Gen Con 2012

Another Gen Con is behind us. Conventions like Gen Con are a paradox: when you’re working the convention, 5 days (4 days of convention + set up) is too long, but at the same time, it’s too short to do everything you want to do and see everyone you want to see. Since I have duties as Submissions Coordinator of the ENnie Awards, I have too little time to game at Gen Con. I played exactly three games while I was there (four if you count a demo): Pathfinder, Bulldogs!, and Project Ninja Panda Taco.

Pathfinder: I ran a Ptolus/Pathfinder game for some friends Wednesday evening. The PCs were reformed monsters from the Brotherhood of Redemption. There was a budding romance between the minotaur gunslinger/rogue and the troll fighter; my wife was a good sport to go along with the silly banter. It was interesting that they chose to bypass the Bluesteel door by chopping THROUGH the adjacent wall with an adamantine greatsword.

Bulldogs! Sci-Fi That Kicks-Ass: My wife and my first FATE game. I already loved what I read about the game and really enjoyed the system. My wife thought it was awesome and wants to play FATE (particularly Bulldogs!) again. Yeah, I’m down with that.

Project Ninja Panda Taco: You may remember this from the Kickstarter. We played with the creator of the game, Jennifer Steen (of Jennisodes). It’s sort of a hybrid improv/RPG. It was a lot of fun; another game my wife judges as “Awesome.” Actually, I think she may have said “Totally Awesome.” My Mastermind, Otto von Schnitzelpusskrankengescheitmeir was horribly ineffective and by the end of the game, he completed 0 projects. His minion, Larry the Loitering Lisper, however advanced to Mastermind status by the end of the game. I look forward to playing it more when I get my copy from the Kickstarter.

I also demoed a game of Edition Wars with the good folks from Gamer Nation Studios. It’s a card game that reminds me a bit of the good parts of Chez Geek, but with simpler mechanics. It was a lot of fun. I bought a copy at the con, but now I wish I’d supported their Kickstarter when I had the chance.

I bought way too much stuff. The games I’m most excited to play are Deadlands: Reloaded and Call of Cthulhu (I’m a late bloomer). I also picked up the Beta of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, the new Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight Games. Despite my misgivings about the custom dice, (at least the Beta has stickers you can apply to create the dice yourself) I’m finding myself liking what I’m reading about the mechanics. I hate required fiddly bits and custom dice in RPGs, probably because I have SO many dice already, not being able to use them for a game is a barrier to entry for me. Of course, there is a conversion chart for regular polyhedrals, but that’s a pain in the butt.

The production values are really good. I was thrilled to see actual ARTWORK in this book, rather than having it crammed full of movie stills. It’s already my favorite visual presentation of a Star Wars RPG since WEGs 2nd edition (not the Expanded & Revised; I think they overdid the “Look! We can print in color now!”). For some reason, having original art in a Star Wars RPG book inspires me more than movie stills. Probably because it gets me thinking about how I can use the world instead of how it was presented to me (there’s a lesson there for people making licensed games).

The class & talent tree system reminds me a bit of The Old Republic MMO, but only so far as they have classes & talent trees. They’re not really implemented the same way. It uses a dice pool mechanic. I have no idea how it compares to WFRP, but I’ve heard it similar. It actually looks pretty easy once you get used to the symbols on the dice (and a small cheat sheet will help with that).

Edge of the Empire offers a smattering of species: bothan, droid, gand, human, rodian, trandoshan, twi’lek, and wookiee. I would have preferred mon calamari to gand, though, but it’s still a nice mix. I guess I’ll have to run a few sessions of it and see how things work.

The ENnie Awards ceremony went very well. The venue was the Grand Hall at Union Station and featured cathedral ceilings and stained glass. As Monte Cook said, we “leveled up” (the first ENnie Awards ceremony was held in an internet chatroom). You can see the complete list of winners here. Carlos, the official ENnie Awards photographer put pictures of the ceremony up on his Flikr account.

