DunDraCon 2016!

Hey there, blog fans! My slump may be slowing down my blogging, but it's not keeping me from taking my annual vacation (and marketing opportunity!). The reason that I haven't been liveblogging, or taking many photos this year is that I've actually been too busy gaming and having fun to tell you all about it.

Well, it wasn't all fun and games. The Greyhound bus that was to start my wife and I on our adventure on Thursday started out about a half hour late. We arrived in San Francisco probably about an hour and a half to two hours late. The BART train was still running, but by the time we got to Pleasanton, the last bus had already left. So a $4 bus ride became a $25 cab ride. It was past 8 PM when we finally got to the hotel, so all we did after that was to get some dinner and go to bed.

The one perk of this trip was this: a license plate I spotted in the McDonald's parking lot during our meal stop.

I understand that only 1 person in the state can have a license plate that says "BATMAN" and that the early bird catches the worm. I almost thought this guy remembered the '90's and Bart Simpson as Bartman, but then I noticed that there was more than one R on the plate. All I can say is ERMAHGERD! IT'S BRTMRN!

We had reserved Thursday night at the convention hotel. Even though the con didn't start til Friday, they were good enough to get us convention pricing on the night before. Thanks to that, it actually came out cheaper than the Best Western we laid over in last year.

Friday is when the fun officially began. Not only was it the first official day of the convention, but also the first time I ran my new scenario, “The Winged Monkeys of Oz” (it's a tentative title, but they're a big theme in the adventure, so it works). I was actually kind of surprised that it was scheduled for the “P” session, which players could only sign up for on the convention website before the con actually began. As it was, I got three signups and 2 no-shows. But I also did get 2 “crashers,” people who had not signed up, but hoped to play anyway. In this case, a mother and her 10-12 year old son.

This session was probably the most fun I've had running Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. I think mostly because the characters being played were Toto, the Scarecrow and Bungle the Glass Cat. Accomplishing some of the tasks the adventure requer ired while being so small and having no opposable thumbs was an entertaining challenge. And because the adventure wasn't as structured as I typically do, (though more structured than Jaded City) there was just enough room for me to feel comfortable improvising.

And not long after that was my first opportunity to have fun as a player and not worry about all the things that a Narrator has to worry about. The game was set (somewhat) in the universe of the classic TV show Lost in Space. The players were portraying the crew of the Jupiter-1, the testbed for the technologies on the Jupiter-2 which would later house the Space Family Robinson.

The system was a variant on Classic Traveler and we all rolled up our characters before we began. It was actually something of a fun twist, since most of my experience has been with pre-generated characters. Most modern systems offer more detail and depth, but that makes generating a character a time consuming process that you don't want to do if you're only playing the character once. But by using an older system, we were able to build our own characters fairly quickly with instruction from the GM.

Though like the Space Family Robinson, we were sabotaged by Dr. Zachary Smith (though he didn't get stuck on board like he did when he would later sabotage the Jupiter-2). Our space warp drive misfired and we wound up way off course around a planet we had no reason to believe even existed.

I won't spoil too much in case that GM runs it at another con, but there were natives where we didn't expect there to be natives and the main trade goods we could think to offer them were Pop-Tarts in their shiny mylar packaging (which matched our space suits). It became something of a running joke throughout the adventure.

I think I managed to get a full 8 hours of sleep between that and my next game, which was Whitney Preston's Mythos Trek. I might not have. There was fun, but I don't know if it was quite the degree of fun we could have had if I had been more present. There's also the fact that I had to take some time out from this session to make sure that the Dealer's Room was stocked with copies of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.

To make sure there were no hiccups this year, I brought some copies of my game so that the vendor would have inventory. The operator of the booth got stuck in traffic for a few minutes and his booth didn't open when the Dealer's Room did. But that's the worst that happened. I checked back at the booth a few times (and bought some things, too) and people did buy it.

There was a game immediately after the Mythos Trek game that I was interested in attending, but I realized that I had to take some time to help polish my wife's adventure. It was her first time trying to run Fate Core. Her tastes normally run to Pathfinder, but then someone had to make a setting for Fate called The Secrets of Cats, featuring magical cats protecting their humans (whom they think of as Burdens) from various supernatural nasties.

The morning led to another run of The Winged Monkeys of Oz, with a full table. There were a couple of crashers, too. Two players were even daring enough to create their own characters. I use the AiO Characters Pack for my pregenerated characters and that includes 2 blank character sheets. I've offered several time to allow players to make their own characters, but this is the first time anyone took me up on it.

We picked up Prince Nawer, a Field Mouse Noble and a cowboy version of the Scarecrow with a lasso, a pop gun and a magical stick horse. I didn't note his name and he took his character sheet with him when the game was over.

Once another successful and enjoyable Oz adventure was had, there were only 2 hours until it was time for my wife to present her adventure. My wife and I are very different people. It's part of how we get along so well. I'm a planner and she's an improviser. So every year when she runs an adventure, I'm the one who tears his hair out trying to make sure that she has some idea of what she's going to do. Then I hand her the framework of an adventure (always far less than she needs to run it, IMO) and then she goes in to the room and improvises an entertaining adventure for all.

