Can We Game? Yes We Can!

It’s been a few days since CanGames ended and now I’m in full rejuvenated gamer mode. I’ve been working on a few adventure ideas and also thinking of what to run for next year. Actually, I’m hoping to attend the event either on the following Sunday as well (… that’s my dream).

I had planned on going an extra day this year but life has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into the process and changing plans. Anyway, next year might be a different story.

CanGames is the only convention I can afford to attend. It’s about 45 minutes away, we drive there in the morning. Grab a bite to eat along the way, and when we arrive we usually find a place to hang-out for a bit. Get caught up with life with fellow gamers we only see during the convention.

It’s nice to see new faces among the familiar crowd. Each year the gamers seem to get younger and younger and it’s good to see the hobby thriving. Though, with Comiccon’s growing and sprouting up all over the cities, it’s good that gaming convention still thrives and has it’s own niche.

I still run my Saturday face-to-face game when the stars are right and everyone can be there at the game table barring life events, work or theatrical commitments. But, I have been venturing forth into the virtual tabletop world. Sites like Roll20, Astral, and Fantasy Ground offer a chance to run and play with people around the world at a virtual tabletop.

I even attend an online VTT convention in November, it’s called AetherCon and I think I’ve been attending since it’s inception. I happened to stumble upon it by accident and sat in a game or two. I did that for a couple of years, until I finally decided to jump in an GM some games.

AetherCon is one of those conventions that I can play several games without leaving the house and still meet new and interesting people.

As you can tell, I’ve been a gamer for more than 3/4’s of my life now. Starting way back in high school back in 1979. My gaming library is huge since I’ve been collecting games over the years as well. One of my players has dubbed my gaming shelves “The Folios of Doom”.

Well, time to get another coffee. TTYL.

A Not So Wild Weekend

I enjoyed the weekend of AetherCon, even though my games that I were slated to run were a bust, I did have fun playing in a few of the games over the weekend. Enjoying the neediness of the con with fellow gamers who want to play and have fun.

A lot of excellent GMs and some awesome players who can really get into their characters with some pretty neat accents. Next year I’m book the entire weekend off and run a game a day and partake in a few as well. Totally immerse myself into the con.

It’s something to look forward in and maybe, just maybe, I might bring along a few of my players from my game table with me. It doesn’t cost you a penny, there’s some cool room to enter to chat with other players, shop for some new (or old games), vote on events like miniature painting and also spend painting duels that occur.

With the gaming group around the table and face to face gaming is only slated for nights when we can all get together. Virtual Table Top is the other option to keep on gaming.

AetherCon 2018 – Day 3

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

My morning was already booked at the local theatre as I had a commitment there. My afternoon was free and I had already signed up for a Savage World adventure.

The event was called “The Helix Nebula Situation” and it had a 2pm start.  It looked like it wasn’t using a Savage World setting but a creation of the game master.  We were AI robots on a generational starship.

Here’s what the synopsis of the event described:

As you activate, your senses are assaulted by the blaring of sirens and flashing lights. You can see the starship is drifting motionless in a nebula and the control panel is conveying the enormity of the situation. In microseconds you asses that the computer has decided you are the ship’s last hope and activated you. The computer’s voice is not reassuring even with the unemotional calmness in the electronic voice: “Warning: Life Support Anomalies”, “Warning: Propulsion Sensor Errors and Failures”, “Warning: Collision Detected”. This is the moment you were designed for. The reason your AI deep learning networking wet-ware was created. You will not fail at the reason you exist.

There were three other players signed up for the event so the table looked like it was going to be full. I had played Savage Worlds a couple of times, but recently immersed myself into the game mechanics when I was asked to run Titan Effect which was a Savage World setting.

I picked a Maintenance Bot “Fixit” and the others where a Pilot, Navigator and a Scientist bots activated to handle the task at hand. The bridge was empty, the alarms ringing off and warnings were steadily announced. Being the Maintenance bot my main concern was getting the life supports up and running as well as fixing the cryogenics chamber where the crew and families were sleeping.

