Gen Con 2025: The Way

I got on a plane to Indianapolis after three days of unrelenting anxiety with nights ranging from one to four hours of sleep. I normally prefer the road trip, but there were Reasons. 

Some of the anxiety was about the trip, but most of it was just my stupid life. Somehow I made it through the shoddy cardboard halls of an airport under construction (again) and shambled my way through two flights and a layover without freaking out or completely losing consciousness. I drifted off occasionally and jolted back to reality when I forgot where I was and thought I was falling asleep at the wheel of a car. 

Tom couldn't get away, but one of his friends from work was kind enough to pick me up and deliver me to his apartment. Tom came home later and found me passed out on his couch. He fed me something. I think we watched TV. Then sleep. Real sleep. That was Tuesday. 

The next day, we picked up our badges at GM HQ, had a look around, and settled at the Level One bar in the Hyatt, one of my favorites of the Gen Con hotels. They had some special Gen Con drinks, one of which was a black Manhattan. I've had plenty of regular Manhattans, but that was my first black one. The difference was a Sicilian cordial instead of vermouth, and it was really, really good. I only had one, though, because they were expensive and I still didn't feel quite myself after all the stress stuff before. 

The "old home" dinner was at High Velocity in the JW Marriott. Mostly familiar faces. John brought Kirsten, his new lady friend. Mark, who I had previously only known through social media, was there, and excited to be at Gen Con promoting all the new material coming out for his cool B/X Gangbusters game (a new printing of the one I ran at BASH Con a few years ago). His energy was infectious. 

Tom and I also went to the most depressing (and hot) office supply store ever, and I think I helped him adjust some margins or something so he could print stuff that would fit on index cards. Later that night, a storm came through. We were already home, so it was just pleasant rumbles of thunder and rain. And it left behind the nicest Gen Con weather I've ever seen. It was like, on top of all the other things we were taking a vacation from, we got to take a break from summer, too. 

We grabbed a parking space in the Oort Cloud lot we had used last year. There was a little bit of friction as we walked to the convention center because I thought Tom's game was an hour later than it was, so I didn't understand why he was rushing us and he didn't understand why I was acting like we had plenty of time. Anyway, we got to his Gotham City police game and I wandered off. 

Apparently I'm not the only one who loved the old carpet pattern. In the course of my wanderings, I was asked by a woman sitting in the Marriott skywalk (Marriott Classic, not that upstart JW) if this was my first Gen Con. When I said it wasn't, she offered me a badge sticker with nothing but the old carpet pattern on it. I was delighted. This year suddenly became the first year I ever cared about making sure my badge was turned frontside-forward all the time. 

Also, I visited the exhibit hall and came back to watch Tom's players take on the menace of the Condiment King. 

Tom had a Crawlspace game later with a hilarious crew. It was so much fun to watch that, when someone else in the room offered me a spot in his Apocalypse World game, I turned him down in favor of continuing to watch the show. I probably should have taken the offer. I mean, try new stuff, right? But it really was a great show. He had these ghost hunter media personalities all competing for attention and our friend Brett giving a hilarious performance as the constantly-maligned groundskeeper and I couldn't look away.

Somebody in this or maybe one of Tom's other sessions said he had actually run TerrorHog! I knew one or two people bought and liked it, but actually playing the game is a whole other thing. 

At some point on Thursday, I got out of the first of the two games I had scheduled. Tom had asked me to run two Qalidar games, so I scheduled two sessions of "The Cave of Crystal Souls," the scenario I had written for the Qalidar Basic book in one of my previous lives. I didn't really want to run it. Funny, though: I read through the adventure again in case someone did show up and was like, "Damn, this is good! Who wrote this?" But, as expected, nobody signed up and nobody appeared at the last minute. 

Saturday, Tom had accidentally signed himself to run a game at the unholy hour of eight in the morning, and, for reasons I will never understand, didn't correct it when he had the chance. I scheduled an Uber the night before, for 2PM, and slept in while he went off to punish himself for his short-sightedness. 

