Story Time: My 1st Two Tournament Experiences

Yesterday I was doing something kind of monotonous and painful.....assembled (mostly) a big piece of Ikea furniture. Had Spotify blasting in the background and some song lyrics lamenting being dealt a "bad hand", and I honestly thought....., "Do people even think about the times they unfairly have an advantage?"

Well, obviously I do, or I probably wouldn't be typing about it here. What immediately came to mind were my 1st two RPG tournaments. While I am quick to talk about tournaments here 'cause it's an easy topic for me since I played in, and then ran, quite a few for HackMaster at Origins & GenCon. Pretty sure that I've referenced my earliest tournament experiences before, but I haven't flat-out told the whole story/stories.

My very 1st tournament experience was definitely a "bad hand" and the second was an "unfair advantage". Both of these were at a smaller local con overseas. The organizer was able to bill the AD&D Tournament as the "National Tournament" because there wasn't one otherwise. Winner got a free trip to GenCon Europe. No pressure.....actually I'm in it for the fun, so no....no actual pressure.

It's 1995 and I've made it to the final round at the "American" table.....there was another table for the host country so games could be run in native languages. I don't remember if we can choose our pre-gens or if they were randomly assigned, but I got a single-sided PC sheet that had the party Magic User. On the flip side of the PC sheet was a fricken wall of text. One paragraph of your PC's basic history and then a series of short paragraphs telling the player how their PC gets along with the other PCs. For the most part nothing too remarkable....until you got to the fighter, Solamnus. I can't recall my PC's name, but I sure remember this guy!

My PC did not like the Fighter, thinking he was an idiot and his stupidity is going to get me killed. There was some bad blood there, but it really looked like it my PC's fault 'cause it seemed to me that he was a bit full of himself and more than a bit dickish to the fighter, even if it didn't say that straight-up. The text was a first-person account and the "fact" that the fighter didn't care for being turned (intentionally, mind you) into a chicken was somehow not the MU's fault....yeah ok I think I have a feel for this PC.

In-character, and only in-character, I talked down to the fighter, nick-naming him "Salami" 'cause it was more succinct than "meat head". As a player I did mention to the other fighter's player that there was clearly some issues between our PCs and to please not take it personally. I assume he had bothered to read the backstory......especially since he didn't have to start looking up spells and whatnot before we started.....

.....yeah, clearly I assumed wrong. The player was a little antagonistic, but it didn't seem OOC in the moment.

The party did manage to work well-enough together, but leading into the final encounter it was obvious we were getting into, at best, a stalemate, and at worse possibly even a TPK. Now was my opportunity to shine and through a good combination of spells I was able to advance our party to the final encounter and subsequently managed to obtain the McGuffin while the party was otherwise bogged downed with the BBG. This enabled our table to win the tournament!

We had to pick a MVP from our table to win the trip and while I am biased (duh) I think it should have been me because I was playing my PC well, and managed to do some creative work that caused us to win. Problem was that Solamnus' player, and the player's wife (who was also in the game) really didn't like my PC making fun of that PC. Both players took it personally and to this day I don't think they actually read the PC backgrounds. Instead they both voted for the Bard's player, who did some cheap theatrics at the table......really?

Clearly I was a bit upset, but really it was just some added BS that feed into post-game and post-convention let-down. I really didn't know that was a thing for me yet. The player who went to GenCon Europe had a great time and she actually started playing and I was able to take part in her game a couple of times.

The next year (1996) though, that was a bit of a shit-show, but grossly unfair.....in my favor. Again I'm at the final table and this adventure revolves around finding a Holy Avenger for a Paladin....that I was lucky enough to draw. Really? The entire adventure revolves around one/my PC getting the best bad-ass weapon possible for him, which we managed to do. The final BBG is tough, but against a Holy Avenger....not that tough. Guess who won the tournament? The obvious answer isn't "me", but "Whoever managed to play the Paladin", which was me, but if a monkey capable of rolling dice was at the table with that PC (be nice Erik!) had the Paladin, then that monkey would be going to 1997 GenCon Europe! At least this monkey got a trophy!*

I didn't do too poorly at GenCon Europe. I didn't win, but I did place in the top half of my table...which came in second. This means I was in the top 10 if that's brag-worthy. That convention was in England during the weekend that Princess Diana died. That was an....... interesting experience, but not one for here. It was the second time I met Ken Whitman (1st being the earlier convention), but again not a (interesting enough) experience for here, unless you're a fan of the card game Groo: The game.

