Inappropriate Mysteries of the Jersey Shore

Bean! (Heavily Modified)
Friday, July 31, 11pm-3am
Promo Blurb: Take the roles of animated fast food products or one of their neighbors in this off-the-rails RPG based on the late night cartoon.

I started off this year with something new, in which we had someone play Doctor Weird, someone else play his assistant, Steve, and the rest play the Grant Committee. Passing in suggestions, amalgamating them, and perverting their intent, led to the unveiling of a giant blueberry, which proceeded to eat its creators and roll off to ravage New Jersey.

In addition to the standards (Frylock, Meatwad, Shake, Carl), we had Willie Nelson (not the Willie Nelson), the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future, and Inignokt. Ghost and Inignokt were selling Speedos door-to-door as part of a pyramid scheme. Somehow this led to a Foreigner Belt mishap which caused a real pyramid to grow up underneath Carl's house. There was time travel, cloning, and a Boxy Brown cameo. The giant, spiked blueberry showed up on the news, but nobody cared. Carl died, but was revived when Frylock attached his head to Ghost's body.

As the neighborhood was destroyed (I think by the blueberry, but I'm not sure I'm remembering it right) Frylock and Meatwad left town.

The players had several good ideas for future sessions, including a pile of cameo characters that players could just grab, play for a few minutes along with their other characters, and then discard. That's in the works for next year, along with some tweaks to the Doctor Weird prologue system.

Back to the Gen Con Write-Up:
http://www.christinalea.com/2015/08/gencon15.html

Gen Con 2014: Totally Worth It

tl;dr - Shit happens, but Gen Con and my friends are still awesome.

In the Basement, Mixing Up the Medicine

For the weekend before Gen Con, we met Jerry in Columbus for a soccer game and some Stay Alive! Well, Tom and Jerry and the Boy went to a soccer game. I stayed in the room and watched a delightfully awful monster movie. They invited me, but... alone in a hotel with a monster movie! After work on Monday, despite that beautiful new Player's Handbook calling to me from above my desktop, Tom and I did a bunch of last-minute prepping and printing, including having a spiffy poster made for Crawlspace.

On the Pavement, Thinking About the Government
Tuesday, Tom didn't get off work until after 8PM, so I had plenty of time to pack before he got home. Once he did, we were off to Indy... or at least someplace close to Indy. A combination of fatigue and the need buy easels & a dolly before we hit the whirlwind of downtown Indianapolis, made us decide to stop for the night in a smallish town somewhere northwest of our destination. Wednesday morning, we bought our supplies and made our way into the heart of Indianapolis.

Don't Follow Leaders, Watch the Parking Meters
We've pretty much got this setup thing down. We couldn't check in to the hotel until four, so we picked up our badges and I transferred all our stuff to the booth space while Tom watched the car. It may sound like Tom's slacking here, but I actually volunteered for the loading job because I'd rather do something like this than have to stand around and stress out over car protocols. While I was going back and forth, I snapped a picture of the main hallway in the convention center. It's not that the scene itself was all that interesting; it's just that I was suddenly so happy to be there and wanted something I could use to recall the moment later.

That done, we called our local friend Jordan and had lunch at Acapulco Joe's, and hung out with him for a bit. From there we stowed the car, started putting the Peryton Publishing booth together, and eventually checked in at the hotel. Heard a few times from Curtis and Tim, who were making their way over from Tulsa. That's another thing I was happy about - Curtis has been a dear friend since childhood, one of the first people I played RPGs with, and I've been trying to get him out to Gen Con ever since I started going in 2004.

Jump Down a Manhole, Light Yourself a Candle
Thanks to Tom, our Wednesday night gathering has a name: Old Home Eve. This year, driven from our traditional spots so the Diana Jones folks could reserve a space big enough for their egos (okay, I actually have no idea what these people are like personally or even who's on the list - I just liked the sound of it), we ended up having to meet at the Tilted Kilt. It was noisy, but the food was good and the staff treated us well.

Over dinner and drinks, we presented Jerry with his "event uber-overlord" t-shirt to thank him for herding all the cats of the Peryton Gamers group and translating our rants and scrawls into something the Gen Con staff could use.

I bailed around 10 or 11, I think. I wanted to get at least a little bit of sleep and not be hung over for the game I was running in the morning, and I thought it might be a good idea for someone to be at the hotel whenever Curtis and Tim got there, since they were rooming with us. Besides, while I enjoy a good buzz as much as anyone, I think I've mostly outgrown getting staggering drunk and stumbling from bar to bar until I can't find one that will let me in. Mostly.

Curtis and Tim showed up not long before Tom, around 2:30 or 3:00 AM. We didn't talk a whole lot, although Curtis expressed some alarm at the presence of large numbers of weeping angels in the hotel. There were even a couple of smaller ones skulking around outside our window. A few hours later, I shoved Tom back out the door to go "open" the booth.

Try Hard, Get Barred
Thursday morning, I was all proud of myself because I got out the door in plenty of time to show up early for my game. Then I made the mistake of going through the convention center instead of around it to get to the Marriott. You see, some people go batshit insane over the official opening of the exhibit hall at 10AM on Thursday.

By "some," I mean enough to sack Rome, all ninety gazillion of whom were packed into one great shoggoth-like mass between me and my destination. Once they had closed off my retreat, many of them absolutely refused to budge, possibly for fear that I might get in front of them and snatch up some exclusive limited edition version of something they wouldn't otherwise be interested in. Maybe next year I should bring a machete.

While slogging my way through this liquescent horror, I ran into Jordan and we chatted for a while before splitting off on our separate missions. Eventually, I got a break. A small formation of Gen Con staffers in a hurry to get somewhere was pushing its way through the crowd, and I was able to jump in behind them and ride their wake past the worst of it.