Some of that might have been Friday. I was just enjoying life and doing fun stuff. The best thing about this vacation was that I was only thinking of time in terms of what's up next, rather than trying to look down the road. There were drinks at bars and delicious big salads and foldable slices of pizza outside in the beautiful weather where everyone was happy. And there were a couple of Crawlspace games where I got to ham it up just like the players I had enjoyed watching on whatever day I was watching them play. 

One exchange:

Tom: You can each choose one item that's always with your character no matter what movie they're in. 

Liam: (I don't remember what Liam had.)

Me: I've got a pet rat, Nibbler. And the whiskey flask from when I leveled up. 

Tom: I was hoping you wouldn't mention the whiskey flask when we've got teenagers here.

Teenager2: I've got a bag of cocaine. 

Me: Good thing we're not talking about whiskey in front of the teenagers. 

Player5: I've got one of those short novelty baseball bats. 

Tom: Okay, that works. 

Player5: It's full of heroin.  

I didn't come home with much loot. Crystal Caste was selling Gen Con d6's for two dollars apiece. I felt kind of ripped-off, even at that price, because, in addition to the Gen Con 2025 logo on the six spot, they put their own logo on the spot opposite. I mean, come on! You sell dice, so maybe just sell dice; don't sell commercials for yourself on the dice you've already been paid for. Gen Con used to give us those things for free, and, even when they were free, we didn't have to get them with extra pimp stamps burned into them. At least I've got the carpet-pattern sticker.  

We didn't go the con on Sunday. It felt wrong to miss a day, but, parking and other things considered, it made sense. We went to see the new Fantastic Four movie (which rocked) and continued testing our theory that there is no such thing as a weekend with too much pizza. So far, we have found no evidence that this "too much pizza" thing exists. Research continues. 

We chilled in Tom's apartment and I helped him do some computer stuff. Just took it easy. 

Monday, I had to begin my journey back to summer and anxiety and drudgery, but at least I'd have my cats and I was ready to get back to finishing my novel (in between drudgeries, of course). I'm getting really close!

And, in the halls of the Indianapolis airport, people were still gaming.  

 I've been experimenting with Substack, so I posted this over there, too. 

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Gen Con 2024: Who Missed Me?

It's been a couple of years since I went to Gen Con. We were still wearing plague masks last time. A few people had them this year, but they didn't stand out amidst all the other cosplay stuff. One disturbing change is that they replaced the carpet in the convention center. I'm not sure it even counts as Gen Con without that carpet. 

The drive to Indy went well. I mostly listened to audiobooks (The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales). My left arm is now noticeably darker than my right because of the sun coming through the car window. Anyway, I got to Indy on Wednesday night, had some drinks with Tom, and that was pretty much it for Wednesday. 

I didn't have any games to prep for or find. I guess the last time I ran games at Gen Con was was 2018. When it was time to submit events this year, I wasn't even sure I'd be able to make it to Indy. I'm thinking next year I actually will run a game or two. We'll see.  

Parking was a bit of a challenge. Even the insanely expensive hotel lots were full. Eventually we found a $20/day lot somewhere in Kentucky and were able to walk in from there.

Tom's games were all Crawlspace this year. I wandered off during the first one to have a look around. That was Thursday morning, and the exhibit hall was still super crowded. Actually, I think that's the thickest it ever got, even more than the usual Saturday influx. I wandered back, futzed around on my laptop, and the game ended. I never really followed what happened. 

The afternoon game, "The Seance," was crazy. I didn't play in this one either, but I did stick around to watch. Two tables full of players hamming it up as a mix of skeptics, believers, and grieving family. Some of them were wearing Ghostbuster costumes. 

After that, we poked our heads into the exhibit hall and stopped to see what was up in that stadium thing on the way back to the car. Looked like Goodman Games was selling stuff out of a van. We joked about how Gen Con was setting up for one of those "Who's The Werewolf" games with the whole stadium playing and 200 werewolves scattered about. 

Friday's game was in the Hyatt instead of the Marriott. It was fun to revisit that one. I haven't had any events there in a long time and always liked it. We had some mall pizza for lunch and settled into our cozy hidden room for the event. Tom brought some weird cinnamon beer.

