). For the weeks afterward my friends all made sure to let me know what I missed out on.

A year later the Magic the Gathering frenzy had taken over. You had to wake up early, stand in line for some crazy amount of time, and if you were lucky you would get 1 pack of Legends. Now I know that must sound crazy to think that the current set could not be bought at any random comic store, but it was the world we were living in.

The years went by and most of the time I tried to ensure I’d go at least two of the three days. And then when it became a four-day con, I pretty much stuck to the two days anyway. At the time it felt like they were expanding just to do it… I mean, I could see 90% of what I wanted in 2 days, why bother with 3.

But then a curious thing happened… friends began to move away or maybe they lost interest into going. And soon that group of 10 or so that made it where no matter what panel you wanted to go see or what deal was going on in the Dealer’s room – you’d know about it and have someone to share in the experience. I don’t know about you, but doing things by myself means there is no one to nudge when you see that “cool thing”.

And not long after that, I was the only one going to con… and it became strictly a 1 day thing for me.

I carried the flag for those “dark” years for my group of friends. Sure, I might see a couple of people I knew, but that old core group was nowhere to be found… and it lessened things a bit.

Then came Firefly and Serenity.

For most of this time my wife avoided Dragon Con. It was something I think that amused her from a distance. That “thing” John did around Labor Day. Every year I’d ask and nudge and hint that I thought she’d have a great time if she just did 1 day with me.

And she always put it off. Maybe next year. Maybe next year.

Then came Firefly and Serenity. And a panel at Dragon Con with pretty much the whole damn cast.

And I had her.

And she came to Con, and saw the panel, and then saw that Charlene Harris and TruBlood was there and sat in on another panel. And we spent the evening watching the costume contest with some good friends in their room on closed circuit enjoying room service.

That’s all it took.

And suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore. I had my best friend to nudge and point at a cool costume and to experience things with and just enjoy this piece of my own life with her.
Soon enough some of the other friends have drifted back (here and there) to the con. And I get to meet up with newer friends as well… guys and gals I may not have seen in months.
It’s glorious.

At the end of Dragon Con I’m always hit with a slight melancholy. No matter how much I enjoyed myself or even on those years I was bummed out about being by myself… I would still get it. That idea of all these people who shared some passions with me… all these people who said fuck it, I want to enjoy what I want to enjoy and not worry if I look or act silly during these 4 days. I love that about Dragon Con. I love people watching. I love going to panels and seeing tv and movie stars talk about their projects and getting excited about the next big thing. I love going to writing panels in an effort to glean as much information from people in the “know” as possible.

Mostly, it makes me feel not so alone. Because, for a long time there us nerds were out in the wilderness. It wasn’t cool to say that you played DnD or Magic or read comics or liked Anime or played computer games. And for 4 days Dragon Con offered an oasis for those of us who wanted to feel apart of something bigger than just us.

So yeah, at the end of the day on Sunday (as we use Monday to recover) I’ll get that funny feeling in my stomach that another one of these has ended, and it will be another year before I get the chance to do it again. I’ll be tired, my feet may hurt, and my wallet will likely be lighter, but even with that slight sadness I know that it is only a matter of a little time before we get to do it again.


Hope to see you this weekend!

Gen Con 2025 Recap – Part Two

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When we last left our intrepid heroes, their Gen Con had taken a turn for the not so great. Whether it was the games, the scenarios, or the GMs, the last three games were never going to make a best of list and it made the one game which had been cancelled preconvention the second-best game thus far.

To say they needed their luck to turn around is an understatement.

Day 2 Continued

Curseborne

The last game of the day was Curseborne from Onyx Path. This is a World of Darkness style game, using the same d10 system you’re familiar with if you’ve ever played any of those games.

The only bad thing about this game was when we originally looked at the schedule, we thought we’d have to hustle from the JW Marriot to the Stadium with no time between the games. However, ending the previous game early did have the side effect of allotting us ample time to make this game (and disaster was averted). That said, our fourth player (Holly) was about ten minutes late for the same reason. Lucky that she made it, as Holly immediately made an impact on things by speaking in a sort of Eastern European accent.

I must admit that at first, I thought it might be her real accent (not crazy since in the 70,000 attendees, it is likely to get people from all over the world). Not to be outdone, I was playing a Ghost possessing the body of a bartender. This was a guy who lived it up in his original life and so…

A quick aside… during the weekend Egg, Lee, and I pretty much are trying to make each other laugh constantly. For this year the crazy/silly talk settled on the Marvel Comics character Dr. Druid. It’s ok if you’ve never heard of him. He was an Avenger for a hot minute (and betrayed the team) before mostly only appearing in those huge scenes where the artist has to draw 50 characters who have something to do with the plot.

