Knights & Knaves Alehouse

I like Capitalbill's summary, so I'll do the same...

Wednesday
Got in a little late, drank some Spotted Cow (a recurring theme), and played Carcassone in the lobby.

Thursday
Descent into Vladikavkaz -- ran my first game of the con. As it's a sub-level of a much larger dungeon and had a lot of possibilities, I gave the players a treasure map with some annotations to give them a choice of what to do. They chose wisely and took on the Stone Sisters and their "goth girl" blind warriors (the player's nickname, not mine). Lots of fighting and mayhem, a few casualties, esepcially when big-momma spell-casting super medusa showed up.

Chainmail: Viking Assault on a Norman Fort -- this one was run by Paul Stormberg, originally written by Gygax. I was on the Norman side and co-commanded the outer defensive fort against the initial Viking assault. We did a great job of mowing down the Vikings with bowmen as they approached -- until they reached the walls and a crazy-good roller mowed down the entire line of my archers. Still, I think we out-maneuvered the attackers by not fixating on the fort's defense as our objective (it was to protect the Earl's lady and a chest of his treasure, which we immediately evacuated). In the end, we won through straight attrition, having slaughtered most of the attackers.

Archer-eye view of the screaming hoard:


Crypt of the Lost Fire Opal -- This was also Paul Stormberg. I picked the female magic-user as my pre-gen, only to learn to my chagrin we were going to all be 1st level - that meant a lot of creative play to be useful since my spell allotment was very meager. Still, we had a good time exploring the dungeon, and were amused by the hand-slapping antics of Disciple Koh (played by my brother). I think we threw Paul for a few loops, too, as we did a few unexpected things like befriend the bandits living below.

Friday
Jutland with Miniatures -- I put together a set of ship miniatures for use in playing the Avalon Hill game Jutland last summer and decided to show them off this year. The game was fun, except that the four hour block was not quite enough time to really have a good game. The poor German players ran into the entire British fleet with his little scouting force of Battlecruisers, and much mayhem ensued, though the German gunnery was superb, sinking the HMS Agincourt in the first salvo with a lucky hit on its magazine.

German battlecruisers flee the Royal Navy, hoping to reach their own battle fleet:


I had a break on Friday, the first one I'd really had, and got to meet EOTB and talk his ear off about my campaign in the pub.

Castle Greyhawk -- One of my yearly "musts" is Grodog's Greyhawk. This year I was in the same group as EOTB and Capitalbill. I played a high-level Paladin and got to lop off the arm of an Iron Golem, so I was pleased! I think the free-flowing Spotted Cow was wearing down our brains a bit; that was certainly the case with me!

Saturday
Aliens: Hunt the Queen -- Another great Grodog game, this has also become a yearly "must." I played Hudson, so I got to throw out lots of good quotes from Aliens. However, unlike the movie version, I had some great rolls and took out several alien critters with my pulse rifle. Sadly, Allan had a lecture to give which ended the game early (I think we were toast anyway, given that Apone, one of the best fighters, got killed pretty early on).

Grodog's Aliens:


Lost City of the Elders -- this was one run by Rob Kuntz and proved to be heavy on abstract problem-solving. It went well enough, as we only lost one PC who ended up being sacrificed by some elder beings to who knows what. As it turned out, the mission we were sent on was bunk -- it was a ruse to send some rubes (the party) into another dimension as an experiment.

My only other break was short, but long enough to fulfill another annual "must" - dinner at Medusa in downtown Lake Geneva. That place is awesome! And given my Thursday adventure, quite appropriate.

Night of the Walking Wet #4 -- my last event was the highlight of the trip, as always. This one was run by Tavis Allison and has been ongoing since Garycon 2 with the same core group of players and PCs. As always, we had a blast as much for all the table talk as the adventure itself. Tavis is a great DM but gets even higher marks for keeping things flowing when he has a table full of rowdy knuckleheads. We picked up more or less where we left off last year and reentered Castle Kraak where we wandered about some areas previously not explored. My character got to slay an evil wizard AND his hydra (a polymorphed Hobgoblin, I think) in one round with some spectacular rolls. That made my night! This game with these players and DM was a fortuitous combination that continues to be the best part of the con for me. I'm looking forward to continuing it next year!

Tavis' Walking Wet (with all the piles of table plunder - no one goes hungry in this game):



This was another great year. I'm amazed that I can game for 14 hours a day and still feel like I missed so much of it.

