My 2015 Convention Schedule

A new year has come, and with it, a new year of conventions here. Since I worked all three of the winter holidays (not that I had much choice, mind you), I'm getting a couple of extra vacation days, so I plan to make the most of them! This year, I'm attending...

Gary Con (March 26-29): This has become the con I live for now. It's so close to home that I don't need to rent a hotel room and it's a far more intimate and friendly affair than the larger, more-visible conventions. This year it almost looked like I wasn't going to make it at all. My employer is rather strict and stingy when it comes to approving vacation requests and someone had already requested off for that Thursday and Sunday! However, thanks to a sympathetic co-work willing to trade workdays, I'll be able to make Thursday's festivities. I'm still trying to see if I can get Sunday off, but I won't get my hopes up.

This year, I'm just going to play. I have no time to put together a scenario to GM and I want to flesh out Mu a little more before I try to run it again. After playing in Tim Kask's OD&D games, I'm going to shoot for getting into one of Frank Mentzer's games.

Gamehole Con (November 6-8): Another "local" convention, I've heard enough good things to persuade me to attend for the first time. It has a larger scope than Gary Con, catering to a larger selection of games than just classic role-playing. That suits me fine, of course.

I've got the vacation time cleared with my corporate slave drivers, now all I need to do is scrimp and save for a cheap room. Madison is little further from my place than Lake Geneva, but its still a tolerable distance for a poor gamer like myself. Also the lateness in the year, gives me most of the year to work on some ideas and think up something to run.

See you all there!

Mu/Gary Con Update

Yes, I will again be gracing Gary Con with my august presence and this year I will be GMing an event:

Slavers Of The Dead 

Why do the serfs of the remote, decaying village of Ny'Cha fear the night? What sinister forces are rifling through the bones of their ancestors? Can a motley band of travelers unravel Ny'Cha's secrets before more potent horrors are unleashed upon the land? 

Welcome to Mu, the dark, bloody and decadent world of sword and sorcery adventure and Lovecraftian horror. Pre-generated characters and variant rules summaries will be provided.

I also wanted to run a Savage Worlds/Realms of Cthulhu adventure where the players take the roles of mobsters sent to the mountains of Kentucky to find out what happened to a hooch supplier. Unfortunately, that game was not approved. Oh well, far less game master drudgery for me.

GaryCon Update.

I wanted to post this earlier last weekend, but Real Life is a bitch.

I signed up for my events for GaryCon. With the exception of Saturday, I tried to keep it to one event per night to leave myself time for pick-up games and other things. I'm leaving Sunday open so I can play in Victor Raymond's EPT game. I also decided to help out a fellow convention goer--and reduce my own hotel bill--by rooming with him.

Here's what I'm doing:

Thursday:
2 PM: Ghostbusters - How Dry I Am
I haven't played WEG Ghostbusters since middle school!

Friday:
10 AM: Heroes of Barsoom Episode 1 - The Lost Sextant vof Inak
This is part one of a two-pater. I'm not sure how the the GM is going to modify 1st Edition for Barsoom, but it should be interesting to watch.

Saturday: 
10 AM: Heroes of Barsoom Episode 2 - The Lost Sextant vof Inak


6 PM: Amazing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea - Taken From Dunwich
I pledged for ASSH's kickstarter campaign. With a copy on the way, so I want to see how well the game runs.

I'm hoping that there will be some kind of cork board where one can post pick-up games and that Warriors of the Red Planet is out in some form by that day. See you all there!

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote...

Ahh... yes, takes me right back to my senior year in high school; Mr. Elliot's English Literature class...

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

While I won't be traveling with a interesting collection of Medieval English archetypes (unless there are some serious SCA members attending)  I will be making my yearly journey to Lake Geneva, WI to attend GaryCon, March 22-25, 2012 for a weekend of Old School Gaming fun and debauchery. I'm sort of divided on whether I want to run a game right now because I do enjoy playing more than GMing. However, if I do I'm musing on the following games:

• Humanspace Empires (I do hope that Drune reappears on the interocitor soon and gives us an update.)
• An introductory Empire of the Petal Throne game. (If I do, I'll see if Victor Raymond is planning on running anything so we can co-ordinate properly.)
• If Al and Tom can get Warriors of the Red Planet up and running by this winter, I'll consider some Barsoomian gaming complete with miniatures.
• Anything else my fevered brain can devise by March.

Well, it's time to start saving up my pennies to afford booze and the hotel bill. See you at The Lodge!