There were only three of us playing "The Sleep Study III." I was the nepotism-hire administrator working with one assistant, one PC subject, and a bunch of NPCs. It was a trip. Tom listed it as IV instead of III in his blog, so maybe I've got it wrong, but I know he said III at the table. Anyway, I'll never relax to the sound of birds chirping again. 

We had some drinks at the Crowne Plaza Bar, chatted with the bartender and whoever was next to Tom. The hotel or maybe Gen Con was offering "Dragon Punch," a mix of red wine and Coke. Seriously. Even the bartender was disgusted. I had a couple of Manhattans instead. We looked around the convention hall some more, and had dinner with some friends. Still no Jerry, though. He was a slave to the auction the entire time, as far as I know. 

Tom and I bought some generic tickets and looked for events over the next few days, but nope. He knew some people involved with Tower of Gygax or Gaxx or whatever, but the people piling up at the door for it got scary, so we ran away. 

We didn't have any more scheduled events to worry about on Saturday. We took a more serious run around the exhibit hall. I bought a One Ring book. Tom talked to some people and found a couple of things. I mostly tried to avoid making eye contact. I can only take so many elevator pitches.

We were going to meet some more friends and they suggested the Omni bar, but there turned out to be no Omni bar this year. Blah blah remodeling blah. We did meet the Nieblings out in the hallway, though. They worked on the original Dungeon Master's Guide for TSR, although their names are buried in the acknowledgements on page 8. 

Our friends showed up, agreed that it wouldn't be any fun to eat in the weird little space the Omni was offering, and moved on to Taggart's (Crowne Plaza) again. Fine with me. I love Crowne Plaza. As it happened, several of the group were late for a LARP event because of all the shuffling, but they were too polite to mention it until dinner was over. 

I can't believe neither Tom nor I thought to get pictures of Brett and Natalie in their excellent Achilles and Artemis costumes.  

My feet and I were wiped out. After a nap, Tom brought back some Long John Silver's and we watched a bunch of Blake's 7 on Freevee. I had never seen the show before, so that was neat. 

We had thought about just staying in on Sunday, but some of the stuff we saw in the exhibit hall was sounding more appealing to Tom, and of course it would be silly to blow off a day when there are only four, especially with my feet finally adapting. So, whatever, we had another look around, had some drinks, bought some stuff.

Stopped at the auction to talk to Jerry for a few minutes.

And here's the loot. Well, mostly. I already had the pendant. It came from a giant Halloween festival and it has captured the light of some good times. 

So we had another nice evening of sci-fi and beer and that was about it before the trip home. 

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Gen Con 2022: Still the Best Carpet in the World

I went back to Gen Con this year. It was better than I expected. For one thing, I didn't see any sign that attendance was down. I don't know what the real numbers were like, but the crowds didn't look any smaller than the last time I was there.

I listened to Children of Hurin on the way over. Poor Hurin, cursed by Morgoth to watch while his wife and children blunder their way across Beleriand, getting all sorts of people killed for no particular reason. 

    Melian: Y'all know this magic sword is cursed, right?

    Beleg: It's magic? Sweet! I'll take it!

    Thingol: I don't think you heard--

    Turin: RAMPAGE!

I showed up in Indy on Friday evening but didn't do any actual convention stuff until Saturday. Tom gave me my Peryton Gamers badge and I went to get my vaccination bracelet so the door wardens could see that I'm not a moron. That went a lot more smoothly than I expected, so I poked around a little in the exhibit hall, where insufficient air conditioning made my plague mask really unpleasant.

Tom was running TerrorHog, so I went back to the JW to watch that. Upon arrival, I was immediately shanghaied to play one of the unused characters (I had actually promised to do this a long time ago). It was fun seeing someone else run my adventure and I always enjoy playing Crawlspace. The other players seemed to dig it. It's a pity they knew who I was when I joined the game. Would have been interesting to hear more candid thoughts.