It was one heck of an adventure going through the ship and encounter strange liquid creatures that had possessed a few of the crew.

The session went along smoothly as we went from area to area to repair, explore and encounter and also trying to figure out how to deal with these strange liquid like beings that had taken over some crew and messing up with the electronics on the ship.

Cards were dealt, Bennies were spent (Bennies are the tokens your character have to enhance a roll or two) and also there was a encounter where I didn’t think my character wasn’t going to make it (or be corrupted by these liquid critters). But, in the end Pilot, Scientist, Navigator and the Maintanence bots saved the ship.

And thus, this adventure wrapped up my AetherCon weekend.

That’s the beauty of an online convention. I didn’t have to travel anywhere and stayed within the comforts of my own home while meeting and chatting it up with other gamers. I’m looking forward to next year as I know already what I’m going to run.

 

 

AetherCon 2018 – Day 2: Part II

I had some time to kill before my 7pm game, so I spent a couple of hours working on a Roll20 Gamma World adventure. As I did so I put on some music from the 60’s and early 70’s to get me in the mindset of the Cthulhu scenario; the adventure was to take place during the Vietnam war.

There was five of us in the game room along with a Keeper and it was going to be one of those do-or-die scenarios. With CoC you know your in it for the thrill, knowing that your character will eventually buy it or go mad and end up in a sanitarium.

The description of the game:

Charlie Don’t Surf: The Vietnamese called it Dong Ap Bia. The US Army, Hill 937. But to the soldiers who were there in May of 1969, it became Hamburger Hill, “that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” You’ve become cut off from the main forces implementing the Apache Snow offensive. Your objective is simple, link up the 101st Airborne infantry unit near Hill 937 and join the assault. The problem is – the 101st is 8 clicks through dense jungle with an unknown number of Charlie and you’re running low on supplies. Just another day in this boondoggle of a war. Of course, what you’re not aware of yet is that there are things much scarier than Viet Cong hiding in those jungles, and there are fates worse than those found waiting for you on Hamburger Hill…

What started out as a simple task became more complicated every step of the way. Each step was darker than the encounter before and left us even more perplexed.

Meeting with another unit to escort them back to base, but then they didn’t want to return to base and gave us a parcel to deliver for them instead. And before we knew it they all had disappeared back into the jungle.

With parcel in hand we head back to base, but encounter some sniper file as we made our way through a gorge. Though, we eventually did manage to take him out.  We continue on our way, when someone heard the sound of an airplane overhead. Flying just above the treetops and when it came into view is was an OV10 Bronco, painted black and no markings. It dumped some chemical over us and then flew off once again.

We cleaned the gunk off our stuff the best we could then continued on, heading back to base with the package. Then we stumbled upon an abandoned village, there was not a living soul around. It looked like whoever lived here just picked up and left in a hurry.  We bed down for the night and then continued on our way and the next day we came across another village.

But this one had traps around it. Someone had set up claymore mines pointing towards the village itself as if to keep something in there. We scouted the place and spotted an American photographer who apparently went nuts from what he witnessed in the village and he kept babbling on and on. We went into the village and had a look around and discovered the entire population of the village had gone into a bunker and then they were all murdered and displayed as if some macabre dance.

The squad didn’t want to stay here for the night and we moved on before night fall, taking the photographer with us. Whenever he was asked something, he babbled nonsensically about things.  We continued on for a bit and decided to set down for the evening. Though, it wasn’t a quiet night when a Vietcong patrol stumbled into our area and there was one heck of a fire-fight.

Overall, the battle was over in a few rounds. We packed up our stuff, moved a mile or two away and rested til dawn and then started moving again. Along the way, we heard the sound of a plane and everyone took cover.

But, the plane didn’t appear and it seemed to crash in the distance.