With these two initial tournament experiences it isn't surprising that it took me almost another decade to sling dice in an organized play event again......

*There was no trophy for winning the tournament. The prize was the trip, so I had a cup made as a trophy.  I just wanted something physical I could display, and possibly use at the table. Not the best pic as this was for something else....

Played a DCC Game and "Won" by "Losing"

 

Special Note: I'm at North Texas RPG Con and exhausted. It's been a great con by almost any standard and I'm pretty much wiped. I'm pre-writing this at 2030 on Saturday night when I have a free moment and I should be resting before the midnight auction. I know I'll be dragging tomorrow anyway.....so screw sleep I'm putting up the post.

There are a few games I own I don't get to play much. Probably more my fault than the system's....maybe I prefer other systems or I get enough gaming in already (yeah, right.......that can't be it!). I like DCC, but for me it's a convention game. Maybe that'll change, but for now it's the odd convention game and listening to the Spellburn podcast.

I did get in a DCC funnel game that was unexpectedly good time for me.....I say "unexpectedly" because it was advertised as a 3rd level game and ended up being a zero-level funnel, which can be fun, but not what I was hoping for in the least.....

....yes, this is going to be something of a PC Story and since I'm pretty sure it was an actual published adventure I'm going to forgo a lot of specific game-ruining aspects because that isn't the heart of this specific PC story.

This is the story of Jimbobob. Yes, if you want to continue reading you will have to suffer through said PC story. If not, Erik will undoubtedly have another post tomorrow...

That out of the way, this is the story of Jimbobob (Jim-bo-bob) who got rounded up with his fraternal twin sister Jillbobob and his best bud Scrotus and forced with a gaggle of others to complete not just a task that will lead to certain death, but THEN continue on and try to save the world from some BBG (Big Bad Guy) who is going kill everybody and everything at some unspecified "soon" time. Score of victims suckers have gone before and perished and the powers that be are already herding the next group to follow after Jimbobob and his compatriots are nothing but a memory and a bloodstain.

Miraculously the initial task was met without suffering too many loses. The group manages to secure the MacGuffin and there is a glimmer of hope that maybe the impossible task is not so impossible.....the group makes it back to the assembly point and is able to advance forward on the final step of the journey to confront the BBG. Our group has been able to build upon the incremental deaths successes of HUNDREDS that have come before, but the MacGuffin is more than just a means to get to the end, but a mighty tool, a weapon even, that can turn the tide for humanity. Our small, motley assembly of nobodies actually has a chance of pulling this off!

Then all of a sudden.....out of the blue....

POP!

Jillbobob is just vaporized in an explosion of pink mist. Jimbobob is covered in the puréed remains of his sister. His one companion from before he was even born! What.....the....fuuuccckkkk.....

Evidently the MacGuffin has a killer of a downside (pun intended). It allows the wielder to perform magic and if there is a spell failure, the result is a random being suffers a "violent decompression event", or "gets popped" as the group quickly puts it.

What was the brief glimmer of hope for Jimbobob turns into a deep level of despair. Nothing matters, we're all going to die anyway so why bother........(I basically started channeling my inner emo and started speaking as much like Eeyore as I could, when using this guy). Scrotus is thankful for every moment the group has and getting closer to succeeding is worth celebrating, especially when we start losing group members to the perils of adventuring....and a few POP!s.

Eventually the group finds another MacGuffin, a different one, and hopes to find a third before confronting the BBG. There's a tantalizing "lead" but someone has to go all Tunnel Rat and start crawling into some stone tunnels/rabbit holes....something that will probably lead to a lonely and/or painful death. 

"Whatever, we're all going to die anyway. I've been all alone since Jillbobob died anyway....." Jimbobob is sent into the tunnels with 50' of rope tied around him and eventually just disappears. The party waits for a while and then just leaves him for dead. (The GM didn't ask me to stamp the PC sheet 'dead' so I just STFU and thought maybe he'd be found later).

