GaryCon V - Day 1

It’s that time of year again; the time when winter is grasping desperately, but no less effectively, with its frigid, desiccated caress. Yet spring tries with the temerity of a newborn foal to stand. And one of the first signs of spring for my family and me is GaryCon.

GaryCon is a gaming convention held in the honor of the Father of Roleplaying Games, E. Gary Gygax. Gary Gygax passed away in March of 2008. After his funeral many of his friends and family gathered informally and gamed in his honor. The following year, in 2009, Gary’s son Luke Gygax, along with many of the Old Guard of gaming, decided to continue this tradition. In the intervening years, GaryCon has become a kind of living memorial to a man who influenced many lives.

Every year it’s been run publically, from 2009 until now, I’ve attended GaryCon. The first year it was a mad dash to Lake Geneva’s American Legion Hall to spend a Saturday gaming with a hundred or so others…treading the creaking wooden floors gamers once tread to attend early GenCon. This year there were over six hundred people filling the rooms and halls of the Geneva Ridge Resort in Lake Geneva.

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon. For my family and me, one of the great aspects of this particular gaming convention is that it takes place about 50 minutes from our home. This is very handy for several reasons. On Day 1 it is convenient because my wife can drop me off and then return home. This allows me to start my convention on Wednesday night while my family doesn’t join me until later – thus avoiding school absences and keeping us at one vehicle when Day 5 rolls around.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men…

I was settled into my room at about 2PM only to have my boss call and request some things. Since I wasn’t officially on vacation yet, I had to fire up my laptop and get some work done. I thought this would be a bad omen, but the work went quickly and I was done by 4:30 PM. I wondered downstairs to pick up my badge, as well as those of my family.

At this point you can tell it’s a pretty low key affair. Some folks are just arriving; many do not arrive until Thursday or later.

But it is clear there’s still important work to be done…then again, it seems Chris is always busy during this convention.

Registration took all of about 5 minutes and I was back in my room checking emails to ensure my boss didn’t require any last minute changes…and taking a nap. Yet another sign I’m getting old.

I woke about 6:45 PM or so. One last check of emails and then I was going to head down to the bar to hoist a couple. As luck would have it, the inestimable Doug Kovacs sent me a text message about 7:15PM to see if I was around. Next thing I know, I’m in a Gamma World game with Michael Curtis running it, Doug Kovacs on my left, and next to him Jim Wampler.

I had not played Gamma World…well, non 4e Gamma World…since 1979. I grabbed some d6’s and was off to the races. Michael used the 4d6-drop-the-lowest, and I rolled pretty well except for Dexterity. Some random generation of Mutations and my basic character looked something like this…Vico Din Fenrik (a note on names – people were batting about the idea of using chemical names from the various drink bottles on the table…I went with a different chemical I sometimes have to ingest):

Now those random mutations were awesome, in the powerful sense, for some in the group. For me? Well, I got physical mutations of Attraction Odor, which attracts carnivores 30-90 kilometers away – and Narcolepsy, which gave a 2% chance to fall asleep for 6-60 minutes in a stressful situation….awesome in a completely different way. I did get one mutation that turned out to be really quite powerful – Intuition. That mutation provides a +3 per die of damage.

Then Michael rolled us some random weapons and tech equipment– I got a stun rifle with one...that’s right, one...charge and an energy cell charger. I’m still not quite sure what the latter does. After that it was random gold and a bit of shopping. This took me a while due to not being as familiar with the equipment list as I am with the standard fantasy setting’s list. Given my mutations, I figured that Vico was kind of the feral outside. Who wants to hang out with a guy that attracts carnivores? So I went with a kind of barbarian-in-apocalypse feel…except for one purchase.

Remember that Intuition mutation? Well, I found I could afford an Energy Mace. This weapon does 10d6 of damage. Intuition gives me a +3 to each damage die. So I figured if/when I hit with this weapon the results will be quite spectacular…at least 40 points of damage (if I roll one on 10 dice)!

The last thing I purchased was something called a Neutralizing Pigment. I’m not sure what these are (some kind of salve you put on), but Michael ruled I could find one (gray) that cut down on the aforementioned Attraction Odor enough that existence wasn’t a constant battle with swarming carnivores – it was a one shot after all.

