I was perusing the latest in horrid D&D fan films this morning and got sentimental for an old board game instructional/story video I used to have on VHS tape.
You're welcome for that Cullen.
Also, there's seems to be yet another D&D documentary coming out that, while as cringe-worthy as most, seems to have some sort of overall point about societies stupification...or something, I'm not sure, but it does poke fun at politics being ridiculous. Anyways, check out the trailer.
Showing posts with label Gamer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gamer. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
To the Earth's Core!
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SPECIAL UPDATE: The soon-to-be straight-to-DVD blockbuster remake of CHILDREN OF THE CORN (that was filmed in my tiny home town of Lost Nation, IA) premiers this Saturday on the "Syfy" channel at 8pm Central!
------
I decided to actually give Hollow Earth Expedition a try with my gaming group, and I must say it was a blast. I had a short adventure already planned out for Gencon but never got the opportunity to play it there, so decided to invite my buds over for a convention-style one-shot game of 1930s pulp action!
Now, as my players had never played Hollow Earth Expedition before nor even heard of the dice system, I had to give a quick overview of what was going on. I read the following:
Then I just let the players see all the demo characters I had printed off and let them choose who goes on the mission without knowing what all the stats meant on the sheets. I would explain the rules after they chose characters because I figured it'd be easier to understand while looking at the sheets.
The characters available were as follows (and yes if you're a Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle fan you'll recognize most of the character names I used):
Prof. Edward Challenger -- Mad Scientist (Expedition Leader)
Lord John Roxton -- Big Game Hunter
Ms. Gladys Huntington -- Intrepid Reporter
Preston Weatherby III -- Dying Moneyman (Expedition Sponsor)
Doug McClure -- Ex-Military Rugged Explorer
Prof. Julius Summerlee -- Snooty Professor (Challenger's Academic Nemesis)
Jacqueline Payne -- Archaeologist and Fortune Hunter
Glenda Blondell -- Imperiled Actress
This being their first adventure they opted for a combat-heavy group and chose Prof. Challenger, Lord John Roxton, Doug McClure, and Jacqueline Payne.
The rules to the game are pretty simple, and I won't go into them here. Suffice to say that one of the major differences between HEX and other rpgs are Style points. Each character had a predefined Motivation (Power, Greed, Truth-Seeker, etc.) and a pre-defined Flaw (Overconfident, Absent-minded, Thrill-seeker, etc.). Each time a player plays their character to their motivation or flaw I give them a Style point, which is a poker chip. They can then use these style points to get fairly big bonuses on their die rolls. So for example, Prof. Summerlee's flaw is "Condescending," which means he gets Style points whenever he proves his mental superiority, or just from being a dick in a smarmy and entertaining sort of way. Now, his combat stats are rubbish, but presumably by the time he has to dodge bullets he's saved up so many Style points from antagonizing the group that he can wade through combat by sheer "luck." Style points really made for a fun game, and flew back and forth between me and the players like water.
When starting new games, I prefer to channel my inner Robert E. Howard and start the campaign in media res, that is, toss the characters into an immediate and dangerous situation and gloss over how they got there in the first place. This is much more fun than starting out with the characters sitting around with a long briefing and a Q&A session with the local king, royal sponsor, or general "quest-giver." Don't give the characters the opportunity to waste time haggling with the blacksmith for deals before they've even dented their sword.
With that in mind, the description of the setting was simple and straightforward:
Then I set down a map I drew of the inside of the MOLE and showed them the five stations, there is the HELM, SYSTEMS MAINTENANCE, ENGINES, AIR PUMP, and SENSORS.
The players had to get ten successes at the HELM within three turns to escape the oncoming rush of hot lava filling the tunnel behind them. Every station gave benefits to other stations or the HELM if successfully maintained, and also gave other stations penalties if not successfully maintained (or in the case of the Air Pump, made everyone start to suffocate and take damage). Of course there were five stations and only four PCs, which is by design. But Doug McClure flexed his mighty thews and manned the bellows of the Air Pump, Prof. Challenger put on his steampunk goggles and drove at the HELM, Ms. Payne interpreted the SENSOR array to help steer the MOLE, and Lord John Roxton took up the monkey wrench and banged on the ENGINES to keep them going. Everybody ignored the smoldering and sparking SYSTEMS MAINTENANCE station and just hoped it would hold until they were safe, and sure enough they were able to just make 10 successes by the third turn and thrust upward through the Earth's crust into an expansive jungle valley! They had little time to ponder this unusual circumstance as they were closely followed by the rushing lava!
They only had a few minutes to spare before the MOLE was swallowed completely in lava, so I let them grab their gear and head out the upper porthole, where they had to jump to a nearby tree for safety. Ms. Payne made it easily, and Lord John Roxton had no trouble grabbing a tree. Doug McClure took a stumble and his boot brushed some lava, but he made it in one piece. Prof. Challenger tried to use the MOLE's ejector seat to get to safety, but only succeeded in setting off a small explosion wrecking the control panel and throwing him harshly into the jungle trees.
Once safe, the PCs were able to look around and while the Professor's coordinates said they were deep within the Earth's crust, they could see a shining sun above them and were deep in a tropical jungle! Then, Doug found some tire tracks in the mud, suggesting they were near the site of where Expedition 3 must be operating!
The PCs followed the tire tracks for a few hours and noticed a lot of previously unknown and thought-extinct ferns and insects. Fortunately, Roxton was keeping an eye up while they traveled because he shushed the group as they came upon a horrendous sight... lizardmen!