Through an unfortunate incident Scrotus now has MacGuffin #1 and another PC has MacGuffin #2 when the party faces off against the BBG and it is apparent that the few remaining PCs are true and rightly fucked. The world is fucked. This isn't just a BBG, it's a fricken B...B...G. It's like we were hoping to fight a Lizardman and then coming across fricken Godzilla! Holy shit people-who-ramroded-us-into-this-crap, I can see why you buried the lead. We could have saved ourselves the trouble and stress (of being POP!ped for one) and just slit our own throats on the onset of the adventure.

Luckily though the world might not be screwed as we are because while even one mighty MacGuffin won't do diddly-squat, at least in the group's hands, to the BBG, the other MacGuffin can turn one guy into a different type of BBG. Basically we might have a chance against Godzilla because our guy can turn into Mecha-Godzilla.

OK, a little honesty here....."we" are still righteously fucked, but Mecha-Godzilla boy had a decent shot at surviving this thing and saving everybody back home.

Out of Character (OOC): Yeah.....you think you might have seen a typo, God knows I can be full of them, but I did mean "had" because this is when Jimbobob comes back into the picture.

The nearly-useless MacGuffin changes hands a few times as people die from the BBG and maybe a few POPs. There's a bit of chaos happening when Jimbobob emerges from the tunnel into the final battle with the BBG and guess what happens to be on the floor near his feet...another MacGuffin! Since everything is fucked and we're all going to die anyway, might as well give the MacGuffin a go. Jimbobob tries to activate the magic and nope and he fails miserably.

POP! goes the Mecha-Godzilla.

OOC: At this point I think as a player I'll be all smart and maybe a little rules-lawyerly. There are only three PCs alive in the chamber, but IIRC the vaporization was a random effect.....did the GM account for the BBG when rolling off? Evidently this was a possibility and he had been rolling for the effect to target other beings outside the group before, but hadn't this time.....so he'll re-roll.

POP! goes the Mecha-Godzilla. (OOC: Oh well, I tried)

So it's the BBG against the one remaining PC, that it knows about, armed with essentially a useless MacGuffin, and then there's Emobobob, er I mean Jimbobob armed with an even more useless MacGuffin. The BBG rips through the other PC like he was a wet piece of tissue paper and it won't be long before Jimbobob is discovered and snuffed out just as easily.....

.......and then....

POP! The BBG is vaporized and the world is saved, but not Jimbobob. He just doomed himself to an eternity alone.....at least in his mind.

OOC: So I know I'm screwed and this is the end of the game with the GM clearly having a winning hand. Now, he may have just thrown me a huge bone, adventure wise, but I thought I had a rare rules-lawyering moment, one proud enough to post about it here at the Tavern, no less. While on the surface the MacGuffin really seemed useless because it had no real powers other than casting spells, and those spells weren't going to do a whole helluva lot to the BBG, like highly doubtful even a single-digit of damage, I noticed that the highest level spell had a DC30 spell check and made it clear if you rolled high enough you could pick....actually quoting from the book...."any two of the effects listed above". You know what was on said list...and I hope you've figured it out dear reader.....

.....failure. Failure was on the list. Now clearly the intention is to pick a beneficial spell effect, but in this case, clearly failure is an option.....and if I pick it twice, then I'm assured a pyrrhic victory. 

Of course you'd think that if I'm typing this out now that I managed to pull off that 29 or 30 roll on my d30, or that I was able to burn Luck to get the desired results, but no....I just actually failed my spell check, so someone is gonna POP!, just not both Jimbobob and the BBG. It was all down to the die roll, which the GM let me make. Odds the BBG POP!s and even Jimbobob gets to reunite with his sister in whatever fresh hell serves as the afterlife....

.....and I roll a "1".

Jimbobob saves the day but now he's stuck in a virtual mountain or riches that he can't possibly use.....well he could, but in doing so he'd undoubtedly release the MacGuffins into the world and how many more would suffer being POP!ped? I figure he'll just turn into the Mecha Godzilla and spend the rest of his days alone protecting the world from his group's sucessess. 

My Brief Run-In with Dave Arneson

 

Although I've been a big volunteer for a game company squaring-away the "big" convention tournaments, I've only attended GenCon two or three times. I've always been much more a Origins fan.....far more "bang for my buck" and GenCon is just too much, well for me......"too much".