Get Blessed, Try to Be a Success
Of course, I was still a few minutes late. I had been a little worried about the turnout of "Storms Over the Isle of Dread." When I came up with the idea back in January, I thought it would be a great way to draw people in. I didn't find out until later that the D&D Next playtest had already insured that anyone who ever cared about the Isle of Dread was already sick of hearing about it. Still, I needn't have worried, because I got a great group of players and had a lot of fun. I think both of the male/female pairs were couples, but in any case I'm pretty sure they all knew each other, and that tends to work out well. They came up with cool characters like a fixer who was raised by a crazy janitor who thought he was vampire and a karcist who grew up hearing voices and tended to enjoy following their darker impulses. They were also great schemers and plotters, which is the kind of group I like for Qalidar. They took control of the greeter robots and then used one to get into the cyber-tyrannosaur and bring down half the plateau with photosonic cannons. They also correctly worked out the nature of a plot element which I had been fairly sure everyone would ignore, so that was cool too.

Ring Bell, Hard to Tell if Anything is Going to Sell
I texted Curtis to let them know I was done, and headed over to the booth to see who I might run into and how things were going. Seems like things were going well. I wandered off before long to do some shopping.

I took Curtis around the convention center to find where he would be running his Cards Against Humanity game and generally give him a feel for the landmarks. I don't think I did a very good job, but Curtis managed to find his way around in spite of my help.

We hooked up with Tom for a late lunch at Champions and were pleased to find that the menu of our traditional meeting place had once again become a real menu instead of last year's index card with nothing but deviled eggs and sliders on it. I was overjoyed. I don't think anybody else much cared.

Duck Down the Alleyway, Looking for a New Friend
Thursday night's D&D5 game was a new thing for me. I had been to other peoples' off-the-books games and I had been to pickup games, but I had never arranged one myself. Luckily, Caed (the other Robin) was involved, and she scoped out a cool corner for us in the lobby at the Omni. We did have to steal the bench from the piano to have enough seats, but the last thing anybody there needed was some attention-whore trying to play piano, right?

The game itself was lots of fun. Familiar faces included Curtis, Brian, Todd, and Caed at first. Jerry showed up later on and I clumsily hurled his character into the action mid-stream. I also got to meet Caed's son, Dylan, and a friend of hers whose name I keep forgetting. The scenario was ostensibly "Danger at Darkshelf Quarry," a recent prequel adventure included with the Slavers series hardback. I hadn't prepared much, so I ended up winging a lot of it to cut down on page-turning. I didn't even have the Player's Handbook until the previous Friday, so I just used the basic characters from the Starter Set. Twice. The fact that I was able to DM this pretty much off the cuff and mostly follow the rules as written confirmed my impressions about the new D&D. Definitely a game I want to play more of.

The adventure itself pretty quickly turned from a stealthy investigation to a wild chase. Curtis and Todd took turns trying to drive me crazy, so I'm pretty sure at least the three of us had a good time. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with what everybody was doing because the group was so large and not everyone was willing to shout their actions across the lobby at me. All in all, I thought it was beautiful chaos.

Don't Wear Sandals, Try to Avoid the Scandals

By the time I got into circulation Friday morning, Tom and his new protege were already stressing about an upcoming game they had planned. Tom ran off to help with that while I held down the fort. Mostly that's what I did during the day. I was snagged on the way back from a bathroom run by Icons, having just found out that it actually does away with the things that annoy me about FATE/FUDGE/ETC, and still being in the market for a fast-playing, low-prep superhero game. Seriously, I was just minding my own business, conscientiously returning to my booth, when that game jumped out and tackled me. I still haven't given it a thorough read, but it looks promising.

Friday night at nine was Aqua Teen Hunger Force time. I ran with a setup that Michael had suggested to me last year, and I wish he could have seen it. The premise was that it was time for Carl's high school reunion. He was hoping to score, and the other characters were determined to tag along for various reasons. I added the fact that all of Carl's classmates had been replaced with Plutonian replicants determined to steal the Foreigner belt for Emory and Oglethorpe.

I handed out nametags and sharpies to provide extra opportunities for the characters to be demented. The reunion was, of course, a disaster. I always have trouble remembering everything that happens in these games. I guess it's because it's all so non-linear. Maybe too many endorphins fry my brain. I dunno. Anyway, Frylock made 2Wykyd sentient, the Mooninites (a new option this year) were Mooninitish, Meatwad cooked up some mustard gas in an effort to help with the party favors, and almost everybody died or was mutated.

All of that only got us halfway through, though, so everybody swapped characters and I ran a follow-up adventure for the second half. Somehow Love Mummy, Billy Witchdoctordotcom, and Travis of the Cosmos ended up fused into one monstrous entity and, again, lots of other characters died. That's generally how these things go.

As I was closing down, I noticed Tom's Crawlspace game getting started over in the corner. I thought about staying to watch, because those sessions can be almost as much fun as ATHF, but I decided to head back to the room for some swag-wallowing and sleep instead.

Twenty Years of Schooling and They Put You on the Day Shift
I had been planning to sleep in Saturday, since Tom was opening the booth, but when everybody got up and started talking about getting breakfast, I figured I might as well join them for a high-priced waffle or two at the hotel restaurant.

 The exhibit hall was swarming. I don't think I've ever seen it this full, and they had more space than ever to spread out over. Seems like I hung around there for most of the day. Folks were in and out. I think that's when YogPaul stopped by, which was a nice surprise. We met him on our second or third Gen Con at a Cthulhu rally.

Get Sick, Get Well, Hang Around the Inkwell
After the hall closed, Tom handed off his Qalidar game to Scott, whose event that morning had fallen through, and staggered off to the bar. I had been feeling progressively more cruddy all day and called off my own evening game, then made the mistake of sharing this information with Tom.

Tom: Come on, have a drink with me.
Me: Blurgh blargh yargle fargle.
Tom: Oh, you'll be all right. We won't stay out long.
Me: Bleahhhh.
Tom: We'll just have one drink, and then we'll go see how Curtis is doing. You want to support your friend, don't you?
Me: Poop.
Tom: That's the spirit! I'll see you downstairs in a couple of minutes!