I offered to stick around and sort of assist her with the system, but I quickly realized that having 2 G.M.s was making things more complicated, not less. I stuck my nose in a few times to make sure everything was okay, and it seemed to be doing alright. The way Aspects work in Fate Core is always a learning curve, but it seems she did fine and the players had a lot of fun.

Since Sunday was Valentine's Day, the rest of this very full day was dedicated to a romantic dinner and other such things. The only thing we didn't do was take a swim in the pool. We don't have ready access to a pool back home, so it's one of the things my wife looks forward too every year. So we made a point of taking a quick swim in the morning before breakfast. I can't swim, but I love looking at my wife in a swimsuit, so I hang out in the shallow end while she cuts loose. It's a win-win.

My wife says I have great legs. So for Valentine's Day, I wore a kilt for her. Here's a photo of me for all those fans of me, sexy men's legs and kilts.

From there, it was a very smooth packing-up process and I am writing this from the Greyhound bus that is the last leg home. There are still things to discuss, such as what I bought this year and my design process for the first new Oz adventure in quite some time. But I think those are blog posts for other days. Hopefully soon.

First Post of the Year

Just in case you were worried, I am still alive and still posting here.

DunDraCon is just around the corner and I will definitely be there. And so will Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. Not only will I be running AiO on the convention schedule, but I have also arranged for the game to be available in the Dealer's Room. I am very excited.

Getting things organized for the con has been more work than I expected this year. The hotel sold out in a matter of days. It happened before anyone expected, even the convention organizers. While they were trying to get an overflow hotel setup, they put up a room sharing page on their site. This is how I managed to get lodging at the convention hotel this year.

Transportation was the next major step. We've been going with my friend Mike for several years now, but he declared last year to be the last year he would do it. His car was capable of handling 3 people and their convention gear, but when we added his new girlfriend to the mix, there was not enough room. So it's back to Greyhound buses

But I did take advantage of Google Transit to figure out the local bus system in San Ramon and turn a $20 cab ride into a $4 bus fare. Modern technology is wonderful, isn't it?

RPGaDay #15 Favourite Convention Game

I try to play in at least one game every time I go to DunDraCon. It can be hard to find one, since I am rather choosy. Coupled with the fact that my schedule also gets taken up with running my own game, trying to sit on a few seminars, and having time to cruise the Dealers Room and the Buyer's Bazaar, one is usually all I get.

I generally avoid the D&D games. I generally prefer non-fantasy games and supporting systems that don't get a lot of play or that I haven't tried before. There is one GM who regularly runs GURPS games, so I've tried to get into his games when I can.

Though I must say that my favorite convention game was actually one that I played this year. It was the Mythos Trek game. Although the system was ostensibly Chaosium's Basic Role Playing system, the GM ran the game very loosely. Good, cool, or funny ideas typically had a very good chance of success. Coupled with the GM awarding "Cool Points" good for free rerolls if you could make him laugh, there wasn't a lot of tension regarding whether or not we would succeed at anything we were assigned to do. So most of the game was about exactly how we were going to accomplish our missions. And with all of the sci-fi nerds that signed up for this, we had a lot of fun coming up with ways to reconfigure the deflector array to augment the spin of the graviton matrix and other such silliness.

There was a lot of humor and lots of opportunities to strut my Star Trek geek stuff. Best convention game ever.

RPGaDay #14 Best Convention Purchase

This one's a toughie. As I've mentioned, I do most of my game shopping at conventions these days.

I could talk about the joys of discovering old GURPS sourcebooks, like the licensed GURPS Conan and GURPS The Prisoner.

Or the times I was able to pick up some bit of new hotness, like Spirit of the Century, Diaspora, or Monsterhearts.

Or the random and vintage, like the original Castle Falkenstein. I've had the GURPS adaptation for years (by the end of this month, you'll probably be sick and tired of me talking about GURPS), but the original rulebook with its card-based rules, and a couple of supplements, were finds in the Buyer's Bazaar.

Along with most of my vintage Talislanta collection. My wife insisted on buying the Fourth edition when it was new (she lovingly calls it "The Big Blue Brick"), but it wasn't until we started shopping at DunDraCon that we found books for the older editions. We even bought the only Tal4 supplement, Midnight Realm, at DDC.

Just a quick one

First of all, the Christmas in July sale I mentioned in my last post does not end today, but instead continues until Sunday. So you still have a couple of days to save 25% on Adventures in Oz Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.

Also, July 27 (today) is Gary Gygax's Birthday. He would be 74 years old today. For those who missed it the first time around, here's Gary's signature character Gord the Rogue statted for AiO.

This weekend is also the Winkie Convention in Asilomar, California. Good luck and Ozzy fun to all who are able to attend this weekend. I wish I could be there.

As someone mentioned on my Facebook fan page (I have one, you should check it out), I should mention conventions where I will be demoing AiO. And if you've been following my blog for any length of time, you know that my favorite convention is coming up next month. That's right, DunDraCon!

Just like last year, I have signed up to run the sample adventure The Jaded City of Oz twice: Once as a walk-up game for their kids program (though grownups have shown up) and again on the regular convention schedule (requiring convention registration). If you were at either of these last year, you know that I gave away a free print copy of the game at each of these demos, making some gamers incredibly happy and others Insanely Jealous (TM). Depending on demand and my energy level, I might also make an appearance in the open gaming area and run unscheduled demos as well. (probably no freebies there, though.)

