Friday November 15th
I ran a game of Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space.
Ashes of the Daleks from the adventure booklet was played.
I had one excellent Whovian player who played as the first Doctor.
Not the best choice for physical stuff like forcing open doors on a space station (there were lots of these) and with no sonic screwdriver... well lets say at least the jiggery-pokery made up for the lack of more obvious solutions. Oh and with a Tardis that basically can just leave and not come back the level of play certainly was improved as more thoughtful solutions to problems were required. I really enjoy this game and once again I was left with the impression of having just watched an episode of the show. Cubicle 7 has done a great job not only with the quality of the boxed game itself but with the game system as well. I would say this falls into the category of the modern RPG.
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| Its bigger on the inside? |
Saturday November 16th
A very busy day.
I started off running Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG for two players who played two pre-gen characters each. "Tower out of Time" was provided free from Goodman Games as part of their DCC 2013 world tour. I was send a package of "Road Crew" goodies including buttons, pencils, bookmarks and badge tags ( I paid the shipping on this stuff as I'm in Canada and that's their set up, but they sent me enough stuff to host three events - so I guess I'll get a couple more games in this year if I can).
It was a very weird adventure and very pulp fantasy influenced. That's good as that seems to be the point of the game being inspired by Appendix N genre writing. I don't think one of the players really liked the spell tables but for me this random element is what is missing in most Baroque style game systems (d20 et al.) which focus on balance when designing an encounter.
Everyone seemed to have a great time even though (or perhaps especially that) half of the party died.
I think it all turned for them when the main adversary had a spell failure that ended up working in his favour resulting in an effect that caused all the armour within a 25' radius to fall apart.
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| Its made of flesh! |
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| Fuck you Tipper Gore! |
Next was playing in the Total Warfare BattleTech Solaris VII Tournament . I picked some mechs from those available and started shooting. I could see this perhaps being a little more interesting next time but considering that the BattleTech group put a weekend of demos and tournaments together despite having lost some of their organizers for the event I would say they did an above par job. Great fun.
Finally I joined in on a game of Numenéra. We played an adventure called "The Vortex" written by the game's designer Monte Cooke and GMed by Chris Wachal. I don't want to give away any details on the adventure but I would like to say that I haven't felt this sense of wonder playing an RPG since the very first times I played D&D back in the fall of 1982 when I was nine years old. It was great fun discovering my characters powers and abilities all the while exploring a mysterious temple with no clue as to what to expect next. Rules light system, all new idea, all new encounters – fantastic! BTW my character died at the very end.
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| Monte, I almost forgive you for helping make D&D shitty |
Early morning as I was scheduled at 8:30 in the morning to run a Gamma World adventure I'd written for the second edition of that game. I had one person show up that expressed interest but he wasn't willing to play unless there were some more people showing up. Lesson learned – pad the table with a player or two of friends and don't run your game too early on Sunday morning. I can't help but think that I got that early slot because I may have expressed interest in leaving the Battletech:Alpha Strike Tournament slot open so I could play in that. In any case I plan on posting the adventure I wrote here along with the one I wrote and ran at JimCon II.
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| Possibly the best edition |
Last of all was the BattleTech: Alpha Strike Tournament using the new Alpha Strike rules that recently came out. I've been playing this for a couple of months and its a really fun game that uses a more modern rules light miniatures game system but still has the feel of BattleTech. I came in fourth place but I had great time playing with the other guys and it looks like there is going to be a resurgence in the local BattleTech community.
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| All the fun in less than half the time |
I had a great time again this year and I recommend that anyone that enjoys tabletop games of any kind come out and play next year.
