So how was Gen Con?
I believe Tavis went to be a speaker… did Alex go? Were there any ACKS events?
I ran pick-up ACKS games on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The first night we had a big group of players including Rich Forest who I should not have been surprised to meet at the Orc Stomp 5K, given that he tracks his runs at his blog Superhero Necromancer. I'd previously corresponded with Rich because he is revising an encyclopedia entry ("Dungeons & Dragons, Monster's in") for the upcoming Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. This group rolled up Adventurer characters - with a few exceptions like Roger of Roles, Rules, and Rolls who arrived late and thus graciously used a pre-generated Mard the Barbarian. We used the templates from the Player's Companion to speed up character creation; I let each player roll 3d6 and then offered them the choice of that template or any lower-numbered one. Many chose their assigned fate but some substitutions were made, as when the dice generated an eunuch sorceror.
In this night's adventure, the party found a cult of mushroom-eating Men who could see in the dark and sent a troll against the heroes. When it was defeated, the mushroomers drew back and suggested that the party leave them alone and raid a dragon's treasure instead. This went well until the dragon unexpectedly returned. The decision to flee was not unanimous, so the dragon breathed the largest group to death and then mauled a couple of stragglers while the others ran in all directions. Those who went back into the mushroom caves were pursued but managed to elude the dragon. The survivors became quite rich from the haul they had managed to scarf up before the owner returned.
On Friday night, we played with Jarrod - one of the fatalities of the first night coming back for more - and Brian aka Trollsmyth. More on that later.
Well - I will chime in. I hadn’t heard of ACKS, but I met him at the seminar that he led. Great talk! It was quite informative and I really enjoyed the topic. Tavis invited anyone who wanted to meet him for pickup games at Embassy Suites that night. My friends and I went over and were excited to get to play.
After dealing some serious smackdown to the players the previous two nights, Tavis suggested that we play higher level characters, so we did. We got ninth level PCs that were totally tricked out with personal armies, camp followers, pegasi, giant dwarven constructs with heavy repeating ballistae for hands… you get the idea. We went into the cavern complex and encountered the mushroom people, and decided to parley with them rather than kill them. They led us to the dragon’s lair. First, we had to dispatch a chimera, but that was no big deal. Then we had to smack the dragon around a little. The poor guy, he never really even had a chance.
To reward the mushroom people for their help, we dammed up their river with the dwarven constructs, flooded their cavern, and then shot them with ballistae when they came running out. It might sound evil, but I checked with my goddess before doing it, and she said it was cool, so you know.
We had a blast. Afterwards we went out to Steak N Shake and hung with Tavis and had delicious shakes to reward ourselves for our total awesomeness.
Tavis, thanks for the seminar and the game. We really had fun.
Tavis, thanks for running the games all those nights. I had a blast despite being a regular casualty on thursday and friday. Thank you also for accepting my two friends Kevin and Jim, total ACKs newbies, on Saturday night. It sounded like they had an awesome time, and they both enjoyed the post-game philosophical discussion!
Those games sound like they must have been a blast.
And Tavis, I really enjoyed the seminar too. It was all sorts of interesting. Go figure an OSR grognard enjoying a seminar about the OSR movement. Shocking I know. But it was informative. Thanks for that.
Awesome guys - sounds like it was a lot of fun. Hopefully some day I’ll be able to make it, but until then I must live vicariously. 