What was probably my favorite game of the convention really only happened by dumb luck.  This game was sold out, but then someone had to return a pair of tickets, and was nice enough to post about it on the Goblinoid Games forum.  I snatched them up, and sold my extra to BigFella, so the two of us got to sit down together for a little old school dungeon delving at its finest.

The game was billed as an intro to the system, but naturally the guy had incorporated a lot of his own house rules.  With this system, I can’t imagine how you could not.  I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone to ever run a “straight” LL game, it just begs to be tweaked.  The game was a little slow out the gate as we got a feel for what this GM’s style was.  He made a few choices I would never have made myself, and at first I chafed at them, but eventually I just chilled out and went with the flow and the game got very exciting.

I was playing a level 1 elven magic-user.  His rules allowed me to use a bow, thank goodness, as the only spell I had was magic missle (sleep was not in my book, and thankfully so as we faced almost entirely undead) and when I finally cast the thing my target died before the spell went off and I lost it.  The bow was really the only saving grace of this character, well, that and his torch bearer.  The GM had actually listed a few hirelings on various player’s character sheets, under equipment naturally.  We had a couple men at arms, and a couple torch bearers.  I still bemoan the fact that I managed to have a torch bearer but didn’t own a single torch.  Well, thankfully we found a few horses hobbled at the entrance to the dungeon, and nobody in the party felt any real compunction rifling our rival delvers mounts for goods, and thus I scored a couple torches for my torch bearer.

Eventually we reached a treacherous bridge over a chasm and our light could not reach the other side.  Somehow, I managed to get talked into being the first one across due to my light weight and infravision.  How many first level magic-users must I play before I realize I should never ever ever give in to this kind of crap?  Sure enough, the chasm was full of stirges.  I had a rope tied around my waste and they were able to haul in the dried husk of my corpse, but that was the end of the game for me.  Or was it?

Remember that fateful torch bearer?  Well, I immediately took over the personality of the torch bearer and insisted that my elven master had ordered me to take care of all his belongings should he fall.  Even though the GM claimed the torch bearers were “non-combatants”, I kept pushing the envelope, trying to use the bow of my fallen master to help the party.  Personally, I would never call any NPC a “non-combatant”.  Sure, I might ratchet down his ability to fight by quite a lot, but given a choice between grisly death and trying to figure out how to swing a sword, I think most of us will go with the sword.  Anyway, after some very good rolls my character was granted by the GM “man-at-arms” status, and we all joked that I would surely make level 1 by the end of the adventure.

But it wasn’t to be.  At the end we found a big hall full of horrible undead, and though warned against entering, it’s a con game, so naturally we were feeling a bit more reckless than a normal party might be.  In the picture on the left you can see the dwarf and the fighter, our final remaining two players, surrounded by horrible undead.  It was at this time that our dwarf’s luck changed.  The guy was nailing stuff left and right, but sadly in the final fight his luck changed.  Ultimately it came down to a couple final rounds between him and the big bad creature, which we new was pretty hurt.  In fact, the GM later told us that she was down to just 3 hp and killing her would destroy all the rest of the undead.  But it was not to be, the dice just wouldn’t have it, and our brave dwarf fell.  Yup, that’s right, TPK.

Quite possibly the coolest, funnest, most exciting TPK I’ve ever been a part of.  Even though only one guy was still in the game, everyone was leaning over with anticipation every time the dice hit the table.

Really good stuff.  My hat’s off to the GM, he ran a bad-ass game.

Friday afternoon I was scheduled to play in a Tunnels & Trolls game.  I was kind of surprised when I saw T&T on the event list, and given that I’ve played plenty of solo games and GMed a regular game once but never played, I figured I’d sign up.  There were actually two games, so I wrote the second one down in my list of back-up games should I fail to get my first picks during event reg.  Which of course is exactly what happened, so I ended up with tickets to both T&T games.  By the time Friday afternoon rolled around I really wanted to spend more time in the Exhibit Hall and check out the Auction, so I gave the T&T game a pass, figuring I’d get my T&T fix on Saturday.  For now, it was off to the Exhibit Hall.