Savage Worlds at RockCon

I"m going to be attending Rock-Con in Rockford, IL November 4th-6th and there are Savage things afoot. I'm going to be running a game of Space 1889: Red Sands Saturday morning in the 9 am to 1 pm slot. Pre-generated characters and miniatures (well, cardboard miniatures) will be provided. Other Savages are planning events of their own. 

Also, if you like classic RPGs and/or Tékumel, I'm also going to be running an introductory game of the original Empire of the Petal Throne, Friday night. My partner in all things OSR, Victor Raymond, is also promising to take daring gamers on a trip into the empire of Tsolyánu where adventure, wealth, and very available priestesses of Lady Dlamélish await!

More details as they come.

Transmitting LIVE from GaryCon… OK, not really.

I'm posting this a lot later than I wanted to, but I do have real life concerns (e.g. school, internship, back shaving) to deal with. So here it is: my recollections of GaryCon III!

Friday:

The trip was long, tiring, and arduous. I lost an ox while fording the Missouri River. I had to shoot a buffalo but could only take 100 lbs of meat back to the wagon. Mary Jane and Cornelius died of typhoid fever and I buried them somewhere in Utah Territory…

OK, OK, Lake Geneva was only 35 minutes away from my home in Muskego. I probably drive further to go to school each week. Still, I couldn't pass up the chance to make an Oregon Trail reference.

I arrived at the Ledge at Grand Geneva Resort early Friday morning and checked into a rather comfy looking room. Like the previous year, the main part of this mini-convention was held at the lower level of the resort's main building. I got my badge, my event's guide, and a swag bag full of back issues of Knights of the Dinner Table. Since this the first time I had come for the full weekend, I didn't know that you had to pre-register for any of my event. Therefore, if I wanted to play in any games, I was going to have to hope they had openings.

It was rather quiet this time of day with only a few games being run. I spotted Jeff Dee at a table playing Villains & Vigilantes. Since I was on his Facebook friends list and admired his Tékumel-related artwork as well as his work with the Atheist Community of Austin, I decided to briefly say "hi" and introduce myself. Besides V&V, I spotted a few D&D/AD&D games, a 1st Edition Gamma World game, Kenzer & Co. was there running Hackmaster Basic games, and one rather enthuastic fellow was running a Star Wars D20 game while wearing an Imperial officer's uniform. (This GM ran two other games during the con, each time dressing in a theme appropriate costume: Saturday, he ran the classic TSR Marvel Superheroes game dressed up as Bronze Age Tony Stark complete with dyed hair, fake moustache, 1970's-era tux open at the chest to reveal a plastic Iron Man chest plate, and a glass decanter of "whiskey." Sunday, he ran a D20 Call of Cthulhu game where he wore late 19th/early 20th Century attire. Now THAT'S dedication.)

Later that morning, I was able to get in on a game of  Mutant Future titled "Bring Me The Head Of Frank Sinatra." I played a mutated Badger with the ability to mentally project ice rays at its target. After being charged by a New Jersey warlord to bring back the head of the famed Rat Pack leader, our party quested to legendary Las Vegas fighting plant men, robot cops, and Elvis impersonators along the way.

After that, I did a little more work on my Humanspace Empires playtest game. I worked until evening when I decided to get involved a Hackmaster Basic demo. I had played the "original" AD&D-parody version, and I was curious on how this version differed from the first. With some help from the GM, I created a Dwarf Fighter and we had a brief combat session featuring a pack of kobolds. I found the game a little clunkier than what I'd expect from an "old-school" style game, but it was fun. Best of all, the GM gave out free copies of the game! Bonus!

About that time I was after 11 pm and I was feeling really tired. I went up to the hotel bar for a rum and Coke nightcap and slumped off to my room to sleep. The only thing that would made my day perfect was to find the gamer-girl of my dreams to share my bed with me.

Yeah, as if that was EVER going to happen.

Saturday:

When I woke up the next day, I noticed that a 1/4 inch of snow had been dumped on the area overnight. Ah! "Springtime" in Wisconsin!

Never mind that! Today was the big day: the Humanspace Empires Playtest! I got up, showered, checked out of my room ($100 a night!? Yeah, some "special convention room rate" you've got there. Next year, I'll just burn the gas and sleep at home!), drove into town for breakfast, drove back to hotel and found a nice quiet corner to sit down to put the finishing touches on my scenario. Somewhere along the way I ran into Victor Raymond, who was playing in a Moldvay game, while I was taking a break to stretch my legs. I told him about the game and, as president of the Tékumel Foundation, he was very interested in the project. We talked EPT for a while, and then I went back to work.