After a bite and some drinks, Tom had another Crawlspace game, this one about a haunted radio station. I didn't play this time, just sat nearby. I worked for a while, then stopped to listen in. Had a late dinner and drinks at the fancier of the two JW restaurants afterwards.

Sunday was shopping day. I came back with Swords of the Serpentine, a fold-up dice box/rolling tray, and some sparkly purple dice. I already had the tote bag. Swords of the Serpentine looks really promising. In many ways, it seems to be what I've wanted from a fantasy game for a long time. Even though it's made with darker stuff in mind, it might be a decent Middle Earth rule set. Whether I can or can't find both the motivation and the players to actually run the game remains to be seen.

Tom picked up some stuff too, including a couple of setting books and a cool picture consisting of several layers embedded in a clear acrylic block. I think that's about it. We had some good Mexican food and enjoyed a quiet evening. I listened to Conan stories on the way back, but got tired of them somewhere in Missouri. I like Robert E. Howard, but the dosage was just too high.

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Try Nihilism

Last weekend would have been Gen Con if not for the plague. I wasn't going this year anyway, so I didn't care, but most of my friends were bummed. Tom even resolved to come up with a "hoot" to fill the void. Once everybody agreed to have it in Point Pleasant, West Virginia (home of the Mothman) I was on board too.

My original plan was to do a Mothman-inspired adventure I had run at Gen Con a few years back, but a request for D&D inspired me to finally try out the 5e Adventures in Middle Earth rules. This was a last minute switch, so I went with one of the adventures in the Bree-Land Region Guide instead of making up my own. That area has always been one of my favorites.

Tom and I got to Point Pleasant on Wednesday, snapped a picture of the statue, confirmed that the Lowe Hotel (right across the street) really was closed, and proceeded to turn our room at the Quality Inn into a walk-in fridge. Tom did Tom stuff while I read through the adventure and crammed as many of the Middle Earth rules back into my brain as I could.

Return to Chimney Rock

A few weeks ago, something -- I don't remember what -- reminded me of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books. With that, I immediately thought of The Mystery of Chimney Rock. I used to love this one when I was a kid. In a sudden fit of nostalgia, I looked up a copy and bought it. I don't know what happened to my original one. Boxed up in an attic somewhere, probably.

I played it through a few times and then discovered that several pages were missing at the end. Could be worse; at least I got to finish a few threads before I hit the wall. After that, I spent a little more time just seeing what else there was buried in the pages. There was a lot going on that I didn't remember, so even though it was disappointing to not be able to explore correctly, I had fun.

The other thing is, I started thinking that this would be a cool scenario to run as a real RPG adventure. I've always wanted to do a good haunted house scenario. I've tried a couple of times, but it never really felt like what I wanted. This book gives me some new ideas. Several of the threads seem to contradict each other continuity-wise, but I don't think reconciling them will be very hard. I was toying with the idea of running with the bit where it gets bulldozed at the end for condos, but I'll probably keep the house intact. I also thought of a way to merge the two that might be fun. We'll see. For the system, I'll probably use Vortex (the system behind the Doctor Who RPG) because I use it a lot and am very comfortable with it. Crawlspace is a possibility, though.

I won't be running this at Gen Con because I'm already signed up for my stuff there and I don't want to have to think about any new scenarios this summer. Maybe Carnage if I go. Or maybe I'll just run it for my friends.

This is Not the Title

Work on The Nameless Way has picked up again after creeping forward for a few months. I also had a great gaming weekend a couple of weeks ago.

I finally figured out how to work in the future party's contribution to "The Beginning of the End" without overshadowing the current one. I had been planning to mostly gloss over it, but instead I'm using it now as a dream sequence everybody got pulled into because the telepath is having fits. And of course, that guy having fits leads into the developments that lead to this freaky time-trip anway, so it's also useful foreshadowing. It has, consequently, become really fun to write again. I'm cramming in writing time all over the place now, above and beyond the schedule I set for myself.