I’m still working on the Doctor Who post. I thought I would finish it up after I set up the booth Wednesday night or before I got started on Thursday. We all see how that worked out. The next Doctor StrangeRoll game will take place on Friday, August 31st, wherein the PCs will begin exploring the tomb of Pharaoh Amun-Re.

Off Session 2

Sorry for the delay in updating, work has been … stressful.

When we last left our Heroes of the Old Republic, they were hiking up a mountain path to the mine staffed by the occupants of Outpost 3 on Dantooine. They arrived to find the mine seemingly abandoned. Four large insect creatures (laigrek) were milling about the main processing area and moved to attack when our intrepid investigators entered. Despite the Jedi’s lightsaber, the battle seemed to be going poorly until Baccus used some mining explosives. When the dust and bug guts settled, they went about investigating the control room near the processing area.

They found evidence of another bug in the control room (probably fled from the massive explosion that just took place), and a curious thing: the surveillance system had been sabotaged. Something strange was in the air, a discordant musical sound echoing through the mine. They set out to investigate, following the rails deeper into the mine until they found a working shaft lift. As they descended the lift, the musical notes became louder.

At the bottom of the shaft, they found a labyrinth of mining tunnels. However, one was clearly used more than the rest, so the heroes followed the trail to a large chamber full of copper-colored translucent crystals. The chamber contained several examination tables, medical diagnostic equipment, some odd-looking machinery, and many empty cages. One of the cages was not, in fact, empty, and contained a strange creature that looked like a butternut squash on top of banana leaves wearing a mushroom. A Squib was fiddling with the lock on its cage whilst making the musical noises on a strange instrument.

The Squib, whom our heroes had difficult getting a name from (they alternately called him Ikky, Rikki, Tikki, but not Tavi), was a prisoner of a scary-looking Mirulakan, as was the strange, plant-looking alien, who introduced himself as “Bob” (with a strange emphasis on the “b” sounds). Both “Bob” and Padawan Jakar could sense the Force in one another. The heroes freed the aliens, collected some samples of crystals and poked around the makeshift lab. They found a datapad with a slicer’s spike attached to it. Fortunately, the spike was rigged to not work properly, so they were able to see several journal entries entered by Ben-Dara Jobi.

Ben-Dara Jobi Alpha Phase Journal

They concluded that it appeared Ben-Dara Jobi was experimenting with sapients to attempt to infuse them with Force energy in the hopes of repairing his own severed connection with the Force. They searched around the lower levels some more and found the masticated corpses of the missing miners–presumably the people upon whom Ben-Dara Jobi was experimenting. They left the mine and returned their borrowed mining equipment to Outpost 3, told the remaining citizens of the remains of the miners and headed back to Garang. There, they attempted to track down the man who sold the data spike to Ben-Dara Jobi. They found him in an electronics store, but to their dismay, he only SOLD the data spike, he didn’t program it.

Next, our intrepid band went to a cantina to attempt to locate the slavers with whom Ben-Dara Jobi dealt to get offworld. While subtlety wasn’t their strong suit (Baccus just out-and-out asked a seedy-looking fellow where he could buy someone to do work that he didn’t have to pay). Fortunately, no one called the police on their for their suspiciously-specific inquires and they learned that the only people who recently visited Dantooine who might be involved with such nefarious dealings was a Rattataki named Karsta Djannis. The man was reluctant to say more, so he suggested Baccus look around “sunfall.” Baccus suggested to the rest of the group that they wait until dusk to see if he came back to the cantina.

Meanwhile, the others discussed attempting to track down a slicer who programmed the data spike and was apparently jilted by Ben-Dara Jobi. They had the names of the only two slicers of that skill known to operate in Garang: Moki and Dandy Black….

The next game will take place on May 4th. As that is “Star Wars Day” (May the 4th be with you!), we’ll likely continue the Star Wars campaign and pick the Doctor StrangeRoll game back up on May 18th.