So we had a couple of drinks and started wandering around. We did, in fact, check in on Curtis to see how he was doing. We also checked in on Scott. Both seemed to be getting along fine.

I started feeling quite a bit better, which of course made me feel guilty about dropping my game, but I got over it and bought one of those ridiculous plastic goblets they were selling in the Marriott lobby. I don't know why. Maybe some parts of my brain were still sick. It was kind of fun, though. Kind of like at a carnival where you know you're getting conned, but you try the game out anyway just for the hell of it.

Losers, Cheaters, Six-Time Users
We were on our way to pester Jerry at the auction when the guy who was supposed to be house-sitting called and said he just dropped by to discover that our apartment had been ransacked. We lost both our main computers (leaving only the netbook I had brought with me), our laser printer, DVDs, jewelry, and whatever other stuff they thought looked valuable (some of which was comically not valuable, but that wasn't very comforting). Tom took off to deal with stuff at home and make sure the cats were okay (they were) while I stayed to work the last day at the booth and catch a ride back to the Rustbelt with Jerry.

Walk on Your Tiptoes, Don't Tie No Bows
Sunday, I was lucky enough to have a lot of help. Friends provided moral support, helped run the booth, and even hung around later to help me box everything up and get Jerry's car loaded. And of course there was Jerry with the car. Ken St. Andre came by and helped sell stuff. I don't even think he knew anything had happened, but I think several of our sales were entirely due to his efforts.

And, sales-wise, it was a really good day, probably the best we've had since we started doing the exhibitor thing in 2012. Christopher Helton from Dorkland and Bleeding Cool stopped by and we chatted for a bit, too. Still, it was kind of hard to enjoy that particular day. No post-con victory celebration this year. Well, not immediately post-con, anyway. I still count the time we had at Gen Con as a victory.

The Pump Don't Work 'Cause the Vandals Took the Handles

I had taken Monday off because we originally planned to stay Sunday night in Indy, and Tuesday to decompress. As it happened, Monday and Tuesday were mostly dedicated to getting things up and running the best we could at home. Over the past week, though, I have been able to find a fair bit of time to enjoy the haul I brought home, and it looks like it's all pretty great.

We're thinking about moving. If our neighbors didn't do the job themselves, they had to have known about and not had a problem with it. And they were always douchebags even if somehow they're squeaky clean this time. I guess I'll never know either way. They'd best not try it again, though. This place is tricked out like the Tomb of Horrors, now.

Tom's write-up, as usual, is all over the place. There's a summary of the games he ran on one blog and then there's part one, part two, and part three of the general-purpose travel log on another. Whichever one you read, don't believe his lies. Jerry's is here. We're collecting a list of others in this thread.

Gen Con 2014 Events

Here's what I've got lined up for Gen Con this year. In addition, I'm planning to run short +Qalidar demos at the +Peryton Publishing booth whenever I'm there. The other Peryton Gamers events will be found here, once we get everybody's final submissions in (buy tickets here).


Storms Over the Isle of Dread
Qalidar: Resistance RPG

Thursday 10AM-2PM and Saturday 9PM-1AM
In a lost corner of a backwater world called Mystara, something has gone terribly wrong. Multiverse-traveling agents of the Typhon Corporation, hoping to exploit the psionic talents of a population of aquatic creatures living in the heart of the Isle of Dread, have instead become pawns themselves. The horizons of the long-isolated kopru have thus been expanded beyond their darkest ambitions. These sadistic monsters must not be given time to explore their options further.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Reunion
Bean! The D2 RPG (heavily modified)
Friday 9PM - 1AM
It's time for Carl's high school reunion. He can't wait to show off 2Wycked and maybe hook up with Denise Zambrano. As long as no weirdo aqua something whatever food monsters or shrieking robots from the future get involved, it's gonna be pretty sweet. Tonight!

Gen Con 2013: All The Random Pieces

"It is a day so long in coming that I am uncertain how to celebrate it."
"Perhaps a quiet chuckle."
"Very well, then. Let us chuckle."

Gen Con 2013 was amazing. So many of the right things came together that the inevitable setbacks were hardly noticeable. In fact, I won't even mention them. Well, okay, I might, but just the ones that kinda make me laugh now that it's all done. Oh, and the weather! The weather was perfect. I couldn't have asked for a more pleasant weekend temperature-wise. (Click here for the musical accompaniment, but don't bother watching the video. Just come back to this window and read while it plays.)

Our first obstacle was Daci's scheme to keep us home by claiming one of the boxes. It was a clever plan, brilliantly executed, but somehow we found a way to deal with it. We loaded up the car and left Cleveland shortly after Tom got home from work on Tuesday. We took a new route, going past Toledo and then heading off through the corn fields to Indianapolis. The Machine says it takes twenty minutes longer, but it was a much more pleasant drive than the 71 to 70 route, partly, I'm sure, because we didn't have to go anywhere near Columbus.

Wednesday
We got going bright and early - before noon, anyway - had breakfast, rearranged some bags, and packed some stuff that we were borrowing from Jordan. We grabbed an early lunch at Acapulco Joe's, rented a dolly, checked in at the Canterbury, picked up all the badges for the GMs we were sponsoring, and I started setting up the booth while Tom disposed of the car and made his way back. We chatted with Eloy and John K. a bit in the process and invited them to our Old Home Eve at Claddagh.

Old Home Eve went well. We had a big table in a nice curtained alcove in a restaurant/bar with cool decor and good food. There was a revolving line-up of friends, friends-of-friends, and maybe one or two shape-shifting aliens at the table. It took awhile, but Mike and Amy finally fought their way through the I-70 traffic jams and joined us. Unless they were the shape-shifting aliens. You never know.

