This convention is an 8 minute drive from my home. So, if I only get into one game, it's not a big deal to drive to the convention and go home afterwards. When the convention is in San Francisco, it's a 50 minute drive each way. So, I'd rather play in a couple of games (stay all day) when I have to drive up there.
The only drawback is the DunDraCon shuffler results are posted 15 mins before the first games in that time slot which is crazy. For instance, in a slot, some games may start at 6pm, others at 8 pm. But they don't post the attendance list until 5:45pm. Giving you 15 mins to get to your game. The good news is that they now post the results online in addition to the old fashioned way of taping up paper on a wall, there used to be a crowd of people jostling each other trying to figure out of they got into a game. I just wish they post it an hour earlier. (The exception is the day's first session which is posted the night before).
I was worried about the two games I was running because they were on Sunday and Monday, but both at 8am. The scenario I have is best with a full table. To my relief, both games filled up. There was only one no show for Monday morning, but I had one crasher, so I still filled the table. Yay!
Those more observant might realize I sometimes title these convention blog posts with the words Excellent Adventures and sometimes not. It's a reference to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Some conventions aren't excellent. This one was.
The games were fun, the GMs were good to excellent, the scenarios were all very good, the Players were all good to excellent. I hung out with people from the Con circuit. Picked up some free stuff from the freebie table. Got deeply discounted stuff from the Dealer Room. Definitely two thumbs way, way up. 👍👍
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Tales from the Walker Bar and Grill, Chapter 1
Friday 2 PM for 6 Hours
GM: Ben Lopez
System: Feng Shui
Edition: 1st
Players: 6 (P Myers, M Willner, H Parker, J Smith, Morgan Hua, 1 empty seat)
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Rules Knowledge: Useful
Game Content: Mature Themes
The Walker Bar and Grill, where retired action heroes go to live the quiet life and avoid trouble. But trouble tends to come knocking. Play as characters such as Cordell Walker, Jack Burton, John McClane, and more!
We had Data (from the Goonies but grown up), Magnum PI, John Wick, Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China), and Dirty Harry (but old like from Gran Torino, my PC) hanging out in a bar. There was a whole stack of pre-gens. Those were the ones we picked.
I enjoyed this game. It started off with a bang and we had a big fight near the end, that went on a bit too long, and John Wick was going to die in a couple hours if we didn't get him to a doctor, so we took him to Doogie Howser.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
A German scientist and his granddaughter show up in the bar with a heavy metal suitcase. He looks furtive and makes a phone call about being followed. Magnum PI overhears this and tells us. I go over to the scientist and ask him if he's being followed by good guys or bad guys. His response, "Bad guys, and I'm not carrying a WMD." The granddaughter needs to use the restroom.
A black SUV shows up and Data spots the ninja being deployed, sneaking around the back where the restrooms are. Hot Asian Mama comes in the front. John Wick winds up in a very, very long fight with the ninja. Data, Magnum PI, and Jack Burton deal with the Hot Mama. Dirty Harry, walks out front and unloads his gun into the SUV's engine, comes back in, drinks his beer, calls his wife to tell her he'll be late for dinner, and goes uses the little boy's room. Meanwhile, Data has lassoed together Magnum PI and Hot Mama. Magnum PI keeps on hitting on Hot Mamma and keeps on striking out (failed multiple seduction rolls). Jack Burton is watching over the scientist and granddaughter, who ducked behind the bar. Jack decides to take them to his shack as multiple black SUVs are heading towards the bar. Dirty Harry comes out of the bathroom and pats down Hot Mama and finds various weapons and a grenade. He fumbles with the grenade and blows up The Walker Bar, killing Hot Mamma. Propane tanks in the back must be some sort of code violation.
John Wick spins out his car and leaves it in a ditch, Data's hydron fueled car is blown up, Magnum PI's car is a two seater, so we take Dirty Harry's ex-police cruiser to Jack Burton's shack. While there, they decide to get their story straight and tell Walker the ninjas blew up his bar. They also open up the metal suitcase which has a C4 booby trap and a gadget with lots of buttons and dials, a McGuffin.
A red BMW shows up and a Russian in a red track suit demands the professor and the suitcase. He can give us a lot of money or death. Our choice. He drives off. We decide to head for the junk yard which is more defensible.
