Gary Gygax, July 27, 1938 - March 4, 2008
We were fortunate to see him last year at GenCon 2007. In his honor we should all get together again as soon as possible and play a true Gygaxian D&D adventure. Here are three things I figure are minimally needed to make it truly Gygaxian:
1) Strange number-based riddles/puzzles
2) Occasional save-or-die traps
3) A Rust Monster
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Now back to this weekend's DelpCon ...
Incoming Nerd Bomb! Take cover!
This weekend was DelpCon 2008. The annual festival of geekery that takes place in the basement of wherever Delp is living at the time. Fortunately Delp now lives in Cedar Falls, the home city of our old alma mater, the illustrious University of Northern Iowa. At this annual convention we at the very least play a game of D&D and drink 6-7 gallons of Mountain Dew. The geek fairy was out in rare form this year, as we also got in a full-fledged Star Wars miniatures tournament and watched two nerdy movies. It was glorious.
Attendees were myself, Delp (of course), Superchad, Devin, Travis, RW, and Paul.Friday night we started the Star Wars tournament. Delp and I bought a bunch of random booster packs for Star Wars minis and everybody got a single sealed booster pack. Then we played the double-elimination tournament with whatever we got in our box. In the boxes people got badass Jedi like Mace Windu, Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, and Qui-Gon Jinn. The MVM (most valuable miniature) award, however, goes to the humble Sith Assault Droid.
The magic of this little guy is that he is the Necron of Star Wars minis. He is an otherwise mediocre mini that has two important powers: shields which made him the most survivable little guy in existence if you can roll high enough each time he gets hit, and a flamethrower which doesn't need to roll to hit anyone within 6 squares. Devin and I got identical pulls in our "random" booster packs, and while we didn't get any bad-ass jedi, we both got a Sith Assault Droid, doubling the chances that people could face, and learn to hate, this little bastard.
Coincidentally (or maybe not), Devin and shared the trophy for Star Wars tournament master. The games went on so long that by the time we got to the final game we were all sick of Star Wars minis, and Devin and I felt that facing off two Sith Assault Droids against each other may end up ripping a hole in space-time, so we called it a draw. In the future Devin and I may have to face off again to determine who is the truest of Star Wars minis champions.
We shared the cake with everybody.Saturday we ate a huge breakfast at the infamous Waffle Stop in downtown Cedar Falls, followed by a trip to the FLGS (friendly local gaming store), The Core. I picked up the Dunwich Horror expansion to my copy of Arkham Horror (best wedding present ever -- thanks Paul!).
Then returned to our HQ in Delp's basement, and that's when the true dorkery was unleashed!
That's right, Dungeons and Dragons! RW was the DM for our foray into the realm of fantastic adventure. He came up with a sweet reversal adventure idea in which we were all turned into different undead, and took over a dungeon for our own. Wanna hear about my skeleton rogue? How about Chad's mummy barbarian? Or Paul's Vampire Spawn? No? Okay, okay, geez...
And in case you still don't believe me that SuperChad was there...
In any case, RW's adventure was totally awesome. We picked locks, dodged traps, fought zombies, and fed paladins to the unholy Ravenloftian Well of Souls. Like I said, good times. We played for a long, long time until the DM just couldn't take any more and we had to call it a night...
...a night to go out on the town, that is! Most of us drove in a big caravan to Delp's dad's house to meet some of his friends there to play cards. I'm pretty sure every one of us ended up losing money at that game, but it was a good time anyway, and we got to meet Delp's friends. Somewhere along the way we got split up and some of us went back to game further while others went to ye old tavern to seek adventure (Huzzah!).When the gamer group returned we played some more Star Wars miniatures while we waited for the party crew to get back, and then we all watched the MST3k version of Angel's Revenge, which was horribly great.
Finally, on Sunday we watched the new cinema classic: Dungeons and Dragons II: Wrath of the Dragon God, which is infinitely superior to its predecessor that had quintuple the budget to work with.And as RW would say, LuX 4 L1fe!