Deciding to investigate this crash, we moved on towards were we thought it was and discovered a cavern. We explored it and that’s when our photographer friend had stumbled into a trap and it ended up taking his life.

There was something in the cave at one time, but it had been moved and there was some blood on a trail, but the Sarge wanted us to get back to base to drop off the parcel. We agreed that’s the thing to do and headed south east and that’s when we stumbled upon the plane crash.

It was the same plane as before and it had crashed for some reason…

Now, I’m not going into details about this encounter and let’s just say that it became a running battle from this point on. I’m not going to go into any more detail other than we did what we set out to do, and basically ended up going out in a blaze of glory.

And that’s how I wrapped up my Saturday night at AetherCon.

 

 

AetherCon 2018 – Day Two: Part I

I got up out of bed a little after 4am Saturday morning,  I then went down stairs to expand open a scenario for my Cadillacs & Dinosaurs adventure that would start at 9am. I put the coffee on and booted up the computer.

I was looking forward to running this adventure once again, the last time i did that was at Cangames. And that was a couple of years back and one of the reasons why  I picked it for my Aethercon 2018 game.

The premise: Governor Dahlgren approaches the party and explains to them that they had received a strange message over the radio from Hell’s Outpost.  The transmission stated they needed some assistance and also on the next delivery could they bring cigarettes… and that’s when the transmission ended.

Dahlgren want them to go out on the next delivery and see what is going on. Basically, she tells them it could be nothing at all but it has to be checked.

With some battle maps made up for some encounters and the characters right out of role playing book to be the pre-generated characters for the players to choose from, it would play out like the limited animated series episode.

There was a little buzz about the game when it was announced and so I was confident that I’d have a couple of players at the event. But, sadly that didn’t happen at all. There where no takers, and after fourty minutes of waiting it was time to close up shop.

I’ll give it the ol’ college try with it in 2019.

I went to the Aethercon event and begin hunting around for a came to play at 7pm. My regular Saturday night crew wouldn’t be showing up at the game table this evening due to work and other commitments my players had. That’s when I spotted a Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition adventure called “Charlie Don’t Surf” which piqued my curiosity and I signed up for that.

After doing some minimal housework I logged into my next game to give it a tweak before running at 2pm. A Savage World setting called “Titan Effect”.

A couple weeks back I was asked by one of the organizers of Aethercon if I was interested in taking over a game for another GM who was running but had to drop out. I jumped at the chance since it would be nice to play some Savage World once again.

Though, I changed the original adventure and went with a quick & dirty scenario called “Rest & Recreation”. It was one of those “side quest” type of scenario made for convention style of playing.

I saw that I had one player signed up and was hoping that a few others would drop in as well, since the adventure requires a small group of players for it to have the effect that I wanted to get when things go sideways.

The game was promoted by Knight Errant Media and also added to their update, in the hopes that people might like to give the setting a try.

As game time approached the one player had arrived and we discussed the setting and Savage Worlds mechanics and he looked over the characters and picked one. And, we waited to see if anyone else would enter the room. The one thing I hadn’t planned on was what to do if only one player arrived, I could of scaled back the adventure and let the one player choose another character to play as well.

After about 30 minutes we decided to close up shop and I figured that since the scenario is all set and ready to go, I’ll save it for a rainy day.

 

AetherCon 2018 – Day One

Aethercon kicked off it’s seventh annual online convention of Friday.

There was a few interesting gaming events I was looking at at 9am but decided to put the polishing touches on the scenarios that I was going to run on Saturday. I’d figured I’d dedicated my morning to those two events and then jump into the convention at 2.

My first event for Friday was a Savage Worlds setting called Frozen Skies which was slated to start at 2pm. The adventure “Things Never Go Smooth” in which a crime boss wants us to fly out to a remote Alyeskan settlement and pick up some “goods”. Basically, a milk run… but is it?