On the way to the junk yard, the bad guys has dug a ditch in the middle of the road and ambush us from the woods, ninjas and some guy in a yellow suit with a red mohawk, the Cock. In front are more black SUVs, the red BMW, and a white limousine. John Wick starts mowing down the mooks in the woods. Dirty Harry shoots and kills the driver of one of the SUVs. The Russian steps out of his BMW with a gold plated AK-47. A very big bruiser, the Great Wall, steps out of a SUV. More mooks come out of the SUVs. There's lots of shooting. John Wick kills most of the mooks, but gets mowed down and is bleeding out. Magnum PI takes out the Russian. The Cock has a disorienting crow, but after getting shot lots of times, Dirty Harry takes him out. Magnum PI throws the C4 at the Great Wall, but he survives the explosion. Great Wall climbs over Dirty Harry's car and attacks Data in the cab of the Pork Chop Express. So, Dirty Harry reverses his car and smashes into the Wall. Dirty Harry hits the Wall again. The Wall tries to flip over Harry's car and fails. Data drives the Pork Chop forward and does the same thing, but pushes Harry's car into the ditch. Dirty Harry climbs out of the car and hits the Wall with his M14 in full automatic and finally (got exploding dice) kills the Wall. Meanwhile, Jack Burton has been fighting a Drunken Master who had gotten out of the limo. Jack finally convinces the Drunken Master that he can't win as all his men are dead. The Drunken Master takes off in the limo.
PCs get into the red BMW and drop off the dying John Wick to Doogie Howser who patches John Wick up, dropping all the bullets into a giant jar labeled John Wick. Meanwhile, the PCs give chase after the limo. Dirty Harry shoots out the rear tires of the limo, but it keeps on going. Finally, Jack Burton pushes the limo off a cliff and it explodes at the bottom.
The PCs return and find the scientist, the granddaughter, and the device (which we hid) were gone.
The bar fight was fun. The ditch shoot out started to wear out it's welcome near the end. After John Wick got AK-47ed too many times, the Player had nothing to do (no backup PC). When I brought this up, the GM asked and the Player said he was ok watching the rest of the action, one of John Wick's shticks was that he can shoot a mook every tick on the clock, so he had a lot of action early on. When we got the Drunken Master to flee, we felt we were finished, but the GM wanted us to continue the story, so we decided to chase the Drunken Master.
The GM did have to look up 3 things during play: C4 damage, car ramming damage, and the crit table when John Wick went down. I guess those things don't happen too much in his games.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Cthulhu Dark: The Cable
Saturday 8 PM for 4 Hours
GM: Charles Picard
System: Cthulhu Dark
Players: 5 (F Garcia, A Valbuena, Bill L, Sean P, Morgan Hua)
Provided: Characters created for game
Power Level: low
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Mainstream
In 1858 magnate Cyrus Field backed the most audacious high tech project of the 19th century: laying an undersea telegraph cable across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. As crew on the USS Niagara, you'll discover the truth of that expedition... and why it was doomed to fail!
Cthulhu Dark is a rules light take on Mythos gaming that centers the experience of ordinary people confronting a cosmic horror they can't defeat. Be prepared for themes of body horror, compulsion/addiction, and madness. Safety Tools: X Card; Lines and Veils.
This year, I used my priority slip to get into this game. I had heard good things about this game and Charles told me he was considering retiring the game, so I wanted to make sure I got to play it before it was retired. It was an excellent game. The best of the 3 games I played in. It also helped we had a table of excellent players including Bill and Sean.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Charles gave us the historical background and various occupations for crewmen on the USS Niagara. We picked occupations, then made up a name and the PC's core Conviction. Charles asked us some questions to round out the character such as place of origin. He also handed out some prompts that we had to fill out, whose answers would tie into the mystery. Then we began to play.
Bill picked the 2nd Bosman and created a-by-the-book 3rd generation seaman. Sean picked the Ratter and created Reaper, a terrier who he can talk to. I picked a Cableman, hard laborer who unspooled the wrapped cable, whose Conviction was "Sweat was poetry." We also had a cook who spoke to his dead mom. An assistant surgeon who dished out alcohol and held down patients during amputations.
