Star Wars Wednesday - Convention Season 1995...2015

The summer convention season is in full swing now. At this point, everyone has heard the San Diego Comic Con news and its fantastic secret Star Wars concert. I caught the panel and more online, while working on my own events for several upcoming conventions. It was fun, catching the great behind the scenes reel from the con, followed up by a random retweet that unexpectedly served up a (presumably) bootleg periscope feed of the concert itself. I actually missed a fair amount but managed to catch the fireworks finale in all of its wobbly grainy phone-camera streaming video glory. So on with the shows....

OK, almost. First, something that goes nicely along with the convention theme this week. I realized recently that 20 years ago today, I was helping to man the West End Games booth at Origins 1995 in Philadelphia. It was my one trip to Origins (so far), in the days before it settled down to Columbus, Ohio. OK, technically it wasn't my only Origins, or even the first one. GenCon and Origins ran concurrently at GenCon one of the years I was there. 

Anyway, the short version of the story is: I took a trip to visit friends and the staff at West End Games before the show. I spent a few days there and hung out with the staff (said friends having departed unexpectedly for TSR not long before). In 1995, Origins and DragonCon landed on the same weekend. The line editors and other upper staff were attending DragonCon, even though Origins was basically in their back yard....sort of. Honesdale, PA isn't that close to Philadelphia, but a lot closer than Atlanta. So, some of the other editors, staff, and at least one freelancer covered Origins. George Strayton and Paul Sudlow were part of the crew. I know there were others, but since I can't seem to locate any pictures, I'm at a bit of a loss at the moment. 

It was a lot of fun. We helped run the booth and ran official games. I recall that one my tables turned out to be the worst dice rollers ever, so fantastic failures and wild die punishment it was. There was a trip to some industrial-goth-like-apocalypse bar that had computer generated abstract patterns generated by electronic music. Very 1990s. 

While looking for the aforementioned pictures, I did find my schedule for running games for WEG at Origins and GenCon a few weeks later: 

 

I received a lot of handwritten notes from Bill Smith, Star Wars line editor at the time. Email had barely started to take hold, and WEG started off with just a single address for each department. WEGedit@aol.com and so forth. The adventures were written by Star Wars Adventure Journal editor Peter Schweighofer

So, I've been to a lot of conventions over the years, but I've never had anything quite like going to three in three weekends in a row coming up at the end of July and beginning of August.  

First up: KantCon in Overland Park, Kansas (KC). For those interested and lucky enough to read this on Wednesday evening in the scant time left before midnight. preregistration is still open. I'll be there Saturday and Sunday, running games pretty much all of the time.

I'm running my new adventure called The Delinquent Hutt for Star Wars Edge of the Empire, where the PCs are highly advanced characters taking on the likely unenviable task of repossessing major items from a deadbeat Hutt. Like a luxury star liner. I'll also be running the latest version of my Paths of Destiny adventure for Force and Destiny, tweaked since GNcon earlier this year. KantCon has a good Savage Worlds fan base, making it a good place for me to run my Pranac Pursuit adventure for The Last Parsec. Speaking of The Last Parsec, I was too busy to do this earlier, but I received the array of print products from the Kickstarter: 

 

Cool stuff. I also got the wild die, but I suspect one of the piles of stuff on my desk has temporarily buried it. This will be the first time I'll be running with all of the accessories (cards, bennies, etc.) completely matching the theme of the game, which I hope will make for an upgraded playing experience. 

Next up is GenCon. I'm not running any official games for FFG, though my Rebellion Day adventure is being run by FFG as the Age of Rebellion entry. I hope to put together some pick-up games, but we'll see how the time works out. 

The weekend after that is Kansas City Comic Con. I'll be attending as one of the Gaming Guests on Friday and Saturday. I'm running Paths of Destiny again, and another new demo/short adventure called The Hutt Smugglers  (guess what the PCs have to do). Um, yes, I'm using material from Lords of Nal Hutta in my Edge of the Empire con games this year...why do you ask?

I'm also running D&D 5e, another new (short) adventure I'm calling The Century Spring:

Every 100 years, the Century Spring must be restored before the waters of the Century River run dry. The time has come, but mysterious creatures stole the magical scrolls of renewal. They took control of the Century Chambers, where the river begins. Can your band of heroes thwart the thieves and restore the river for the next 100 years? 

Sign up is thru the Kansas City Comic Con website. 

Don't forget, the Force and Destiny Core Rulebook is still due out soon. FFG posted the next preview on their site this week.