Saturday, May 31, 2014

Carnage 2014 Events

I've submitted my games for Carnage 2014:

Shadroc's Last Stand 
5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Friday Night 7pm-11pm
The necromancer Shadroc has tormented you for most of your careers, but not anymore. Realizing he's no longer in control, he turned and fled. He slipped past you in Dyvers, led you into an ambush in Nulb, framed you in Gradsul, and you've all agreed never to speak of what happened in Westkeep. Now you've got him cornered. He's hiding out in a hellish mountain valley pocked with noxious geothermal vents, and he has nowhere else to go. That's a good thing, right?

Stetsons Are Cool
Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space
Saturday Afternoon 1pm-5pm
After the war criminal Magnus Greel's escape almost caused a catastrophic double nexus collapse, further development of Zygma beam technology was banned and all signs of its use carefully monitored. You've been sent to a primitive settlement in the wastelands of nineteenth century America because a new Zygma projection has been detected, and the dusty rat-hole of Scurl's Hollow is its only stable endpoint.

A Strange Shootout in Silver Springs
Qalidar: Resistance
Saturday Night 7pm-11pm
Gunfights aren't common in this out-of-the-way Ozark Mountain settlement, but that ritzy new resort establishment up on the hill has attracted some strange customers. The fact that a bunch of folks were shooting it out last week is odd enough, but some of the bodies were even odder. They say one of them had some kind of stubby horns or something, and reflective plates fixed right in over his eyes, if he even had eyes. And that other one - well, the constable whisked his body off right away and won't talk about it, but old Skip Simpson from down by the bluff says it was bent up all wrong, and it smelled like tar.

Other Peryton Gamers events can be found here (eventually). As always, while I think I'm likely to get these slots, check the program to be certain of the final time and date.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Finding Me at Gen Con

If you're looking for me at Gen Con this year, a good place to start would be one of the events I'm running or at the Peryton Publishing booth, one of many listed as 1317. Here's a map (click to enlarge):
You can find the original, non-perytonized version here.

Friday, May 02, 2014

Dice Blather

Like a lot of gamers, I have way more dice than I carry around. I usually take my little purple bag for myself and, if I'm running games at a convention, I'll bring a "loaner" bag with a few sets of dice that I wouldn't be too upset to lose. I have another bag full of d6's that I bought specifically for Tunnels & Trolls, but I usually end up relying on what's in my regular bag. This being the case, I'm sure it's no surprise that I occasionally switch around the ones I'm carrying.

I bought a nifty set of iridescent Chessex dice at BASHCon this year, and that one went in right away. I had a couple of sets of Zocchi dice and various pip-faced d6s in the bag with it. I've bought a lot of Zocchis over the years, mainly because the gem dice are pretty and, when I first started buying RPG dice, that was what the hobby shop carried. Back then I didn't know, and later I didn't care, about the whole super-duper precision edge randomness thing. Most recently I had a set of glow-in-the-dark ones and a really nice-looking pale green ("peridot" I think) translucent set in the bag.

The Zocchis didn't feel right rolling with the new ones, though. The sharp edges seemed fragile next to the tumbled ones. The dice felt lighter too, almost hollow. I don't know if they really are lighter - I certainly didn't weigh them - but I couldn't shake the impression. The numbers started to bug me. I had never really noticed before, but, next to the large, bold, numbers on the tumbled dice, the numbers on the Zocchis looked anemic. Maybe that's another precision balance thing.

I decided that I like tumbled dice with numbers that are really easy to read. I know, crazy, right? I dug through my collection and found some translucent Koplow dice from a tube that I took home when I had my shop (nostalgic for obvious reasons). I also grabbed the ones from that boxed set they made when 3rd Edition D&D first came out (nostalgic for reasons I'm not going into right now). I kept a couple of the souvenir d6's I had been carrying around - an Elder Sign one that my regular Aqua Teen players gave me the first time I ran it and the complementary die from the most recent BASHCon. I also kept my solid metal blue and silver d6's in.

So, there's the new line-up. Who would've thought I could write a post this long about rearranging my dice?