By this point, we were all set to go. I took about an hour and a half to gather and build our characters so we took a quick break and then settled in.

What follows make shake any collectors to their very core. As we started, Michael pulled out the original dice from this set. How did we know they were the originals? Well, for one thing, they were still in the plastic bag…

Then he proceeded to tear the bag open. I’m not kidding when I say we were surprised…not in the sense that we didn’t know what was about to happen, just that he’d do it. So, of course, I had to get pictures of him tearing open a bag of dice that probably hadn’t seen fresh air in 30 years…

With all the preparations behind us, we played…

According to my notes, our little party was made up of:

Skell  (bony arms) – Jeff

Ash (The Flammable) - ??

Badge (The Honey Badger) – Zach

Gigantor (6M Tall) – Jim W.

Frictos (Pure strain human) – Doug

Vico (The nervous savage) – Me

Our tribal leader of the Fenrik clan was Benzoate. Since it was a good year and we, the “warriors” of the clan, had some down time, Benzoate was sending us to the Palace of the Ancients. It was a tribal tradition to send boys there as a rite of passage, so we knew something of it – its location being the most important at the moment – but also that it held artifacts of The Ancients.

Off we trudged to the Gorge of the Dead Worm and scaled the western edge to find the Arrow of the Ancients that would take us to the Enters and from there into the Palace. There, lying in the shadows was the massive metal Worm for which the gorge was named. We were tempted to climb down to investigate, but Frictos used his magic speaking device to consult with Benzoate who told us to forge ahead (Doug’s character had a communicator but no matching one, so he would “communicate” with our chief, who did not have a communicator, to determine what to do on occasion).

The Arrow was not so much a road as a straight path with these strange metal stands that stood about a meter and a half in height and were capped in a u-shaped manner (think mini American football goal posts). They were pretty consistent, though they did change in height as the terrain changed, thus keeping their tops on a straight and level path. We followed the Arrow until we finally came upon The Enters, a dark cave into which the metal rod path led. I fired up a torch and into it we delved…

After a few dozen meters of trudging into the wide cave, we noticed that the metal stands seemed to veer slightly to the right, and that the slight echoes seemed to indicate a larger area ahead. Sure enough,  we soon came upon stair case on the left the led to an open cavern of sorts, complete with pillars and a yellow line painted on the floor along the edge of the raised area (think underground railway station – because that’s what it was). There were large planters that contained massive albino killer plants with shooting thorns.

After some positioning and an initial foray against the grotesque horrors, Vico finally decided to rush in. the energy mace, as expected, dealt serious pain, smashing the creature into a pulpy mess. At which point, while raising his weapon to rush the second planter, Vico’s narcolepsy (with a whopping 2% chance) kicked in…and he crashed to the floor, asleep.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, our fearless leader, Frictose, had wandered off towards a darkened opening strewn with small bits and pieces of the see-through metal the Ancients used. After killing the remaining creatures and slapping the shit out of Vico to wake him up, the rest of the group noticed Frictose’s absence. One of the other character’s mutation let us know there was something nasty in the darkened corner in which Frictose was last seen, so off we went. On the ground just beyond the once-upon-a-time-store-window lay Frictose, his mouth and nose glowing with a bright blue fluid substance.

Vico immediately leaped into the room to try and aid his companion, only to have the bright blue icy fluid quickly extricate itself from Frictose and hurl itself at Vico’s face. Vico dodged just in time as Skell let loose a blast from his energy weapon – just missing Vico but hitting the creature. Vico was saved; but alas! Frictose was no more – felled by a slurpee.

Vico stripped the body of anything useful, as well as the communicator, and off we went, following the sense of radioactive mutations one of the characters could pick up. Past a door and down a hall we came upon small curved half wall (think reception desk) that filled a portion of the next corner. Behind it were three humanoid creature with crossbows. Without much in the way of ranged weapons – at least not many charges in them – Vico decided to rush them and let the energy mace have its way with them. Once again, the Intuitive mutation paid off and soon the opponents were so much slime on the walls and floor…at which point the GM reminded me he was keeping track of how many charges were being used. Heh.