If you've already purchased a copy of AiO and you bring it to the convention, I will gladly autograph it or let you take my picture with it or whatever.

My Convention Adventure

I had expected my Thursday to be very boring. Our transportation would be leaving Thursday night rather than the Friday morning I had rather hoped for, but I had all day to prepare, right? Wrong.

I woke up at 10:30 that morning (I slept in) to find a message on my answering machine that I was due to work at 8. Which was a surprise, since I had believed that I had the day off. I usually get Thursdays off because it's my game night with my friends. Quickly throwing my uniform on, I hurried in to work. They let me finish out my shift (very nice of them) and I was back home by about 5. I expected my friend Mike to come pick up me and my fiancee at around 7, so I still had time, right? Wrong again.

Shortly after I got home, I got a call from Mike warning me that his sister (who was tagging along for something else) was in a bit of a hurry and they would be leaving just as soon as she was ready. So now we had no real idea when we would be leaving, so we had to hurry on our final packing (and wound up forgetting a few things). We still wound up leaving around 7 PM, but we did it with more adrenalin and less done than we had originally intended.

We were traveling in the dead of night, so I don't have any traveling pictures this time. We did wind up seeing a little bit of snow, but it was too dark to consider getting a shot of it. Since our hotel reservation didn't cover Thursday night (and I'm not sure I want to consider paying full price for a room there), our friend arranged for us to sleep on his parent's couch. (He didn't have the money to attend the con himself, but he did have family business to take care of).

We arrived on Friday rather early, which is good, since we had been warned that the hotel had overbooked and we might have to be accommodated at another hotel. I much prefer it when my commute to convention activities is simply the elevator.

It wound up being a pretty boring day, all around. I wasn't running a game, there weren't any games that I was particularly interested in playing, and the Dealers Room didn't open until Saturday. My fiancee and I attended part of one seminar on online resources for RPGs, but found it rather dry and wound up leaving early.

We also managed to replace some of the items we had left behind, like a digital camera, at the local Target. Hey, if the Nikon Coolpix is good enough for Ashton Kutcher, then it's certainly good enough for me. (And thanks to the nearby Borders going out of business, I picked up inexpensive copies of Son of a Witch and Lion Among Men.)

Saturday was a bit more exciting for me, as I was scheduled to run "The Jaded City of Oz" as part of the convention's Kid's Room. Thankfully, I had time to visit the Dealers Room beforehand, because I wasn't fully set on six-siders and gaming stones (I know I bought them years ago, but those wound up buried in the boxes during the move and we haven't had time for archeology).

I was a little worried, because nobody had showed up by the time my game was scheduled to run at 10 AM. It took a while, but I did get a pretty full group for the game. Check them out!

And yes, I was pretty impressed that I had so many grownups show up for a kid's game. Though that might have been because the con organizers decided to double-bill it as a "Demo game" in a separate part of the program. Either way, I had players and they had fun.

I spent most of the rest of the day shopping in the Dealers Room and the Buyers Bazaar. The Buyers Bazaar is more of a swap meet with individuals selling off their old games. I found a significant deal on a lot of old Talislanta stuff (It's a very cool setting. Check it out!) including some stuff that isn't available on that site.

That night was a city-building seminar which I was very happy I didn't miss, what with me being a Ken Hite fanboy and all. While I had been hoping for a chance to say hi to him this con, things wound up taking an interesting turn. My fiancee and I wound up chatting (and eventually having dinner with) Kevin Andrew Murphy, who was another panelist.

I even wound up giving him a print copy of AiO that I had been planning to give to Ken Hite. He seemed to like the idea of the game, and I'm hopeful he likes the implementation. He was good enough to let us get pictures with him. My fiancee took this one, and I took one with Kevin and her. (If you're a fan on Facebook, you can see that shot, as well as several others that won't make it here.)

The next morning was another game of Oz. The amazing thing was that people actually signed up to play. Though before we settled in, one of the players bowed out. So another player volunteered to call in a friend (on his phone, not by using an Oz Point) to round out the group.

In general, the players liked the scenario. There was some disappointment that the final scene wasn't as awesome as I had pitched it. You see, the final scene is the Jaded City of Oz, a place so magical that its inhabitants have literally seen everything. The challenge of the scene is very much about lateral thinking, as you must show these people something that they haven't seen before.

It can be easy for a Narrator to make this scene too hard, by countering everything the players propose with something wonderful and magical from the city itself. This group only stumbled for a little bit before a player decided to present their unique and interesting character, Bungle the Glass Cat for inspection. I couldn't come up with a good counter to that. So things were over rather quickly in what was supposed to be the "boss fight" of the adventure (although I've never had to use the combat rules in one of these games)

I sat in on two rather boring seminars on designing and publishing RPGs. They were very broad overviews of the process, with no real meat.

That evening, I wound up signing up for the one game that I played in: Spaceballs Back in Action. It was a lot of fun and everyone got a kick out of recreating roles from that classic film. I was Yogurt the Wise, who I played as this kind of dirty old man character with plenty of merchandising jokes. To the point of hitting a bad guy upside the head with Spaceballs: The Frying Pan. I don't know if I would play with the rules they were using again, but there was some fun to be had.