Anyway, during our discussions about this sad sack of a character, I decided that Toad was his buddy and spoke with what can only be described as David Lee Roth’s voice.

End aside…

So that’s the voice I went with during this two-hour session.

Every time I get to play an Onyx Path game (or a White Wolf one), it just seems to deliver. We had a great table of PCs, and our GM was a breath of fresh air as he was very knowledgeable in the system, but also gave us plenty of room to interact with each other and the NPCs within the game.

It took until the last game of the night, but we finally got another good one!

Day 3

This was going to be another full day with only a random hour here or there to fit anything in really. If we were going to make the Dealers’ Room, it would be in short bursts on our way to another game.

Blade Runner

Egg had really wanted to play Blade Runner for a while, so I was happy I could grab us a slot. It leaned very heavily on the investigation aspect of things as our four Blade Runners were investigating the shooting of an anti-replicant journalist. Our task was complicated by a time deadline we needed to hit… find an answer to who was responsible by 5PM or potentially the city would erupt from the news.

One of the interesting ideas was that you could “zoom in” on a crime scene. Trying to evoke a cinematic element to things is a good thing. The problem is that the GM mentioned it once in the rules, and then it wasn’t until one of us (Egg) remembered that we could do it that we managed to get the final piece of the puzzle to lead us to our next potential assassin.

The other “problem” was picking up on cues from the GM. In a lot of games, you can often determine if you should continue down a path by judging the GM’s reaction to your questions. Sometimes they are very direct (“yeah, that’s a dead end”) and other times they can just lead you to believe that something isn’t a true path. We ended up hitting the second of those and without meaning to, the GM basically told us the guy we were going to interrogate wasn’t the bad guy.

This wasn’t a fake out on his part, it was more that we interpreted something one way and then when it turned out this was the Big Bad, it meant the deaths of our characters. Which is fine in a convention game, but later we asked if anyone else had ever figured it out and in the 8-10 sessions he’d run the game only 1 group had managed to not get slaughtered…

Maybe it wasn’t entirely our fault then?

I would have also liked to have seen how the combat actually worked, but we were cut down in a narrative fashion to end the game… so even though that might have been a great opportunity to do so. We still had about 40 minutes left in the session, so it wasn’t a timing issue.

Our Brilliant Ruin

I’m going to go ahead and spoil this… this was by far and away the best session we played this year and likely would go in the top 5 sessions of any of our Gen Con/Origins/Dragon Con gaming.

That said, I’m not sure how much of that was from the game system itself and how much it was due to our GM (I think it probably was 95% the GM), so weirdly I wouldn’t mind playing the system again with someone else just to see how it might hold up.

I wish I could remember the exact description of the game (Downton Abbey meets something with a dash of steampunk thrown in). Regardless, the game really wants the players to embrace their roles (ranging from the Butler to the Aristocrat to the Scholars). The ability to roleplay is by far the most important aspect of the game, with everyone being able to shine.

The GM not only loved the idea of “cool things” but he embraced those moments and tried to make them even bigger. By the end of the adventure, we were leading a procession of villagers against the local aristocrat with a band and doves and an old cannon to prove a point. And while no shots were fired, we made our point to oust the current “ruler” and replace him with one of our own… executing him just as the story faded to black.

Just amazing fun all around.

Planet of the Apes

Another game Egg had requested, though we weren’t exactly sure how it would go. Obviously if you follow the original movies, the idea of either being a human in an ape world didn’t sound very appetizing. Luckily, we not only were playing the apes, but we were on a Human Hunt (the most dangerous game indeed). Using a version of the old West End Games Star Wars system, it was like a old pair of shoes (though the last time I played the system was in the mid-90s).

Again, we were blessed with a good GM, a good mix of players, and one player who must have been waiting for this specific game because he just leaned into his “Lawbringer” character. With such lines as “You know what they say – human see, human do”, he found every great moment to really hit it all home.

My character was the reporter coming along for the hunt, hoping to find corruption among the elites. And that’s how I started playing it, but as I made notes of what pictures she had taken, I started to see something else. Even when we encountered the humans, we never really had to deal much with the idea they could talk (keeping them gagged helped with that). When we reached the end of the session, I had a chance to give my findings (what kind of article did I write) and I went with one that celebrated the hunt and those who participated. It celebrated our leadership along with those poor NPCs who lost their lives to the obvious “radiation sick” humans (RAD Human).

I’m curious how a campaign would work in the world, though I suspect you could really lean into the exploration of the Forbidden Zones or reclaiming some of the irradiated areas.

