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Garycon III
Mar. 28th, 2011 09:40 pmSo, another wonderful year.
I ran Bring Me The Head Of Frank Sinatra and had a good time doing so.
I also played in:
John Hershberger's run of Joe Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage. I stepped on the teleport trap first thing, and the party idiotically followed me. So our dungeon crawl very quickly turned into a "get back to where we were". We did succeed in that goal, and we slew a (shadow) dragon and got rich off a couple trolls, so that was fun and successful. This was the first of many games where my obsession with scent was noticed; I acquired the name "Toucan Sam" for demanding to know what the airflow and scents from each passage were.
Jeff Talanian's Hyperborea. Weird Fantasy, Martian Apes, Lovecraftian Things. Fun game; felt sort of like S3, actually, in its fantasy-dudes-exploring-weird-sciencey-thingy vibe. I had a great time in Jeff's game last year, and I had a great time this year.
Bryan Skowera's Court of the Crimson King. Designed around the King Crimson song of the same name. Very, well, metal. Quite possibly my favorite game of the convention--I was playing a monk and thus WAY outside of my comfort zone, and I was very sorry to have to turn my character over to another player and leave to go play....
Tim Kask's GaryCon special this year, "The Sinister Secret of Sweetmeade Abbey". Fun exploratory game, although 12 players made it a little unwieldy even for OD&D. It was in a noisy location next to the door which kept opening to admit smokers and the arctic blast, so it was really hard for one end of the table to hear the other. We all got stung to death by bees. So it goes.
Then I ended up jumping in to the tag-end of some other game that had been going on. This was a late-Saturday-night everyone-is-drunk-and-exhausted dungeon crawl through a semi-collapsed mine trying to solve some mystery about some groups of competing miners or something. It got way silly. I remember we ended up cutting out the lungs and trachea of a grimlock to use as an air bladder to get through a flooded passage. It made perfect sense at the time.
Next morning: Joe Goodman running Dungeon Crawl Classics. Man, that was a blast. I'm a little proud in that my character voiced his suspicions that we were being set up, and Joe improvised the adventure on the fly to make that come true. Bravo, sir, bravo.
Sunday afternoon: I jumped in for a little while while my wife was finishing up her game in an Empire of the Petal Throne game run by Victor Raymond. I took over a guard NPC. We were delivering a message to a really scary sadistic archmage. The DM had played in Professor Barker's game for 20 years, so I was able to play a proper Apostolic Succession game of Tekumel, which was great. I don't think I or anyone I know can run it, because I just don't grasp the metaphysics or enormously-complicated society of Tekumel, and if I tried it would be just another Weird Fantasy take on D&D. So that was extremely cool.
I did get that copy of Lost Tamoachan signed by Harold Johnson, Jeff Leason, Jim Ward (a second time!), and, yes, Jean Wells! On the Nereid illustration! Scans later when I get around to 'em.
And, for you EC fans out there....
I ran Bring Me The Head Of Frank Sinatra and had a good time doing so.
I also played in:
John Hershberger's run of Joe Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage. I stepped on the teleport trap first thing, and the party idiotically followed me. So our dungeon crawl very quickly turned into a "get back to where we were". We did succeed in that goal, and we slew a (shadow) dragon and got rich off a couple trolls, so that was fun and successful. This was the first of many games where my obsession with scent was noticed; I acquired the name "Toucan Sam" for demanding to know what the airflow and scents from each passage were.
Jeff Talanian's Hyperborea. Weird Fantasy, Martian Apes, Lovecraftian Things. Fun game; felt sort of like S3, actually, in its fantasy-dudes-exploring-weird-sciencey-thingy vibe. I had a great time in Jeff's game last year, and I had a great time this year.
Bryan Skowera's Court of the Crimson King. Designed around the King Crimson song of the same name. Very, well, metal. Quite possibly my favorite game of the convention--I was playing a monk and thus WAY outside of my comfort zone, and I was very sorry to have to turn my character over to another player and leave to go play....
Tim Kask's GaryCon special this year, "The Sinister Secret of Sweetmeade Abbey". Fun exploratory game, although 12 players made it a little unwieldy even for OD&D. It was in a noisy location next to the door which kept opening to admit smokers and the arctic blast, so it was really hard for one end of the table to hear the other. We all got stung to death by bees. So it goes.
Then I ended up jumping in to the tag-end of some other game that had been going on. This was a late-Saturday-night everyone-is-drunk-and-exhausted dungeon crawl through a semi-collapsed mine trying to solve some mystery about some groups of competing miners or something. It got way silly. I remember we ended up cutting out the lungs and trachea of a grimlock to use as an air bladder to get through a flooded passage. It made perfect sense at the time.
Next morning: Joe Goodman running Dungeon Crawl Classics. Man, that was a blast. I'm a little proud in that my character voiced his suspicions that we were being set up, and Joe improvised the adventure on the fly to make that come true. Bravo, sir, bravo.
Sunday afternoon: I jumped in for a little while while my wife was finishing up her game in an Empire of the Petal Throne game run by Victor Raymond. I took over a guard NPC. We were delivering a message to a really scary sadistic archmage. The DM had played in Professor Barker's game for 20 years, so I was able to play a proper Apostolic Succession game of Tekumel, which was great. I don't think I or anyone I know can run it, because I just don't grasp the metaphysics or enormously-complicated society of Tekumel, and if I tried it would be just another Weird Fantasy take on D&D. So that was extremely cool.
I did get that copy of Lost Tamoachan signed by Harold Johnson, Jeff Leason, Jim Ward (a second time!), and, yes, Jean Wells! On the Nereid illustration! Scans later when I get around to 'em.
And, for you EC fans out there....