Gary Con 2013

[rredmond]

So cool!

[Chainsaw]

Keep the pictures coming, guys.

Any good stories yet? Fabulous victories, grisly deaths, fistfights over beer at the Lodge, etc?

[capitalbill]

Ghul's Castle Zagyg game...

[Falconer]

Any good stories yet? Fabulous victories, grisly deaths, fistfights over beer at the Lodge, etc?

In ligedog’s game on Thursday night: capitalbill, EOTB, and I (plus two other guys who aren’t on this board), all playing 4th level characters, took on a death demon (from Moldvay). We were really nervous, but turns out it didn’t stand a chance. With two clerics in the party, we had 5 protection from evil spells and 2 silence 15' radius spells prepared. We killed it without taking a scratch!

Then some of us ran into Rob Kuntz, and talked about the death of creativity for 3+ hours.

[capitalbill]

Some random pics from the con...

[rredmond]

KISS was there????
Thanks Bill. Excellent pics!!

[Chainsaw]

Any good stories yet? Fabulous victories, grisly deaths, fistfights over beer at the Lodge, etc?

In ligedog’s game on Thursday night: capitalbill, EOTB, and I (plus two other guys who aren’t on this board), all playing 4th level characters, took on a death demon (from Moldvay). We were really nervous, but turns out it didn’t stand a chance. With two clerics in the party, we had 5 protection from evil spells and 2 silence 15' radius spells prepared. We killed it without taking a scratch!

Clerics, the unsung heroes, eh? Sounds like fun. Who played what?

[EOTB]

Rob played a half-Orc thief; Chris played a halfling fighter; CapitalBill played a cleric; Falconer played a cleric; and I played a magic-user with Wetstink, my ferret familiar.

[capitalbill]

What a great convention!

Sitting in MKE eating some breakfast before my flight, will post more in depth later. I did make sure before leaving town to drive around a bit on...Broad Street.

[Guy Fullerton]

My first Gary Con was the best convention ever! Not a bad referee among any of the games I played. Head-and-shoulders above most of the games I've played at the local California conventions. I'll probably blather more later, but just a few more pics for now. Click any of them to see more in my photostream...

Captain Stubing running the Love Boat. Looks like somebody got lei'd.


I played in Rob Kuntz's Friday night Lost City of the Elders game. After a bit of recruiting, we filled out the party to 10 PCs, I think.


Bill Barsh at the Pacesetter Games booth.


Allan running Aliens on Friday, and this time the marines hunted the queen.


I played some Mutant Future, a Gamma World simulacrum-ish game.


Gene Simmons ran Marvel Super Heroes.


Jeff Talanian runs us through Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works. We won at AD&D!


The Table of Honor


The Table of Honor


Gary's dice on the Table of Honor


More Aliens. This time on Sunday. Every session was full.


Princess Leia offers moral support to the rebels during their Death Star trench run

[MageInBlack]

Yeah...that is me in the center. I lost around 35 pounds in 7 weeks so I feel like a frickin' rail. It only took about 3 beers to get a buzz going on Allan's Friday night game.

[Guy Fullerton]

Yeah...that is me in the center. I lost around 35 pounds in 7 weeks so I feel like a frickin' rail.

Holy %#@&! How did you do that?

[capitalbill]

Wednesday
Arrived about 1030 pm, proceeded to drink Spotted Cows, caught up with people

Thursday
Played a seventh level human fighter named Hex in Welleran's "Descent into Vladikavkaz" AD&D game. We successfully raided the Temple of the Stone Sisters and managed to extract a sizable haul of treasure from the horde of medusae and their creepy blind goth girl cohorts. Welleran is a great DM and playing in this game was a great start to the convention.

Played a fourth level human cleric named Ragnar Wolfbrother in a pick-up AD&D game that Ligedog ran later that evening. Much drinking commenced, hilarity ensued (you have to love a fighter killing himself by rolling a fumble and dealing himself triple damage in the face), and Ligedog was forced to watch us murder his big bad demon through our use of superior tactics (and luck). Another very well run game.

Friday
Played a fourth level Esquimax thief named Sitiyok in Mabon's "Kolivun's Folly" AS&SH game. Our intrepid (or, interpid ) band of adventurers travelled to an abandoned temple of Xathoqqua to get some rare ingredients for our sorcerous patron. Overachievers that we were, we also took out a small daemon-pict (orc) army and their swine daemon leader, before re-consecrating the temple to the big toad guy and releasing a pack of enslaved night gaunts ("You're free! Free!"). Yet another well run game, and the best made pre-gens/props/handouts I've seen in a con game.