I have a tiny clip-on video camera I brought with me to the convention, and the one thing I recorded a lot of was walking around the Exhibit Hall.  Not terribly exciting stuff, but I figure I’ll eventually edit it to speed through the walking parts and may do a little voice over to comment on the booths we see.  For now, I’ll give you the highlights.

If I were summarize the feel of this year’s convention to others in one word, it would be: subdued.  I found no huge displays of anything really.  No massive booths decked out to look like a castle, no scaffolding that reached the roof, no big televised magic tournaments or huge statuary anywhere really.  OK, a tiny bit here and there, but not nearly what I’ve been used to in the past few years.  On one hand, this worried me a bit that the convention was suffering, on the other, it was kind of a nice “back to the roots” feeling, like the convention was all about RPGs again.  Except for my own company’s brief appearance handing out t-shirts for our latest game on Friday, I didn’t see a single video game oriented booth in the convention hall.

That isn’t to say there wasn’t some weird stuff in there.  Most notable was a booth that was decked out to look like a goth club, complete with thumping music, mini-bar, and lounging goths and steam-punk kids who looked far too cool to be bothered actually attending the convention.  I thought I saw some dates or a name near the top of the booth and I kind of figured it was basically an enormous and rather expensive ad for another convention.  Though I have no idea how much they were charging for those drinks, maybe enough to pay for the booth?  Anyway, turns out it was the White Wolf booth.  The fact that there wasn’t a single product being sold there (other than booze), what really boggles my mind is the fact that I didn’t even know it was White Wolf until reading other people’s blogs after the fact.  Seriously, how can you even claim it’s a promotional trick if I don’t even know what it is you’re promoting?

This year I bought no miniatures, but I did pick up the requisite Fantasy Flight game I’ll likely never play.  My main goal was to look for resellers of old out of print stuff.  Troll and Toad sadly had very little with them in that regards except for copies of Dark Tower and Palace of the Vampire Queen, both way too pricey to even contemplate I’m sure.  Otherwise their booth was full of magic cards and D&D minis.  Eventually I got BigFella to take me to a couple booths he found — House Atreides and another whose name I can’t find, but suspect was UK based.  I bought a few modules and old accessories, which I have yet to find the time to page through.  I really expected more though — I couldn’t even find a first printing PHB!  Well, turns out the real gold mine for that stuff is the Auction, which I will cover in another post.

I really enjoyed roaming the exhibit hall, which I did a lot, though ultimately I found very little to get excited about.  I saw no thrilling brand new releases.  Even Wizard’s booth had just their standard stock of Magic and 4e stuff.  Still, nothing really makes you feel like you’re at GenCon quite like roaming the Exhibit Hall.  It’s so overwhelming and awesome.  Despite having maps and making many passes over several days, you never quite get a handle on where anything really is.  Trying to find a booth you saw the other day is pretty close to impossible.  I guess that’s why I really want to get that video posted, I think it really gives you the best sense of scale of this crazy convention.  It really is huge!

Anyway, that was my Friday afternoon.  Next up was playing in the other Labyrinth Lord game, and the realization that the con is now more than half over.  So sad!

Friday morning I felt myself torn.  I was scheduled for a Warhammer FRPG game with Jenn, and having played a different game with the same GM already she warned me I might not like his style.  I could also decide to play the second half of the AD&D tournament from yesterday, which I had a reasonably good time at.  Waffling between the two, I decided to stick with the plan and go to the Warhammer game.

