The GaryCon V Recap Post- Part II: Friday

[This is a continuation of the belated recap of GaryCon V that took place in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin last month. This recap also features my brother Michael as a guest blogger.

Also, I need to get this done so I can move on and blog about other things.]

Friday

One of the things I told myself I was going to do Thursday was to get everything together for the Shootout. That didn't happen, so for the second year in a row I was scrambling to get building models assembled and paper minis cut out. The glue sticks I purchased for the models didn't work at all, so I had to run back to Wal-Mart to buy tape. As for the minis, it turns out that I didn't have them with me when I left upstate New York. And my attempts to print out copies from the hotel's printer failed spectacularly as they didn't have any PDF viewers on their office computer. I decided to make do with the fantasy minis I used the day before and continued on. My only interruption being when Michael came back from his 9am game earlier than expected. I'll let him explain.

[Retro Phaze] New Wizard Weapons

I've been playing Final Fantasy V as of late. Final Fantasy holds a place in my heart from my days as as a young RPGer. While it probably isn't the first console RPG, it did grab my attention due to it having a setup similar to Dungeons & Dragons. It had character classes similar to D&D, monsters that seems to be culled from the Monster Manual, and even followed a Vancian magic system for it's three spellcasting classes. However, it was limited by a linear plot that's pretty unavoidable with computer and console RPGs. Eventually, the Final Fantasy franchise spun off from it's D&D roots to become a system unto itself.

Last year, after The Baron Lieutenant Reginald Hornsby and his band of ragtags vanquished the evil Zedikiah MacKenzie and recovered the Sword of Dracus in the world of Engines & Empires, John Higgins asked a select few of us to play in another game he created called Retro Phaze (formerly called Elegia), a tabletop RPG based on the original Final Fantasy.