The gaming bit was neat, too. We didn't call it a hoot, but it kind of was. Tom set up a slot to run Spacers at the game store and several friends from out of town joined in. For the after-party, Saharrah volunteered to run an off-the-cuff game of Crawlspace called "Eat Me" in which we made our way through the jungle, starting fires and switching sides, while pursued by magic furry cannibals. The next day, after seeing the other friends off, I ran a session of my Icons campaign for the usual suspects, concluding the long-running backup story of Landshark's possessed dog.

I still need to work out what I'm going to do for Carnage, though.

BASHCon XXXI: That's No Moon

BASHCon always kind of sneaks up on me. This year, I was especially busy with Throne of Gorgudai and behind the schedule I had set for myself, so I really didn't want to stop. I even cancelled one of the two events I had in mind so I could put it off longer. Also, to be honest, "The Nightmare Tree" never did come together the way I wanted it to. Its core ideas just wouldn't mesh. Even so, I barely got my pre-gens for Crystal Rifts done in time and kind of skimped on preparation.

Tom took off Thursday morning to pick up Randy and go to the "Pre-BASHCon Bash" he was hosting. I had to wait til Friday to avoid taking time off work. Unfortunately, Jerry had to bail at the last minute and Paul didn't show up until late, so the pre-BASH gaming didn't happen.

Friday night around 7PM, after defeating my phone GPS's attempt to abandon me in one of Toledo's less savory neighborhoods, I got to UT, picked up my badge, and went to find the crew. They were hanging around one of the game tables chatting. After we talked for minute, one of them remembered to tell me that Tom was waiting at Phoenicia to have dinner.

After dinner, Tom and I both jumped in on Beckett's Crawlspace game, Gimme Shelter. I don't think this one was part of the Jupiter Moon theme. We took the roles of mentally ill homeless people who have to face real horrors from beyond with no help from the world around them. I also got Paul to sign our copy of A Brief History of Gnolls.

I had driven directly to the convention, so Tom & I had two cars to get back to the motel. They took off a bit ahead of me, so I was surprised to find them not there when I arrived. Mystery solved: they had detoured to pick up a late night Del Taco snack. I rearranged my bags for the next day's gaming and dropped off to sleep.

I found it surprisingly easy to get up for pancakes the next morning, after which it was off to the con to check out the dealers and wander around. Nothing much grabbed me this year. I thought about buying some more dice, but none of them really spoke to me. We had a snack (again, Phoenicia) and moved on to my afternoon game.

I had a full table for The Crystal Rifts of Tartarus. Well, sort of. One guy showed up thirty minutes late. After I re-explained the rules and the background just for him, he played for an hour or so, then told me he had to leave because he had another game scheduled. Anyway, this was my test-drive of the Cypher System, and I thought it went really well. GM'ing combat usually gets a bit tiresome for me but, when one of the players rolled a GM intrusion against an almost-destroyed starshadow, I didn't even mind that splitting it into two completely healed ones made the fight last longer. I also had fun playing with elements of Qalidar without worrying about accurately representing any published details. And Pluto. Pluto is cool. Literally.

When I made the characters, I had left the equipment for them to pick and I had each of them roll for a random cypher at the beginning. I had been a little iffy on whether or not keeping up a regular supply of cyphers was worth the trouble, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. The initial cypher was a gadget. At the midway point, I also gave each of them a subtle cypher as an "inspiration" sort of thing.

GM intrusions were fun, although I probably should have used a couple more. Stat pools were fun. Simple stats for creatures and NPCs were awesome. Players doing all the rolling was fun. The only drawback is that the book is really heavy. I guess I could try GMing from a tablet, but I don't much like that idea. Still, I think I'm sold on Cypher as a primary vessel for random convention games. Besides being a fun set of rules, it's generic. A generic system doesn't feed me a bunch of assumptions about how the world is put together, so I'm not tempted away from my own inspirations.

After dinner (we're big fans of Phoenicia) and a high-five with the Quitters' Club (Jerry and me, for cancelling events), Tom played to a packed house for his Crawlspace adventure, and I joined Beckett, Jerry, Randy, and Liam for Beckett's Dungeon Crawl Classics scenario, Scream Bloody Gore. This was apparently inspired by an album, with various encounter areas patterned after the different songs. We spent all our time dealing with a village infested with zombifying curse-maggots. We weren't so hot at making friends, though, and had to resort to a charm spell just to avoid being burned alive by an angry mob.