A small tribe of lizardmen were dancing around a large bonfire and playing drums. Near the makeshift bonfire they saw an overturned truck and a wooden pole stuck in the ground, with a very distraught woman tied to it! The lizardmen danced around the young sacrifice as the drummers thrummed hypnotic music into the jungle.
Lord John Roxton could not stomach the sight of a woman in distress, and immediately took a knee, aimed his .405 Winchester rifle at the serpentine head of the nearest abomination, and pulled the trigger. The lizardman's head exploded in red mist. The crack of the shot scattered most of the tribal serpentmen, leaving the shaman, his bodyguards and the drummers left to defend the sacrifice.
After a few rounds of intense hand-to-hand combat between the group and the lizardmen, a thunderous roar was heard throughout the jungle, and the PCs realized what the drumming was actually summoning. That's right, since this was a one-shot I wasn't holding back, the lizardmen had summoned a T-rex!
McClure raced to cut the bonds holding the captive with his machete as Ms. Payne distracted the T-Rex with her shotgun and fancy moves. She narrowly escaped being bitten in half only by the grace of spending a lot of Style points and using up her special "Lucky" Talent she gets once a game session. The T-Rex finally reached down to snap up the sacrifice as McClure pushed her out of the way and threw a lizardman drummer forward at the same time, feeding it to the T-Rex Gammorean-guard style. With the death of the drummer the other musician lizardmen stopped playing and started to flee in panic. With the T-rex no longer hypnotized by the music it rampaged around the area attacking things at random. McClure grabbed the damsel and ran past Challenger, the T-rex hot on his heals. Fortunately, Prof. Challenger had in the meantime been attaching a fuse to the overturned truck's gas tank. As the thunderous Superpredator passed the jeep the Professor lit the fuse, and the truck and T-Rex exploded in a tremendous fireball! Prof. Challenger barely leapt out of the path of the explosion into a nearby sinkhole.
Once they were clear of the area, the damsel explained she was Dr. Emily Masterson, a British geologist who was with Expedition 3. She explained that they were ambushed by Nazis who had come into the Hollow Earth on an icebreaker Ship via an opening in the North Pole. The Nazis had found a treasure-trove of strange and precious artifacts and hoped to utilize the riches of the Hollow Earth to help their Fuhrer to conquer the world! She was forced to work with a group of Nazis looking for more precious minerals when they were ambushed by the lizardmen. The Nazis fled leaving her to be sacrificed to the Lizardman gods.
Upon hearing this, patriotic Doug McClure expressed his disdain for Nazis and asked how they could stop the nefarious germans from fulfilling their plans. Dr. Masterson said she could lead the party to where the Nazis had found a strange obelisk in the jungle that they believed to be some sort of weapon. The party needed little prodding with the promise of glory, riches, and a possible escape to the surface and so proceeded to follow Dr. Masterson to the Nazi encampment.
Sure enough, upon arrival at the obelisk they saw a bunch of Nazi guards and Nazi engineers lowering a dug-up obelisk toward the back of a large truck. The obelisk swayed unsteadily on some jury-rigged ropes and it was clear the Nazis were concerned it would fall before they got it on the truck. Deciding they needed to stop whatever it was the Nazis planned, the crew threw together a hasty plan. They would play the lizardmen drums to make the Nazis think more lizardmen were coming, and at the same time Ms. Payne would sneak behind enemy lines and pull the stake holding the obelisk upright at a 45 degree angle above the truck. It seemed like a good plan, until the drumming on the mystical lizardman drums accidentally summoned a group of hungry Ultraraptors from the nearby tall grass!
Nazi, Explorer, and Raptor fought in a desperate three-way battle. In the confusion Ms. Payne pulled up the stake and the obelisk came crashing down onto the truck, just as a guard jumped into the truck to avoid an oncoming raptor. He was flattened instantly. The obelisk broke in half and revealed what the rune-inscribed atlantean artifact had been hiding, a miniature black hole!
Suddenly, everything started to be pulled toward the tiny black hole between the two broken halves of the obelisk. As objects and creatures fell into the dark matter, it grew in intensity and was able to pull toward it larger and larger objects. The players had to hold on for dear life not to get sucked in. As the Professor secured himself between some trees with a hastily-erected harness, he noticed that when the smaller broken-off pieces of the obelisk fell into the hole it decreased in size slightly! On the other side of the battlefield Lord John Roxton noticed it too. Held by his belt and secured to a nearby tree by the stout Doug McClure, he was able to take aim and shatter one half of the obelisk with a well-placed round from ol' Matilda, letting all the smaller pieces fall into the hole, decreasing its size significantly. Unfortunately, the other half of the obelisk was on the other side of the black hole from Roxton, which would suck his bullets into it if he tried to shoot past it!
Seeing his only chance, the professor overloaded the dilithium oscillator on his experimental Stun rifle and tossed it to Ms. Payne, who was able to throw it under the other half of the Obelisk just as a huge explosion rocked the valley. The obelisk section was thrown into the air and came down into the black hole, nullifying the black pulsar, or what was known to the inhabitants of the area 100,000 years ago as an Atlantean Gravity Bomb! The Nazi's plans to take the bomb back to the surface had been foiled!
The trucks and encampment destroyed by the implosion, the players gathered themselves together and headed toward their only hope of escape, the Nazi's icebreaker ship docked just a day's hike away. But as they got to the shore their hopes were dashed, as some time in the night the ship had been attacked by what must be giant sea beasts, or had suffered an artillery explosion, as now only pieces of the deck and various debris bobbed out in the water.
Where would they go now? How would they survive in this hostile world? Where did the rest of the Nazi sailors and soldiers go? Would they ever find their way back to the surface? Find out next time on...