Day 4

With Sunday arriving, we made one last quick trip to the Dealers’ Room and then it was time to make our way back to Atlanta. I did end up buying a couple of Button Shy games as well as finally taking a chance on the Final Girl series of solo games (though at the time of this blog, I haven’t had a chance to take it for a spin).

Next year I’ll be skipping Gen Con as the family is going on a cruise that week, but it is very possible that Origins might be the replacement for the guys’ trip. We’ll see as the date gets closer.

Gen Con 2025 Recap – Part One

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Day 0

We did our normal trek from Atlanta to Indianapolis. Through a weird trick of fate, my wife was actually in Indy at the same time for about a day (for work). While we didn’t get to see each other, it was interesting to be in the same general area in such a random way.

As normal, we use Gen Con (or any gaming con) to play those games we’ve either never played before OR haven’t played in a long time. Since our current game is 5E D&D, that leaves pretty much anything and everything else as fair game.

Day 1

Our original first game was cancelled, which probably was a blessing in disguise. It allowed us to not rush through breakfast before heading over to the Dealer’s Room (but after the initial rush of 10AM. We made our way through the various aisles and locked in a couple of potential buys “at some point this weekend”. The theme for most of our Dealer’s Room time was fitting in a hour or two whenever we could between games as our schedule didn’t have a ton of gaps.

Tales from Elsewhere: Clockwork

The Kickstarter Prelaunch Page is located here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/talesfromelsewhere/tales-from-elsewhere-clockworld?ref=profile_saved_projects_prelaunch&category_id=Q2F0ZWdvcnktMzQ=

We lucked out and had the creator of the game GM for us (Peter Lange), which immediately solves any problem of whether or not the person running the game is going to know the rules.

This hadn’t been on anyone’s list since the game isn’t out yet, but I am a sucker for anything Steampunk/Weird West related, so I snagged it on that alone.

As Peter talked about the game a bit, the set up was a weird west/steampunk world but 100 years after the wild west originally ended (due to a calamity). A very clever idea which let him create an area of the world to start your campaigns, but a ton of the map was not occupied for those 100 years. All this sets up some cool discovery-style sessions with wagon trains, outpost/forts trying to help humanity fight back against the monsters.

The character sheet was really well set up with pretty much all the information you needed for your character and some cheat sheet rules related stuff on there as well, which made it incredibly easy to follow along with what your character could or couldn’t do, and what those consequences might mean for the session and potentially for the long haul in ongoing campaigns.

It was a 2-hour game with a very straightforward setup of a wagon train going out to settle on the frontier. Each person had a roleplaying opportunity from interactions with some of the NPCs travelling with you and by helping them, you potentially got a gift or an offer of help later that you would be able to potentially use. The main piece was the battle at the river crossing where one of the players at the table was the same person who had built the terrain pieces for the encounter. Of course, there was an ambush by Bandits and then in the midst of that we also had the misfortune to deal with undead robotic monstrosities.

The battle flowed smoothly, and overall, I thought the system was both simple enough to get started quickly but had enough depth that I could see how building a character and doing a proper campaign could work well.

Great session and really fun game. I’m already planning on backing the Kickstarter when it launches on September 2.

Peter has a Youtube where he talks about this game and the mechanics of other roleplaying games. You can find him here:

https://www.youtube.com/@TalesFromElsewhereGames

Root the RPG

I have the digital version of the game which I’ve played a handful of times, so I am familiar enough with the world. I’m also a fan (if from a distance) of the various settings which feature anamorphic critters running around as the PCs.

As it was a 4-hour session, we spent the first 45 minutes creating characters. I’m not sure that it actually needed to go that long, as I think you could probably get through it in about half the time, but some of that time was spent on showing how some of the weapons were designed, since for the session they only had a very basic set of options.

I do always

During the game, our Vagabonds arrived in a clearing (village) who were dealing with the aftermath of a wolf attack where they had blown a dam to wash them away. Now, I was playing a Beaver, so while that form of attack might be effective, it is probably not the best long-term solution.

As we investigated the problems of the town, we came to realize that it is mostly a Rabbit town with a few Crows, but the ones seemingly in charge were the Foxes. My mind immediately wonders if this is really the problem and the Foxes are up to no good.

No.

OK, well we are all affiliated with the Woodland Alliance, maybe we could get them to come in?

Maybe, but here are the people you need to talk to.

That goes mostly nowhere.

There is a lot of this where we pretty much try everything we can think of AND even want to check out some random side events, but are shut down by the GM. At which point, I basically express my frustration saying, “I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do at this point.”