Immediately afterwards my next game came to me (nice to have two games scheduled at the same table back to back). Again I went with a thief, this time an eighth level dwarf thief named Adelweiss in Ligedog's "Fountains of the Deep" AD&D game. This game saw us trying to sneak commando-style into the complex that turned out to be filled with giants, bears, and giant skeletons. A slight miscalculation involving a fireball and the gas-filled caverns below the complex saw my character perish in a nice explosion. Only character death of the convention for me, but I heard the remainder of the party (one other character bought it as well) completed the mission! Another great game in the books and I now had about 20 minutes to run for another beer and a quick bite before...

Getting to play a fifteenth level human thief (might as well make it a thiefy, thiefy day) in Grodog's Castle Greyhawk AD&D game. I have very rarely had a chance to play in a high-level game so this was a treat. The group was full of great guys, the Spotted Cow was plenteous, Allan was top-notch, and we speed through the challenges in front of us...until we didn't. We ended up getting stuck trying to figure out how to procced for a bit, engine racing but wheels just spinning. At the end of the game we were basically at our goal and assuredly would have completed our mission if we had only had more playing time. So I guess that was a moral victory.

Saturday
8 am came so incredibly early after the long day of gaming and late night before, but the World of Thundarr the Barbarian beckoned. It was rough dragging myself out of bed but I was sure glad I did. Sniderman runs an incredibly fun game and this was no exception. He supplied us with some cereal bars (of course I went with Lucky Charms), played us the opening credits, queued up commercials, and kept the Saturday morning cartoon vibe chugging along. We pretty much drove the game right off the rails in about the first 30 minutes and had him scrambling to keep up with our "amazing strategies". We finished the game early, had some free time to chat, and were given a Thundarr sourcebook for the Mutant Future game. Ending early? Thanks for the afternoon nap!

I ended up not having an afternoon game so I hung out with some of the guys, spent some money in the dealer's room, watched some of the auction, and was part of an adventuring party in search of food and drink- we fared pretty poorly, every establishment in town we tried but for the Subway was packed.

Getting to play in Ghul's Castle Zagyg AD&D game was an amazing finish to a great con. I played in two of his AS&SH games at last year's con so I knew his game would be great, but since I had heard he'd be running CZ I had been so looking forward to Saturday night. Despite some party strife I had a blast and if you have the boxed set, the copper container on the cover of the Store Rooms booklet is now empty. The dungeon now has one less unnatural giant spitting python thanks to us.

Sunday
Resting up after an amazing convention and already planning for NTRPG and GC VI.

[MageInBlack]

Yeah...that is me in the center. I lost around 35 pounds in 7 weeks so I feel like a frickin' rail.

Holy %#@&! How did you do that?

Maybe you didn't notice at the table...but I have braces on....which...was about 7 weeks ago. So I was 6' 1" and 250 pounds when I got them so I had a ton of weight to lose. When you put braces on someone with a slight obsessive compulsive disorder...well..I only eat when I feel the need and only eat enough to not be hungry. I drink only coffee with milk and then water the rest of the day. They are annoying to keep clean hence I don't want to eat just for shits and grins so I wait till I actually feel hungry. I am glad I got the kick in the ass with the weight loss and having to wear these for a little more than a year from now...I can probably be retrained by then to "not" over eat like I did in the past. I didn't eat "bad" foods...just alot of "not so bad" foods. Since I can't bite down fully yet...I eat alot of yogurt, apple sauce, and soup...with the occasional instant potatoes. On the ride to GaryCon, my wife looked over at me and chuckled that she can now see my cheek bones.

This all kinda sucked since I could not eat anything on the hotel menu and everyone at the tables kept ordering wings and pizza and it smells so frickin good. At least I could have beer. There is a nice place in town called Egg Harbor where I went for a couple of mornings where they would make me a bunch of scrambled eggs...to go. So although these things will eventually straighten my teeth...they were the last hurdle to jump. Not only do I like Star Trek, video games, computers, books, and D&D...but now I have these metal wires to give me full nerdvana.

[Chainsaw]

At least I could have beer.

@capitalbill - Thanks for that summary, man.