Trapped in the Hollow Earth!
SPECIAL UPDATE: The soon-to-be straight-to-DVD blockbuster remake of CHILDREN OF THE CORN (that was filmed in my tiny home town of Lost Nation, IA) premiers this Saturday on the "Syfy" channel at 8pm Central!
------
I decided to actually give Hollow Earth Expedition a try with my gaming group, and I must say it was a blast. I had a short adventure already planned out for Gencon but never got the opportunity to play it there, so decided to invite my buds over for a convention-style one-shot game of 1930s pulp action!Now, as my players had never played Hollow Earth Expedition before nor even heard of the dice system, I had to give a quick overview of what was going on. I read the following:
Several months ago, Prof. Challenger received a faint distress signal from a group that identified itself as "Expedition 3." The cryptic messages from Expedition 3 stated they were a scientific crew who had become stranded deep within the Earth's Crust.
Prof. Challenger immediately began work on the Maneuverable Oxygenated Linear Excavator, or MOLE, a drilling machine capable of traversing through the Earth at remarkable speeds.
Most of the world thinks this is either an insane endeavor or a scam, but Prof. Challenger was able to secure funding and pull together a group of distinguished explorers to join him on this expedition. Together, you will travel in the MOLE on a rescue mission to the heart of the planet!
Then I just let the players see all the demo characters I had printed off and let them choose who goes on the mission without knowing what all the stats meant on the sheets. I would explain the rules after they chose characters because I figured it'd be easier to understand while looking at the sheets.
The characters available were as follows (and yes if you're a Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle fan you'll recognize most of the character names I used):
Prof. Edward Challenger -- Mad Scientist (Expedition Leader)
Lord John Roxton -- Big Game Hunter
Ms. Gladys Huntington -- Intrepid Reporter
Preston Weatherby III -- Dying Moneyman (Expedition Sponsor)
Doug McClure -- Ex-Military Rugged Explorer
Prof. Julius Summerlee -- Snooty Professor (Challenger's Academic Nemesis)
Jacqueline Payne -- Archaeologist and Fortune Hunter
Glenda Blondell -- Imperiled Actress
This being their first adventure they opted for a combat-heavy group and chose Prof. Challenger, Lord John Roxton, Doug McClure, and Jacqueline Payne.
The rules to the game are pretty simple, and I won't go into them here. Suffice to say that one of the major differences between HEX and other rpgs are Style points. Each character had a predefined Motivation (Power, Greed, Truth-Seeker, etc.) and a pre-defined Flaw (Overconfident, Absent-minded, Thrill-seeker, etc.). Each time a player plays their character to their motivation or flaw I give them a Style point, which is a poker chip. They can then use these style points to get fairly big bonuses on their die rolls. So for example, Prof. Summerlee's flaw is "Condescending," which means he gets Style points whenever he proves his mental superiority, or just from being a dick in a smarmy and entertaining sort of way. Now, his combat stats are rubbish, but presumably by the time he has to dodge bullets he's saved up so many Style points from antagonizing the group that he can wade through combat by sheer "luck." Style points really made for a fun game, and flew back and forth between me and the players like water.
When starting new games, I prefer to channel my inner Robert E. Howard and start the campaign in media res, that is, toss the characters into an immediate and dangerous situation and gloss over how they got there in the first place. This is much more fun than starting out with the characters sitting around with a long briefing and a Q&A session with the local king, royal sponsor, or general "quest-giver." Don't give the characters the opportunity to waste time haggling with the blacksmith for deals before they've even dented their sword.
With that in mind, the description of the setting was simple and straightforward:
To reach the coordinates broadcast by Expedition 3, the MOLE must travel through over 500 miles of solid rock. You are just getting used to the sound of the grinding drill when suddenly the MOLE is rocked by external explosions. Boiling hot, sulfurous gases penetrate the hull, the electrical systems spark, and the engine pistons scream and struggle to put out enough power! A tectonic tremor has caused the MOLE to fall into a matrix of brittle rock within an enormous magma field!
Then I set down a map I drew of the inside of the MOLE and showed them the five stations, there is the HELM, SYSTEMS MAINTENANCE, ENGINES, AIR PUMP, and SENSORS.
The players had to get ten successes at the HELM within three turns to escape the oncoming rush of hot lava filling the tunnel behind them. Every station gave benefits to other stations or the HELM if successfully maintained, and also gave other stations penalties if not successfully maintained (or in the case of the Air Pump, made everyone start to suffocate and take damage). Of course there were five stations and only four PCs, which is by design. But Doug McClure flexed his mighty thews and manned the bellows of the Air Pump, Prof. Challenger put on his steampunk goggles and drove at the HELM, Ms. Payne interpreted the SENSOR array to help steer the MOLE, and Lord John Roxton took up the monkey wrench and banged on the ENGINES to keep them going. Everybody ignored the smoldering and sparking SYSTEMS MAINTENANCE station and just hoped it would hold until they were safe, and sure enough they were able to just make 10 successes by the third turn and thrust upward through the Earth's crust into an expansive jungle valley! They had little time to ponder this unusual circumstance as they were closely followed by the rushing lava!
They only had a few minutes to spare before the MOLE was swallowed completely in lava, so I let them grab their gear and head out the upper porthole, where they had to jump to a nearby tree for safety. Ms. Payne made it easily, and Lord John Roxton had no trouble grabbing a tree. Doug McClure took a stumble and his boot brushed some lava, but he made it in one piece. Prof. Challenger tried to use the MOLE's ejector seat to get to safety, but only succeeded in setting off a small explosion wrecking the control panel and throwing him harshly into the jungle trees.Once safe, the PCs were able to look around and while the Professor's coordinates said they were deep within the Earth's crust, they could see a shining sun above them and were deep in a tropical jungle! Then, Doug found some tire tracks in the mud, suggesting they were near the site of where Expedition 3 must be operating!