Of course, late night Del Taco came next.

In the morning, I got the surprising news that Tom and Randy were going to go ahead and take off, because of their longer drive. It was weird, after being all bunched up together talking and laughing, to be suddenly and unexpectedly alone. Not that I mind being alone. I crave it, even, but the abrupt shift was disorienting.

While I was still getting ready, I also heard from Jerry, who said he wouldn't be at the con today, either. I packed up, checked out of the motel, and drove to what felt like a creepily empty campus. I was there more than an hour ahead of Beckett's start time, so I took one more turn around the exhibit hall, got some coffee, and found a cozy place to chill. I had my tiny laptop with me, so I started writing. I think I got around 300 words in. Not a lot, but not bad for found time.

I passed Beckett in the hall on the way to get my second giant cup of coffee. Players gathered, and the Jupiter Mining Company Disaster got started. This was a funnel adventure. We each played four characters, most of which were expected to die. The one you end up with, therefore, already has a backstory. It's a mechanic from Dungeon Crawl Classics, but we were actually using Savage Worlds rules. Our characters were all functionaries in a giant corporation who happen to be around when something blows up. I had plenty of real life experience with the characters I was playing, so that part was a lot of fun. I sometimes found it a bit draining to play four characters at once, though. I was a good corporate drone to the end, but everybody else joined the anarchists.

Beckett and I managed to get one more Phoenicia meal in and chat a bit about game systems while the organizers cleared away all the convention stuff. Then we cleared ourselves away for them and it was time to go home.

Tom's version is here. Don't believe his lies.

Update: Beckett and Jerry have blogged about it too. 

Five friends meet at a hotel to play games. What happens next will make you stop eating mushrooms!

Or maybe...
Troll Hoot V: The Hilltop Horror 
I wasn't even sure I was going to do a blog for this, since I know Tom will and I'm not sure I have much to add. Then it occurred to me that it might be fun to post something with one of those moronic clickbait headlines. Don't worry; I won't make a habit of it.

This year's hoot was in Mansfield, Ohio. For years, we've been driving past this place on the way to other things, looking up at the motel on the hilltop and saying, "we need to have a hoot there."

For a variety of reasons, it finally happened. I promised you something about mushrooms, didn't I?
Okay, we'll get to that. We got started Friday evening.

The Creep
We started off with a Crawlspace adventure by Tom, part of an ongoing series he's been running for years, most of which I've missed. One of the cool things about this game, as I've probably said before, is that your character is an actor trapped in a series of movies, so you can have the same character in a series of adventures playing a different role each time. My character is starting to build up quite a resume, from The Return of Count Vulgarr to The Swamp Troll to this one (and one more on Saturday).
In The Creep, I played the love interest to a character who had been tortured by alien experiments that left him confused as to whether he was a pizza boy or a head in a box. He was just being released from the insane asylum when we got started and was already seeing "mushroom eagles" in the sky. It didn't get better from there. Chasing each other around in circles over drugs and post-psychiatric-institution trauma, our characters were eventually abducted by three-armed alien bigfoots and experimented upon. Caed/Robin and I escaped. I'm not sure, but I think we may have been the only ones.

A Fistful of Hypo

After breakfast, we kicked off Saturday with Beckett's Glow adventure, which I loved because I got to play a humanoid ant who liked to make "human suits" out of skin. Not that that was particularly an ant thing - just something I always thought would be fun. Caed/Robin and I decided that both of our characters were named Robin because, in the hive, "we are all Robin."

Upon obtaining the fabled mulberry wine, I gained super-psychic-ant powers which enabled me to enslave the other Robin and go back home to rule the hive. I think there was also a gang war going on and Tom & Drew's characters might have gotten killed in a big explosion downtown. I can't be expected to save everybody, can I?

Cards Against Humanity
In between sessions, we played Cards Against Humanity, which I had never tried before. Lots of raunchy fun.