At this point we decided to call it a night. It was after midnight, and many of those involved had been traveling for a lot longer than the 45 minutes it took me to get to Lake Geneva; not to mention that everyone had busy days ahead tomorrow.

So there you have it. This is the kind of thing that makes GaryCon so special for me. The convention hadn’t even officially started. I had planned nothing for Wednesday night other than perhaps catching up with folks over a couple of beers. And yet here it was, 12:30 AM, and I was finishing up playing in a game I hadn’t played in 30 years with some new friends. That is why GaryCon rocks.

Oh…and I found out later that we are looking to now make this game a yearly event – that is, we’ll keep the same characters and next year on Wednesday night we shall continue their adventures in the Palace of the Ancients.

Many Kudos to Michael Curtis who ran the game and did a fantastic job of making the unfamiliar easy and had a great way of describing the scenes in a way that made something so familiar seem wonderful and mysterious. Thanks to Doug Kovacs who invited me to play and who made Frictose so funny. And thanks to the folks who let me play and who I hope to see next year.

Gary Con V - Thanks

I’m starting with this aspect because knowing me I’ll fizzle out in posting about GaryCon and this is too important to leave until the end…only to get left out due to my own laziness.

Thank you.

Thank you Chris and Luke and Dale. You have created a convention and atmosphere that is second to none. I am thrilled to bring my family every year. If I had one convention a year to go to from this day forward, it would be this one.

Thank you to all the volunteers who setup, breakdown, and in between try their very best to make everything run smoothly. Those who bring drinks and snacks to the people running games so the rest of us can enjoy playing; those who help registration and those who sort out souvenirs; those who spent countless hours figuring out how to get us places to play…it may not be said as much as it should, but thank you.

To the hotel staff who did a fine job and seemed to be all over the place this year…Thanks! And Well Done!

Thanks to all the people who ran games…for me special shouts out to Michael Curtis who ran three of the seven games in which I played; to Tavis Allison who came to this convention, even though he had recently-born twins at home and a broken ankle, because he made the commitment to do so and then ran Night of the Walking Wet well into Sunday morning when he had a hell of a travel day to follow; and to all those that were so kind in running games in which my kids played – they had a blast.

Thanks to all the other attendees who, year after year, are so nice and friendly and welcoming that my kids have said repeatedly, “Everyone here is so nice.”

Last, but never least, thanks to my lovely wife who puts up with this nonsense every year and supports it so much that we’re already planning next year. She truly is one in a million.

The Stickmen of Arosa

I've been writing down ideas for a world (toying with calling it The Broken Earth) in which I would like to run a DCC campaign or two (maybe one for the kids and another for a group). The binder is getting full and I wanted to start to get something out here in case folks have ideas/feedback/etc.

There will be no particular order - for example, this one is one of the more recent jottings...

The Stickmen of Arosa

• Think tiny ents, though more humanish than tree...
• Each wudj, or individual, is a short, thin humanoid with narrow shoulders, long limbs, long, thin fingers and knee joints that are reverse of most bipedal creatures.
• The skin of the wudj is bark-like, though more soft and flexible/pliable.
• Nobody knows if there are males or females or how they reproduce.
• Each brundle is made up of 10 – 40 wudj.
• Each brundle of wudj is essentially a kind of hive-mind of a single tree.
• Each wudj "worships" the tree with which it is associated.
• All wudj of a brundle form a kind of commune.
• Wudj warriors carry long sharpened sticks, the equivalent of spears.
• some carry one in each hand, two-weapon fighting.
• The specific coloring and look of a brundle is determined by the species of tree the brundle "worships".

Even here you can see how I have some ideas still being worked through. For example, is it a hive mind, a commune, or worship...or something that somehow blends the three?

In this case, I've even asked my nephew to throw some drawings together based on the above. We'll see...

(As a side note, I originally wrote most of this post around Christmas but the holidays then got in the way of finishing.)

When Gaming Matters

Some events are difficult to work through. Sometimes, instead of worrying about the how’s and the why’s, it makes more sense to get back to the basics; focusing on things that matter. So this weekend we spent quite a bit of time doing things as a family – both work and play.