The PCs followed the tire tracks for a few hours and noticed a lot of previously unknown and thought-extinct ferns and insects. Fortunately, Roxton was keeping an eye up while they traveled because he shushed the group as they came upon a horrendous sight... lizardmen!
A small tribe of lizardmen were dancing around a large bonfire and playing drums. Near the makeshift bonfire they saw an overturned truck and a wooden pole stuck in the ground, with a very distraught woman tied to it! The lizardmen danced around the young sacrifice as the drummers thrummed hypnotic music into the jungle.
Lord John Roxton could not stomach the sight of a woman in distress, and immediately took a knee, aimed his .405 Winchester rifle at the serpentine head of the nearest abomination, and pulled the trigger. The lizardman's head exploded in red mist. The crack of the shot scattered most of the tribal serpentmen, leaving the shaman, his bodyguards and the drummers left to defend the sacrifice.
After a few rounds of intense hand-to-hand combat between the group and the lizardmen, a thunderous roar was heard throughout the jungle, and the PCs realized what the drumming was actually summoning. That's right, since this was a one-shot I wasn't holding back, the lizardmen had summoned a T-rex!
McClure raced to cut the bonds holding the captive with his machete as Ms. Payne distracted the T-Rex with her shotgun and fancy moves. She narrowly escaped being bitten in half only by the grace of spending a lot of Style points and using up her special "Lucky" Talent she gets once a game session. The T-Rex finally reached down to snap up the sacrifice as McClure pushed her out of the way and threw a lizardman drummer forward at the same time, feeding it to the T-Rex Gammorean-guard style. With the death of the drummer the other musician lizardmen stopped playing and started to flee in panic. With the T-rex no longer hypnotized by the music it rampaged around the area attacking things at random. McClure grabbed the damsel and ran past Challenger, the T-rex hot on his heals. Fortunately, Prof. Challenger had in the meantime been attaching a fuse to the overturned truck's gas tank. As the thunderous Superpredator passed the jeep the Professor lit the fuse, and the truck and T-Rex exploded in a tremendous fireball! Prof. Challenger barely leapt out of the path of the explosion into a nearby sinkhole.
Once they were clear of the area, the damsel explained she was Dr. Emily Masterson, a British geologist who was with Expedition 3. She explained that they were ambushed by Nazis who had come into the Hollow Earth on an icebreaker Ship via an opening in the North Pole. The Nazis had found a treasure-trove of strange and precious artifacts and hoped to utilize the riches of the Hollow Earth to help their Fuhrer to conquer the world! She was forced to work with a group of Nazis looking for more precious minerals when they were ambushed by the lizardmen. The Nazis fled leaving her to be sacrificed to the Lizardman gods.
Upon hearing this, patriotic Doug McClure expressed his disdain for Nazis and asked how they could stop the nefarious germans from fulfilling their plans. Dr. Masterson said she could lead the party to where the Nazis had found a strange obelisk in the jungle that they believed to be some sort of weapon. The party needed little prodding with the promise of glory, riches, and a possible escape to the surface and so proceeded to follow Dr. Masterson to the Nazi encampment.
Sure enough, upon arrival at the obelisk they saw a bunch of Nazi guards and Nazi engineers lowering a dug-up obelisk toward the back of a large truck. The obelisk swayed unsteadily on some jury-rigged ropes and it was clear the Nazis were concerned it would fall before they got it on the truck. Deciding they needed to stop whatever it was the Nazis planned, the crew threw together a hasty plan. They would play the lizardmen drums to make the Nazis think more lizardmen were coming, and at the same time Ms. Payne would sneak behind enemy lines and pull the stake holding the obelisk upright at a 45 degree angle above the truck. It seemed like a good plan, until the drumming on the mystical lizardman drums accidentally summoned a group of hungry Ultraraptors from the nearby tall grass!
Nazi, Explorer, and Raptor fought in a desperate three-way battle. In the confusion Ms. Payne pulled up the stake and the obelisk came crashing down onto the truck, just as a guard jumped into the truck to avoid an oncoming raptor. He was flattened instantly. The obelisk broke in half and revealed what the rune-inscribed atlantean artifact had been hiding, a miniature black hole!
Suddenly, everything started to be pulled toward the tiny black hole between the two broken halves of the obelisk. As objects and creatures fell into the dark matter, it grew in intensity and was able to pull toward it larger and larger objects. The players had to hold on for dear life not to get sucked in. As the Professor secured himself between some trees with a hastily-erected harness, he noticed that when the smaller broken-off pieces of the obelisk fell into the hole it decreased in size slightly! On the other side of the battlefield Lord John Roxton noticed it too. Held by his belt and secured to a nearby tree by the stout Doug McClure, he was able to take aim and shatter one half of the obelisk with a well-placed round from ol' Matilda, letting all the smaller pieces fall into the hole, decreasing its size significantly. Unfortunately, the other half of the obelisk was on the other side of the black hole from Roxton, which would suck his bullets into it if he tried to shoot past it!Seeing his only chance, the professor overloaded the dilithium oscillator on his experimental Stun rifle and tossed it to Ms. Payne, who was able to throw it under the other half of the Obelisk just as a huge explosion rocked the valley. The obelisk section was thrown into the air and came down into the black hole, nullifying the black pulsar, or what was known to the inhabitants of the area 100,000 years ago as an Atlantean Gravity Bomb! The Nazi's plans to take the bomb back to the surface had been foiled!