Frozen Skies is a role-playing game written by Stephen Hughes of Utherwald Press. It is being brought to Kickstarter by Applied Vectors Ltd. So I hunted around for a description of the game and found this at the kickstarter.

The setting of Frozen Skies is the continent of Alyeska, the most northern landmass of the world of Darmonica and is often referred to as either the ‘rooftop of the world’ or ‘Darmonica’s Crown’. It is an icy frontier plagued by savage beasts, cut-throat sky pirates, harsh weather and eons old dark secrets. It is a barely tamed land where the most basic of utilities are hard to come by and tend to lie on the good side of unreliable at best. But despite all this there are opportunities for a man to make a name and, more ideally, coin for himself.  

Alyeska itself is dominated by savage beasts known as Wulvers, wolf like creatures that’ve plagued Alyeska since its earliest Colonial days. The Commonwealth had troops stationed in Alyeska to defend its fledging colony against the beasts, though they were steadily whittled away to satisfy the Commonwealth’s war efforts. As the defenses were weakened the Wulvers gradually overran more and more territory, in the end the Alyeskans were forced to hide behind fortified walls and increasingly rely on air travel to maintain contact with far-flung outposts.  

Despite the Wulvers the other great powers of Darmonica have their own interest in Alyeska, chiefly for the ruins and artefacts of the Ancient Terrans buried beneath the ice and for a mineral by-product of the Blast known as Glimmer Rock. Until it was altered by the energies released in the explosion it was a previously unremarkable mineral, now it is the fuel for a new Industrial Revolution that the world finds itself on the cusp of….but only if the new technology can be made viable.

It looked intriguing and I was looking forward to some good ol fashion pulp hero action. But, the came was called due to the fact that not enough players were at the table. The GM needed a minimum of two and the other players who had gotten tickets to the event never showed.

This setting looks pretty interesting to say the least.

I went to the Aethercon site and looked around for a bit and judged some miniatures and some some speed painting things. Then I went back to my adventures that I had prepared and gave them a little bit more tweaking here and there before the other game I signed up for began at 7pm.

The Adventure was called “Your Sister’s Keeper” for the Fantaji Role-Playing System by Anthropos Games. In this scenario an older sister of a player has been captured by kobolds and taken to the Land of Nod, what the books called Wonderland. And it’s up to the characters to brave the oddities and nonsense of a dark world where nothing is at it seems and bring her back before she goes insanse… or worse. Leaving the realm and into another.

The adventure was described as a “Kingdom Hearts” meets “Sucker Punch” and add a little “Dr. Strange” into the fold and you got a deep dark tale that Tim Burton might be proud of .

From their website:

Fantaji is a simple engine with a deep potential for both creativity and strategy. The moving parts come together on the tabletop to produce a vibrant and dynamic arena for players to respond to and role-play within.

The focus is still a conflict mechanic, a game. While other storytelling games get a little theatrical, Fantaji has roots in competitive play and risky conflict. We try to add the stuff of good drama, high action, creativity. But we do not take the game entirely into the realm of kabuki, theater, or simple make believe.

And that’s what we got.  There were two other players and the GM ready and raring to go and with a quick overview of the game and the system and a few question about the mechanics and character templates we were off and running.

I looked through the templates and picked the Soundrel and named Tymm.  Morgan picked an Icon and named her Alice, and the other player picked a Kingpin named Oliver.

II won’t go into detail of the adventure since it might spoil it for those who may want to try it. But I will tell you that it’s like a whole mish-mash of events and fairytales wrapped up in dark world.

There was a magic portal, snow covered land, flying harpies with armoured knights, missing children, one hell of a bar fight that nearly got my scoundrel killed and that was only in the mosh pit. And, finally an encounter with the big boss and his army of automaton warriors!

Too say that my scoundrel was way in over his head when he decided to face the big boss Mano-et-mano is not the brightest thing to do without a little backup.  It was a pretty fun filled session and I really enjoyed it.