The Keys to Christmas Place
I played more of a cameo role in this, as a somewhat disinterested FBI agent who got dragged into a freaky case when some MIBs tried to assassinate her. There was something about kids (or gnomes) and Christmas music and a trailer park. I definitely remember Beckett's parrot turning out to be an alien flying crab-fungus. I guess I shouldn't wait so long to write these things up.

BASHCon XXX: Awesome Mix

This year's BASHCon was a wonderful surprise. I was pretty sure I'd have a good time. I can't think of a BASHCon that I didn't end up enjoying. Still, though, I just wasn't getting excited about it as it closed in. I suppose, for one thing, I was preoccupied with finally getting Losing Lanterns polished up and published. A few other naggy details were on my mind as well.

When I came home from work on Thursday to find Tom and Monk relaxing in the living room, I couldn't help smiling. I filled out character sheets and packed while they started up a Z Nation marathon. I was a little cranky Friday morning because this ridiculously cold weather is starting to get to me, but a nice breakfast at our favorite diner cleared that up. They picked me up from work and we were on our way. Not that it was an epic journey or anything. Toledo is only about two hours away.

Monk had signed up to run a game at 5:00, so we were a little rushed, but registration was moving right along. We were all set and at the table on time. I hadn't really expected to get to play in his Black Lotus Affair, because it overlapped a Friday night tradition, but he decided to shorten it so that they could run back to back. Black Lotus is a pulp era journey across Europe, seasoned with the machinations of princes and assassins. We traveled by dirigible, ferry, train, and… well, the train was as far as we got. Monk used a FUDGE variant to run the game, and it seems to work well for him. It was a lot of fun, even if we did have to use those "special needs" dice with the plusses and minuses on them.

Tom replaced our traditional Friday Tunnels & Trolls game with a Crawlspace one, The Swamp Troll. Jerry showed up with Liam, Beckett was there with a friend, and we had two other people join in as well. Beckett and I played characters we had used before in "The Return of Count Vulgarr" but, because of the way Crawlspace works, they didn't actually know each other in-game. I played an on-the-edge small town sheriff in the midst of supernatural cult activity and soap-opera-like personal entanglements. We barely stumbled our way through to a resolution, at which point Tom killed us all.

Paul showed up briefly to say hi and show off a cool bit of craftwork, but wasn't feeling well, so that turned out to be all we saw of him. After the game, I checked in to the motel and started winding down to crash mode while Tom and Monk and maybe other people went out for drinks and snacks.

Saturday morning, my Doctor Who event fell through, so we did some shopping and just hung around. I bought a couple of cool rings and almost bought the Archer board game. I love that show and the game looks like fun, but, given time to think about it, I decided that it would just end up in a pile with all the other interesting but unused board games I have.  Tom, Monk, and I eventually ended up haunting Phoenicia for a while, chatting, enjoying the comfy chairs, and, in my case, sketching out a few maps.

My Icons event, Night of the NecroDon, was up at 3:00. I had Tom, Monk, Liam, and Jerry playing an amphibian, a shape-shifter, a batman, and a dazzler. They dealt with an outbreak of superhuman mob violence, fought among themselves, and finally confronted a mad scientist/sorcerer in his lair. His lawyer got away, though, so there's bound to be a sequel. Monk said he really liked Icons and was planning to get a copy to use in his own games.

I tried out my recently-purchased Noteboard to provide a map of Lightfoot Island and to sketch out certain locations. I meant to take some pictures, but I was too into running the game, so I've enlisted Tio's help to model the product at home. He does great work, don't you think? Anyway, I found this little gadget immensely useful, and so much less cumbersome than the traditional rolled-up vinyl mat. Tio can be contacted for additional work through this profile.

 Jerry was ready to run pretty quick, so I grabbed a falafel wrap to go and we jumped into his AD&D game, part one of A Farewell to Hands. That's a pretty disturbing title if you don't think about the literary pun. Last year, we ended the game with the realization that we had acquired the Hand of Vecna. Not having anyone in the party who wanted to be both mutilated and brainwashed, we decided to look for a way to destroy the artifact. Our sources suggested that we should consult a floating head in Myth Drannor, where it's really stressful to be a wizard. We arrived by magic portal and fought our way through the tunnels until we hit the cut-off point for the next day's adventure. Tom and Monk were in another game, which wasn't even close to being over, so we had a late snack and Jerry dropped me off at the motel.