And of course, I spend a good chunk of money every year on all of that stuff that I've been holding out on for the whole year. Like Volume 2 of the Dresden Files RPG. And before you start dissing me for being an emo teen and picking up the Smallville RPG, I actually heard very good things about it on RPG.net. In order to make super-powered characters compare favorably with normals, they shift the balance point of the game to focusing on the relationship drama. Which is exactly the same as what I did in Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.

The other major item of note (I mentioned Talislanta earlier) is FantasyCraft, a d20 successor system, of which Pathfinder is the most successful. It does have the advantage of a lot more flexibility in terms of characters and campaign options than Pathfinder, but it looks like the d20 audience is mostly crying for their D&D fix.

Adventures in Staying At Home

This certainly has been an exciting week. Wish I was there.

Last weekend was the San Diego Comic Con (congratulations on those two Eisners, Eric!) as well as Winkie Con. This upcoming weekend is GenCon, one of the first (and certainly the biggest) RPG conventions out there. And during this week, it is Read an RPG Book In Public Week.

The only thing I've been able to participate in was Read an RPG in Public Week. But then, this is something I do anyway. My Facebook Friends and Fans have seen my photo of me reading AiO at the local Starbucks. The funny thing is, that was pretty much a publicity stunt. Sure, I read the book on my own (it's full of good stuff), but later that day, I wound up taking my D&D Dungeon Master's Guide to work with me so I could do some research for my current game.

I would have loved to attend any of the events going on right now, but traveling is a rather expensive proposition for me. DunDraCon is largely paid for by my tax return (I have to e-file to make sure that I get it in time). Hopefully, next year I will have some extra income from sales of the game, which should help me get out a bit more and drum up more sales of the game.

So remember, if you want to see me at Winkie next year, buy my stuff!

On a related note, the layout for the PDF version of the game is nearing completion and I'm hoping it will be done by next month. Even if it's ready sooner, I'm tempted to delay release until August 20th (Princess Ozma's birthday). This is mostly because I missed that date last year with the game.

First Look: Me!

One of the things I've had to do as I'm getting ready for DunDraCon is to buy a new digital camera. The one that I used last year died soon after we got back. And there were no pictures of me taken at the con last year because I was in dire need of a haircut. So as I'm playing with the camera and admiring my hair, I'm realizing that you guys haven't seen what I actually look like. Here I am:
Some of you may have seen the little icon that I use which looks kind of like this, but with a goatee. The thing is: for many years, I did indeed have a goatee and it was dead sexy. But I was forced to change jobs a couple of years ago and my new job didn't allow facial hair. As I had to feed myself and my fiancee, and pay for my publishing dream, I bit the bullet and shaved. I'm actually going to try to grow it back a bit over the weekend, so watch as I get progressively scruffier and sexier.

The big stack of books

Well, I told you before I left for the con that I would have a 3-4 foot tall stack of books to take home with me. Here it is.

And I warned you that I would tell you about my new purchases. Don't worry, this is just the highlight reel.

Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard: I picked up the main Burning Wheel rulebooks last year on the recommendation of Ken Hite and I was impressed. So this year I picked up the supplements Monster Burner and Magic Burner. Also this year came the Mouse Guard RPG, based on a comic series in which the heroes are civilized mice fighting for mouse civilization. I picked this one up on the recommendation of the kids-rpg Yahoo! Group that I belong to as well as (you guessed it) Ken Hite. The reason that it's mentioned here is that the RPG uses a kid-accessible version of the Burning Wheel rules as it's engine.

Someone in my shoutbox asked if I was planning on doing an RPG based on Wicked. While my own rules are more suited to a very light-hearted Oz, should the money materialize to make a Wicked RPG possible, I think I would go with the Burning Wheel as the underlying rules. Simply because the method for creating characters requires you to get into the character's past and into their head, which is one of the major ideas of Wicked; letting you into this person's life. Even if you only saw them for their few minutes of screen time, now you know and understand where that character is coming from.

Wicked: This was not bought at the con, but at the Borders at the nearby shopping center. I thought you guys might be interested in my opinion of the book after reading it. The first thing that struck me when I finished the book was "Oh my god, the Easter Eggs!" There were so many Oz references scattered here and there throughout the story. Although Maguire's Oz feels very different from Baum's, he actually does not preclude any of Baum's stories; in some cases going so far as to set them up (Dr. Nikidik, anyone?). My second thought was "He really liked 'Glinda of Oz', didn't he?" Most of the major plot points emerge from that book. Kumbric Witchcraft was what Queen Coo-ee-oh practiced. Madame Morrible setting up her students as the Three Adepts. The Goldfish in the fishwell.

Hunter: The Vigil: Now for something completely unrelated to Oz. Hunter: The Vigil is the latest in the World of Darkness line of games. Whereas most of the World of Darkness games allow you to play as a monster of some sort (Vampire and Werewolf are among their more popular lines), Hunter allows you to play a monster hunter. They tried this in an older game, Hunter: The Reckoning, but that was less impressive, I thought. For one, although Reckoning had their heroes set up to kill all sorts of supernatural creatures, they often wound up becoming quite supernatural themselves. Reckoning also required a bit more buy-in to the World of Darkness at large.

While it is possible to play a monster hunting monsters in Vigil, it is not the only option. They also support a more mundane "mortal heroes against monstrous supernatural evil" style of play. Though you can fight against vampires and werewolves, more support is given to fighting various kinds of monsters, including the supernaturally durable serial killer from many horror movies.

