Disclaimer: If I forget to mention you, I'm an idiot. Post and mock me about it so I remember not to do it again--I've seen enough posts above mine where someone leaves people out that I know it will happen. Apologies in advance!
Wednesday:
I arrived at Gencon just in time to hit the Canadiana Suite right on time. Unfortunately, I didn't know to look up for the flag, so I had to call Rel to get the room number. At this point, I met a huge number of ENWorlders, although I didn't get to talk to many of them for long. Interesting notes include diaglo warning us to stockpile for the killer flu (and then later flashing several people in the corner, prompting my repartee "Anything else is just a pale imitation"), fusangite deciding that I, like Xath, could pass for an elf if they existed and that this was, in fact, a 'talent', talking to Truthseeker for a while about various topics including confidence for my one-shot, speaking to Alenda and Belen about several topics including that weird school that hosted my little brother's last PACE tournament, chatting with Ranger Wickett and Hellhound near the end, and enough more to overload my brain cells.
Thursday:
I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and headed over to Piratecat's Antiheroes game, my first ever Con game. This game spoiled me considerably, although it also instantly sold me on Mutants and Masterminds, which has convinced me that perhaps a sound marketing strategy for new game systems is to convince Piratecat to run them at Gencon. Old One was, of course, perfect as Pinnacle, although those grapple rolls weren't always on his side (but that's okay, he got tons of crits in later games), plus his digging plan to disable the evil device was crucial in saving the day. John Crichton's press release of Yodeling Roach and the Roach Rangers was brilliant. FickleGM's snippy intellectually arrogant comments were spot-on for the character and always funny, and his banter back-and-forth with Migraine was fun to watch. Meanwhile, the Knockout/Migraine/parents interplay courtesy of Sidereal Knight and Ben (plus PCat for the NPCs, of course) was hilarious. The robotic 'must obey Migraine' bluff was hilarious. But as all puny mortals know, Doctor Primus shall one day become your supreme overlord, and...hey, Roach, still have that banana? Although all the ENWorld pickup games at the Con were fantastic, this was probably my favourite (there were several other strong competitors though). Reading Piratecat's comments on how to run an effective Con game in that recent thread, I can see how he definitely used every bit of that advice in building Antiheroes, and I can attest that it was effective.
Antiheroes was followed up quickly by Rel's famous Sky Galleons game. The characters were all entertaining, and I got to try out my faux-Connery accent with Professor McTaggart. KidCthulhu's Tex was great, even when chiding the professor for trying to engage the shark in fisticuffs, and second only to Ladytoll's Budrajah as a killing machine. DaveStebbins's poor captain got constantly knocked out by enemies and slapped by Lizzie, who mysteriously gained about 500 times more personality and a saucy streak to match when Piratecat wandered in and took control. Great fun was had by all, and we reached the apparently-common climactic ending wherein the Professor tries and fails to blow the door in on the BBEG and then we had to quickly lop off the hand before the self-destruct blew us all to Phobos.