Our first job, take a small boat and go check out a derelict, find survivors, get the log book, and see if it's sea worthy. The derelict is a rich man's yacht with a starving dehydrated sun-stricken boat owner who was cooking anglerfish on his deck. After determining that the yachtsman was deranged, the PCs broke into the galley and found it was waterlogged, but with an eerie glow. We found rotten papers, a bottle with glowing fluid, and the discarded husk of a very, very large bug. Each time we rolled a 6 or got an Insight, we got weird visions of happy people in a futuristic place with wires inserted into an eye socket. At some point, we decided to take the yachtsman to the Niagara and to scuttle the yacht which wasn't seaworthy. 2nd Bosman and the Cableman set the yacht on fire. On the way back, the cook drowns the yachtsman. One of the more disturbing things was the yachtsman eating the bottle of glowing fluid, biting into the bottle and eating the glass, blood gushed from his mouth. He told us the bottle contained the nectar that would connect him paradise where his wife and the other passengers of his yacht resided.
Our trip was the 3rd try in creating the transatlantic cable. We see the Niagara was pulling the cable back up, damaged somehow. Once back onboard the Niagara, crewmen are in bedlam. Some nectar was pulled out with cable and some of the crewmen had tasted it. The assistant surgeon becomes the anointed high priest of the wire. The cook, his acolyte. Crewmembers, his flock.
2nd Bosman decides to make the boilers explode and goes below deck.
Ratter and the Cableman decide to flee on the small boat, packing it with food and water.
2nd Bosman makes the boilers go critical, but right before it explodes and takes the Niagara to the bottom of the sea, he sees the wire, the wire is life, life is the wire.
Reaper has eaten some of the nectar and Ratter dreams of years in the future, being in a city, and Reaper accepts an invitation by the high priest to join the wire, leaving the Ratter behind. The Ratter wakes up to the smell of cooking and sees the Cableman eating dog meat. Ratter pushes the Cableman overboard who sees a long lost friend and swims into the deep to join the wire.
The Ratter is rescued, but when he goes to the pound to find a new dog, he rejects the ones that talk to him and picks one that he can't understand.
Overall, a very creepy and satisfying game.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Hope's Last Day
Sunday 8 AM for 4 Hours
GM: Morgan Hua
System: Alien RPG - Free League
Edition: 1st
Players: 5 (D Wheeler, D Sundey, S Bea, J Ball, R McClelland-Bane)
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: Colonists
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Mature Themes
Hadley's Hope is a 'shake and bake' colony located on the moon LV-426. Hope's Last Day tells the story of the final hours of Hadley's Hope, all through the eyes of five colonist workers. The time frame is 2 weeks before Ripley arrives with the Colonial Marines in Aliens. The PCs return from a routine maintenance run and find everything has gone to hell. This scenario is from the core book. I was introduced to Alien RPG with this scenario and I love it. I've run this about 8 times already.
All newbies to Alien RPG and one person never saw any of the movies. There's always that one Player and I love it because it'll all be a surprise to them. I had an excellent table of Players.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Events of note:
Macwhirr was on a ladder and a facehugger was descending on her. Singleton, the newbie, decided to shoot the facehugger and the acid sprayed Macwhirr and it was a real surprise. Macwhirr panicked and had a death grip on the ladder, another PC tried to pry her off, but failed. So Hirsh attacked the facehugger again and killed it, but the resulting spray dissolved Macwhirr's leg (random crit). Good times. 😊
At another point, another PC lost a leg, so now there were two PCs hobbling along.
In the end, Komisky got on the shuttle, waited a Turn to lower her Stress. Meanwhile, the other PCs had panicked and fled to safety, after recovering, they headed to the shuttle, but not in time. Komsky took off just before they got there. When Komisky had opened the shuttle, the facehuggers there left the ship, one hissed at Komisky, but detected the Xeno infection in her and left her alone. Those facehuggers then attacked the PCs staring at the departing shuttle (Hirsh and Sigg were shooting at the shuttle in frustration). After killing the facehuggers, the PCs went back to medical to put the two amputees in cryo-regeneration units. The other two PCs got repair parts to take back to their tractor to repair it. Komisky got into the cryopod in the shuttle, just like Ripley in the movies.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
The Adventure of the Sword Tournament
Sunday 4 PM for 4 Hours
GM: Brian Chumney
System: Pendragon
Edition: 6th
Players: 5 (K Betchart, K Ryker, S Bui (one no show, I assume it was this person), Sean P, Morgan Hua)
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Mainstream
The year is 510. The cold, gray, leaden skies of winter mirror the mood of the land. None have worn the crown of Logres since the death of King Uther fifteen years ago. All of Britain suffers under the depredations of rapacious, ambitious barons and opportunistic raiders. You and your fellow Player-knights will join a nameless, backcountry squire who quite unexpectedly finds himself carrying the weight of an entire realm on his shoulders. As landless knights, the characters are presented with a golden opportunity to back the so-called Boy King against the warlords who would crush him in their mad quest for power. This is a tutorial scenario meant not only to teach everyone the rules of the game but also familiarize them with the world of King Arthur, which is often quite unlike our received understanding of medieval life as depicted in contemporary fiction, visual media, and other role-playing games.