GURPS: Although you probably wouldn't be able to tell by the way I design games, GURPS is one of my favorite systems. Only got a few items this time around, probably because the world is running out of GURPS stuff I don't have. GURPS Myth, the licensed setting book for the Real-Time Strategy game of the same name, and GURPS Shapeshifters. I'm surprised that GURPS Shapeshifters got made, mostly because it came out 1 year before the edition change, which made most of its' rule information obsolete.

The one GURPS book that I really wanted was not sold at the con: GURPS Thaumatology. The latest in their hardcover line of wonderfully crunchy rulebooks.

Munchkin: For those of you who may not be aware, "Munchkin" has a negative connotation among the gaming community. It is generally taken to mean a bad player, or someone who focuses on combat effectiveness or replicating their favorite action hero of the moment instead of making their particular character interesting.

Then Steve Jackson Games had to go and make it fun. They made a card game in which each player tries to twink out their character to be ultimately badass and get the best loot. I had already picked up one of the spinoff games, Munchkin Impossible (a sendup of the spy genre), but this year I picked up a copy of the original fantasy-based Munchkin set. Both games are fun, but I'm waiting to try them both together and make a Russian Elf Tourist with Fruit Combat Training and a Sword of Decapitation (+2!). It could happen.

I finally managed to talk my gaming group into trying out "Adventures in Oz." Our first session is scheduled for Saturday. I'll let you guys know how that goes.

What happens at the Con...

...stays at the con.

Not really.

We left Friday morning at about 10 o'clock. I was pleased that I had found a friend who could drive, since that meant we didn't have to take the Greyhound bus. Me and my girl had done that for a few years and found it remarkably inconvenient, but had no real way around it until now.

It was about a 7 hour drive, which would have been a bit shorter if it weren't for the snow we encountered near Legget.

We arrived at the hotel at about 5 PM only to discover the power was out. Thankfully, this being a Marriott, they were prepared and had emergency power to run elevators and get everyone checked in. However, since we arrived so late in the day, we did not get the two bed room that we had requested (1 bed for me and the lovely lady, the other for our driving companion). We were able to get a cot brought to the room for the driver, but for the most part, it seemed like we traded one set of inconveniences for another. I'm working on figuring out a more optimal scheme for next year.

Saturday morning, I was up with the dawn to run "TransFormers: Attack of the Retcons."

It went well overall, since the majority of the players were Transformers fans of old, who got all of my references. They really liked the "retcon" mechanics I had devised, especially when one character got "killed" by the Retcons. Since the character was wiped out of existence, Optimus Prime instead sent someone else on the mission, meaning he got a different character. It took a few minutes for the group to get back to playing because they were stunned by the awesome.

For the record, the little girl in the picture is a Dorothy.

I spent Sunday morning in a seminar entitled "Ain't it cool?" in which the inestimable Ken Hite (and Darren Watts of Hero Games) gave their recommendations on hot new games. I then spent the afternoon picking up some of their recommendations from the dealer room.

Then, Sunday afternoon, I got ready to run my new "Magic Belt of Oz" adventure. As it was part of their kid's program, kids were encouraged to simply drop in to play. No kids came.

After 30 minutes, two grownups walked in and asked "Is this the Oz game?" I was a little leery of running a game with only 2 players, but I decided to give it a try. It did not go well. It actually helped me realize a mistake I had made with both adventures that I had prepared.

In both cases, I assumed that the players would be familiar with the background. The Transformers players had more fun if they knew about the planet Junk and the Quintessons. The Oz player that knew some of the background had more fun than the one that didn't. So next year, my plan is to build adventures that do not require background knowledge from the start. If there's background involved, let it be revealed by the story, not assumed in order to make the story work.

Miscellaneous pictures:
This is that Ken Hite guy I keep talking about. I own and enjoy a number of the books that he has written and I was quite pleased to discover that he is a regular attendee at DunDraCon and gives wonderful seminars. As well as the "Ain't it cool?"
seminar, I was also able to attend a seminar with him on city-building for RPGs. He also did a few I was unable to attend because of the time-slots for my games.

I must also now tell the story of how I met Ken Hite in an elevator last year. We both wound up in the same elevator along with one of my con-friends, Melissa. When I realized who it was, I said "WOW! You're Ken Hite! I really enjoy your work" (Or something similar). Melissa said, "I'm not nerdy enough to know who you are."

Ken's response to this was simply priceless: "Treasure that."

He was also a great sport in allowing me to get this picture of him. I'm not in the picture with him for the main reason that I am badly in need of a haircut and do not need that immortalized, thank you very much.
This is one of the few cos-players to attend the con. Other cons have much more extensive costuming, going so far as to have seminars and fashion shows and masquerade balls. If you can't tell, she's dressed as Mara Jade from the Star Wars Expanded Universe.









Then I had to go and take pictures of dice. Most of these items were intended to be used for the Oz game. The tubes are full of green glass beads to represent Oz Points for the game, and the plastic box on the left is full of 6-sided dice to be rolled during play, green with gold pips. The plastic box in the right is a standard polyhedral dice set (1 4-sided, 1 6-sided, 1 8-sided, 2 10-sided, a 12-sided and a 20-sided die) in the same green with gold markings. That one I bought just for me. This is the first chance I've had to buy dice since most of my gaming gear got stolen several months ago.

