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

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.

60 Days Till GaryCon! Pre-Gen Success!

I finally got my pre-gens for my D&D game done. I remembered that I bought some postcard stock for my printer to make spell cards for my Learn to Hacks. Sure enough, they are the perfect size for pre-gens for BECMI D&D. I decided to keep things as simple as possible. Things like stats, hit points, weapons, armor and any magic items the character would have. I'll assume they have basic gear and money available.

I still need to get spell lists together and make a worksheet for all the opponents in the game, but one key part of my prep work is finally done.

67 Days Till GaryCon! A Third of the Way There.

Short blog today on account of my neck still bugging me after my accident on Thursday.

I'm running a bit behind on getting my pregens for my D&D game finished. I'm thinking of creating a half-sheet since the game is a one shot and there isn't a need to include every last detail for the player. Stats, gear and spells (or thief skills) should be sufficient.

The preliminary Event Catalog for GaryCon V is up. I'm still waiting to see if any of my games have been accepted. The deadline for submitting new events is January 17th.

73 Days Till GaryCon! More Pre-Gen Goodness

So here's the pre-gen lineup for the D&D Game I'll be running at GaryCon:

• 8th Level Cleric
• 8th Level Fighter
• 7th Level Magic-User
• 8th Level Thief
• 8th Level Dwarf
• 8th Level Halfling
• 7th Level Elf

The game is supposed to be for 6 players, so I have enough for all with one leftover. But part of me is wondering if I shouldn't create a few more in case more than one person wants to play a fighter or something similar. Off the top of my head I'm thinking an extra cleric would be a good idea. Then again, you can never go wrong with an extra fighter.

Any suggestions? If you had to create a 6 character party using BECMI rules, what would it look like?

74 Days Till GaryCon! Pre-gen Mania

I just finished rolling up a dwarf, elf and thief for my D&D game at GaryCon. I am now in the process of divvying up the magic items amongst the players. After that, I will figure out the mundane equipment and then work up some character sheets for the convention.

My plan is to have everything up on New Year's Day so they are available for the convention and anyone else who might be interested.

I did re-roll a few of the magic items that were borderline imbalancing for the adventure. I also ruled a 10% chance per level that a temporary item was used. Most of the potions, scrolls and wands are now off the list.

In an unrelated, yet interesting note, tomorrow will be my 150th post. What a way to end the year.

81 Days Till GaryCon: More Pre-Gen Prep

Despite spending the entire morning hopping from airport to airport and battling a head cold that waited until the day I went on vacation, I managed to get the start on two more pre-gens for my D&D game at GaryCon. This time I am adding a cleric and a magic-user to the mix. Both are based on 120,000 XP, so the magic-user is only 7th level compared to the 8th level PCs we have seen.

88 Days to GaryCon! GM Prep Time- Part One

I've decided that Sundays will be spent detailing the process of preparations for each game I'm running at GaryCon. Out of the three games, I have run two of them in the past. So I'm going to start this series on the D&D game that recently added.

Now, the adventure was designed for 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. But I'm going to run it under Cyclopedia rules since that will reduce the number of books I have to bring with me. Plus it will also make it easier to create pre-gens since the Basic Rules have race-as-class as a feature.

I allotted for six seats at the game, but I'm going to create eight pre-gens to give the players more choice and account for possible additional players. This should give me one of each class for everyone to choose from, plus one extra which I have yet to determine.