The trucks and encampment destroyed by the implosion, the players gathered themselves together and headed toward their only hope of escape, the Nazi's icebreaker ship docked just a day's hike away. But as they got to the shore their hopes were dashed, as some time in the night the ship had been attacked by what must be giant sea beasts, or had suffered an artillery explosion, as now only pieces of the deck and various debris bobbed out in the water.Where would they go now? How would they survive in this hostile world? Where did the rest of the Nazi sailors and soldiers go? Would they ever find their way back to the surface? Find out next time on...
Trapped in the Hollow Earth!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
GenCon 2009!
Jump to comments.
Yes, I'm back. I'm not going to go into the whole tired monologue of why I haven't posted in five months. Just be glad that Gencon 2009 supplied the activation energy needed to kick one geek butt into nerd gear again.
Wednesday:
Wednesday morning, Mary packed me up and sent me off to GenCon at the crack of 9am.
My travel companions from Madison were my IT buddy from work, Steve, and two of his faithful companions, Jason and Nick.
Upon arriving in Indianapolis, I met up with Delp and Paul in our room at the Marriott to form the "GenCon Triad." (those of us who have been to Gencon three years in a row)
Later that evening, Brando arrived in Indy to complete the adventuring party and there was much rejoicing. GenCon could officially commence!
First, a beer was had at the local microbrewery that caters to nerds during Gencon, the RAM. The RAM produces a new beer specifically for Gencon every year. This year it was a Honey Brown Ale, which we drank plenty of.
Then we talked the talk of nerdyness well into the wee hours of the night, ready to face dangers and adventure galore for the next four days of gaming.
Thursday:
First thing Thursday was True Dungeon! After getting a filling breakfast in the concierge lounge, we headed downstairs to face the horrors of True Dungeon.
Sadly, Devin was abruptly unable to attend GenCon this year, and so we had an extra ticket to True Dungeon. Requiring a Cleric, we found this guy in the hallway to fill in.
He did his part acting as the cleric, but its difficult to compete with the awesome that is Devin. Devin, you were missed, especially your puzzle-solving skillz.
We stumbled through the puzzle rooms with all the skill of first-level morons, but gritted our teeth and took the auto-damage as we kept on going to the next extremely dangerous hit-point sapping room. Of course, with an adventuring party so resplendent and powerful, we were still victorious in the end and overcame "Scumfang," the Troll Mage King of the Cursed Bog of Deadliness and Neverending Peril.
This is when Delp left the party to assume his duties as a volunteer for True Dungeon, and I only saw him once or twice afterward due to his busy volunteering schedule.
As Paul went to run through True Dungeon a second time, Brando and I tried to get to one of the Hollow Earth Expedition games I had singed up for with the excellent title of "Burt Fedora and the Warmaidens of Mars." Unfortunately due to a last-minute renovation in the Crowne Plaza hotel, the game was moved to another room which the info booth was not updated on. Alas, we searched and searched, but by the time we did find the game it was already 20-minutes in and we'd be interrupting, so we didn't bother them. Instead, Brando and I wandered the exhibition hall for a few hours, and Brando got his picture taken with some of his favorite characters.
Plenty of good ol' fashioned representatives from the Empire were there too.
Of course there were Ren-faire bands and whatnot selling their lute-music CDs.
There were a ton of very cool minis to be seen and we both took pics of sweet 28mm pewter mini setups. Brando took like 600 pictures of them.
There's also an art show at GenCon for fantasy art, and one guy brought along his wizard-ified motorcycle. Now with 30% more skulls!
Later that night, I ditched the crew and went on a solo adventure to go play a 6-hour marathon of 1st edition AD&D's original RAVENLOFT Adventure (I6)! The GM was excellent and clearly loved the source material. Unfortunately it started out a little slow because the guy couldn't bring himself to turn away all the people who showed up with generic tickets to play, resulting in 11 PCs to deal with. Fortunately, it got a lot better when a Banshee on the second floor of Castle Ravenloft screamed and 6 PCs died after failing their saves vs. death magic, leaving the remaining 5 of us to mop up Strahd.
My character, Connor Macgregor: Cleric of Lathander held his own against the minions of evil with his holy spellcasting and richeous silver flailery. Each time he defeated an enemy or did something even remotely noteworthy it was recorded in his Great Book of Good Deeds.
He even managed to find the Holy Symbol of Barovia and with it actually stunned the Vampire Lord for one round!
That's right, that's Connor within 5 feet of Strahd Von Zarovich. How's that for some iron balls? Strahd was aghast at Connor's clerical abilities and fled for one round, leaving us to be level-drained by his nearly-endless Wraith minions (of which Connor single-handedly destroyed two). The party was level-drained and their souls were eventually imprisoned forever but the legend of Connor Macgregor, stunner of Strahd, will haunt Strahd forever!
Arriving back at the room well after midnight, I collapsed in hopes of actually making Friday's Hollow Earth game I had signed up for.
Friday:
Friday morning I got up chipper as can be for the Hollow Earth game "Lost City of Crystal Graveyards," and tried to awaken Brando to attend with me. Unfortunately, he and Paul had gone out and gotten uber-hammered the night before, so he had an epic hangover and did not attend the morning game with me. Furthermore in my haste to get to the game I neglected to take my camera, so got no live-action pics, but this illustration does a good job representing the great adventure that I had.
After Hollow Earth, I did some more exhibition hall shopping and picked up all the sweet new release books I wanted, including Mysteries of the Hollow Earth, Strange Aeons, Star Wars Guide to the Rebellion, and the Desolation rpg.