Sunday, Jerry had a full table for A Farewell to Hands, so Tom and Monk wandered off. Tom grumbled happily (yes, it really is possible) about being glad he didn't have to play D&D. The character I played before had already been claimed, so I played a fighter instead, which was actually something of a relief with all the funky magic distortion going on there. We fought our way on to the floating head, got the answers we needed, and finished off our quest to lose the extra hand by exposing it to the bone-crushing rays of an undead beholder.

After that, Tom presented me with a cool-looking pendant that had a clock inside it. Neither of us knew until Monk commented on it that it was a Harry Potter thing. We met up elsewhere with Jerry and Liam for Mexican food and talked about what a good con it had been.

Conclusion-writing. Bleah.

Just For One Day

This Saturday past was Holiday Game Bash VIII, a big get-together or a small convention, run by North Coast Gamers. +Tom K and I spent the day celebrating that we could be heroes with +Jerry Teleha and a nice assortment of new people.

Tom and I headed over to the Rock City Music Hall a little after eleven in the morning. We were looking forward to checking out the games and spending time with Jerry, but not all that optimistic about our own events because we were running RPGs and, last time, this seemed to be mostly a board game crowd.

We were greeted inside by smiling hosts and a board with the "tour of games" logos on it. They've really got a great venue. The one we went to a couple of years ago was in a church and I ended up in a Sunday school room with tables and chairs that were made for toddlers. This time it was a big open hall with plenty of grown-up size tables and a restaurant/bar in the next room. We signed in, found Jerry, grabbed some drinks, and looked up our table numbers.

The role-playing games were in kind of a nook at the front of the hall. Tom's game was first up on my list. He was running a Qalidar adventure called "Corporate Raiders" and I was helping him out with the rules because, even though they're waaay on the light side, he's d20-challenged. We sat around the table for a while and were starting to think it would be a wash, but then Tom spotted an acquaintance wandering by and snagged him. "Corporate Raiders" was set up so that we started out as almost-retirees with no levels in any class. I based mine on Mallory Archer and John created an engineer named Wayne. I don't want to give too many spoilers, but we did eventually get to make our characters more adventure-y, which helped us survive in a world gone mad with Tom's pyramid-headed raiders and shiny glam warriors. Not exactly the kind of opponents I would have come up with, but it was fun for me to see Tom (or anyone) making his own thing out of my game.

We found Jerry at the bar and had a late lunch. The specials they had for the Game Bash were good and actually quite a bit cheaper than the regular menu. Jerry took off first for a game he was in. Tom & I followed after another round to set up for mine.

We were still fairly early, but there was nobody using the table before me, so we camped out. A guy came over and introduced himself. I think his name was Ben but, for reasons that will make more sense later, my brain insists on labeling him "Sherman Peabody."

The scenario was basically the same one I ran at Gen Con this year. As always, I tinkered with it a bit while we played. This time I left a little bit more a mystery to solve and threw in a bunch of machine-munching antroids. Jerry showed up about a third of the way on and we worked him in. He had a particular grudge against giant ant-like creatures from a bad Tunnels & Trolls experience. I don't know about them, but I had fun, and was especially gratified by their reaction to the "peel."

Next up was Tom's Crawlspace game. Jerry, Ben, and I stuck around, and several more people showed up in short order. One of them said it was the game she had been looking forward to all day. We had some great performances here, which seems to be particularly common with Crawlspace. Ben's crazy administrator (Sherman Peabody), a quirky and somewhat randy detective, an outraged grad student whose work had been stolen, and a couple of hedonists stumbled around the college campus and the surrounding town and turned a vampire mystery into a manic soap opera. (The vampire is on the cover, so I don't think giving that away is going to be a problem.)

And that's pretty much it. They were closing the place up when we left for a late night snack with Jerry.