After the party broke up, Tom wandered off to drink some more with... I forget. Probably Caed-Robin, and maybe Jerry too. This was only Mike's second Gen Con and Amy's first, so we wandered a bit and I showed them around the convention center. It was my tenth year there, so, even when nothing is going on, the whole place is buzzing with memories for me. And I hate it when there's just one tiny little line hanging below the picture. There; that's a little better. I wonder why they put in so much image padding.

Thursday
I was in and out of the exhibit hall Thursday morning, but mostly I remember pressing Jordan into taking me to the post office so we could pick up the new Qalidar books. It seems fairly obvious in hindsight that, knowing it would be close, I should have had the books shipped to the hotel. Instead, I had them shipped to Jordan's house. Since he has a job and stuff (I know, right? The nerve!), he wasn't there the first time, so they had to be picked up at the post office, and he had to be there to do it because I hadn't thought to put my own name on the package. Maybe he still would have had to be there because it was his address; I don't know. Anyway, Jordan had a limited amount of time to run all over town, and was nice enough to sacrifice his whole lunch break shuttling me and my books back and forth so I could get them and some comfy chairs (another favor he was doing us) back to the convention center.

Life was much better once that was all settled. I picked up the D&D Next book I had pre-ordered (Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle) and got to have some good chats with several people who dropped by. I may or may not have snapped a picture of Peter Davison that I wasn't supposed to take. I met Brian, an old friend from many online chats and emails, in person for the first time. Nobody was asking about the demo sessions I advertised, and I never brought it up myself because the prospect had always terrified me, despite the fact that I came up with what I thought was a clever mummy-cult encounter quickie.

When the hall closed, we headed over to Champions. Mike, Amy, and I met Brian over there and tried to reserve a big table for everybody, but they wouldn't put us on the list until we had at least six people present, or, apparently, until Tom showed up at the other door and made the same request with an even smaller crew. Scott and Caed-Robin were added to the pile. I think that was it. The ever-dwindling menu is making our sentimental haunt less appealing every year, especially when you can get better food for the same prices just by walking a block or two in the other direction. I dunno. We'll probably still try to pop in there at least once a year. My geriatric bitching aside, the company was more than enough to make it a great dinner.

Friday

After a frantic breakfast quest with Mike and Tom, Friday kicked into gear with my first Qalidar session, an adventure which never really had a title because I had no idea what the scenario would be when I submitted it. It was, however, the untouched second half of the adventure I started at the last Dark Gathering. This year, we were right in the middle of the convention center, instead of off in a peripheral hotel somewhere. I loved this. Tom was less keen on it because it was harder to grab a beer mid-session and he had grumpy old man issues with the climate control.

I had a full table for this one and, apart from a few abortive attempts at subterfuge, they charged in guns blazing. That wasn't really what I had in mind but, since it was still a challenge and they were having fun, I just ran with it. They did have quite a collective talent for mayhem. The ascendant took to collecting faces from the Typhon Corporation's cyborg guards, and the karcist went wild reanimating everything he could get his hands on. I was pleased that the disjunction mechanic flowed at its intended pace, because I had tested it much less thoroughly than the other rules and was still a little worried about it. I had a great time, but I decided to pump up the difficulty in certain areas for future sessions, because some of what they did should have been nearly impossible, instead of just hard.

Mike had started his Powerful Tales superhero RPG an hour behind my game, so I wandered over to the next table to watch them finish up. The way this game works is not something I'd have ever thought to do. It has a phase where you find out what's going on in the larger world and allocate resources that's kind of boardgamish, and then an action phase that plays like a normal role-playing game. The three players not only looked like they were having fun, but all came back later and asked him to send updates as the game developed, so apparently it worked. Jerry had, as usual, a full load of zombie-choppers escaping from Toledo at the next table.

After a bit more booth-monkeying, Jerry came by towards the end of the day and informed us that they were selling dice rings for $5 to anyone with a GM badge. I got a shiny blue d20 one.

There was an interview for a podcast (the name of which I wish I could remember) and then Mike, Amy, and I met Jordan for drinks at Champions. I went back to the room for a bit and then it was time for Aqua Teen Hunger Force role-playing. I had my usual crew, plus Mike and one other player. Just like last year, I planned to get a picture and didn't, so you'll just have to imagine. The Aqua Teens, having borrowed Carl's two coolers full of beer to go camping in the Adirondacks, stumbled upon a meeting of the Love Mummy's hugging cult (the other players), and of course ranged across various other locations from the show until a Foreigner Belt mishap conjured a volcano under Carl's house and Frylock took Meatwad back out to go camping. Quote of the game: "Last time I saw him, Fry Man, he was straw deep in meat. Nobody should have to see that." That only took around ninety minutes, so we took a break and played another one. As always, it was awesome.

Saturday
Next day's function - high class luncheon. Wait. Sorry, that's from a song, isn't it? First up was my second Qalidar session. It had been sold out for some time, but only two players showed up. I think some of the others switched over to the evening one. Anyway, the two players I had were such great gamers that it didn't matter. Also, they loved the game. I'm sure that didn't have any impact on my assessment. Seriously, though, playing a mystic and an ascendant, they carefully scouted out their surroundings and came up with intelligent plans to put the odds in their favor. There were a couple of fights that were practically impossible to avoid, so I toned those down because there were only two of them. Apart from that, they pretty much took on the beefed-up critter strength as it was.

The other concession I made to their party size was that it was more of an information-gathering mission for a larger expedition to follow, so, once they found the giant hive facility in Katun and figured out how they were getting their goods, where they were shipping them, and who was behind it, we called it a win. The game had already run a little over, but we had all agreed previously to keep it going. Then they each bought a copy of the book and had me autograph it. I always feel a little pretentious doing autographs, but that's something I can live with. Unless you count Aqua Teens, this is the first time I've gotten such an enthusiastic response to a game. I'm just gonna enjoy it while I can.