Regardless, I have attended a few times and most importantly for the purposes of today's post, I attended in 2008. I managed to be able to stay after the con closed and helped KenzerCo tear down their booth, something I was able to do quite a few times at Origins. The lead-in pic is from the Steve Jackson Games guys letting me try on the Munchkin head.....despite several extremely poignant warnings and attempts to dissuade me from doing so. It was as hot, sweaty, and post-con nasty as you'd expect a big mascot head to be.....but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me.

That wasn't the only once-in-a-lifetime opportunity during that convention.

Now I'm not sure how many Tavern patrons are aware, but last week (April 7th) was the anniversary of the passing of Dave Arneson. We all seem to remember Gary Gygax's passing, but we have his children running a memorial game convention every year that helps all of us remember.....

Anyway, GenCon 2008 was Dave Arneson's last GenCon with us and I briefly got to meet him at the KenzerCo booth. He was being pushed around in a wheelchair and it just seemed he knew it was his last big con. That seems sad, it did in the moment, but at the same time I have to give the man credit 'cause he was (literally) rolling with it. He was going around giving other game designers/artists these little baggies with d20's and a note in them. I was gifted one of these and they were two Gamescience d20's and the note was on a Westin Hotel sticky notepad:

"Rubbed in the hair of a live game designer

-Dave Arneson"

I've never rolled the dice and being a KoDT/HackMaster fan, the whole "fame rub" on a game designer (there is a long story arc about this in the comic) makes this a special memento in a couple of ways.

Now while I have seen The Secrets of Blackmoor, but I personally don't think I quite "get" Arneson's full contribution to this hobby we all share. I know there are some books I probably should pick up someday that might help, but I already have a few "history" books on the early days of this hobby I haven't gotten around to reading yet as it is.

On Fudging Dice Rolls

 

This weekend is GaryCon, though this year it's virtual. Raise a glass and/or roll some dice in remembrance.....you do you.

Earlier in the week I was chatting with a GM friend of mine, mostly getting her advice on a writing project I was (probably still am) a little out of my depth on. Of course the discussion strayed from the initial topic and in the process I was told that she was going to "stop fudging dice rolls".

Now I'll admit that my initial reaction was more of a "wait, what?" and thinking that's just wrong, but it really got me thinking about the role of the GM, and more importantly, how other people interpret the role of the GM as well.

Now I already know that some of your reading this may have already condemned this GM for her particular style......which is human nature if you have a conflicting style. I've always been a "by the roll" type GM, and player and it's served me well in the past*. Some games you really shouldn't even consider fudging dice rolls, like in DCC where the game balance itself comes from the brutality that is the random dice roll.

Now in this GMs defense, said dice rolls were more like changing a monster's hit point total or under-representing a damage roll to keep from killing a PC. I think most GMs do this as more of a story-telling perspective and to keep the action flowing. Of course I doubt the same type of GM would add hit points to a monster or bump up the damage roll against a PC in order to kill the character because they think the story would be benefitted, which is kind of why I'm against the GM screwing with dice rolls.

Now I can see a different GM fudging dice rolls to the same effect for a vastly different purpose. If I wanted to (well be a dick, but not exactly where I am going....) increase my chances of a Total Party Kill (TPK) or just wanted to hamstring the party in general, I'd fudge the dice obstinately in the "party's favor" to not kill a PC, but bring them down to like 1 hit point. Almost killing a character could be "dramatic", but also is more of a party resource suck than killing said PC. Sure, go ahead and use up your potions and spells to restore that character.......then you won't have them later and I can maybe kill off a few more of the party!

Now I get that this is a game and we play to have fun. I assume that most GMs that fudge dice rolls do so because they want to keep the status quo. They're the storyteller type....well a storyteller type. I'd argue that I'm a storyteller type GM as well, but I let the dice fall where they may......

......but I'm a lazy GM.

Yes, I'm the Arbiter of the game and have to decide what goes, but I'm telling a story, not necessarily the PC's story. The PCs might be the protagonists, but the way I figure...some of the story has to happen outside of the PCs actions...they just get to see the stuff that comes across their path.

Also, I'm not sure I'm good enough of a GM to properly balance an adventure, much less a campaign well enough to keep the adventure fun for everyone involved. Sure, most games have some rough guidance, but it's well....rough. I'm OK with dead ends, red herrings, and unbalanced encounters and adventures. The rough guidance given can get me "close enough" and my actions in shifting in response to the party isn't so much fudging dice rolls, but changing how the world...how the story...is tweaked in the first place.