Then after dinner we finally got to hang out with Delp for more than five minutes and for the rest of the night Brando ran a game of Dark Heresy (note: link may have music) for the three of us. We killed a number of cultists AND innocent bystanders, and succeeded in sending the cult leader to his well-deserved judgement. Unfortunately we each died horrible deaths at the hands of a Daemonhost and his fervent followers, but that's a small price to pay for furthering the God-Emperor's glory.
Saturday:
On Saturday morning, Delp once again disappeared to True Dungeon land and Brando, Paul and I went to the Hyatt to play in Brando's 8-10 am spider-infested game of Return to the Tower of Gygax. RttToG is a fairly new addition to GenCon, and is a continuous highly-deadly game of 1st edition AD&D in a magical tower of traps and wizardry, where DMs run two-hour shifts for any players that showup. Immediately upon entering the game I was passed a note from good old Brando letting me know I was possessed by a malevolent daemon and forced to kill my fellow PCs. I personally kicked an unsuspecting Paul the Elf into a pit of acid and held the door shut on him. I still kind of feel bad about that Paul.
Later my shift started and I ran the Tower of Gygax from 11am-1pm, wherein I could exact my revenge upon Brando, who's gnome illusionist I suffocated in a sea of shifting quicksand. Later I forced everybody to jump from pillar-to-pillar over a bottomless chasm, and each pillar was trapped such that it would randomly kill or imperil the person on the pillar behind it. Everybody had a grand ol' time, and one player actually escaped the Tower!
Having geeked out to the max at Tower of Gygax on Saturday, Brando, Paul and I then went back to the room to change into our Green Lantern shirts, and proudly walked around the convention center as the three coolest dudes in the hall.
Oh yeah, and the three of us ate dinner at the RAM.
That night, I taught Paul and Brando how to play Lord of the Rings strategy battle game with my Rohan guys and Goblins on some of the new terrain I picked up, and there was much battle to be had.
Sunday:
We all said our farewells and started the long trip home. Thus ends another epic tale of The Lords of the GenCon, Nerds of the West!
Now its time to deal with the inevitable post-GenCon sickness from swimming around in that petri dish of nerd funk. I can already feel my throat getting sore and my nose getting stuffed as we speak...
Oh well, good thing its totally worth it! Now where's that Dayquil?
Yes, I'm back. I'm not going to go into the whole tired monologue of why I haven't posted in five months. Just be glad that Gencon 2009 supplied the activation energy needed to kick one geek butt into nerd gear again.
Wednesday:Wednesday morning, Mary packed me up and sent me off to GenCon at the crack of 9am.
My travel companions from Madison were my IT buddy from work, Steve, and two of his faithful companions, Jason and Nick.
Upon arriving in Indianapolis, I met up with Delp and Paul in our room at the Marriott to form the "GenCon Triad." (those of us who have been to Gencon three years in a row)
Later that evening, Brando arrived in Indy to complete the adventuring party and there was much rejoicing. GenCon could officially commence!
First, a beer was had at the local microbrewery that caters to nerds during Gencon, the RAM. The RAM produces a new beer specifically for Gencon every year. This year it was a Honey Brown Ale, which we drank plenty of.
Then we talked the talk of nerdyness well into the wee hours of the night, ready to face dangers and adventure galore for the next four days of gaming.Thursday:
First thing Thursday was True Dungeon! After getting a filling breakfast in the concierge lounge, we headed downstairs to face the horrors of True Dungeon.
Sadly, Devin was abruptly unable to attend GenCon this year, and so we had an extra ticket to True Dungeon. Requiring a Cleric, we found this guy in the hallway to fill in.
He did his part acting as the cleric, but its difficult to compete with the awesome that is Devin. Devin, you were missed, especially your puzzle-solving skillz.
We stumbled through the puzzle rooms with all the skill of first-level morons, but gritted our teeth and took the auto-damage as we kept on going to the next extremely dangerous hit-point sapping room. Of course, with an adventuring party so resplendent and powerful, we were still victorious in the end and overcame "Scumfang," the Troll Mage King of the Cursed Bog of Deadliness and Neverending Peril.
This is when Delp left the party to assume his duties as a volunteer for True Dungeon, and I only saw him once or twice afterward due to his busy volunteering schedule.
As Paul went to run through True Dungeon a second time, Brando and I tried to get to one of the Hollow Earth Expedition games I had singed up for with the excellent title of "Burt Fedora and the Warmaidens of Mars." Unfortunately due to a last-minute renovation in the Crowne Plaza hotel, the game was moved to another room which the info booth was not updated on. Alas, we searched and searched, but by the time we did find the game it was already 20-minutes in and we'd be interrupting, so we didn't bother them. Instead, Brando and I wandered the exhibition hall for a few hours, and Brando got his picture taken with some of his favorite characters.
Plenty of good ol' fashioned representatives from the Empire were there too.
Of course there were Ren-faire bands and whatnot selling their lute-music CDs.
There were a ton of very cool minis to be seen and we both took pics of sweet 28mm pewter mini setups. Brando took like 600 pictures of them.
There's also an art show at GenCon for fantasy art, and one guy brought along his wizard-ified motorcycle. Now with 30% more skulls!
Later that night, I ditched the crew and went on a solo adventure to go play a 6-hour marathon of 1st edition AD&D's original RAVENLOFT Adventure (I6)! The GM was excellent and clearly loved the source material. Unfortunately it started out a little slow because the guy couldn't bring himself to turn away all the people who showed up with generic tickets to play, resulting in 11 PCs to deal with. Fortunately, it got a lot better when a Banshee on the second floor of Castle Ravenloft screamed and 6 PCs died after failing their saves vs. death magic, leaving the remaining 5 of us to mop up Strahd.