I have Pendragon 1e and 5.1e. I've played it and recently bought the 6e Starter Set (I only skimmed the new rules) and I wanted to play it. My favorite thing is to play something before running it, so I can enjoy it twice. Once you run a game (or read it), you can't really play it as a Player. Being the forever GM, I always have to have new material to run, so I sometimes have to run a scenario and never get a chance to play it.
GM told us the Starter Set adventure is pretty long, so we weren't going to finish it, but he'd try to get us through as much as possible, so we'd get a good feel for the game. We wouldn't do a Wintering phase, but he talked about it.
I vaguely remembered the Battle system. I did like the change for Multiple Opponents in combat. Previously, if you fought two people, you had to split your skill and decide how much per opponent; now, you just get a -5 to your skill for both opponents. Failing a Passion roll wasn't as punishing as before. So, all good changes.
I really enjoyed this game. I'm so glad I got to play. We also had a good table of Players too.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We only got to the Battle of Carlion. We did one Round of Battle there instead of the 8 Rounds because we were out of time. The GM summarized the other Rounds and sped to the conclusion. This wasn't too bad as we previously also had a Round of Battle at The Tournament of the Sword, so we did get a taste of Battle twice. We also fought and killed some Picts when we stood watch over The Sword of Peace.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Hope's Last Day
Monday 8 AM for 4 Hours
GM: Morgan Hua
System: Alien RPG - Free League
Edition: 1st
5 Players: N Quinnell (Hirsch), B Recktenwald (Holroyd), K Pincmbe (Sigg), A Lee (Singleton), Vincent (MacWhirr)
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: Colonists
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Mature Themes
Hadley's Hope is a 'shake and bake' colony located on the moon LV-426. Hope's Last Day tells the story of the final hours of Hadley's Hope, all through the eyes of five colonist workers. The time frame is 2 weeks before Ripley arrives with the Colonial Marines in Aliens. The PCs return from a routine maintenance run and find everything has gone to hell. This scenario is from the core book. I was introduced to Alien RPG with this scenario and I love it. I've run this about 8 times already.
One of the Players, A Lee, mentioned that he had watched the podcast interview of me. What? Someone watched that? And wanted to mention it? Thanks! Made me go watch it again. It definitely has some good advice and information.
The Players were all newbies to Alien RPG, and two who've never seen any of the movies, but one admitted knowledge via osmosis through friends and social media. This was the first group to survive with no deaths and they even rescued a NPC. This was the 12th run of the scenario for me. Another table of excellent Players.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Events of note:
Their first adult Xeno encounter scared the heck out of them. But they were able to take it down. Unknown to them, I got the Rise Again crit result. Sigg decided to take a closer look at the corpse and poke it with a broom handle; it rose up again and he had to put it down. The result, Sigg got splashed in the face (Knocked Out Teeth crit) with acid.
The PCs got into the Command Center, repaired the CCTV system, and after seeing where the remaining Xenos were, decided to lure them away with loud sounds on the intercom system (non-mechanical, low frequency, so the Xenos can sense fake movement). MacWhirr got a single success, so I let them decide which Xeno to lure away. They picked the one outside of Billy's Bar. Which let them rescue Wes Osterman (NPC) without having to fight another Xeno.
All PCs and Wes got on the shuttle. Sigg brought with him a canister with a live Xeno egg and half of a facehugger. I was waiting for Singleton to sabotage the shuttle, but it didn't happen, so this was the first run out of 12 where all the original PCs survived and got off LV-426. Amazing.
Tales from the Walker Bar and Grill, Chapter 1
Cthulhu Dark: The Cable
Hope's Last Day
The Adventure of the Sword Tournament
Hope's Last Day
