Morgan's AetherCon VIII (2019) Adventures

This year, I noticed that most non-D&D games were under-attended. Luckily the two games I signed up for actually happened.

The one thing that I did notice about AetherCon is that more often than not, games are sometimes run by the game author themselves.

I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.

---

11/15/2019 - Friday 11am-3pm
Title: Darkness
System: Star Trek Adventures
GM: Sam Webb
# Players: 4 of 6 (5th player was a no show)

Play an adventure from the upcoming supplement “Strange New Worlds” with the writer! Respond to a Vulcan Expeditionary Group distress call on a planet transformed into a black void in the sky absorbing all by 0.04% of light. Locate the Vulcans, and discover what was behind the transformation of the planet.

The GM was the author of the scenario.

I felt we spent a lot of time rolling dice which killed the pacing a little, but I really enjoyed the scenario and highly recommend it.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We're sent to rescue a team of Vulcans on a scientific outpost. Once we arrive, we beat a couple of technical problems and land on the planet with a shuttle. Scanners returned no life signs. Not only that a black dust reduced visibility to almost zero. Through technobabble, we were able to increase our visibility range by pushing the particles back with our environmental suit's protective field.

The GM's virtual table top map was completely dark and we had to move around in almost complete darkness, except for the small bubble of light our suits provided. That was cool.

We found the outpost breached and a dead Vulcan. Exploring the control and command center recovered records of hundreds of asteroids crashing into the planet and soon after, the black particles covered the planet.

Examining the bodies we found and the core reactor, something or things drained all the power out of the EVA suits and core reactor. The EVA suits were breached or the helmets were cracked, killing the Vulcans almost instantly.

PCs went to the asteroid crash site near the outpost via shuttle and got attacked by Vulcan zombies wearing damaged suits.

In the middle of combat, my character got swarmed by both zombies and I contacted our ship in orbit and got myself and the two zombies teleported back onto our ship. The zombies removed my helmet, but I was able to breathe, and they Vulcan mind-meld with me and I had first contact with a new silicon life form that had colonized the planet, but I was too late in stopping security from disintegrating the two Vulcan zombies.

The away team then returned to the ship.

We then changed our deflection dish to communicate with the planet and we convinced them of our intelligence and started relations with them. We also recovered the rest of the dead Vulcans.

The best bits for me was:
1. Realizing Vulcans have a standard optimal outpost floor plan and was able to get the floor plans of a standard Vulcan outpost.
2. Teleporting the two zombies back with me as they were beating down on me mercilessly, and in effect saving the rest of the party who was ineffective against them.
3. Realizing when the zombies contacted me that they had actually touched my head just like a Vulcan would have with a Vulcan mind-meld. GM only described it as tearing off my helmet and digging their fingers into my face. I later asked our Vulcan crew member if the bruises on my face matched the same hand positions as a Vulcan mind-meld. And it was. Very cool.

Cool thing in the game: Space Zombies!

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

---

11/15/2019 - Friday 5:30-8pm
Title: Midsummer Road
System: Ryuutama
GM: Matt Sanchez
# Players: 2 of 5 (game was originally scheduled for Saturday, but it got moved at the last minute, luckily the other player was available too.)

A honobono trip through the woods.

The GM was one of the translators of the Japanese game.

An interesting game. The fun part was making up the world and the next town we were going to. The world building had about six separate questions for the world and town that had to be answered by the players.

The travel portion was interesting in its own way. Weather changed every day (and possibly terrain) and we had to roll for the physical condition we were in when we woke up, hunting for herbs, traveling, and making camp each day.  Each action also had a chance of getting us injured or sick. There was a lot of dice rolling for just traveling day to day. Thank goodness for the automatic die roller on roll20.net, the different combination of die rolls for each check was a bit too much for a novice player.

All the die rolls added up to small daily dramas, but for me, I prefer a game which reserved die rolls for high drama and wow moments.

We did see a couple of interesting things along the way.

Overall, I did enjoy the game for what it was.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We created characters, then the world, then the next town we were headed to. Then we had to buy some equipment from various entertaining store keepers, then we traveled. During our travels we ran into rain, a twisted ankle, a cold, some dragon tracks filled in as puddles, and finally our destination.

At the start we ran into a strange fellow offering us some gold to sign a contract where our travel story would be magically written into a book and then once our travel was complete, would be read out loud to night dragons which ate our story (and the words would vanish from the book).

Later, we ran into deep puddles in a rhythmic pattern which wound up being footprints of a large rain dragon. We had followed the footprints and spotted the dragon.

At one point, a PC caught a cold, got better; then my character caught the same cold the next day and recovered a day after. Pretty funny and modeled real life.

Below is the world and town we imagined:

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===