I stand by my decision, even though the Warhammer game was not very good.  The GM had basically written a long choose-your-own-adventure centered around a mysterious location which we were occasionally allowed to interact with, or at least ask for more detailed information about.  I did have an amusing character, and some of the other players were very good, and I enjoyed the interplay we had.  I tried at one point to push something into the game, but quickly realized it was moot and so sat back and enjoyed the train ride.  However, the end was just unbearable.  There we were, surrounded by the bad guys, and told that we could leave with our lives or die right now.  It was only halfway into our time allotment, and we had had pretty much no action all game, so some players decided it was time to fight.  The GM then narrated our forceful ejection from the building and the game ended.  Sigh.

Ultimately I was glad to have a variety of experiences at GenCon, some good, and some bad.  How am I to decide what it is I like and want more of if I don’t try everything?  (Hmm, getting a little philosophical here.)  Also, I didn’t mind having a game end early so I could have a little more time in the exhibition hall.  Unfortunately, this game was not the worst of the con for me, but more on that later.

GMs like this really make me feel bad for players for whom this is their only gaming experience.  I’d hate to think people turn away from the hobby thinking it isn’t very fun simply because they’re playing with a GM who really ought to just go and write a book already.  I guess the only thing I can really do is get out there and run more stuff.

This picture, by the way, has nothing really to do with this game in particular.  I saw this guy at some random point during my exhibit hall wanderings and just had to get a picture.  Usually I hate it when people gum up the halls trying to get pictures of some doofus in a costume, but I just couldn’t resist.  His costume seemed thematically appropriate to this post, so there you have it.

When originally planning our GenCon trip, I thought I wouldn’t sign up to run any official games, and instead just try and organize some pick-up games when I felt like it.  However, I saw that Dan Proctor put out a call for folks to run Labyrinth Lord at GenCon, so I signed up to run one officially.  Good thing I did, as I never did make it over to the open gaming area.  I have no idea how difficult it would have been to run something off the cuff vs. officially signed up.

All 8 tickets sold out right away, and I had 7 of them show up.  The one guy who couldn’t make it sent his ticket with his friends in case someone else wanted it.  I had one player who said that he knew a couple people that wanted to get into the game if there was open space that he could call, but he didn’t think just one of them would want to come by himself.  It was pretty nice to feel so in demand.

The game I ran is called “Come What May”, and is billed as a “sandbox style” game.  Basically there are a bunch of threads and it’s up to the players to decide what direction to go.  I have some very adaptable bits of background that I can twist and change as needed to try and give the end of the game a decisive feeling ending.  The last time I ran this I gave the players cards with elements  to work into their characters to try and make them care about some of the many plot hooks.  Then I threw them into the tavern where they could uncover info and decide what to follow up on.  This worked in some cases, not in others, and ultimately the players floundered a bit at first.  So this time instead I started outside of the town and hit them with a combat right off the bat on their way to town, so they could gel as a team before thinking about what leads to follow.  I skipped the background cards and just described all the tavern occupants in great detail when the players entered and made sure that all the NPCs were very talkative.

It more or less worked.  This group spent a bunch of time in the tavern talking to different people and picking up pretty much every lead possible, then half of them got impatient and they headed out to the area that simply sounded “the most exciting”, namely a mysterious tower that appeared a few weeks ago on a nearby hillside.  This got them into some good exploration and combat areas and finally led them to rescuing a missing girl, which is where we ended.  It was definitely not as nicely tied up at the end as the first time I ran it, but the players seemed to enjoy it, and at least one even suggested we all reconvene the following night to finish it out.

Interestingly, when I talk to other folks that played this game, the thing they remember is the tower.  They also ended their game there, but only after exploring some other avenues first.  It is most certainly the strangest and thus probably the most exciting sounding area.  While other stuff including bandits and slavers exists, the tower contains the most fantasy elements.  I can’t help but feel that perhaps I’m making things too complicated with this module.  Perhaps I should have the adventure just start with “a mysterious tower appeared in the area at the same time a girl went missing, and you have entered it to discover if the two are related,”  then double the size of the tower, add a lot more stuff to it, and let the party have at it.  I think I’ll have to come back to this after I finish all my GenCon blog posts, as there are two other experiences I had that tie into this.