I went back to the exhibit hall and sat around there for a while, then took off and roamed for a bit, found Mike & Amy, and went looking for some place to have a late afternoon meal. We weren't sure where we wanted to go, so we wandered around the streets, hoping for inspiration along the way. I was about to just take them to Scotty's when we saw Rock Bottom Brewery and decided to go there instead. We had a nice quiet chat about how well the convention was going, after which I went back to the exhibit hall to close down the booth. Ken came by to pick up a copy of Qalidar, but not much else happened. I went back to the room to watch TV and nap a little before my evening game.

My third and final Qalidar game started at 9PM. Well, my game by default. Curtis was scheduled to run this one, but he was AWOL from the whole show, so, not wanting to send interested gamers away, I covered it. There were four at the table, and Tom dropped a fifth player into the mix for reasons that seem to change every time it comes up. There was certainly room, though, and he turned out to be a good addition to the group, so I guess it doesn't matter. With five people, we had every character but the karcist in play.

I'm glad I did run this one, because this party's exploits were something to see. I love how you can run the same scenario three times and get three completely different adventures. This group combined the second one's sneakiness with the first group's larger size and wider range of classes. They started off abducting and interrogating the extras, which even without a great deal of cooperation, led them much more quickly to the facts they were after. This was also the only group to meet the stardust mercenary and find out that he would be more than amenable to deserting his employers for the right price.

Exploring Katun with similar care, they were also the only group to find where the dobbers actually slept. Having chatted up the locals and studied the way the compound worked, they spent quite a bit of time figuring out what kind of attack would cripple the operation, free the enslaved population, and keep the dobbers from rebuilding here. The resulting plan was a symphony of ambush, sabotage, and synchronized demolitions. And except for a couple of slips and one piece of bad information that they were able to work around, it played out perfectly.

Sunday
With no more events to tend to, I settled in at the booth. Tom and Ken showed up almost together if not at the same time. Maybe they had breakfast together or something. Anyway, Ken said he read the book and it was "weird beyond imagination," which I took as a compliment. Actually the most flattering thing to me was that he not only bought it, but read it right there at the convention. He also said it needed some jokes, which... okay. I'll have to take a look when I'm going over the final release and see if it's too dry.

Tom said I was throwing off his feng shui, so I left to shop with Mike and Amy. I found a nifty pendant with a fluorite crystal that was surprisingly cheap and bought that. Amy had become a big fan of the dice rings. I think Mike bought one more and she bought several. I have to admit, the percentage one she picked up is really cool. She also had me lead her back to where I got the crystal. We also went to see the statue of Lolth in the D&D room. I miss having the big D&D statues in the main concourse.

So, the final loot count included Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, the d20 ring, and the crystal pendant. Kind of a light haul, but the convention itself was so much fun that a few souvenirs should be more than enough. I had intended to pick up 13th Age, Numenera, and a couple of random Doctor Who DVDs, but unforeseen circumstances made the additional expenditures unwise.

Back at the booth, we found Jordan, his girlfriend Amy (let's call her Indy-Amy to avoid confusion), Scott, and John B. along with Tom and Ken. I think this is actually where Ken said the stuff about Qalidar, but I don't feel like moving it. We cleared out the booth and boxed everything really quickly, and then hooked up again in the Canterbury bar for drinks. Everybody wanted to do something different for dinner. Jordan and Indy-Amy just ate right there. Luckily, we were able to come up with a compromise that annoyed everyone equally. Still, Tom and I had a nice dinner at Bourbon Street Distillery followed by a pleasant early evening walk back to the hotel, and I got to meet a friend of Jordan's who took a look through Qalidar and described it as, "the stuff of nightmares."

Other Bits and Pieces
On Monday, we pulled off a surprisingly successful car-shuffling and packing plan, then Tom, Mike, Amy, and I headed out to Acapulco Joe's for... breakfast? It was still pretty early, so they weren't serving lunch. It was kind of weird to eat pancakes at a Mexican food place, but everything else on the breakfast menu was revolting (the incomprehensibly popular "breakfast burrito" included), so that's what I went with.

And, sigh, that was pretty much it.

Jerry, Tom, Eloy, Ken, and Scott are all blogging about the event, although not all of them are finished, and some of them have barely started. Some of my other friends also blogged about it, but it's against the rules to link to people I didn't see. More blogs will hopefully pop up at this link. As always, don't believe their lies.

Carnage Noir

The last Carnage at Lake Morey wrapped up recently. Moving was probably a good idea, because blah blah blah, but I still blah blah blah. Yeah, this has all been said very well before, and I don't really have anything to add.

Wednesday

After recovering from SuperFrankenSandy or whatever the part of it was called that hit Cleveland, I went in early to work so we could get out early in the afternoon and head for Syracuse to pick up Monk before the airport started to think he was a terrorist or something. The weather was drizzly. We didn't hit any of the terrifying storms we had been warned about. The worst of it seemed to be long gone. 

We picked up Monk and went to Tully's, the sports bar across from the Dark Gathering, for dinner. We then proceeded to orbit Lake Onondaga because Tom thought he could get to the motel by feeling his way through town instead of getting back on the expressway and, despite years of experience that suggested otherwise, I believed him. When we finally got there, they couldn't get to sleep, which of course meant I couldn't sleep either, because they were giggling and talking about boys well into the wee hours. Or "more wee" hours. It was already pretty late when our tour of the slums of Syracuse ended.

Thursday

So yeah, more driving, more drizzle. Not much to say about it, but I guess I should blather on for a while so I'll have more room for pictures. We took a different route, cutting straight across to Brattleboro or whatever it is instead of meandering through the diagonal course that the machines always want us to take. We got to the resort and checked in. I found Andre and said hi, then Tom wanted to do laundry. We tried to go to an Indian restaurant but it was run by crazy people so it was already closed, so we ended up somewhere else. Hungry Bear or something like that. I don't remember what I ate, but the house margaritas were really good. They had a little bit of a bite like you'd get from ginger or something. I don't know what it actually was, but it worked.

