55 Days Till GaryCon! GaryCon III: Part III

Shortly after I got into D&D, my buddy Dennis introduced me to Top Secret, an espionage role-playing game. The game was interesting too me as it was another game that only relied upon percentile dice to resolve actions (Marvel Super Heroes being the other one I knew about). It was also the first game I played that had a point-buy system for character creation. Shortly afterwards I purchased a copy of Top Secret SI, the 'advanced' version of the game. I figured I would get a chance to run and play some games of intrigue and adventure. Unfortunately, I could never find anyone willing to play Top Secret. Thus the box sat on a shelf until I forgot that I still owned it.


Fast forward a few decades later to GaryCon III. On Saturday morning, I went through all my stuff to make sure I had everything ready for my game of Top Secret SI. By luck I had discovered that my brother had my old box set, and it was still complete. So I decided that would be my second game for GaryCon III. I formulated an adventure where the bad guys sought to set off a dirty bomb in a grain elevator in a rural town to create a worldwide panic and drive up the price of corn. With everything in hand, I was ready to run the game Saturday morning.

Only two problems. First, out of the five people that signed up for my game, only two showed up. They were a man and his teenage daughter. And like a good father he was introducing his daughter to the world of old school gaming. The other problem was that I lost my timetable for the adventure. Everything else I had, NPCs, maps, pregens, etc. But the one thing I needed to keep me on track was nowhere to be found. I had to wing it, and hope that all the planning left something ingrained.

One thing I found out is that if you are the only person at GaryCon running Top Secret, someone will come up to your table and ask to join in. So within minutes of finding out half my players bailed on me, I had a new group and the game was underway. I also had the privilige of finally meeting +Jeff Rients of Jeff's Gameblog as he stopped by my table to see what was going on. We spoke for a minute before he went on to other events at the convention.

After the villainous plot was foiled with only one PC fatality, my brother and I stopped by the Kenzer & Company booth and played some HackMaster with the D-Team for a few hours. For dinner my brother and I headed to the Next Door Pub for some pizza and took a break.

You just had to find an excuse to use this picture again, didn't you? We're just going out to eat!

I don't remember much about the rest of the night. I do know we hit the bar again and played Give Me The Brain for a while. But I do recall turning in before midnight as there was still one more day left in the con, as well as something else for Sunday.