Oh yeah, one other interesting tidbit — of the seven players we had one cleric, one magic-user, and no elves or thieves.  So pretty much everyone else was a fighter, halfling, or dwarf, which amounts to a lot of fighters really.  For all my griping about thieves, it was really kind of interesting playing without them.  Honestly, I’m not sure I noticed the loss.  The party made a very straight forward assault on the tower, which suits a group of mostly warriors, and I think it worked just fine for them.  So yeah, I think I could probably ditch thieves and not worry too much about it.

Ultimately, I think the game was a success.  I will certainly run more of this kind of thing in the future.  I’m very interested in honing my convention game writing and DMing skills.  I’ll have to start looking into when the next local con where I can run some stuff.

After lunch and a confused first wander through the exhibitor’s hall on Thursday, I reported to the Reaper painting area for the Speed Painting competition.  Basically a big group of people are each given the same miniature, pair of brushes, limited set of paints, and just 45 minutes to produce the best painted miniature they can.  The end products are judged, the winner receives a free mini or similar, and the top two or three contestants are given passes to compete in the finals on Sunday.  I’ve never seen the finals myself, in the past I’ve always had to leave to catch my flight before then.  This year I had ample time, which of course meant I was doomed to not make it in.

In fact, for some reason the registration system screwed up and sent me two tickets to the event.  I was going to return the extra, when I remembered that BigFella had some trouble getting tickets to pretty much anything this year, so I offered it to him.  He gladly accepted, and then I realized this would mean we’d be going head to head in the contest.  Did I mention he’s a professional artist?  Doh!

Guess who won?  Yup, BigFella got a pass to the finals and yours truly did not.  I kind of figured it would go that way anyway, so I’m not really that disappointed.  I suppose it probably would have helped if I had painted a mini sometime in the past three months before the contest.  While it would have been nice to get into the finals and have another something to do on Sunday, I still had a lot of fun and of course I got to keep the mini, which is pretty darn cool.

Here he is, the tiny Gandalf mouse.  This is the first year I’ve been given something other than a female adventurer to paint.  I actually really enjoyed painting him.  Jenn bought the entire set of mousey adventurers after the competition, which I think is great as they’re awesome figs and maybe, just maybe, it’ll get her back into painting.

Unfortunately he did get a little scraped up in transport home, so I might have to re-touch him a little before sealing him up.  Even though the limitations of the contest produce minis that aren’t really up to my normal standard, I like to keep them in their original state as best I can.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with this little guy — he’s not exactly something I’d expect to use in regular play.  Perhaps he will have to live on my desk here or possibly at work.

Next year, Reaper.  Next year I’ll get into the finals for sure.

Here it is, 4:00 on the day after GenCon, and I’m now starting to feel recovered enough to post about it.  Actually, I’ve spent a lot of time today sifting through pictures and video footage I took while there, so expect a lot of posting including media in the upcoming days.  I’m going to try and keep the individual post sizes down, which means focusing each one on just one thing, so for today I’m going to talk about my first game of the convention.

I reported to the Sagamore Ballroom bright and early Thursday morning at 9:00 AM.  Note to self: stop buying breakfast at the hotel restaurant on the first day.  I do it every year, and every year I’m amazed at how expensive it is.  When will I learn?  Anyway, I love playing in the Sagamore Ballroom.  It’s right above the exhibitor hall and it’s enormous.  It really makes you feel like you’re at GenCon.  I’m really hoping that when the ICC renovations are done, other games that are spread out in various hotel ballrooms will all return to the main convention center.

Usually the Sagamore is for “official” D&D games only — which really means WotC endorsed 4e stuff.  So I was a little surprised to be playing an AD&D game here.  Turns out the game was in fact a tournament.  They ran three tables of it, it was scored, and apparently it was in two parts.  They never sold tickets for the second part, the assumption was that if you came on Thursday morning to play, you would come back and play Friday morning as well.  An unfortunate assumption, as I already had another game scheduled for Friday morning.