Thanks to the attendees for all the pics.

I'm really going to have to try to make it next year. It looks like a great con!

http://s700.beta.photobucket.com/user/b ... 5549807358

Link to album. More to come.

I will pull some pics and post more later (i.e who or what is going on).

Great convention and not to be missed!

To follow in capitalbill's footsteps:

Wednesday: Drove up to LG from South Bend. Reacquainted myself with Spotted Cow! Also found out chainsaw wasn't going to be able to attend

Thursday: Started off the convention in Welleran's game. My dwarf thief managed to survive two lightning bolts (one friendly fire) and petrification but in the end perished from exploding runes while trying to open a chest (at least I disarmed the trap!) It was a great game and I hope to get to see more of Vladikavaz next year. Spent the afternoon, after a lunch at Sprecher's, working on a scenario for a pickup game and then ran the game that evening with EOTB, Falconer, capitalbill and my two friends from Portland. It was definitely fun to get behind the screen again - thanks to everyone for playing! Also make sure to give your demons hand weapons.

Friday: Spent the morning putting the final touches on my convention game (checking stats and finishing the pregens) and in general dealing with the nerves from running my first game at a convention ever. Ran my game in the afternoon. The players were great and thought of some really interesting ways to get around some of the obstacles I had set up. Most of them survived their way to the end but I did manage to take out a few of them (sorry Bill)! I was really worried that I had made it too big for the players to get to their goal by the end of the session (4 hours is not a long time) but it actually worked out OK. Didn't have a game that night - didn't think I could go from DMing to playing right away - but later that night my friend Christopher convinced me and capitalbill to try the jousting (Chainmail rules) and I ended up making it to the second round of the Tournament!

Saturday: Played in Victor Raymond's Empire of the Petal Throne game. We were tasked to find objects for an evil undying wizard and ended up journeying all around the multiverse. We ended up getting two of the three items, managed to gain and lose 2 blaster wands, and kept our cleric from being executed for presuming to cast ESP on some friendlyish aliens. All in all pretty fun and if anyone is interested in EPT I highly recommend playing in a game with Victor. Finished off the evening in ghul's Castle Zagyg game - a pretty raucous session - we had a bit of breakdown in our large party's decision making process in the middle of the game after taking out the leadership of a tribe of goblins, but finished strong with a pitched battle vs a giant snake. Interestingly, to continue the snake theme, our first encounter was with a trio of coral snakes and since I was in the first rank it was a pretty nerve wracking experience as it took three rounds to kill off the creatures - your poison save is pretty bad when you are 2nd level!

Sunday: One game left a Mongoose Traveller game. Sort of a Speed type scenario. We were all various passengers aboard the Moon Transport Bus. We ended up saving the bus and our skins. I've had Mongoose Traveller for a couple of years but never played it. Seems like a fun intuitive system - one of these days I hope to get to run a session. Then it was time to leave Lake Geneval. Before we left my friend Christopher encouraged us to take a stroll on the frozen surface of Lake Geneva. We went about 100' before we decided that even though the locals were driving ATVs out in the middle of the lake we did not not need to risk a save vs. hypothermia.

This was my first GaryCon, and my first Con period. It was a blast.

I got into the con on Wednesday night, around 6PM. Went to the bar to see what was going on, as that looked like where most of the people were. On my way in, I was handed this flyer, which was for some sort of improvisation troupe.



Not really my bag. Next year I'll hang out in my room instead, but this year I was looking around at people's badges trying to see if there was someone there I knew.

After the improv was over, I ran into Ligedog and his pals and we hung out until later when Capitalbill arrived. Beers and whiskey were had.

Thursday I didn't really have any games set up. Someone had already grabbed all of Chainsaw's tickets (the fine folk at the registration desk apparently just set them out on the table when he contacted them with the word he wasn't coming). So I wandered around town for a while, and watched some games over peoples shoulders. Then we made our lunch/beer stock run, and that evening we had the pickup game with Capitalbill, Ligedog and his friends, and Falconer. That was fun. I was very proud of keeping my familiar, Wetstink the Weasel, alive for the entire adventure. Ligedog runs a fun game; I wish I got the chance to play with him more often. Although I think we wouldn't ever run into a demon again that didn't have at least a dagger on him! The other memorable aspect of our Friday night game was our server, who was a pretty young girl who was very nice, and sweet, but either was on some sort of stimulant, or, was cursed by not being born with the brains God gave a lugnut. We couldn't quite tell, but in the end we decided it didn't really matter. It all added to the charm, and she forgot to charge Capitalbill for one of his beers.