 

Game On!

So, on Saturday I finally got my game on.  It’s been a long hiatus from the gaming table and it was good to gather a few players and roll some dice.  The game group will occur every two Saturdays due to one of the players work schedule, and I’m fine with that.

They had created there characters after a little kerfuffle about character sheets… my printer decided to run dry… it did manage to squeeze out a couple of sheets.  Once the characters were written up, the adventure was raring to go.

game on

It felt good to be rolling dice once again, and socializing with old and new players, also the chugging coffee is an added bonus.

And this weekend will be some AetherCon action as well. I’m running two games via Roll20 on Saturday. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs RPG by the defunct GDW. And a Savage World setting called Titan Effect. It’s a super-charged espionage game with mutants.

I will also be partaking in a couple of games this weekend as well. One on Friday and another on Saturday evening (since my regular campaign) is now bi-weekly instead of weekly.  The beauty about Aethercon is that it’s a gaming convention and I don’t even have to leave home to attend.

 

AetherCon 2018 Is Coming

One of my favourite online conventions is AetherCon.

I’ve been partaking in this event since I accidentally discovered the first one seven years ago. First couple of conventions I was a player in a few games throughout the weekend; never leaving the comfort of my home and getting to meet other players from around the globe.

Here is a little info about the convention from the website:

The 7th annual AetherCon Online Tabletop RPG Convention is a gathering of pen and paper roleplaying gamers that will take place in cyberspace on the weekend of November 9-11/2018.

AetherCon is a free to attend, free to partake, non-profit initiative. Throughout the weekend there will be a plethora of tabletop RPGs on offer for all to play in. All games will be run on the free, browser-based virtual table top Roll20 and/or Google Hangouts with those programs as well as Skype and Discord as audio options. These programs will, for the most part, allow GMs and players alike to simply click on a link and enter the playing area as opposed to needing to download and install the software to participate, Skype being the only exception.

For this years convention I’m planning on running a classic GDW RPG based on Xenozoic Tale by Mark Shultz. That game is Cadillacs & Dinosaurs which is inspired by the comics and has spawned a short-lived animated series of the same name.

The adventure I’m running “Everybody Smokes In Hell” has the look of the animated series but the feel of the darker Xenozoic comics. I ran this particular adventure with a group of players at Cangames a couple years ago, and I figured I’d give it another run at Aethercon this year. Though, I have to create better and more detailed battle maps for Roll20.

Someone at Aethercon told me there was some buzz about the game since it was announced; i hope that’s a good sign and get some players to experience the world of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.

Also, for this convention I was asked to run another game; Titan Effect RPG.

Titan Effect is by Knight Errant Media and is a license campaign setting for Savage Worlds. More information about this setting can be found at:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/249701/Titan-Effect-RPG

After reading through the campaign setting and getting a feel for the game, it runs like Mission: Impossible movies with mutants! That’s just putting that in a phrase, but I do look forward to running it and seeing how it plays on on Roll20 as well.

So, those games I’ll be running and I do hope to sit in a game or two over the weekend as well since it’s rare that I get to play a adventure from the other side of the GM screen.

BackyardCon 2018 – Day 1

 

Well, it’s the first weekend in August. Which means it’s a long weekend with Monday being a Civic Holiday. This is also the weekend of the Lombardy Fair in this area. Also, this weekend GenCon  is also happening with thousands of geeks gather together and play games, buy games, and socialize with others.

Four the past four years now, each time GenCon happens I “host” a two-three day event I christened BackYardCon. Throughout the day I take a couple of games off my shelf and work on an adventure or an idea at the patio table in my backyard.

Friday morning, I brought out Cadillacs & Dinosaurs The Roleplaying Game by GDW to work on a bit. I had decided that I would be running a scenario for an online convention in November.  Cadillacs & Dinosaurs was a short-lived animated series based off the underground comic Xenozoic Tales by Mark Shultz.