After dinner, several of us from the Hungry Bear adventure moved on to Andre's Pool Room of Madness for a Call of Cthulhu game. Much of the usual crew was there, along with New Tom (who was actually much less new to Carnage than us, but I hadn't gamed with him before so he's "new" here) and Old Tom (not Bombadil, although keeping him focused was equally difficult). Instead of waiting eagerly for that lucky die roll that drives your character insane, we got to play characters who started out crazy, which was a fun twist. I got fried by a weird blaster-thing (I know what it was, but I don't want to ruin the scenario for future players) and other characters met even more awful ends, but a couple of them did escape.

I went back to the room, so that was the end of the evening for me. Old Tom stayed out to get even more wasted and, apparently, to go around belligerently asserting weird things.

Friday

I spent a lot of Friday making character sheets for Walk the Spiral. I had intended to do this Tuesday, but then there turned out to not be any electricity. So anyway, I took my laptop out to the lounge and happily concocted my pre-gens in a comfy couch by the window. I had a nice chat with an interesting Diplomacy player whose name I can't remember now. I also picked up the new Dungeon! board game from Cooper's Cave. Well, remade, anyway. It wouldn't be quite right to call it "new." Anyway, if you're near wherever Cooper's Cave Games is in the real world, I recommend going to their store.

Anyway, I finished that and a few mixed drinks, went off to print out my stuff, and then mingled for a while. I was going to play a midnight game, but I got sleepy and went to bed instead. I guess I should just quit signing up for those. Tom woke me up later for some Tom thing, but I got rid of him pretty quickly.

Saturday
Got moving and made a last-minute prop for the Aqua Teen game. I was about ready to join the fray while Tom was around, so he suggested that we "go be among them." I said I'd be along shortly and he left. A little later, I searched the resort and he was nowhere to be found. Apparently by "them," he meant the beer displays at the grocery store. So anyway, I did the lunch mingling thing and then headed back to the room to get my stuff for the Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1: Black Stockings and Sippy Straws. I was kind of anxious about the day's events, so, as Monk looked on in alarm, I downed a double shot of absinthe and mixed a gamma bomb (my name for equal parts absinthe and Mountain Dew) in my water bottle for later re-fortification.

I was soon in a prime Aqua Teen-running mood, but only one person (Roy) showed up. We frantically texted for reinforcements, but were betrayed on all sides by fickle friends. Tyler even made a point of luring people away from our table, despite my desperate attempt to bribe him with uncooked beans. I even wandered upstairs and tried to recruit people.

Zach wandered by. Tom and I had adopted Zach as our Carnage son a few years back because, like all old people, we can only maintain an active lifestyle by draining the vital energy from younger companions. Naturally, I shanghaied him for my event. Still, that was only two. Normally, I cancel when there's less than four players for this game. Andre gave me another excuse by calling with a vacancy, and Tom even stopped by to mock my failure. But I got a good vibe from my two players and from various chemicals, so hell yeah, we're doin' this thing!

Roy played Meatwad, and Zach started out with Carl. I included Shake and occasionally Frylock (he was off on an Internet-generated hookup which he claimed was a science convention, but Meatwad went to find him) among the NPCs. It started off a little slow but, within ten minutes, we were playing off of each other easily and it really got going. The femme fatale, Lana, constructed earlier from garbage I found in our room, appeared and introduced assorted plot twists (although only Meatwad could hear her). Carl eventually died and was replaced by Billy Witchdoctordotcom, who resurrected Carl and pieces of Carl several times as the turkey-chicken conflict from Robofrance played out.

We managed to sustain the mood all the way to four o'clock, when Meatwad and Ultra Mega Chicken conquered the world and decided that it was time to exterminate all mammalian life. Back to the mingling, I met Scott and Petra, who apparently Tom had mistaken for me earlier. Just Petra, I mean, not the pair of them together. I hope. In celebration of the fact that I was wearing shoes with really flimsy soles, I smashed my big toe into the stairs as hard as I could and twisted it into a really fascinating new shape. Then there was dinner out somewhere with some people who all looked like giant throbbing toes, and then I got back in the room and had Tom check out the wounded digit to make sure it wasn't broken. It's good to have a medic handy.

All patched up, I headed down to the ballroom to run Walk the Spiral. Unfortunately, only Christy had signed up. She thought she could get one other person to play, but didn't sound too sure. She also looked wiped out. The other option was that we could jump in on this game with the colorful banners that had been sucking up players all day. (Note to self: get some colorful banners.) Dave from the Dark Gathering was also playing in that game, so I agreed to go that route.

It was a neat game, with runestone-based randomizing and a Norse... well, everything. I think it was called Ragnarok. I was a little put off by the murderhobo play style that some of the fans had adopted, but I didn't want to make waves. I got a little cranky towards the end just because it was taking forever and I wanted to go ice my foot, but like I said, still a fun game.

After a short break, I put my bottle of absinthe, a couple of cans of mountain dew, and a glass into my bag and  moved on to the lounge. Tom and Dan Williams were out there drinking with some other people, so I went to talk to them first. If I had known Dan would be dropping off so soon, I would have stuck around out there to catch up, but I didn't know and I was eager to make the scene at Andre's court, so I moved on after a fairly brief conversation.

Andre was preaching fire and brimstone when I arrived. The conversation eventually meandered away from politics and drifted back to more pleasant topics. After a while we went out to the porch for a toast, drifted back to the pool room, all that. Good times, but not much to talk about.

Less Important Days
And then there was Sunday and packing and driving to Syracuse to drop Monk at the airport. We stopped for lunch at a place called Stella's somewhere in the wilderness. It didn't look like much, but the food was really good. After that there was Monday and more driving and happy cats at home.