 

Off Session 1

This past Friday night was the second meeting of the group, but our first off session. When I started Doctor StrangeRoll, I always intend to play an alternate RPG on the days when several members of the D&D couldn’t make the game, and we were down to 50% attendance Friday night (only one of which was unexpected).

So, I broke out the West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game. That’s the D6 version that went out of print in the 90s for those of you keeping score at home. It’s nice and rule-light and easy to run, so it makes an excellent alternate game to play when we’re down enough players that picking up the D&D game where we left off would be a problem.

Two of my players showed up with characters already made, so we had to wait while the third made his character (not unexpected). My game prep was pretty lacking because I really only knew ahead of time what one character would be (I knew about the second about 2 days before game day). I find it hard to prep if I don’t know what kind of characters there are going to be. For example, it’s not really appropriate to create an adventure around a Jedi Master sending his apprentice out on tasks if the entire group is made of smugglers, bounty hunters, and other fringe characters, nor it is appropriate to have them indebted to a hutt if most of the characters are closely affiliated with the Jedi. I can usually ad-lib Star Wars pretty well (probably because it’s been part of my life & imagination for 34 years), but I did have a little trouble Friday night getting into things; I suspect it was a result of fatigue. It was a very taxing week.

 

Anyway, our Star Warsian odyssey starts with Padawan Jakar, a mon calamari and former Sith apprentice of Darth Ul being tasked by his new master on Tython, Jedi Master Shayl Bey’lya, to go to Dantooine and investigate reports trouble near a mining town, thought to be caused by a fallen Jedi, thought to be dead. Jakar is accompanied by a togorian Bounty Hunter, Khalendri. They received the name of their target: Ben-Dara Jobi and the knowledge that he was once a Jedi. Ben-Dara Jobi fell to the Dark Side during the Cold War and was severed from the Force, rather than being killed. Some time, near the end of the Cold War, he was presumed dead. The two impulsive, would-be heroes rushed off to find transportation off Tython.

While in the Spaceport, they ran across a human pirate, Baccus, who was also looking for transportation. A Republic Captain crossed their path, barking orders at his command crew, and with the help of another Jedi, S’oona Onos, they convinced Captain Damatos to grant them passage on the Republic Cruiser Crimson Hammer (Jedi stick together, and Dantooine wasn’t too much of a delay from the cruiser’s regular destination). Baccus attempted to break into the cruiser’s armory, but when he discovered it was guarded by two battle droids and a couple of armored turrets, decided the potential gains weren’t worth the risks, particular when one takes into account the fact that there’s no where to run when you’re on a cruiser in hyperspace.

The Crimson Hammer dropped our intrepid crew off in Garang, the capital of Dantooine. From there, they headed to the nearby Jedi Enclave to see if they could find more information about Ben-Dara Jobi, such as his description, possible location, and other important details for which they neglected to ask Master Bey’lya. The Archivist at the Jedi Enclave, Dorak wondered why the Council didn’t contact them about Ben-Dara Jobi’s possible resurfacing, but was more than happy to assist Padawan Jakar and his friends. They learned that Ben-Dara Jobi was a miralukan, a species born blind who “see” through the Force. Severing Ben-Dara Jobi from the Force would have robbed him of his most important sense.

Armed with knowledge of Ben-Dara Jobi’s background, they rented a speeder from a shift rodian and traveled to the mining town, Outpost 3. They learned that the mine at which most of the townsfolk earn their living recently suffered a collapse and they’ve been unable to determine a cause or get help. Also, laigreks indigenous to the area have become unusually aggressive since the collapse of the mine. Baccus suggested they acquire some equipment to help them explore the mine and they convinced the shop keeper to supply them with the mining corporation’s equipment free of charge since no one was using it anyway right now. Equipped with detonator packs, syntherope, mining lasers and one breathing mask (the masks available would fit neither a togorian nor a mon calamari and Baccus’s attempts to modify them met with catastrophic failure), they set off toward the mine….

You can read more about the setting and background on the “A Galaxy at Peace” campaign page.