Thanks to deadlines, work travel, and more, I've been remiss in posting these past few weeks. This lasted right up until last week when I was on my way to GamerNation Con 5, The Order of the Gamers (with a Harry Potter theme). I was the Guest of Honor this year, and it was a great time. Lots of Star Wars RPGs were played, and much more.
Wednesday night kicked things off with an on-site BBQ dinner. After that I returned to frantically preparing for my MVG game the next day. I had a surprise in store, but of course discovered that I'd failed to copy half of the character sheets (the stats pages) in my rush to pack for the trip. I quickly remade the sheets.
Thursday morning brought some more of the same prep time, then off to the convention. My first MVG game was the original d6 Star Wars The Roleplaying Game (with Rules Upgrade), running the original RPGA version of my first published adventure Milk Run. The players were suitably surprised and delighted. Five of the six had played way back when. We had a good time as we tried to piece together our various memories among the various versions of the rules. The first edition didn't have the Wild Die, for instance, and the round sequence was altered in each one. I had my original d6 book, Star Wars Sourcebook, and my old dice I used all the time for those games. When I hatched this plan, I expected the 30th anniversary edition would be out by now and so using those. Thursday afternoon and evening were spent talking with people at the con, and preparing for my next MVG game for Friday.
Friday morning - some prep time, then off to the con where I retreated to the back area to finish preparing for the game. My next MVG game was an (obviously) new adventure called Intercept 38B, featuring a lot of material from Dawn of Rebellion. It started on Jedah, but moved on quickly from there. My time was so short before the con that my wife handled most of the character creation. These things happen when I over commit on how many different games to run (which is a regular occurrence). The surprise work trip the prior week certainly played a part as well.
The con stopped abruptly late Friday afternoon when many phones suddenly sounded a tornado warning. We were on the edge of the alert area, with a radar indicated tornado about 5 miles away, seemingly headed away from the area. While several of us went out to take a look at the ominous clouds, the warning sirens sounded a few minutes later, so most headed back inside to take shelter at the back of the building. The dangerous part of the storm wasn't any closer, and the warning dropped not long after. There doesn't appear to have been a touchdown at any point. So....game on. Then dinner and much talking with the attendees. Then prepping for my panel for the next day, assembling some photos into a powerpoint on my phone. Part of my images were on a thumb drive, so I needed a computer to get the two to merge...but didn't have one.
Saturday morning was heavy jacket cold weather, quite a change from the day before. I headed to the con thinking I had time to use a computer to deal with the images, only to discover I had about 30 min until the start of my panel and I was completely thinking of the wrong time. I managed to do it with about a minute to spare...and with only a couple of slides out of order. The panel went well, at about 90 minutes long of the 2 hours available.
Saturday afternoon I played in a combined Edge/Age/F&D game, which I rarely get a chance to do. It was fun and only had one rule I didn't know I was misinterpreting (the circumstance didn't arise very often in my games). Saturday evening I ran a pick-up game of The Sandcrawler Gambit. I tweaked the beginning again. Still working on this one. It's light and a blast to play, but I'm still not quite hitting a few elements I'd like to squeeze in. Christopher West was one of the players. Chris also has a new castle map kickstarter up and running.
Saturday night brought the entertaining lip sync battle, which can be seen (but not actually heard) here.
GM Phil as Elwood Blues, and his brother as Jake.
Graphics by GM Chris
After that, I was pulled into a round of a one page RPG called The Great Ork Gods Hate You. You're an ork, but your success and fate are dependent on spiteful ork gods, played by the other players. GM Chris ran it, while the players also included Sam Stewart from FFG, and two of the hosts from the Eberron Renewed D&D 5e podcast, among others. It was a riot, similar to the way the Paranoia is a fun game to play. Everyone is doomed and knows it.
Sunday morning was largely spent recovering from some bad Chinese food several of us had for lunch on Saturday, but it sounds worse than it was. With no set schedule, I basically talked until it was time for the Experience Point auction for prizes. After that, a con after dinner, and back to the airport for a late flight home.
The con was a lot of fun, as it always is. There was a TON of Star Wars and Genesys played, as well as other games of D&D, board games, and so on. Next year's theme is Gamers Assemble...superheroes.