Friday I had Morgan's AS&SH game in the morning, and Grodog very generously let me wheedle my way into his Castle Greyhawk game that night. In between I went a little bezerky in the dealer hall.

Both Friday games were very good; Morgan ran a scenario where we were tasked with bringing back some lotus flowers for our patron, and also a side job of exploring a temple of Tsothoggua (sp?) that had been abandoned and cursed for over 100 years (that also happened to be the location of the lotus). We collected the dope, and kicked ass on the temple. It had a sort of giant music machine with song cylinders producing magic effects.

Grodog's game was the highlight of my con experience. We were tasked with taking a powerful evil artifact to a demiplane for hiding, accessed from Castle Greyhawk. Then we were supposed to go through a gate that would erase our memories so the location couldn't be tortured out of us (Grodog is so unassuming looking, and then you notice those detail touches on his adventures). As it turns out, we were carrying the soul-gem of demogorgon, which means that it was a good idea I didn't reduce myself at one point of the adventure, and hop in the bag of holding it was in. We did great in the castle at not wasting time getting to the entry to the demiplane, but got hung up after that, and ran out of time before really finishing the mission.

Saturday I played in Grodog's Alien game - which is a work of art and a blast - and then listened to Grodog, Ghul and Paul Stormberg talk about Greyhawk. That was a cool little seminar. They had the original "castle" that was used in early conceptual design, out of the Siege of Bodenburg game. Also, lots of little tidbits of trivia about working with Gary. Francisca came up Saturday while I was in the Aliens game, so we then got the chance to hang out and shoot the shit some, since we shared the room Saturday night. We went to the auction, which I wasn't particularly impressed with other than it was a benefit for Ernie, and went to grab something to eat. Where you might ask?



That turned out to be my last gaming of the Con. Sunday Francisca and I went out to breakfast at Scuttlebuts, and after that I packed up and hit the road for the long trip back.

All in all, just so much fun. Next year I will make sure I get into a few more games - I think I went too light this year. I probably could have asked to get into more pickup games, but it felt odd walking up to games in process and requesting to hop in. Also, next year I will run a scenario or two I think.

My summary is very short:

I wasn't able to attend the entire con this year, nor bring my older 2 sons as intended.

I was able to make the 4 hour drive up to the con on saturday morning. Chainsaw's loss was my gain, as I was able to take his spot in a room with EOTB. EOTB is a class act, guys.

I only had one ticketed event, which was grodog's Castle Greyhawk game, at it was a blast as always. I also played in a pickup game with some guys from Florida on Sunday night (the guys in the green shirts, for those who were there), and it was great fun as well.

The rest of the time was spent hanging out with people, which is a bit odd for me, as I normally schedule myself from 8AM to midnight with steady gaming at conventions. The upside was I got to spend some decent time hanging with grodog and EOTB, as well as getting some short conversations in with Capitol Bill and ligedog. All great people. Unfortuneatley, I didn't get enough time with others. Hopefully attending the full convention next year will rectify that. I've already reserved my room for next year, and the show falls during my kids' spring break. As my wife works in the schools, she will be free as well, and the whole family will be along for the ride. (which should make ghul happy.... )

I had such a great time at the con, catching up with old friends and meeting some whom I knew only through email and forums. Such a whirlwind of a weekend, I never got to spend time with some of the people I would have liked to, too, like Falc and Francisca. So, who's going to Texas? C'mon, you know you want to!

What dates is Gary Con next year?

rredmond wrote:What dates is Gary Con next year?

March 26 - 31. The lodge is already taking reservations.

EOTB wrote:

rredmond wrote:What dates is Gary Con next year?

March 26 - 31. The lodge is already taking reservations.

Reserved.

The actual days are 27-30, that's the t/f/s/s.

The family and I are checking in the 26th, leaving the 31st. Made my reservation on sunday.

Reserved mine as well. I just wonder why the suites were not available yet. I will have to check closer to the date because I needs my space for 5 days! Otherwise...if the family comes...it could be a steel cage death match.

I reserved a couple of rooms too.

A huge thank you to all the photographers who caught me playing or running a game.

Needed an alibi?