The game itself was a lot of fun.  The module was Stonesky Delve, a module written expressly for GenCon 2010 and which I found in print in the exhibition hall.  I actually bought a copy of the module and am thinking of running it at the next HelgaCon, so I won’t give too many details away.  The thrust of the first half though was mapping out a natural cavern, and I had volunteered to be the official mapper for the table.  This had to be the most difficult map I’ve ever had to draw.  It was maddeningly fun.  I was also playing a dwarven thief, and had a nice reparte with the other party thief – a halfling.  It was quite flattering to hear his complaints when I mentioned I probably would not make it to the second round on Friday.

Anyway, it was very cool to be part of an official AD&D tournament at GenCon.  I feel like a real bona-fide member of the OSR clan now.  I’m also now really intrigued by the idea of a point based tournament system for running convention games.  It really does help give the game a certain context and motivation, even if ultimately at the end the points are meaningless.  I never even found out how we scored.  However, I did leave my crazy map behind for whoever played in that GM’s second half of the module, and I’m just tickled by the idea of someone being handed that thing and expected to pick up where I left off.  I wish I could’ve seen how that game went.

The boss mentioned the old “Gold Box” SSI games in a recent speach, which got me feeling a little nostalgic about them.  Then over the weekend I was telling Roly about this, and was amusing her and myself with tales of what it was like even having a computer back in 1988, nevermind the video games.

Pool of Radiance was the first video game I ever bought with my own money, and remains one of the only games I ever played through to completion.  I first learned about this game from an ad in a Dragon Magazine.  The concept amazed me, I had to have it.  I saved up my money, and eventually paid what I thought at the time to be an astronomical amount for anything, nevermind a game: $55.  Funny, video games don’t seem to have changed much in price now in over 20 years.

OK, now that it was lodged in my brain, I had to do something about it.  Back in college, when these games were just somewhat old and not the relics they are now, someone bought me a CD compilation called The Forgotten Realms Archive, which contains all the old gold box games, the Eye of the Beholder series, etc.  I tried to run it on my machine, but discovered that the animation was tied to the CPU speed, and my P75 tore through the thing making it not very enjoyable.  The CD then joined my stash of old games that would lie forgotten in a drawer until, well, yesterday.

I pulled the CD out and tentatively put it into my CD tray, not knowing what to expect especially given that I run Ubuntu Linux now.  I found installer executables and some readmes.  Digging through the text it hit me: oh yeah, these were DOS games, even predating MS Windows.  Wow.  OK, I bet there’s reasonably good DOS emulator out there, right?  Yup, a few minutes later and I was installing DOSBox.  I dug up a spare 2GB usb stick I had lying around, and copied a few of the games to it.  I also copied binaries for DOSBox, both linux and windows.  I wrote a couple quick scripts, and now I’ve got a USB stick with Pool of Radiance and Eye of the Beholder installed that can run on pretty much any machine I stick it in.

Pool of Radiance by SSI

Here it is, Pool of Radiance running on my Asus T91 netbook, which runs Windows 7.   I’ve also run this on my Ubuntu desktop without any problem.  Freaking awesome.  You can see to the right of the box is the novel sized manual that came with the Forgotten Realms Archive, as well as the code wheels that came with it.  These were the games’ method of anti-piracy.  Each time you run the game you have to spin the wheel to match up two symbols and type in the secret password.  Crazy, eh?  The top wheel, which looks a bit off-color, used to be as white as the others.  It’s the original that came with my copy of Pool of Radiance, circa 1988.  It’s the only piece of the original game I still own.

Well, that and the clue book I bought shortly after, which you can see hiding beneath it.  That clue book is probably how I managed to actually complete the game.  It’s freaking hard!  This time, though, I’ve decided no cheating!  The clue book has remained unopened while I play.  You can see at the bottom of the picture a piece of graph paper where I’ve started drawing the map as I explore the game.  With no overhead map and a very cheasy quazi-3D view of the world, good mapping is essential to play the game.