This was a Star Trek tactical simulator game that was being run by the fellow in uniform. You can't really see it, but the display and the consoles were full of blinking and flashing lights. The "main screen" on the wall panel was the "game board" with playing pieces representing ships that were stuck to it. If I wasn't so busy with my seminars and role-playing games, I might have given this one a try.



This is another one of his consoles, featuring a Borg Cube ship model.














The SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) has an active presence at DunDraCon every year, with a display table featuring their as-authentic-as-possible medieval props and combat demos with simulated weapons. Although the weapons are not deadly, they do have the ability to hurt you. The armor that their fighters wear is not simply for show.

There is also a "boffer LARP" group called Amtgard that does combat demos and such at the con as well, but I wasn't able to get pictures of them.

The primary difference between the SCA combat demos and boffer LARP combat demos is the weapons and armor. In the SCA, the swords are made of metal pipe to give them a realistic heft. In that case, you need realistic armor to protect yourself from being hit by a metal pipe. In a boffer LARP, the weapons are made of plastic pipe wrapped in layers of foam padding. Any armor you wear is largely for show, but can affect how damage is "called" during a fight.





This is just a nice little panorama I saw there. In the foreground is the shopping center right by the hotel. The background, though, was just such a lovely view that I felt the need to take a picture of it

Speaking of lovely views, I tried to get a picture of my girl, but it just didn't capture her at her best. I didn't realize that I didn't have a picture of her until the drive home, so what I did get is her looking pretty, but road-weary.

Maybe I'll post a picture of us once I get my hair cut and she's a bit more rested.

Off to the con!

In just about 24 hours, I will be on my way to San Ramon for DunDraCon. I've got both my adventures planned and set up. I'll be packing after work today. I filed my tax return as soon as I could so I'll have a good amount of spending money. And spend money, I will. Last year, I came home with a 3-4 foot tall stack of new RPG books, not to mention a plush Hound of Tindalos. I'll probably tell you guys about my new acquisitions in my next blog or two. Or three.

And I am still trying to get the Quadling Country done and I've made some inroads on the Narrator section. I'll have those up as soon as possible.

Scene it!

Late blog post, I know. I'd bore you with the reasons, but let's get on to the good stuff.

Now that we've done our brainstorming, it's time to put things together. I'm going to do that by assembling the story into scenes.

Those in the gaming world might claim that in only preparing one path for the players to follow that I'm "railroading". I would argue with that by saying 1) as an experienced Game Master, I expect to be able to improvise should the players come up with any surprises and 2) a convention adventure needs to be focused and, yes, a little bit railroad-y. As I said in a previous post, you only get one chance to game with a convention group so you have to make it count.

Scene 1
The party

I'm going to retain the introductory scene from the original "Magic Belt" adventure. It's one of the few things I liked about that adventure and I think the most "Ozzy" bit.

Scene 2
Investigations

There will still be a scene with the Magic Picture, just because of it's obvious use as a detective tool. What they will see in the Magic Picture will be a Green Monkey running through town as the people literally go to pieces. Everyone may make Brains rolls to figure out what's going on. Tin Woodman and Scarecrow are more likely to recognize the final fate of Mrs. Yoop, while Dorothy is more likely to recognize Fuddlecumjig. If the players don't make their rolls, the Wizard will probably be the one to mention the Fuddles. This is the necessary piece of information. The bit about Mrs. Yoop will only become important later.

Scene 3
The Fuddles

For those who haven't read "The Emerald City of Oz", the Fuddles have a tendency to go to pieces at the slightest provocation. Puzzle pieces, specifically. So when the characters arrive there, they will find all of the citizens as piles of wooden jigsaw puzzle pieces. In order to find out where the Green Monkey went next, they will have to assemble the Fuddles. If I have the opportunity and the resources, I might just make some kind of puzzles for the players to assemble rather than just rolling dice on this one. Thank you, Escapist, for that one.

The Fuddles may not know her grand plan, but they do know that she was heading west, towards the Winkie Country.

Scene 4
The Dark Forest

When the characters arrive at the Dark Forest (right next to the China Country if you're looking on a map), they are stopped by a pack of animals just within the forest. Apparently, some Green Monkey just ran by screaming that Ozma was coming to enslave them or something. It will take some smart talking to get out of this one.

Scene 5
Yoops' Cave

The primary element of this scene is the realization that Mr. Yoop is missing. It also leads to a trail of destruction which brings the party to Mr. Yoop's current location.

Scene 6
Mr. Yoop

Defeating or placating Mr. Yoop is the focus here. As long as they succeed in one of those, he'll tell them about the Green Monkey claiming to be his wife and how she used a magical belt to make the bars of his cage disappear. He begged her to take him with her, but she refused. I may play this up for comedy with a sobbing giant and his marital problems, but we'll see.

Scene 7
Yoop Castle

Now for the big showdown. The main trick is to get the Belt off of Mrs. Yoop. Extra challenge being that she's now giant-sized again. She might even give the Belt up if properly persuaded; She does have her original shape and powers back, anyway. However, Ozma's pronouncement that there would always be a Green Monkey in Oz is quite correct. The Belt couldn't undo the transformation, merely suppress it. Once she loses the Belt, she reverts back to Green Monkey.