Gen Con 2012: Beggars at the Feast

Yeah, it's taken me a while. I brought home some nasty little midwestern stowaways from the con and haven't been feeling too good this week.

Fans of the musical Les Miserables will recognize the titles and captions. Yes, the songs are out of order. And, for the love of Grodd and your own sanity, don't try to put together some kind of consistent parallel with each of us being just one character from the show. Just chuckle or roll your eyes at the cute lines and don't ruin it by being anal retentive, okay?

Tuesday: One Day More
So anyway, after staying up late printing out character sheets and stuff and then working half a day, I got everything set for the cats and packed up. We headed out early in the evening and soon achieved sufficient velocity to pierce the net of the dreaded Barrier Arch at the edge of Ohio. We ended up arriving quite a bit earlier than we expected, so we tracked down the other Robin (Caed) at Scotty's. She was in the middle of a trivia game thing but, luckily, one of the waiters was willing to take our money and feed us while we waited for the chance to catch up. After that we headed out to Jordan's house to crash for the night (our check-in at the hotel wasn't until Wednesday afternoon).

Whatya think ye're at -
hanging round me patch?*

Wednesday: Look Down
Wednesday morning, we stuffed the boxes and boxes of stock we had shipped from the printer to Jordan's house into the trunk and drove down to the convention center. Tom waited in the car while I grabbed our badges. The booth for that turned out to be way back by the Exhibit Hall instead of at the front with all the others. It makes perfect sense, and I should have known anyway because I'm sure it was in one of those emails, but it was still frustrating at the time. So I told Tom what was up and quick-marched back there, then went into the hall to figure out how to get a dolly for those boxes. The exhibitor services contractor was no help, offering all kinds of services that would make my work take longer and my purse lighter. Jim at Studio 2 was willing to loan me one, but the it turned out that the guy who was using it at the moment was trapped in a terrifying labyrinth known as "the marshaling yard" and not likely to escape for another couple of hours. After unsuccessfully canvassing the area for other exhibitors from whom I could borrow such a device, I called Tom and he said we should just go eat and rent a dolly, which made good sense to me.

Not much to look at - nothing posh.

Off at Acapulco Joe's, we relaxed a bit with a frozen margarita (and of course Tom had beer) and some good food. Their Tex-Mex is a different style than the Tex-Mex I'm used to, but still very good. Tom somehow waved his hand and made a UPS Store flyer appear in the middle of our table. Seriously, I could have sworn that thing wasn't in the exhibitor packet until he conjured it up. He called them and got everything set up to rent us a dolly. Then we were off to pick that up and check in at the Omni, where all our bags were whisked away by a porter or whatever they're called.

Sooo, back to to the Exhibit Hall, we loaded up our mechanical beast of burden and had a division of labor to decide on. Somebody had to haul the boxes into the Exhibit Hall and start setting up, while somebody else had to take the car back to Jordan's house, catch a bus back downtown (so we didn't have to pay to use the hotel parking deck all week), and walk the dolly back to UPS. Luckily, we disagreed as to which of those tasks were preferable. It's great when things just work, isn't it?

These are my people; here's my patch.

I wheeled my way through the convention center and started unpacking. Would it have wrecked their budget to turn on the AC a day early, I wonder? Anyway, I started opening boxes and moving stuff around, occasionally taking a moment to fan myself with the dry-erase board. Jim saw me scraping at the tape with my keys and loaned me his knife. I ran into Ken St. Andre and got him to pose in front of our stuff, much of which is for his game. A strange man walked up and gave me a handful of tiny dice. Tom came back to get the dolly while I went to the hotel to chill for a bit. Literally. I was seriously craving air conditioning.

Where are the swells who run this show?

After taking some time to unpack and relax, I wandered back over to the Hall and found that Tom had returned and touched things up a bit, or maybe he did that before he left. Anyway, I fidgeted a little more myself and then wandered out to see where he had gone. I found him back at the Omni hotel bar, where he introduced me to Teemo, who worked for (owned?) a European distribution company and was here for research and networking. Here he is from behind, with Tom. After an interesting chat, Tom left to powder his nose in preparation for Old Home Night at Scotty's (we're thinking Claddagh next year).

On the way, we passed a new and truly grotesque piece of statuary, so Tom had to pose with it. I guess I should have read the plaque, because I still don't understand what, apart from revulsion, this piece is supposed to convey. Hoping to attract more horror conventions, maybe?

Only one m-- AAAA! Severed legs! SEVERED LEGS!

Everybody raise a glass!

Anyway, Scotty's. There was all kinds of confusion about where we could sit and then we all ended up right next to the live band, which is exactly what you want when you're trying to catch up with old friends and get to know some new ones, right? They were actually pretty good, or at least I might have thought so if their amplifiers hadn't deafened me. Still, they left eventually and we managed to have a good time anyway. If you click on the picture, you can see Kelly, Monk, me, Teemo, Tom, Jordan, Amy, Ryan, and Frosty. That's a really awful picture of Frosty. Caed was off doing something Caedish and didn't make it. A trip over to the convention center for the non-exhibitors to get their badges, then a quick nightcap, and we were done for the day. At least I was.

Never wants a passerby to pass him by.

Thursday: Master of the House
The Hall opened at nine this morning instead of the usual ten, so folks who shelled out the big bucks for "VIG" badges could get in an hour early. Tom made it on time. I was a few minutes late. Tom jumped in and was handing out Qalidar: Resistance flyers like a champ, getting so many out there that we soon had to dial it back and just give them to people who bought something or expressed an interest.

Comforter, philosopher, and lifelong mate.

One of the people who came by was Jeff from The Gaming Gang, who talked me into joining in on his interview with Tom. It was actually kind of fun, despite the fact that I'm terrible at these things. Later, Monk and Kelly showed up, and Tom left to take a nap in preparation for his impending games (he was running two every night). Monk and I took the opportunity to add anomalous equipment (rocket boots, a cell phone, a laser pistol, and some frag grenades) to his Tunnels & Trolls character sheets. Sadly, Tom caught the tampering before his players could benefit from our magnanimity.