GDW’s used their own game mechanics in this faithful adaption of the animated series plus the comic as well. It’s very rare that I get a chance to run it, I figured it’s about due for another kick at the can.

Friday Afternoon I decided to work on SpyCraft adventure idea inspired by Mission Impossible: Fallout. SpyCraft is an OGL product that has a more streamlined rules based on the d20 system.

I ended Friday with a classic from TSR: The Marvel Super Heroes RPG that I had recently acquired. I’ve been itching to get my hands on this grubby little game after having played a scenario at Cangames earlier this year. I wasn’t to big on superheroes rpg back in the day so i never did pick it up. Sure, I loved the comics and read them from cover to cover but never really did get into the rpg genre.

Now that I have it in my collection I have a scenario that I want to run which is set in the 80’s so this is perfect!

There you have it Day One of BYC in a nutshell.

 

 

 

AetherCon Day 3 – Morning

Normally, I hit the theatre first thing Sunday morning, but due to a planned power outage in that area there wasn’t going to be anything happening at all. So, on that note I had decided to spend the morning at AetherCon.

My first game of the morning was an old classic revised in a new edition.

I was set to play a Morrow Project 4th Edition adventure at 9am. But, later I was informed by email that due to not enough players it was a no-go. Which made me a little bit sad since I do love me some MP and rarely get a chance to have a go at it. Especially the 4th edition that’s been out for a few months now. But on the plus side was promised a PDF of the 4th edition which was a consolation prize that I can get behind.

So basically my Sunday morning is a free to do with as I please.

I was waiting for 2pm to arrive since I had signed up for an adventure for a game called:

Apocalyptic dark fantasy RPG that places heroes and villains into a brutal world of ruin and adventure. The gates must be destroyed.

The adventure was called “The Coast of Thrall” and run by the creator of the game Brandon W. There was another player in the room and we were good to go. The premise of the adventure is:

[Arcanum Syndicate] The module places the players on a ship traveling the ravaged waters of the Sea of Spears. The ship is transporting a mysterious murderer to the city of Soulbade where he is to be executed for his heinous crimes. But when crew members start to turn up missing in the night, who is to blame?

I picked a Human Barbarian to play and I named him Krona. The other player, John C, piked a Half-Elf Mu Dai (a magic using martial artist?) character and named him Bok Choi.

Now I won’t go into full detail about the adventure since the module is for sale and I don’t want to spoil it by going into what we done for those who might be interested in playing it down the road.

The world of Demon Gate is called Koth and our adventure begins in the nation of Myen Wu.

The adventure begins when a group of bandits attack a merchant and the merchant stumbles into town. Bok and Krona are at the edge of the village and see him staggering in.

Bok and Krona run to assist and take him to a temple where we lay him on a table and he is dying from his wounds. His dying wish was for us to deliver an amulet to his daughter in the city of Soulbade.

Krona and Bok head to the port city and book passage with a ship called The Trident captained by a fellow named Tanis. As we wait to board a large humanoid is being loaded on board. The humaniod is chained and with a burlap sack over it’s head and being lead by guards. Afterwards, once every thing is loaded and all passengers boarded. Bok and Krona roam the ship and meet a lot of people, crew and passengers alike.

Since Krona and Bok only started out with 4 bits each we were sleeping in hammocks in the cargo hold of the ship. Krona manage to win a few coins in a dicing game was a fun moment indeed. Two dwarves were playing and one was constantly winning and tauting the other until one was out of a few coins. Krona only having 2 bits left decided to try his luck.

He ended up winning not once, not twice, but three times. And at that point he decided to call it quits.

Now, I won’t go into full detail of what happened over the few days of travel. But, I can let you know when passengers start disappearing we have a mystery to uncover. I did have a fun time playing it and the end battle was bloody and brutal.

I think I will eventually pick up a copy of this game when it hits the stands.