The final game of the night was Paranoia, the game which was the least familiar to me of the Con and which I started out playing completely wrong. My teammates were harsh but effective teachers, however, and I soon discovered that it isn't a good idea to make most skill checks out loud, rather passing them to the Computer to process. Each of the players brought something different and fun to the game. Xath's Communications Officer was devious and greedy to hilarious effect, performing effective cons involving falsification of data that made my character's Con Games skill look like nothing. She wound up at the end of the game having stolen stealth equipment from the Computer and avoiding a near-exposure when Piratecat cunningly solicited a Perversity Point bribe from her to give a positive report and then used that very perversity point to try to get her killed. Speaking of Piratecat, (yes, Thursday was the day of the Piratecat) he was a great team leader, always taking the blame while insinuating it was everyone else's fault and hiding under the table (particularly when I made noisy annoying machine noisier and more annoying), plus starting us out with the paper-passing plots when he jammed people's blasters with cameras, killing two clones who tried to shoot him. He was also the most highly medicated and mutilated character, killed by overdose and later deafened by acid ear cleaner and turned into a cyborg to fix this, which led to a hilarious robot impression, all after being stripped of team leadership. Sadly, his last clone didn't make it out of the last briefing. And speaking of that, frater was possibly the most effective member of the team as far as completing the mission, despite the fact that he didn't have any skills or equipment. He made a great team leader and nearly wound up with the job permanently until that oh-so-hilarious slip of the tongue when he praised his 'comrades' right at the debriefing. Thunderfoot, our other skilless NPC-R-NPC, found a niche for himself as official basher with wood. After a rough start, he managed to stay alive for the whole game after getting equipment by just leaving the room before we killed him and waiting until the people who suggested to kill him were dead and we had forgotten about it. Unfortunately, he lost his leadership in record time, but he made up for it by whacking me and others with a plank a lot of times, including the time he wound up opening a rift and trapping Piratecat in the wall (I told you Piratecat's character wound up getting the most weird things that happened to him, right?). Alenda was definitely the most colourfully treasonous of our troubleshooters, and the fact that she walked through blue access only areas carrying her indigo crowbar was pretty gutsy--at least only a few infrareds noticed her, and of course, they had to die. Better dead than infrared. Belen's Loyalty Officer was known for stinking after they killed me for a while and I couldn't clean up (although we later discovered that this was Piratecat projecting his mutant power to frame Belen) and for his surprise attack with the sword. Perhaps the best exchange in the game was Belen: "I take my sword and cut off Team Leader's head." PCat: "You have a sword?" (I did tell you Piratecat kept getting mutilated in amusing ways
). Also, the time Belen turned on the car while Piratecat leaped out of the driver's seat to his death (yup, again
), leaving us driverless, was hilarious. Even funnier, the girls somehow survived the crash using the Chutzpah skill. And we can't forget shaylon, whose obsession with 'bots' caused everyone to consider him among the least stable members of the team, though the higher-coloured citisens didn't seem to care. Still, his crazy robots and mechanisation skills led to much hijinks.
After Paranoia, we lost Crothian, Alenda, and Belen, and the remainder headed to the Ram for dinner. We exchanged many tales of gaming, alcohol poisoning, and the like, and we managed to all make it back in one piece without pulling a 'Claudio', even Xath after the margarita and the 'asparagus' wine.
I headed back to sleep almost glowing. Thursday was totally awesome--probably the best day of the whole Con for me. And of course, technically a decent bit of the end of Little Canadiana in Exile technically counted as being on Thursday too, I suppose.
Friday:
I woke up early on Friday to take part in Old One's Blood Altar game, which I greatly anticipated, as a fan of the Arthurian genre in general. And by Ambrosius, surely we did spill much Saxon blood that day! Somehow, despite his insistence at charging into battle (presaged by his barely-successful attempt to leap over the 8-foot tall wagon in the initial charge), Artorius came out without a scratch. Alright, alright, not 'somehow'. It was pretty much entirely due to excellent support, particularly from Othic, my stalwart reformed Saxon bodyguard, played by The Universe, who cleaved the life out of the Saxon leader with his mighty axe. The RP interactions between Artorius, Othic, and nakia's Cai, all with different battle strategies, really brought out the life in the tactical situation (though Cai's poor dog got killed). I would have liked to have Artorius go out of the way to save reveal's Bronwyn, based on the RP notes, but Bronwyn managed to take care of her assailants before Artorius even noticed. Ethernaut's Leudonius was in a close contest with Othic for melee effectiveness. One favourite moment is when his Shadow Fear failed to affect more than one enemy because, as Old One said, "These Saxons have not heard the name of Leudonius of Gaul." Well, after Leudonius single-handedly killed the entire remainder of their squadron, we're sure they've heard his name now. Rodrigo as Brother Temerius was particularly funny, especially when he ran out of spells and so wind-walked and pretended to be a ghost, waving around his holy symbol as he spooked the Saxons and pretended to cast Myrdwyn's spells. Best line of the game: Old One: "As the Saxons start to disperse, you notice that the Briton captives are milling about. You have time to speak, so you could help direct them to the escape. What will you say?" Rodrigo (nodding): "Ha!" QueenD's Myrdwyn far and away was the most effective character in the game. Between entangling enemies to split up groups and dropping down lightning upon our hapless foes, it is clear that without Myrdwyn (particularly her blasts that knocked out the icky skeleton spell) we all would have been in serious trouble.