All in all, not a bad adventure. I've probably designed better, but I know I've designed worse. The bit about needing the Belt to maintain her shape was inserted mostly to give the adventure a "neat" ending, and it still needs to be neater. One thing that the original adventure had that I can't really come up with right off for this one is Friends List interactions. Nearly every scene had some method of calling on friends to help resolve the situation.

If all goes well, and I have time, I might just polish it up and put it on the site in the place of the old adventure.

Know thy villain

You probably thought that my review of "The Tin Woodman of Oz" was going to be my blog for the week, didn't you? Well, I've got to keep on my rhythm and I thought you guys might be interested in watching the adventure design process from the inside.

My starting point is the title: "The Magic Belt of Oz". And also the blurb I submitted to the DunDraCon staff. While I could create a completely different adventure and run it in the allotted time slot, it would be much more work than starting from some kind of base.

So the story is about the theft of the Magic Belt. Who would steal it?

The Nome Kings seem an obvious choice, but they also have reasons that they can't. Ruggedo is wandering Oz without his memory (And Thompson might have dealt with him more permanently), and Kaliko is trapped being nice to Oz even though he hates it.

Few other villains appear in the Oz stories without being reformed in some way. The primary exception being Mrs. Yoop, the Yookoohoo from "The Tin Woodman of Oz". Although Ugu the Shoemaker (villain of "Lost Princess of Oz") learns humility from his transformation into a dove, there's no guarantee that Mrs. Yoop woke up one morning and decided to be a nice Green Monkey. And monkeys are crafty, meaning she would be very likely to escape her prison.

Her connection to Mr. Yoop is also useful. A climactic battle might be a fun thing for the players, especially as a chance to try out the game's combat mechanics. And it doesn't get more climactic than a fight with a giant.

Stealing the Magic Belt not only gives her an opportunity to get her original form and powers back, but could constitute a form of revenge against Princess Ozma, who was the one who trapped her in the form of a Green Monkey to start with. (Sure, she's the one who gave the form to Woot, but Ozma's the one who gave her a taste of her own medicine.)

It's likely that the main action of the adventure will occur as the heroes chase Mrs. Yoop across the Quadling Country as she goes to free Mr. Yoop. Since Quadling Country is plenty explored, there's lots of fodder for encounters there. Fuddlecumjig tops the list for me. It's a place Mrs. Yoop would go straight to if she thought she were being pursued. Just the act of her passing would create a mess that the heroes will need hours to clean up.

China Country is a similar place, and on the way, but repairing porcelain people isn't as much fun as putting together puzzles. The nearby Dark Forest, though, has possibilities. For those who may not remember, this is where the Cowardly Lion earned the title of King of Beasts. If Mrs. Yoop did something in her passing to upset the animals, there could be an interesting encounter there.

Then there's the big battle with Mr. Yoop. but believe it or not, that's not the capstone of the adventure. The heroes still need to get the Magic Belt back from Mrs. Yoop. She's gone back to her castle in the Gillikin Country, giving her the homefield advantage.

By the time they get there, Mrs. Yoop has used the magic of the Belt to change back to the person she once was. Then the real fun begins.

You only get one chance...

...to game with someone at a con.

Unlike a gaming group at home, you will only have this group together once, for a few hours. Once the game is done, the story is told and it will never happen again. So making it memorable is very important.

For "Attack of the Retcons", I pulled out all the stops. Spending nearly 6 months in development of this adventure, I like to think I put together a show-stopper. It's got:

* Your favorite Transformers characters recreated using original stats from the toys.
* An epic story that is a loving homage to the classic movie.
* Music cues from the classic movie.
* Screenshots from the classic cartoons depicting major settings and characters.
* I even had an artist friend draw a picture of what a Retcon might look like.

Why am I going on about "Attack of the Retcons" yet again? For one thing, 6 months of work lodges certain things in your brain. I'm finding similar results with my research and reading for Oz facts. For another, it's a great example of what a con game once-in-a-lifetime event can be (If I may be so humble).

So that leads me to "The Magic Belt of Oz". Originally designed as a "quickstart" game to promote the RPG and let players try out the rules, it should work well as a con game experience. But I'd like to make sure that it's as awesome (in it's own way) as "Retcons". So far it's got:

* Canon characters (including Dorothy) as playable characters.
* A story that offers some new places to explore in Oz.

And that's about it. I've thought that a cool touch might be to actually serve something to toast with during the birthday party scene (and maybe teach the kids some ettiquette).

I could also use some more pregenerated characters. The challenge isn't statting up the characters. I believe the rules are simple enough that anyone can do that in about 5 minutes. The challenge is choosing friends. Since this is only one story (though with room for expansion), I'd like to have characters who can call on their special friends for help during the adventure. For example, Scraps the Patchwork Girl might have Ojo as a friend, but what benefit might Scraps recieve by spending an Oz Point to call on him?

Also, I need to come up with a simple paragraph or two bringing the players up to speed if they've only seen the movie. Explaining how Dorothy came to live in Oz and maybe touch on a few of her new friends.

Thanks to all my loyal readers for bringing me a total of 1000 hits on the blog! Here's for 1,000 more!

EDIT: All right, I think I figured out why "Magic Belt" is not as awesome as Retcons. I don't have as much enthusiasm for the game. When I was writing it initially, I was so determined that it be "Ozzy" that I fought a lot of my own adventure writing instincts. Now to see if I can rewrite it to be something that I can actually be proud of in the next three weeks.