As is the case of most weekend events, there were far more people attending the con that day than there had been the day before. However, as the start time for my game drew nigh, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough players to be run a decent game. Well, Victor was good enough to send some players my way. With five eager gamers, most of who had never heard of Empire of the Petal Throne, we delved into the mystery and weirdness of the far future.

I posted a full report of my game here at the Ix blog.

Sunday:

I didn't intend to come back for Sunday. There wasn't anything on the events schedule that really interested me, so I thought I'd spend the last day of the convention at home. However, just before I left Saturday night, I ran into Victor Raymond again while he was playing one of Jim Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha games and had one last to tell me: "EPT, Sunday. Noon."

Of course, I had to come back. I NEVER pass up a chance to game in Tékumel, especially with Victor behind the screen.

I arrived just before Noon and found Victor chatting with Jeff Dee about things Tékumelyani. After they finished we set up in an adjoining room where myself and a few other EPT fans rolled up some high-level characters for a trip through the Jakállan underworld.

I created an Avánthe-worshipping human Aridáni fighter with a sea-faring background from the Ilse of Ganga who had in her procession a sentient magic sword. Our party included another fighter (actually he started as an NPC guard but was picked up by a new player who joined later in the game), a magic-user who worshipped Lord Belkhánu, and a priest of Thúmis (I think) who just so happened to be a Mihálli. We were charged by Prince Rereshqála to find the Garden of Weeping Snows and deliver a query to the undying wizard Nyélmu regarding the mysterious, magic-dampening Black Stones the Mu'ugalavyáni used in their conquest of Livyánu.

We wandered about the dark catacomps of the deep, deep underworld working off only the vaguest of directions. Due to some fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it) random encounter roles, we only ran into a single underworld monster, a dread Nshé. We soon discovered Nyelmu's strange abode and was given an audience with the esteemed wizard. After enduring his condescending insults and thinly veiled threats to make us part of his "collection" (i.e. tortured beings, frozen in time at the height of their torment vis-à-vis Nylelmu's Excellent Ruby Eye) he opened a nexus point and told us that the answer to Prince's query lay within. Our party gathered it's equipment and nobly marched into the point to…

At that point, Raymond closed the game on a cliffhanger, promising to pick it up again next year.

That's a game I dare not miss.

Humanspace Empires Playtest Pick-Up at GaryCon!

INCOMING MESSAGE FROM HUMANSPACE HIGH COMMAND ANSIBLE FREQUENCY 3.45X10^23:

A Humanspace Empires playtet is landing at GaryCon!

Humanspace Empires is a pulp science fiction game set in the space opera "pre-history" of Prof. M.A.R. Barker's classic fantasy world of Tekumel. Thousands of years before there was ever an Empire of the Petal Throne, the Humanspace Alliance and their alien allies ruled the cosmos, explored strange worlds, and battled weird alien menaces from beyond space and time.

Drawing from the science fantasy traditions of the 1930s and 1940s--when a young Phillip Barker was first conceiving of Tekumel--and using on a rules engine that implements the best aspects of the original fantasy role playing system and Empire of the Petal Throne, Humanspace Empires rockets players into the far future in a galaxy of danger and excitement! 

Since this pick-up playtest is being done on the fly (the current rules draft was just finished a couple of days ago), I'm going over the event schedule trying to figure out the best time/s to play. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

In the meantime, for more info on Humanspace Empires, log onto the creator's blog at http://ixians.blogspot.com/ . Also, you can download the current playtest draft here.

Hope to see you there!

Going to Gary Con III

Gary Con III, obviously named after the late E. Gary Gygax, will be held at The Lodge at Geneva Ridge, Lake Geneva, WI March 25-27. I had a chance to spend at Saturday afternoon at last year's festivities and I was greatly impressed. It was fantastic to see so many fans of classic RPGs gathered together in the "home town" of fantasy role-playing running all the great games. I was even able to get in on a game of Buck Rogers XXVc with Flint Dille!

Well, this year I've decided to spend all three days at the con. While it's only a hour drive from Muskego, I don't know if I want to burn the gas going back and forth each. I'm yet to make hotel reservations, but since The Lodge is under renovations, getting a hold of someone there is difficult. (Any help in that department would be greatly appreciated.) The event schedule is also available here (.XLS). and like last year, it looks like there is plenty for the old school gamer to do and I might have something special in store if the stars are right. There is only one thing that bothers me.

Isn't there ANYONE who runs Empire of the Petal Throne anymore? (Besides me and Victor Raymond, of course.)