Next came my game. I was nervous a bout my first Con game at first, but I had talked to Truth Seeker and others about this, so I kept my cool going into it. Unfortunately, the Fates conspired against me. My game wasn't particularly popular to begin with (as evidenced by the fact that there was not a waiting list or replacement when Buttercup dropped out a while in advance), and then when bolen didn't show up mysteriously without a word and Old One called with an urgent business matter, I knew I was in trouble. Matchstick, who had gotten to the game early, helped me salvage some of the game by bringing romp, TroyXavier, and TX's wife, a replacement, to the location, although by the time they had all gathered, we had lost about a half hour. Unfortunately, not everyone knew Iron Heroes, and between explaining the system, giving an incredibly brief mini-battle to let them test out their abilities, and the actual first combat, we had thirty minutes left. The first combat itself, however, was a lot of fun, and we really got into it and had some great moments (TroyXavier's bluff about his dagger being a powerful artifact led to some great moments). With not enough time left, I just stopped it there, which was a bit sad, but at least they had a bit of denouement, as we skimmed past a section involving two of the characters without players. This was a learning experience for me, and I hope to run this again and do even better next time. Truthseeker's encouragement along with Piratecat's point about having run Antiheroes 11 times and learning more and improving each time from a rocky start have encouraged me to keep at it, and maybe I'll see more of you in my game next year (and of course, anyone in my group this year is welcome to join me in finishing up the second part of the adventure if we can meet up!).
Lastly came the ENnies awards. The awards themselves were a lot of fun, with great emceeing by Piratecat and a lot of laughs from guest presenters and archenemies Rich Burlew and Keith Baker. It's really amazing how well we did, especially considering all the last minute screwing over that was going on. The amount of work put into it was incredibly, by the volunteers who put in man hours, the Judges who read all those books, and especially Dextra, who spent so much effort to make the ENnies great, and it showed. Unfortunately for me, the 'butting in' effect that Thunderfoot mentioned seemed to be at least ten times stronger after the ENnies. I guess I can attribute this to many of the others having been there chatting for a while before the doors opened to the general public, combined with the fact that I thought the tables were only for publishers and guests so I sat in the far-less-social back row, plus the fact that I wasn't in one of the post-ENnies groups like TBR, so really it's completely my fault. Nonetheless, I stayed until most people were gone (though not long enough to see the flood), though I very rarely managed to get in any chatting. I'd say the Post-ENnies was probably the low point of this Gencon, since it left me feeling left out, rather than the high I had at the end of Thursday.
Saturday:
I woke up early again (this is becoming a theme). This time, it was for Piratecat's Call of Cthulhu game. Due to my attempt to give then-volunteer diaglo an entire list of silver and gold ENnies winners from memory so he could tell people who asked, I wound up being named The Professor, which was a quite different experience from the Sky Galleons Professor. It was hilarious, with well-played characters all around. Rodrigo's Gilligan throwing out luggage, scrapping the minnow, and just generally shirking duty as Belen's Skipper thwacks him with his hat and yells 'Gilligan' just before getting knocked over or having the hat dirtied by flayed corpses. Mary Anne getting all the bad luck as she is covered with poison ivy, bee stings, and more, and yet surviving Alenda's Ginger, perfectly vain and seductive as she pushes her way into the sacrificial victim position rather than let Mary Anne be the 'star'. Although everyone was hilarious, DaveStebbins as Mr Howell with Piratecat and then later Ladytoll as Mrs. Howell was really the best--his characterisation was just perfect for how I remember the TV character. Favourite lines include the 'half-manatee' excuse that my poor San-drained Professor made for the Deep Ones, as well as his later "These tracks were clearly made by the perambulatory peregrinations of the rare Migrating Fern."