Fortunately, it’s the holidays, so there was cleaning to do and a tree that needed trimming. When the necessities and the niceties of the season had been addressed, we turned to the other great family bonding activity…we played games. The kids were doubly excited due to the fact that I had invited one of my good friends, Paul, to join in the festivities.

We started off, after pizza, with Liar’s Dice. Lo and behold, Paul won – his first time playing! Then we switched to our homemade Zombie Dice and gave it a go. We played two games and my daughter won both. She has this uncanny ability to get six, seven, or eight on the first roll of the game and everyone else gets pressured into chasing her for the rest of the game. Unfortunately for my son, this meant he Jodi'd* two full games.

We finished the dice games around 9:30 PM, rested for a few, and then broke out the next game. Last Christmas I gave Paul a game called Zombies! from Twilight Creations. It is an “older” game from 2001 (apparently), but Paul and I joke about the Zombie Apocalypse all the time so I figured it would be a good game for him. Without being asked to, he brought it last night. Turns out since he received it as a gift he couldn't really get a group together to play it – something he was bummed about.

Skach’s to the rescue!

The game took a little getting used to. For our family, it started a little on the complex side. But one we got into the rhythm it started to get easier. Basically you follow a set of steps on each turn:

1. Pull a new tile – each is a section of the city – and place it.
2. Battle any zombie in your current square.
3. Draw cards to make your hand three cards full.
4. Roll and move – fight any zombies you run into along the way.
5. Roll for the zombies – for each pip on the dice you move a single zombie one space.

The Town Center is placed first and all the players tokens are placed in the center square.

You can see in this picture the center square (circled in red). You can also get a sense for how the city gets built - all the tiles around the Center were drawn as part of those aforementioned steps and placed.

The zombies get on the board in two basic ways. First, whenever a tile with a building on it gets placed, it outlines a set of zombies and life points and bullets that go in that building.

In this picture, you can see a hospital building placed on the map. The yellow circle shows the text that informs the players how to fill up the hospital - in this case 8 zombies, 4 life points, and no bullets. you can see the little zombie figures in each square and the red tokens are the life points.So if you want those life points and/or bullets, you have to go kill some Zombies…or someone does as you can always sneak in after someone does the killing and “vulture” them.

The other way zombies get on the board is through the Event Cards. At the start, each player gets three cards, and then replenishes  them each turn. A card can be played at any time, but only one card per player per "round" - from the beginning of a player's turn until the next beginning of that players turn. There are many of those cards that allow a player to load the board up with zombies, while others give weapons and such - some even allow one player to cause another to miss a turn.

Battling zombies is a simple matter of rolling a six-sided die and getting a four, five, or six. If you do, the zombie is yours. If not, you either have to use a life point to roll again, or add a number of bullets that will raise your roll to success – so if you roll a 3, you can add one bullet and make it a 4 and succeed. You do not get to walk away. Once you enter a square with a zombie (or if you start with one in your square) you have to keep battling until either you or the zombies are defeated. Death means you lose half your zombies and are moved back to the town square, where everyone began the game.

After quite a few turns, you end up with a board that looks like this:

As you can see, everyone was having a good time.

At some point, the most important city card is flipped over and placed on the board: The Helipad.

The circle in the lower left is the helipad. As you can see, as our luck would have it it was going to be an arduous task to get there. Once played, it becomes the place towards which everyone rushes because winning is getting to center square of the helipad and killing the zombie there. It is possible to win by being the first to kill 25 zombies…though that proves very difficult.

We played this game for three hours easy. That's right, my kids were engaged at 1:00 AM and playing just like it was 7:00 PM. In fact, my son formed and alliance with my friend Paul and the two of them very nearly won. My wife ignored the helipad towards which the rest of us were working and went for the 25 kills. At 1:30 AM we called it a night. with no clear winner. The kids were tired, but had an absolute blast.

So much so that the kids and I went to Games Plus today and bought ourselves the base set. We bought quite a few games and expansions today, though some will end up under the tree, so I don't want to divulge. Heck, while at Games Plus we got pulled into a game of Seven Wonders and had a great time.

