I am not dead, Nor am I dying

Rather than spending a lot of time talking about health problems, being temporarily displaced from my house for several months, computer problems, depression, it pouring when it rains, or anything else, I'm just going to say it simply: I am not dead, nor am I dying.


With that, I'm going to jump right back into this update.

GenCon 50

Last week/weekend, I attended GenCon 50. It was a good time. Here are my thoughts on some of the experiences, and a brief review of the games that I played in.

Parking

This year, we bought a parking pass through Gate 10 parking. This proved to be a *really good* idea. Last year we had to walk probably more than a mile every day from the only parking lot we could find that had parking to the convention center (and the same back). This year, we simply parked at the Gate 10 lot and took a shuttle over. We never had to wait more than a few minutes. Plus, since parking is hiked up all through the city, it ended up costing pretty close to what we would have paid without the pass anyway.

Exhibit Hall

It's huge. You could easily spend more time looking through it than the time in which it's open. Despite that there were more people at GenCon this year, it felt less crowded than last year, which was good. Almost anything nerdy you could imagine, and certainly anything RPG or board game related, you could find there. I got a new board game that I'm excited to try out; I'll let you know how that goes later.

Games

The Hunt for the Razor's Edge

System: Star Wars: Age of Rebellion


This was probably my favorite game that I played in. I had never played the Age of Rebellion system before, but I liked it. The dice system was very different from normal, but I did like it a lot. I got to play a Mon Calimari character (think Admiral Akbar), and I got to say "It's a trap!" It also helped that our group was, apparently, the most successful group that had ever run through the adventure. No bothans died on our watch!

Gate of Neifelheim

System: Cypher System


There is no way I spelled that city name right, but that's okay. This was a norse-themed Cypher system adventure. The adventure itself was really pretty cool. We played tier 2 characters, and I think we each had a stat in which we had 2 edge-which made it more likely for us to use Effort, but also made it so that it still cost something.


Unfortunately, a couple of the players in the group were really obnoxious and disrespectful of other players and the GM. This didn't ruin the experience for me, but it certainly detracted from it.

Court of Stars

System: Homebrew


I'd signed up for a homebrew game because, as someone who makes my own systems, I like to play in other home-made systems and support people who are designing new things.


This wasn't really like that. This really just consisted of deciding what if something was plausibly possible for our characters, and then rolling a d6 to see how we did. Admittedly, this is a system, and it worked for the game, but it wasn't really a formed system like I had been expecting.


Still, the adventure was pretty good. The GM was definitely making up basically everything as he went along. We ended up being the bad guys as a result of a contested roll towards the beginning. There was one moment where it looked a lot like we were going to die. If the GM rolled a 2 or higher on the die, a missile would have hit our spaceship and we'd have been ruined. He rolled a 1. With the missile having missed, we then proceeded to take over and zombify the planet. Yay us.

1 Alien Invasion, with a Side of Explosions

System: Cypher System


This was the game that I ran! I think it went well and that people enjoyed themselves. I had less of a specific straight-line plan for the adventure and more a general outline of possible paths that they could take. Fortunately, Cypher allows me to adapt and adjust and pull stuff out on the fly. I'm not great at improvising, but I think I did well enough for the adventure.


The players did end up running away at the end, rather than facing any sort of climax/resolution to the events. I would have had the enemies give chase, but the players rolled a 20 for trying to get away, and I couldn't think of a better "Major Effect" than "they can't follow you." The players left the planet to its fate, but they made it out unscathed.

Neuralpathic

System: Open Legend


I think I like the Open Legend system, but I still need more experience with it. This was largely an investigation-based scenario. I felt like it lacked a lot of direction/objective-I wasn't really sure what our characters motivation was a lot of the time until basically the very end when it was still "cut our losses and get out." I don't know that there was anything to gain from any other path anyway. We'd shown up to salvage, but I don't think there was anything there worth salvaging.


There was only one battle-and it wasn't one that most of our group was even involved in-and those that were there didn't have any real challenge. I am not a huge fan of large combats anyway, so I'm not saying we necessarily needed more combat, just that I sort of expected it, especially given all the combat-related abilities of the group. I think there are other paths that we could have taken that would have had more combat though.

Toybox

I have fallen way behind in doing Toybox updates. I will try to rectify this, but it might be in the form of an update(s) that is much more condensed and not as narrative. Toybox is playing again. They have made it through Yrkallak Tower and beyond. I will try to post a more detailed update soon.


There is a strong likelihood that the Toybox campaign will conclude in December.

Other/Future Game Mastery

I have been slowly working in the background on a system/setting for my new campaign. It is very likely that I will use the setting I was developing for the system that Toybox was playtesting (but not the setting Toybox was playing in) and use a version of the S.C.R.A.M! system (or some other system in which combat is not the focus/the thing that takes a majority of the time). I am unsure as to if I will post summaries here of these sessions or not.


I also have been thinking about a few different one shots. When I hear back from a particular player on what they want to see, I'll be working on a Cypher System one shot that I currently know nothing about. Someone also put into my head the idea of doing an adventure with two competing teams-which seems very interesting to me, and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around. And then, in the background, I've been sort of working on a computer program adventure generator for Paranoia that I'd like to eventually expand out into a) a unique setting/system and/or b) something more generic that can be played in a board-game like way without a GM but still having an RPGesque feel. This last one has sort of been on hold though.

Heroism and Other Lies

I'd originally wanted to publish Heroism and Other Lies Episode 5: Season Finale on July 28th to keep my rate of one book per month. However, that was...disrupted. I have now begun the publication process for it, and it should be available in all the normal mediums by the end of the weekend. I suspect that I'll make a post for it when I'm done with that.

Other/Future Noveling

In my last post, I'd talked about Sufficiently Advanced Dragons, but I think that this project is in standby for the present.


I've started working on-well-more thinking about another project, but I don't have it fleshed out enough to actually talk much about yet.


I am still unsure as to if Heroism and Other Lies will genuinely get renewed for another season. I have a lot that I still would like to do with it, but if it's going to fall on deaf ears, it might be better to save those ideas for a time, place, and medium where it will actually reach an audience.