Next came Alenda's Halfling Musketeers game, which was quite a treat. Although poor Moliere didn't manage to actually use Diplomacy or Bluff successfully on anyone (cursed Lawful Good alignment and those morals about drugging girls with Love Potions like reveal!), we all got a kick out of talking in outrageous faux-French accents as we battled garden gnomes, pumpkins (no, not Rel's pumpkins), bony sea monsters (which we disengaged because only Matchstick wanted to enter from behind after we voted), and more. The Grease spell made every fight a hilarious mixture of slipping, sliding, sneak attacks, reveal tumbling, and random quips like "Roll your healing check BITCH!" (that one-liner brought to you by fett, our gallant healer) and "Are we winning?" (Thunderfoot, after being healed out of unconsciousness following his decision to take on six pumpkins across the map from us by himself while the entire remainder of the party dealt with one mean old gnome. Grappling hooks and ropes were always flying from Old One and Matchstick, which helped us enter without being noticed for a surprise attack, and as previously mentioned, reveal taught us all that the way to cover for a bad date and botched seduction attempt is to slip Love Potion in her wine, which led us to wonder how he made it to the fight on time (the answer, of course, is that he had Quick Draw).
I headed as quickly as I could possibly travel to reach the ENnies booth, and I spent some time talking with Eridanis. By now, they had printed out all the winners, and we handed out a bunch of sheets with the winners as we talked amongst ourselves and with friendly visiting ENWorlders.
Soon after, it was time to go to Chez Geek for Canadiana Part Two. It was much smaller than the first one, which gave me a lot of time to talk with everyone there, which was initially a small subset containing Ranger Wickett and John Crichton (our gracious hosts) plus Xath (who was in and out with blue Romulan ale and then off to see the pre-screening of the next Gamers), Lhorgrim (who heard us from next door), Buttercup, TruthSeeker (who left eventually as well), and later Hellhound, and we eventually had guest visits from reveal, Queen D, and their gang back from True Dungeon who quickly headed out to go see hentai. Eventually, it stabilised into a fairly cohesive group containing the above plus fusangite, diaglo, Bront, Psion, and Crothian (plus I'm sure somebody I missed because I'm dumb that way). We heard many stories, including diaglo's breakin and the time fusangite was accused of being a shapeshifting space lizard (which would be a pretty funny idea for a game next Gencon--maybe I should run a "M&M Shapeshifting Space Lizards of Little Canadiana" adventure next year
). Eventually, we were kicked out by Ranger Wickett's roomies and headed downstairs, where a game of roll the steel d20 and drink if you roll lowest ensued (I watched from the sidelines) as the conversation continued. Eventually, I had to call it a night, and said my goodbyes, as I was unsure if I would see any of the others on Sunday. This led to the ironic statement of "See you on the boards" by diaglo (for those who don't know--he has me on ignore. Probably you too
), which led me to feel a bit better about my posts as people asked him "Why would you put Rystil on ignore?"
Sunday:
I headed to Belen's Midnight game just before flying out. As a band of intrepid dwarves, we braved the caverns full of undead, orcs, a cave troll, and a behir(!) to find the weapon that the Night Kings feared. True to form from Halfling Musketeers, Thunderfoot managed to get knocked out in both big battles, actually dying on the behir at the end (after which I quipped "Can we use his tattoos as a covenant item?"). Oh well, he served his purpose as our map (just kidding, of course, Thunderfoot
). Rodrigo's Tavis added a bit of comedy into our fight against the orcs by taking two rounds to draw his bow due to Hold Person, followed by devastating the opponent. We like to think he was 'aiming'. Old One's Cathal had crazy AC and was always mixing it up and protecting his sister from harm, even against the tough monsters that took out Thunderfoot--in fact, despite my idiocy in never casting Mage Armour, leaving her at 13 AC, Abegayle was not hit once--thanks little bro! Fergus, played, by tkmjcw, may very well have had the most effective single action of the con when he Power Attacked and Cleaved the two orc boss monsters at once with massive damage, getting revenge for the legates who killed his father. Fergus was a combat monster!
After that, I got on the plane and flew back (seeing Psion on the same flight), and I'm in Cambridge now.
So that's it for me. My first ever Gencon was a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing everyone I met again and to meeting those of you I either didn't meet or didn't get a chance to speak with enough.
Cheers!
Rystil