4 weeks to DunDraCon

In just 29 days, I will be in beautiful San Ramon, staying at the lovely San Ramon Marriot hotel and running 2 games for the attendees at DunDraCon. Yes, I said 2 games. Not only am I running "The Magic Belt of Oz" to promote the RPG, but I'm running another adventure entitled "Transformers: Attack of the Retcons." This will be using the Cartoon Action Hour system, designed by Cynthia Celeste Miller and Eddy Webb. I ran this adventure at last year's DunDraCon, but I feel that I could have done it better. It was designed as a strong homage to the 1986 film Transformers: The Movie, complete with final showdown in the depths of Unicron (or his head, anyway)

For those not familiar, "retcon" is a fan term for "retroactive continuity", which is what happens when a story changes previously established lore for a character or setting. Considering that the Transformers universe is full of other "cons", such as Decepticons, Contructicons and Minicons, it seemed that including Retcons would be a fun joke. That adventure is a lot of fun to run, which is another reason that I wanted to run it again this year.

Here are a few examples of retcons from the Oz stories.

Ozian Immortality: While "Wonderful Wizard" contains a good bit of death and describes the Wizard as aging to an old man during his seclusion in the palace, later stories establish that the people of Oz never age and cannot be killed. While some Oz fans have made attempts to explain this away (the most popular theory being that immortality is only in effect during the reign of a true Fairy, as opposed to a Wizard or a Scarecrow), it is actually more of a retcon.

The Wizard and Ozma: While "The Land of Oz" describes the Wizard as complicit in Ozma's disappearance, this detail is omitted in "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz" when the Wizard returns to Oz and he tells his version of the backstory.

I'm sure the Oz scholars among my readers can come up with a few more.

Onward to Adventure!

It may be that my worry 0ver supplements last week was overwrought. I was thinking that I would have to produce another setting supplement, with all the research, writing, and interpretation that would require. However, a thought occurred to me: Why not make an adventure supplement?

The first big reason is demographic. At least two major portions of my game's intended market are Oz fans (who may not have gamed before and might appreciate help coming up with adventures) and parents introducing their kids to gaming (who have many other things to do besides creating adventures for their group). A supplement containing ready-made scenarios would be a good thing on both counts.

The second reason comes from a rather different quarter. In many quarters of the RPG community, there are those who say that adventures generally don't sell well, except for D&D. Ken Hite (whom I have had the honor of meeting) goes a step further by pointing out that Call of Cthulhu has a rather successful adventure line. He even goes the step farther to explain why.

Because both games are designed with an eye to creating a specific kind of story, their customers are more likely to buy adventures that support that kind of story: "dungeon crawls" for D&D and occult mysteries for Call of Cthulhu. Oz stories also have a rather similar structure that could be fun and easy to emulate.

A few more bits of news:

Although one of my early goals was to have the game finished and ready by DunDraCon, that has become pretty much impossible. Although the game may not be for sale there, it will still be played. I have managed to get "The Magic Belt of Oz" on the schedule for the convention. I will be running the game as part of their kids program.

If all goes well, I should have the Winkie preview posted to the site by next week.

Why Oz?

Before I answer the question posted above, I just thought you'd like a little progress report. Gillikin, Munchkin and Winkie Countries are complete and available for download on the Adventures in Oz website.

If you've been reading my blog, you'll notice that I have large areas where my weekly post is just a lot of hooey letting you know that I'm still here. And it's a lot of hooey and not interesting reading. So I've decided to change that. Every week, I intend to offer you something. A new piece of art, design notes, or Oz commentary.

Now to the big question: Why Oz? Why try to publish an Oz RPG?
It all started when I bought some trade paperback comic books at a used bookstore some time ago. They were collections of a series called "Oz" published by Caliber Comics. It featured a very gritty story set in a dark Oz that was conquered by the Nome King. An interesting story, with quite a bit of researched detail (including some things that I didn't get until I started doing serious research). However, it wasn't very "Ozzy."

That just begged the question in my mind: "What is Ozzy?" Since I'm an avid gamer, the answers to that question began expressing themselves as RPG rules.

Publication wasn't part of the initial goal, since it was largely intended as a thought experiment. But as I thought about it, and did some checking, it became more and more possible. The original stories had fallen into the public domain, so I wouldn't have to pay for a license. Print-on-demand technology has reduced the need to shell out for massive print runs at the outset like in the old days. My only real expenses would be minor business and publishing expenses, and whatever content I couldn't generate myself. This last one is turning out to be a killer because I am not an artist. A single piece of art isn't too expensive, but the amount of art that a project like this will take lets it add up quickly.

It was out of this interest in being published that I attended a seminar on game publishing at DunDraCon back in February. There were two main bits of advice that I took away from that: #1 Don't bank on success. It's unlikely, and won't make you a millionaire in any case. #2 If you're going to do it, do it. If it's going to succeed, it needs to do so in the marketplace. If it's going to fail, it should probably happen before it becomes your baby.

So I resolved to put nose to the grindstone and get this baby published by the end of the year, so I can appear at DunDraCon next year as a dealer. While my timing may not be as good as I'd like, my dedication to getting this done has not changed.

Next Week: Combat