So there you have it.  Playing an old school video game that emulates an old school RPG.  It’s actually really quite fun.  I guess now I have something to do to entertain me on the flight to GenCon.

One of my gripes about D&D, especially later editions, is the profusion of magic items.  After a few levels every character seems to be carrying around with him a huge collection of magical artifacts.  I think it really reduces the mystery and specialness of magic items.  Having a sword +1 is barely different from having a sword.  In my current game, I’ve tried to make any magic items the players find feel really special and different.  I noticed at last night’s game that it actually appears to be rather successful, which has really pleased me, especially given that it really wasn’t as hard as you would think.  Here’s a few minor things I’ve done and the effect they’ve had.

Adding a minor detail to the item goes a long way.  One player found a sword described to be “very finely made with a large ruby pommel.”  Another has a staff that is “a gnarled stick of wood with various feathers and fetishes attached to it.”  These are pretty minor and not terribly original, but the fact is that I don’t give that level of detail to normal equipment, and so it stands out.  I noticed as a result my player doesn’t say “I swing my magic sword” or “I use my sword +x”, he says “I pull out my ruby pommeled sword” and everyone around the table gets excited.

Make up command words. The staff above has charges that cause extra damage when expended in combat.  When the players discovered this I made up a command word on the spot: “breeshk”.  It’s a nonsense word I made up that felt right given the primitive appearance of the staff and the fact that it was taken as treasure from a gnoll camp.  Now my player never tells me he’s expending a charge from the staff, he merely shouts “Breeshk!” as he rolls his attack.

Tie it to the location.  One of the best things I’ve stolen from Stonehell is the magical material known as vaedium.  What I love so much about it is that in Stonehell there is no description of what it is or what it does, just that it’s a metal with a magical nature.  While my players were exploring Stonehell they found their very first magic weapon: a sword +1.  I decided it was in fact made of vaedium, which causes it to glow very slightly and imbues it with its power.  When the players tried to have it identified, the sage was stumped — he told them it had none of the usual enchantments upon it, but rather it appeared the very material it was made of was imbued with magic.  I still told them that mechanically it was a sword +1, so they got their money’s worth from the sage, but it’s become known now simply as the vaedium sword.  My players probably still wonder if there isn’t more to this sword than simply the +1 enchantment.  So do I.

I noticed this all last night as the party has its first serious encounter with a monster that required magic to hurt it: a group of three shadows.  The shouts of “breeshk!” and the descriptions of the ruby pommeled sword and the vaedium sword really made it feel like the party was pulling out all the stops, bringing to bear the full power of their magical resources.

I play with a very simplified combat sequence. I like my combats to whiz by very fast. They should be exciting, but should not dominate the game. Combat is the punctuation of the game’s story. Perhaps it makes sense first to look at the official Labyrinth Lord combat sequence before discussing how I deviate form it, and what problems it creates. So here’s the standard sequence from the book:

1. Players declare character movement or actions.
2. Initiative: 1d6 is rolled by each opposing side.
3. The winner of initiative acts first. The Labyrinth Lord may check morale for monsters.
4. Movements can be made.
5. Missile attack rolls are made, accounting for DEX adjustments, cover, and range.
6. Spells are cast and applicable saving throws are made.
7. Melee combat occurs; attack and damage rolls are made, accounting for STR and magic adjustments.
8. Other sides act through steps 4-7, in order of initiative.
9. When all sides of a conflict have acted and the combat will continue into the sequence begins again at step 1.

Group initiative has some advantages.  First of all, it’s much easier to go around the table than to write down a variable sequence of player order.  Also, it limits the side that can win to one of two: players or enemies.  Thus, it’s silly to roll initiative every round, you can just roll it once at the start of the encounter and then go round and round the table.  By the system above, not only do I have to write down an unusual order, I have to run through it 5 times: first for declarations, second for movements, third for missile attacks, fourth for spells, and fifth for melee attacks.  Yuck.