So I think there will be even more regular gaming even if it's not RPG's. It's not only fun, but a great way to reconnect at the end of a busy week and restrengthen those bonds that really matter.

* Jody'd was a term coined at LokiCon for the player who kept getting zero brains because he would shotgun out.

My Secret Santa is Awesome

Because this is what he sent me:

That's right. The 2nd Printing of the DCC RPG, complete with Index, errata, and my son's name still wrong (Still a not upset, Harley!). Oh..and if that wasn't enough, the next four adventures I didn't have...70 thru 73. That crazy so and so almost completed by wish list single-handed!

Thanks reveal...your generosity is much appreciated. Merry Christmas to you, your lovely wife, and your brilliant son. I hope we can all get together for gaming again in the not too distant future!

Friday Night Dice

LokiCon (see previous) made me think about how well some of the dice games I played would translate into things to play with my kids. When I returned home, we started almost immediately with Liar’s Dice…and the kids are getting really good at it. The other game I wanted them to try was Zombie Dice. I explained to them how it worked, and they were both very interested. So I figured I’d get them/us a set for Christmas.

Only today they both brought home some pretty good report cards. I wanted to reward them and started looking around for somewhere local I could pick up a set. Unfortunately that was much harder than I thought it might be. I even considered driving to Game Plus, about an hour or more away (during rush hour). But a sudden headache took me unawares and the thought of leaving the house vanished with its arrival.

Zombie Dice

So I should probably explain Zombie Dice. It’s a set of 13 six-sided dice – 6 green, 4 yellow, and 3 red. Regardless of the color, each die face will be one of three things …a brain (yum!), footsteps, or a shotgun blast.  One takes three dice from a cup and roles them. You keep the Brains off to the side – those are your points. You keep shotgun blasts off to the side in a separate pile…those you want to avoid – you’re a zombie, after all. Footsteps are kind of like a tie…you’re still chasing. So those you set in a third pile. Now, add more dice from the cup to that pile of footsteps until you have three dice again and repeat. At any time you can stop the cycle and add up all your brains. However, if your total number of shotgun blasts reaches three, you lose everything – you get no brains that round.

So, for example, if on your first roll you get a brain, a footsteps, and a shotgun blast you would have a pile of one brain, another pile of one blast, and a third pile of one footstep. If you wanted to stop at this point, your score after this round would be one brain. If you wanted to roll again, you would add two dice to your pile of footsteps (bringing that set to three) and roll….and hope to not get two more shotgun blasts making you lose any brains you've accumulated.

You repeat this process for each player in turn. The first one to 13 wins (for simplicity’s sake – there’s actually a way to beat someone who gets to 13 first, but I don’t want to complicate things further).

The twist? Each color dice has a different number of the three possibilities making some dice more likely to get shotgun blasts and others more likely to roll brains. Green dice have 3 brains, 2 steps, and one blast. Yellow Dice have two of each. Read have 3 blasts, 2 steps, and one brain.

Rolling Your Own

I had a thought while I let the headache recede. What if I just made my own temporary set to use until the joys of Christmas morning brought us a Real Set ™? What would I need?

• 13 six-sided dice – no problem.
• Stickers – also no problem.

These two were the minimum. It would be really sweet if I had the proper colors for the dice and stickers that resembled the originals.  I figured I had the dice, I just wasn't sure about color – but I’d fake that.  I knew we had a metric s**t-ton of stickers in the house. The kids have been receiving them for years. I just didn't know if we any that were small enough and, if so, if we had enough of each kind.

I started by separating out all my six-siders from my set of dice. Then I tried to find dice that would best match a basic set of Zombie Dice.

Oh look, over to the left! Three reds (Squirrel Dice, ironically), four yellows, and six near-greens. Incidentally, the sets of black and sets of blue dice near the top of the pic were set aside for Liar's Dice. So now I have the 13 dice I need:

Now all I needed were the appropriate stickers. My lovely wife dug through the crafting...stuff...and found the drawer with many of the sheets of stickers. From them I noticed these sets:

After some perusal, I settled on some red hats to use for brains:

Onto the dice with them, I say!

