GaryCon V Recap Post- Part III: The Weekend

Ladies and gentlemen, sorry about the delay. This is Michael here, and I kinda agreed a while back to write up my last two days of GaryCon to get the lead-in to Dave's last two days. Sadly, I've been having a host of issues, so I've kept things delayed... a few months. I really need to finish this up. SO! Where were we?

Saturday started pretty well honestly. It was the one day Dave and I were going to be sharing two games, and the first game was Mutant Future. Or to be more accurate, using the Mutant Future setting to play out an episode of THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN! Ah, nostalgia and kids' shows. And the GM honestly rocked. ( +Tim Snider of The Savage Afterworld- Dave) I won't go too heavy into details, god knows Dave might want to, but this was a GREAT game, with the GM playing up the motif with the opening credits played on his laptop, as well as a commercial break. Lots of fun, imaginative playing of the setting, and honestly we really abused some of the opportunities we got. Great game and great start. I think we kinda beat it a bit early, got handed free settings books for if we wanted to do Thundarr ourselves, and went off to eat some before our next game. (Long story short, I managed to quadruplicate Ookla to defeat the enemy. -Dave)

Again, that was intended to be our first game, and I was looking forward to my second as well. See, the followup was a game of Dungeon! I really love that game, and I do need to get a copy of it myself. (I got one! -Dave) Wizards of the Coast did a reprint of the game so if you like board games, pick it up. Again, it was hosted by the creator of the game, who's name escapes me, Dave will probably correct it in. (David Megarry -Dave) And he told again the story of the game, showing the first edition and the tables it was originally played on. Very cool stuff. Sadly, I got to feeling unwell by the time the history was told, and had to excuse myself. So I got to miss out on the actual game itself. Went back to my room and rested most of Saturday away, using my laptop to keep in contact with people online and post some in forums. Even sick, I did some role-playing. Shush.

And that takes me to Sunday, and the last game on my list. The one I'd been looking forward to all con. Call of Cthulhu. Honestly, I'd never played it and I'd wanted to for SO LONG. I love the Lovecraftian setting and I really had been looking forward to it. By the time I got there, there were about five other players waiting, and more showing up as we settled in to talk and chat. Friends and people I'd met from prior cons, I was really looking forward to the game!

And the GM never showed up. Nobody knew what happened to him, where he was. Talked to the con staff, they had no idea what was going on. Table was bleeding players as people went to try and see if there were openings in second pick games when yet again the awesome con staff came through. There was someone with some experience in Call who was willing to GM for us. Great man, I REALLY wish I could remember his name (I am HORRIBLE with names) (Don't ask me, I was playing Traveler at the time- Dave) who more or less ran us through a condensed form of one of his basic sessions. Dave came along during the game, his own game plans kinda shot, and he sat to watch a good deal of the fun as we tried to investigate through a mysterious death and tragic murder. (No, my game went pretty well actually -Dave) All of it looked to lead up to an occult conspiracy and a plan to summon an elder god, and two of our impromptu group got captured by cultists and held in a prison under their base. The rest of us came in, not knowing they were trapped, and confronted the leader of the cult...

And I will admit part of this was my just being kinda tired and feeling ready to head home, but... When the cult leader asked us if there was anything he could say to get us on his side? I sold everyone out, kinda. I'd been hired, NOT paid, and had been working this nonsense without any hope of recompense. I think it rather tickled the GM that I was more than happy to be paid off, and my detective left the rest of them behind to cash his check and get on the first ship he could find to France, get as FAR away from all that nonsense as he could. Honestly? Great end to my last day.

Dave and I had already packed up the car so, we left. Got lunch at a nice out of the way place with... Crap. Dave, tell the rest of the story, my brain is pudding for names.

Afterwards we hung out with +Christopher Stogdill, +Carolyn Stogdill, +Paul Raasch and +Scott Schwartz at Hogs & Kisses in Lake Geneva for lunch before heading home. Overall, it was a great time.

In related news, GaryCon VI has officially been announced for March 27-30, 2014. For more information go to garycon.com

46 Days Till GaryCon! Event Registration is Live!

Outside of some technical difficulties, the event registration for GaryCon V has now begun and will be running until February 23rd. You also have until January 31st to register for the convention with a Copper Badge that gives you 15 SP to register for events.

In good news, I got all the events that I wanted to sign up for. So I will definitely be doing stuff at the convention whether it's playing or running a game. My itinerary looks like this:

Thursday:
8am-2pm (GM) HackMaster- Monsters in the Barn
This is the event I wrote for GaryCon II that was published in HackJournal #39 last year. It's an introductory session for those that have never played Hackmaster before.

3pm-5pm (Player) TSR with Gary Gygax
One of the seminars I wanted to attend. I played in an OD&D game with Mr. Mentzer last year and the stories he told were the best part of the game.

6pm-10pm (GM) Basic D&D- Steaks
This is an AD&D adventure from A1 that I have converted for the BECMI rules. Not heavy on combat, but should still be fun.

Friday:
10am-2pm (GM) Aces & Eights-Last Varmint Standing
This was another fun game I ran last year. Just a big shootout amongst all the players in a last man standing situation. Walk-ups are greatly welcomed here as things will go up and down at a moments notice. No experience necessary.

7pm-10:30pm (Player) Advanced D&D- Quondam Fount
I  had fun at Frank Mentzer's table last year, why not do it again?

Saturday:
8am-Noon (Player) Mutant Future- Thundarr the Barbarian: Warlord of the Sacred Library
Ariel! Ookla! RIDE! (This is going to be so awesome)

2pm-4pm (Player) Dungeon!
Never played this game before. My brother highly recommended it. Gonna give it a shot.

6pm-10pm (Player) HackMaster- The Temple of Unrelenting Despair
My friend Paul is running this game. I always make it a point to support my friends at GaryCon.

Sunday:
10am-2pm- Mongoose Traveller- A Rock And A Hard Place
An old-school game that I never heard of until a few years ago. One must always be open to new things.

So, has anyone else registered yet? What did you sign up for? The clock is ticking, so be sure to get signed up as soon as possible. And I will see you at GaryCon V.

61 Days Till GaryCon! I Want To Play... Gamma World

It was the late eighties at Grandma's house. Knowing that there would be a few stretches with nothing else to do, I brought my copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide with me to read. As I was flipping through the pages, I came upon a section about converting AD&D characters to another game produced by TSR called Gamma World. I had never heard of the game before and wondered what it was about. From what I could gather it was a game set in a post-apocalyptic world that used similar mechanics to D&D. Having grown up on shows like Thundercats and Max Headroom, the idea of playing in a that kind of setting intrigued me. Sadly, I could never find the game at any of my local game stores.

In recent times the closest I have come to Gamma World is downloading the PDF of Mutant Future. But since GaryCon is the home of old-school RPGs, I'm hoping to fit a game into my schedule and cross another title off my role-playing game bucket list.