My character, Connor Macgregor: Cleric of Lathander held his own against the minions of evil with his holy spellcasting and richeous silver flailery. Each time he defeated an enemy or did something even remotely noteworthy it was recorded in his Great Book of Good Deeds.
He even managed to find the Holy Symbol of Barovia and with it actually stunned the Vampire Lord for one round!
That's right, that's Connor within 5 feet of Strahd Von Zarovich. How's that for some iron balls? Strahd was aghast at Connor's clerical abilities and fled for one round, leaving us to be level-drained by his nearly-endless Wraith minions (of which Connor single-handedly destroyed two). The party was level-drained and their souls were eventually imprisoned forever but the legend of Connor Macgregor, stunner of Strahd, will haunt Strahd forever!Arriving back at the room well after midnight, I collapsed in hopes of actually making Friday's Hollow Earth game I had signed up for.
Friday:
Friday morning I got up chipper as can be for the Hollow Earth game "Lost City of Crystal Graveyards," and tried to awaken Brando to attend with me. Unfortunately, he and Paul had gone out and gotten uber-hammered the night before, so he had an epic hangover and did not attend the morning game with me. Furthermore in my haste to get to the game I neglected to take my camera, so got no live-action pics, but this illustration does a good job representing the great adventure that I had.
After Hollow Earth, I did some more exhibition hall shopping and picked up all the sweet new release books I wanted, including Mysteries of the Hollow Earth, Strange Aeons, Star Wars Guide to the Rebellion, and the Desolation rpg.Then after dinner we finally got to hang out with Delp for more than five minutes and for the rest of the night Brando ran a game of Dark Heresy (note: link may have music) for the three of us. We killed a number of cultists AND innocent bystanders, and succeeded in sending the cult leader to his well-deserved judgement. Unfortunately we each died horrible deaths at the hands of a Daemonhost and his fervent followers, but that's a small price to pay for furthering the God-Emperor's glory.
Saturday:
On Saturday morning, Delp once again disappeared to True Dungeon land and Brando, Paul and I went to the Hyatt to play in Brando's 8-10 am spider-infested game of Return to the Tower of Gygax. RttToG is a fairly new addition to GenCon, and is a continuous highly-deadly game of 1st edition AD&D in a magical tower of traps and wizardry, where DMs run two-hour shifts for any players that showup. Immediately upon entering the game I was passed a note from good old Brando letting me know I was possessed by a malevolent daemon and forced to kill my fellow PCs. I personally kicked an unsuspecting Paul the Elf into a pit of acid and held the door shut on him. I still kind of feel bad about that Paul.
Later my shift started and I ran the Tower of Gygax from 11am-1pm, wherein I could exact my revenge upon Brando, who's gnome illusionist I suffocated in a sea of shifting quicksand. Later I forced everybody to jump from pillar-to-pillar over a bottomless chasm, and each pillar was trapped such that it would randomly kill or imperil the person on the pillar behind it. Everybody had a grand ol' time, and one player actually escaped the Tower!
Having geeked out to the max at Tower of Gygax on Saturday, Brando, Paul and I then went back to the room to change into our Green Lantern shirts, and proudly walked around the convention center as the three coolest dudes in the hall.
Oh yeah, and the three of us ate dinner at the RAM.
That night, I taught Paul and Brando how to play Lord of the Rings strategy battle game with my Rohan guys and Goblins on some of the new terrain I picked up, and there was much battle to be had.
Sunday:
We all said our farewells and started the long trip home. Thus ends another epic tale of The Lords of the GenCon, Nerds of the West!
Now its time to deal with the inevitable post-GenCon sickness from swimming around in that petri dish of nerd funk. I can already feel my throat getting sore and my nose getting stuffed as we speak...
Oh well, good thing its totally worth it! Now where's that Dayquil?
Sunday, March 15, 2009
And they call it a Mine!
The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge's fire is ashen-cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls,
The darkness dwells in Durin's halls;
In Moria, in Khazad-dum.
As noted in last post about Talisman, my terrain-building bug is back. However, with very little time on the weekends to work on terrain, and no driving force to get any done (as I don't actually play any wargames anymore), progress is slow. However, my first project to get me back into the swing of things is now complete. I had an extra piece of 2x2 plywood lying around, so I figured a general terrain board was in order. A Moria terrain board for my Lord of the Rings Mines of Moria guys, that is.
First, the boring shots:
I followed the tutorial on the games workshop site to get the little broken tiles and whatnot on there. It looks a lot better with terrain and minis though. Here's some Balin's Tomb attack action:
Aragorn defends the doorway...
Boromir and Gimli attack the Cave troll...
Nothing makes bad paint jobs on Gandalf stand out like a close-up shot...
Strangely, the flash causes the bases to look really light in the pictures, but they are virtually the same color as the table itself in real life as far as I can tell. Oh well, the trials of an amateur photographer.Now my challenge is to convince Mary that she really wants to learn how to play the excessively-complex Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game!
Monday, February 16, 2009
Talisman Game Board!
I sauntered across this little gem this weekend and was amazed. This guy made a totally sweet 3-D gameboard for Talisman! (You can watch it with the sound off, its just background Enya music).