Next, I found on the same sets of sheets a whole bunch of sandals and other footwear. Imagine that...now I have the footsteps! Here's the dice with both:

Last I had to find something for the shotgun blasts. Honestly, this proved the most difficult. There were some snowflakes in a set of Christmas stickers, but not enough of them. With the headache still bearing down on me, the kids and I settled on the dreaded Candy Corn. So the kids set about making it happen:

And here are the final sets:

Roll 'Em If you Got 'Em

And so we got down to using the dice. They worked like a charm. The shapes were easy enough to distinguish. the only thing my kids immediately figured out was the dice were shaped a bit differently - the red ones have rounded corners so you could pull out squared-off corners by feel. We had to institute the rule that you poured the dice into your hand to avoid being able to pick and choose the dice with better odds.

The dreaded Candy Corn:

Storm chooses her dice carefully...

 To no avail:

Collin faced a difficult choice.

His sister had 12 and she was next after him. He had 5, so he needed to get to 13 or more in a hurry.

At this point, he has reached twelve (8 on the books, and 4 on the table) but he has 2 shotgun blasts. He was always the risk taker in games, so he went for it. yo can see the results:

We played two games of Zombie dice with our makeshift set. We had a lot of fun. My wonderful wife won the first game after tying my daughter and winning the dice-off. My daughter won the second game. Then it was time for a milk and cookie break and on to Liar's Dice:

My daughter won both games of Liar's Dice - I have a monster on my hands.

All in all a good fun night.

Thanksgiving SIGPUP

So a few years ago, I coined, in jest, an acronym for a fictitious organization called SIGPUP – The Society to Increase the Gamer Pool Using Procreation.  This was, at the time, my way of summing up my thoughts that one of the ways to ensure tabletop role-playing games lived on was to pass it on to the next generation…to the point of making your own next gaming generation.

Those of you who know me know that I've already got my kids on that track, playing games at home when time allows, at GenCon, and at GaryCon. They've played The Warriors RPG, D&D 3.x, Gama World (4e), AD&D, and their current favorite, DCC RPG…among others.

I am fortunate that for the past four GenCon’s, I have been able to stay at a very nice condo in downtown Indy – my sister’s "vacation" place. On a few occasions, she and her two young boys have joined us in Indianapolis for a part of the weekend and we've done touristy things like the zoo, or the Children’s Museum. The last two years they have even gone to the convention hall on Sunday.

So this last year, I decided it was time to get her kids hooked. As a token of appreciation for allowing us the use of The Condo, I purchased a game my wife, kids, and I found in the Dealer Hall –“ Rawr! TheMonstrous Adventure Game”.  It’s a game geared towards kids and families involving good monsters – the PC’s – that battle the bad monsters. I figured it would be simple enough for my non-geek sister to pick up and would be a fun hook for her boys of eight and six.

About a month after passing the gift on, I received a call from my younger sister asking about…well…essentially how to run a game. The boys had been harassing her about playing since they returned from GenCon. Unfortunately, I was not familiar enough with the rules to offer anything more than general advice. “If he wants to pick up a rock, then let him. You just have to figure out what that means with respect to the rules…or hell, just wing it! It’s more about them having fun than anything else.” Stuff like that.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving a portion of which I spent at my Mother’s house in Michigan. My sister and her boys were there and they brought “Rawr!” along so either my son or I could run it for them. After dinner on Saturday night, while I was introducing Liar’s Dice to the adults in the gathering, my son took a stab at running the game:

Unfortunately, he didn't have a lot of time to get acclimated and so, I think, ended up in the same place as my novice sister did when she attempted to run it. So after my loss in Liar’s dice, I grabbed the rule book, took about ten minutes to get a feel for the rules, and went to it (unfortunately, no pics of that!).

We played through the first sample adventure of the game. I saw where my sister and, subsequently my son, ran into their first question. We had barely begun the first encounter when my nephew says, “I pick up a rock and throw it at his head!” Consistent little guy…

When it was over, my sister said something that struck me as interesting. “It wasn't that I couldn't figure out the rules, but when you ran into something, you seemed to know where to look for the answer much more quickly than I could figure that out.” Huh.