After the Hall closed, I met Tom, Scott Grant, and Jordan in the back room at Champions, then went back to the room to prepare for the games I was planning to run for Friday and Saturday. My brain was so fried from the soul-numbing task of constantly nodding and smiling at people who were just trying to get past me to make an offering at the Temple of Catan or something, that it took me another hour or so before I could conjure up any creativity.

Sitting flat on your butt doesn't
 buy any bread.

Friday: At the End of the Day
Another day at the booth. Sales didn't pick up much from the day before. The kilt-wearing masses continued to slosh back and forth. Seriously, I've never seen so many straight men wearing skirts. I can't think of anything particularly interesting that happened during the day. It's all kind of a blur. Monk and Kelly stopped by again. Tom left early again to rest up for another marathon. I passed up an invitation to dinner because I wanted a couple of hours to prepare for Aqua Teen Hunger Force later on, and that only left me time for a quick drink at the Omni bar. Monk and Kelly joined me for that, and then I went up to enjoy some decompression time.

My first session of "Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1: Puppet Show Tango" was amazing. The usual crew showed up with a couple more friends who I don't think were there last year. Once I got them started, they took off on their own. I hardly had to use any of the plot bits I had put together, apart from the "Last Dance For Napkin Lad" inspired background twists that I periodically threw in. The evening's fun ran back and forth between the two neighboring homes, across the neighborhood, out to Melon Shakers (where Willie Nelson and the Love Mummy went on a horrific rampage), back home, out to 612 Wharf Avenue, and back home again. Ultra Mega Chicken put in an appearance, and there was all kinds of mad sciencey fun with Frylock's cloner, ending in a mega-swarm of meat-fry-spiders devouring the world. This was the longest of these I've ever run, and easily the high point of the whole convention for me.

You need somebody taller and I volunteer!

Saturday: The Second Attack
I had a game at eleven that morning, so Tom "opened" the booth himself.

Anyway, I was off running Walk the Sprial. Hopefully I'll have it all written up pretty soon, but to sum up, the session went well. I ended up with a full party of six, so all the characters were accounted for. The players were great, too. I hadn't prepared as much as I intended to, but I had studied the setting enough that, even though I left an important source book in my room, I was able to guide them through the surreal mysteries of late 1920's Silver Springs without a hitch.

Someone's gotta collect their odds & ends.

Monk and Kelly were at the booth when I got back. I think they ended up running it most of the day, which turned out to be our best sales day. I keep telling myself that's just because it was Saturday. I hung around for a bit, then wandered off to do some shopping. I picked up a bunch of classic Doctor Who DVD's from Who North America, got some beautiful green dice from the Zoccinator himself, snagged a copy of Cubicle 7's The One Ring, and picked up a Gen Con tee-shirt.

Said goodbye to Monk and Kelly, because they were leaving early Sunday and, a hazy few hours later, I was off to Champions to have dinner with Caed and her friends Randy and Josh. After that, not enough people showed for the next Aqua Teen session (needs at least four to keep it crazy), so I just chilled in the hotel room.

The law is not mocked.

Sunday: Drink With Me
Tom slept in a bit, so I got over there early, after slipping past the dalek guarding the entrance.

Jonathan Tweet stopped by to take a look at the Peryton RPG, which kind of stunned me. Did I tell him how cool I thought Everway was? No. Did I tell him how many hours of enjoyment I got out of D&D stuff that he worked on? No. Instead, what I said was, "Hey, I know who you are!" Pleased to meet you, sir. I am an imbecile.

When Tom showed up, I wandered off to drown my recriminations in a new (to me) Eclipse Phase supplement, Rimward. Then I picked up the latest Marvel Super Heroes game, too. I had been meaning to take a look at and possibly buy the Dungeon Crawl Classics game, but was surprised to find that Goodman Games wasn't here. I could've sworn they usually were. Oh well. I'm probably better off without another giant book anyway.

...where they kill for the bones in the street.

There was something going on at the Flying Buffalo booth with actors from Dorkness Rising. I took a picture, but mostly I got the backs of other onlookers.

After the con closed, the breaking-down process was remarkably smooth. We got everything rolled back over to the room and then headed off to meet some folks at Bourbon Street. Originally Tom had cooked this up as some sort of networking thing with Ken and Rick and somebody from FASA or something who impressed him earlier. Ken and Rick bailed because they were staying in some roach motel a hundred miles away, so the FASA guy had no reason to show, which left us with only Scott and John, both of whom had turned out to be great company while we were doing time at the booth. No offense to Tom's new contact, but I was actually thrilled that there wouldn't be any business talk and that I wouldn't have to nail on another plastic smile for another stranger. I was also thrilled to have some delicious blackened tilapia and several hurricanes. Jordan and Amy showed up a bit later, making it a good victory dinner all around.

Bodies on the highway - law & order upside down!

Monday: Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
We booked the room for Sunday night as well. We did this last year just because it makes for a nice, relaxing wrap-up. This year, however, there was also the consideration that we didn't want to be homeless while we were trying to get all our boxes and stuff packed up.

I looked out the window from the hotel room while I waited for Tom to come back from Jordan's with the car. The Gen Con banners had all been taken down. There were no clusters of backpack-toting conventioneers wandering around. It wasn't the Mecca of Gamers anymore. The city was just a city. It was time to go.

Also, dinosaurs were breaking loose and rampaging through the streets. Definitely time to go.

And that's it for this year. See you all in hell!

---

*In case there's any doubt, our neighbor Eloy from Third Eye Games was really nice and in no way reminiscent of an angry French prostitute played with an English accent. He was even cool enough to pose for this silly photo. If you're still in the mood to shop after you've bought all my stuff, then please do go buy some of his.