That said, I noticed that just going around the table and asking each player “what do you do?” leads to some problems.  Players can adapt their strategy based on what the person before them did.  This I’m OK with, and in fact I love the idea that the players can game the system by moving their physical seats.  Changing seating arrangement has so many other subtle ramifications on the game, I like anything that encourages it.  However, not having a separate declare vs. act step does mean that spell casting is much more powerful than it should be.  There’s no way to interrupt spells — the player declares he is casting and it is done.  It’s also easy to lose site of the limitations on casting, notably that you can’t also move, or be in combat, or really do anything else at all.

I’ve been contemplating a way to solve this, and here’s what I’ve come up with.  When you want to cast a spell, you declare on your turn that you are doing so.  At this point we make sure you’re not doing anything that prohibits casting, such as moving or fighting.  Your spell does not go off until the end of the opposing side’s next turn.  So basically, turn sequence is something like this:

1. Go around the table allowing players to act.  Note which players declare they are casting spells.
2. Resolve spells from previous monster’s turn.
3. Make all monster actions, including declaring which monsters are starting to cast spells.
4. Resolve player spells from step 1.

If the monsters win initiative, you just start with #3 then loop back around.  This gives both sides opportunity to attack and interrupt spell casting.  It does introduce the problem though of what to do when a spell’s target moves out of range or vision while the spell is being cast.  Perhaps the caster need merely declare “I am casting…” on his turn, indicating what spell he is casting, but not declaring the targets until the spell gets resolved.  Though that still begs the question of what happens when all valid targets are gone by the time the spell resolves.  I’m guessing it either goes off where the target used to be, or just fizzles.

OK, here’s my scheduled events for this year:

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

As you can see, the scheduling was a bit wacky.  I entered in all my primary choices and all my backups, and that resulted in me getting into d12 Fantasy both Saturday night and Sunday.  I’m guessing I likely won’t really attend both, but I’ll figure out at the convention which one to go to.  Perhaps my performance in the speed painting contest will affect my decision?

I also ended up in two Tunnels and Trolls games.  I was tickled to see them being run, and thought it would be fun to play in one.  I’ve mostly only ever played the game solo.  I ran a session of it once, which was mediocre.  I’m very curious to see it run by someone else.  I didn’t really mean to play in two games of it though, so we’ll see how that turns out.

Originally I didn’t get into any games at all for Friday night, but then later on a couple tickets to the other Labyrinth Lord game opened up, and I snagged them.  I’ve promised the other one to BJ, and I expect it’ll be a lot of fun to play alongside him.  I call it “the other Labyrinth Lord” game because there are only two being run at the entire con, and I’m running the other one.  I was thinking for a while I might try running a second game of it at an open gaming table Friday night, but I’d rather play than run.  Maybe though if I drop the d12 Fantasy Saturday night I’ll run something then.  We shall see.  I kind of like having extra flexibility in my schedule.

I’ve got quite a few games with only an hour gap between them for meals.  That might make things kind of tight, but it’s still way better than the first few cons I went to where I packed it so tight I had to buy and pack meals in advance each day.  I have a nice window of time to visit the dealer’s hall Thursday afternoon (1-3, 4-6), as well as Saturday afternoon (3-6).  That should be just about right, but I’m sure I’ll find other gaps to go roam the hall.

Clearly this year is the year of old school gaming for me.  T&T, AD&D, LL, and Microlite all fit the bill I think.  I’ll be curious to see how long the legs of this thing is.  Is it a fad?  Will I laugh at my schedule next year?  Will it be just like my obsession with Savage Worlds?  We shall see.  It’s held my interest pretty long at this point, perhaps because it really is less about the system and mechanics, and more about the philosophy of what a game should contain.