The GM does give us a little bit of a lifeline (emphasis on little) which gets us to a point where we try and change the big Story of the Clearing with their storyteller. I make what I thought was a decent argument through roleplaying, but then the dice say otherwise.

Which brings me to one of those things… if your players are roleplaying a decision out in an encounter with the NPCs, it’s ok just to go with whether it swayed you or not. It doesn’t mean you have to go with a dice roll. Sometimes, just go with your gut.

Eventually, we convince them, there is another wolf attack which we fend off, and that’s it.

Sadly, this session really left a bit of a bad taste in all our mouths to the point that it ended early… the character creation took too long, and the reputation portion of the adventure really felt underused. I feel like the adventure might have gone better if there was already a Faction in the Clearing and we were working against them to eventually pull the clearing toward someone else. As it was, the reputation mechanic never really came into play.

Day 2

Gangbusters B/X Edition

Egg had really wanted to play Gangbusters B/X Edition. For anyone familiar with any early D&D system with a couple of small twists mostly in terms of naming (Moxie, Wooden Nickles, etc). It’s been a long time since I played 2nd Edition AD&D, so seeing THACO after all these years was strange.

The adventure itself was initially set up pretty well. Every character (we had pregenerated characters) had a small backstory and the GM gave us an idea of why we were either in the Speakeasy or in the parking lot nearby. However, the problem was a gunfight broke out in the parking lot and two of the PCs were out there while the other 4 had absolutely no reason for going out and getting shot at. Which led to PVP with the two on the outside while the rest of us wandered through some overly complicated bag exchange.

The GM did a decent job of making sure the camera turned on each character quickly, so most of the time you weren’t sitting idle for too long. It is a little bit odd to do that with combat happening on one side and talking happening on another.

I think this could have worked a little better if the characters had some additional connections with one another. Maybe even if it was just a quick – you know X guy from your days back in prison. You and Y have run jobs together.

As it was, we all struggled with how to connect to one another and how really propel the story forward. When we finally got to the point where about 3 of us could move a portion of the “plot” forward, I wasn’t sure how or if the other PCs would be included. It didn’t matter as we ended about an hour early with the GM telling us that the second half of the adventure would have taken 2 hours.

So far, one for three in our enjoyment of the sessions.

Broken Tales

This was one of those I’d been very interested in (and still am in light of what transpired). I really like the story behind this game, which is the good fairy tales have all become corrupt and it is up to the very flawed villains to save the day (maybe).

Our group of four was comprised of Baba Yaga, The Big Bad Wolf, The Pied Piper, and the Queen of Hearts. Our adversaries, as we’d come to discover, were the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy. Pretty cool, right?

This game started off on the wrong foot and kind of spiraled from there. Only the three of us were on time, but sometimes when you have players book back-to-back games you never quite know how long it is going to take you to get there. And sometimes you must walk like half a mile between the stadium and one of the hotels. Which really means, a 10-minute grace period is no big deal. Many GMs will use that to start talking about the game or the world or just interact with the players.

We waited for 15 minutes before our 4th player arrived and then waited another 15 minutes for a fourth player who never appeared. The GM even mentioned waiting for a little while longer because this was supposed to be a full session.

We convinced him to begin.

Then he really didn’t go into how the system worked (I ended up having to explain it from one of the rules cards on the table). Then when one of the players was trying to explain that this is how they saw their character, he challenged them on that (eventually letting the issue go). He apparently had never heard of the rule of cool, because he shut down any flourishes to a player’s description of how an action went (when it would have no mechanical advantage anyway).

The best part is when Lee had to step away from the table to go to the restroom. The GM was ready to swing the camera back on him and realized he was gone… which clearly upset him. He then turned to me and said:

“Does your friend often walk away from the table?”

“Well he had to run to the bathroom.”

“Does he do that often?”

Not knowing what answer would appease him, I opted for a stun instead. “No, I don’t think he urinates more than normal.”

That response seemed to do a number on him.

About an hour and forty minutes into the session (four hour scheduled), we had defeated a couple of our adversaries, had figured out Dorothy was on her way to kill the last witch, and now we needed to spring into action to save them. Instead, he declared that was the end of things and to find out more we’d need to read the adventure.

So we basically got a little over an hour of play time, were finished 2+ hours early, and that was that.

You know how the rule of GMing is mostly to say “Yes, And?” to situations? A character wants to climb a wall, yes and. I want to go punch the King. Yes and…

This GM introduced us to the new flavor:

No, And.

Can I do-

No… And?

Well, then could I maybe?

No…And…

Here we were, at the midpoint of our Gen Con experience and somehow the cancelled session was the 2nd best one. Not a good average at all. Next week I wrap up the weekend and see if things could possibly turn around…