You can tell its 2nd edition (the best one) and not 3rd edition (shortened, crappy one) because of the presence of all the center stuff: werewolf, pit fiends, the "dice with death." The 3rd edition one I have now just has you draw cards once you get into the plains of peril, which is totally lame. Fortunately my buddy SuperChad still has my old copy of 2nd edition Talisman. I'm going to get that back from him in a month or so and consider making my own unnecessarily huge gameboard for Talisman. How can I resist after watching that video?
I stopped painting minis and crafting terrain once I moved to Wisconsin, but that video made me desperately miss my pinning vice and foam cutter, even if I'm no longer marching Necrons across fields' of battle.
I keep thinking of other game boards one could build. Arkham Horror maybe, with little light-up 1920s street lights and such. Fireball Island is an obvious one, but that one would have to be functional for the little marbles to roll correctly. What are other games that would benefit from a huge, 3-D terrain board?
You can tell its 2nd edition (the best one) and not 3rd edition (shortened, crappy one) because of the presence of all the center stuff: werewolf, pit fiends, the "dice with death." The 3rd edition one I have now just has you draw cards once you get into the plains of peril, which is totally lame. Fortunately my buddy SuperChad still has my old copy of 2nd edition Talisman. I'm going to get that back from him in a month or so and consider making my own unnecessarily huge gameboard for Talisman. How can I resist after watching that video?
I stopped painting minis and crafting terrain once I moved to Wisconsin, but that video made me desperately miss my pinning vice and foam cutter, even if I'm no longer marching Necrons across fields' of battle.
I keep thinking of other game boards one could build. Arkham Horror maybe, with little light-up 1920s street lights and such. Fireball Island is an obvious one, but that one would have to be functional for the little marbles to roll correctly. What are other games that would benefit from a huge, 3-D terrain board?
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Red Lights of Death!
DAMN IT!
I got the flashing red lights of death on the 360 as I tried to put in my new/used copy of Lego Star Wars 2 I recently traded in for (traded in Call of Duty III -- Hey, by the way, did you know there was a big invasion of Northwest Europe by the Allies against the Nazis in 1944? I know, like, I was totally surprised too as I played through it for the fifth time). I just got the 360 in December as a gift from my buds and wife for graduatin', and I already have the "burn out" lights? I only play this thing maybe once or twice a week! Jeepers Creepers!
Ya see, the original Xbox 360s have a design flaw that results in three flashing red lights (denoting a "hardware problem") appearing after so many hours of use. Back when the 360 came out (Xmas 2005) they only had a 90-day warranty, so anyone who didn't play the hell out of their 360 to get it to die before the warranty was up was S.O.L. Fortunately, Microsoft extended everyone's warranties in early 2006 to one year. Then, just last month they extended all warranties to THREE years because of this problem, and finally admitted it was a design flaw with the system (at the same time releasing the new and improved "360 Elite" console), though they had already screwed a lot of early adopters by waiting so long.
I went through all the troubleshooting on the website, and then called 1-800-4MY-XBOX, listened to the voice recognition tree complete with goth/emo rock background music (it was totally X-treme), and finally got to a guy who took my name and address. He said that they'd be sending a box to me "ASAP" to ship it to them where they can fix it, but then explained the details and I found out that "ASAP" evidentially means 4-6 weeks. He didn't ask for any "date of purchase" or bullshit because as of the announcement last month, their warranty on the very first 360 sold isn't even up. Let's hope this baby comes back to me soon.
I guess you never know how much you'll miss something until its gone. I thought we had more time before the end...*sniff*...if I had only known... I never would have wasted all those hours beating Dead Rising six times...or...or playing through Gears of War multiple times to get all the COG tags...*sniff*...
...but wait, what of my Halo III preorder? It comes out in only a little over four weeks from now!
That means that I won't be able to ...
...KAAAAAHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNN!
I got the flashing red lights of death on the 360 as I tried to put in my new/used copy of Lego Star Wars 2 I recently traded in for (traded in Call of Duty III -- Hey, by the way, did you know there was a big invasion of Northwest Europe by the Allies against the Nazis in 1944? I know, like, I was totally surprised too as I played through it for the fifth time). I just got the 360 in December as a gift from my buds and wife for graduatin', and I already have the "burn out" lights? I only play this thing maybe once or twice a week! Jeepers Creepers!
Ya see, the original Xbox 360s have a design flaw that results in three flashing red lights (denoting a "hardware problem") appearing after so many hours of use. Back when the 360 came out (Xmas 2005) they only had a 90-day warranty, so anyone who didn't play the hell out of their 360 to get it to die before the warranty was up was S.O.L. Fortunately, Microsoft extended everyone's warranties in early 2006 to one year. Then, just last month they extended all warranties to THREE years because of this problem, and finally admitted it was a design flaw with the system (at the same time releasing the new and improved "360 Elite" console), though they had already screwed a lot of early adopters by waiting so long.
I went through all the troubleshooting on the website, and then called 1-800-4MY-XBOX, listened to the voice recognition tree complete with goth/emo rock background music (it was totally X-treme), and finally got to a guy who took my name and address. He said that they'd be sending a box to me "ASAP" to ship it to them where they can fix it, but then explained the details and I found out that "ASAP" evidentially means 4-6 weeks. He didn't ask for any "date of purchase" or bullshit because as of the announcement last month, their warranty on the very first 360 sold isn't even up. Let's hope this baby comes back to me soon.
I guess you never know how much you'll miss something until its gone. I thought we had more time before the end...*sniff*...if I had only known... I never would have wasted all those hours beating Dead Rising six times...or...or playing through Gears of War multiple times to get all the COG tags...*sniff*...
...but wait, what of my Halo III preorder? It comes out in only a little over four weeks from now!
That means that I won't be able to ...
...KAAAAAHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNN!
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