Instead of changing a die roll I might add or remove some monsters from an encounter before the party starts the adventure. If they lose a PC halfway through I'm not going to change what they might face should they press on, but if I know that one PC isn't playing I might make that change before play starts for the night.

Having been a HackMaster (4th & 5th Edition) GM I have been guilty of the "Player vs. the GM" dynamic at the table. Of course that was more a role I was playing as I generally root for the PCs, but if they think I'm out to get them....well that's a bit of game-table drama in and of itself. Just one more thing that the players can overcome.....they can get over and "win" against the adventure and again of the GM out to get them. I was a big fan of the GM shield and everything.....

.....until I wasn't.

I think out of necessity I had a con game that I didn't have my usual setup so I was forced to play without a GM screen and started rolling out in the open. 

Changed my life.

Sure I was already a "as the dice falls" type of GM, but really the players would have to just take my word for it. Rolling in the open let me tweak the adversarial relationship just a smidge. Clearly I'm still a "killer GM", but I'm not faking any of it. Instead of thinking about how to balance the game in the moment I do some rough "math" before the game and let the dice help tell the story that the players nudge and I arbitrate. Much easier (i.e. Lazy) for me to manage. Sure this means that the players may push themselves too far and get themselves killed, which is clearly reflected in my kills stickers above.

My players have to trust that I'll put adventures in front of them they can probably manage. Is that really my job? not really.......but in real life we don't usually try to bite off more than we can choose, within reason. Now if the adventure or encounter goes South and the party doesn't react accordingly...their fault, not mine. Trying to manipulate things to make the adventure/encounter equitable is a lot or work...and I'd rather just take the lazy route and deal with the aftermath.

Hmm......I wonder....

Ok, took a quick break to see if Gary had anything to say about dice rolls in Master of the Game (an aside......holy fuck, this book is going for $70 now!?) Not seeing anything, but there is a bit about Killer GMs (I'm not actually one) and more about GM laziness, which I've more than implied in this post. Yeah...maybe I need to spend less time musing about fudging dice rolls and more reading Gary's thoughts on "Principles and techniques for becoming an expert Role-playing game master".

*I find it hard today to not leave this rambling without a PC story. For a con session I thought it'd be cool to try and roll up a Half-Ogre Fighter specialized in dual-wielding two-handed swords because who doesn't like two 1d12 attacks per round? The adventure was a gladiatorial arena and while I do not remember much from a Sunday morning con game a decade & a half ago, I do remember my PC being pushed off a 120' tower by a wall of force. Since my guy is looking at 12d6p of damage I asked if he could grab a sword in each hand and smile as he faced his impending death. This was HackMaster 4th edition so dice "penetrated", i.e. if you rolled a the top number on a die, you rolled again and added the result -1 to the total. The average damage roll should have been 48hp. Of course, since this is a story being recalled 15ish years later, the GM rolled poorly. Not a single die penetrated, lots of 1's and 2's. Oh and armor absorbed some damage....and Half-Ogres take 1/2 crushing damage, which falls...er, fall....under. Basically my PC managed to survive the fall and walk away from most certain death. Good times.

"Painful" Lesson Regarding System Differences

 

Just a head's-up that today's post is something like 96-103% PC storytime and if that's a turn-off consider this your warning to just come back to the Tavern tomorrow. Also, kind of adult content, possible trigger? Adult content as in Porky's, not as in serious adult content ;)

I've mentioned before that I had a HUGE gaming dry spell between 1996 and 2003, or so.....not that other years were bountiful, just better. I had picked up HackMaster on my honeymoon in late 2002 and we started hitting the FLGS (Favorite Local Game Store) the next year. One friend I made through the FLGS was Rob.

Rob was a medically retired Army vet who happened to be stationed in the same place I was....at the same time even. He was just in the next barracks over and in another unit so out paths just didn't cross "back in the day". Of course we hit it off playing many games at the FLGS and I eventually got into his gaming group. Ugh, that group was painful with Rob as a GM, way too social and mental for my tastes. We'd have entire sessions where no dice were slung. Not my style of game. We used to joke that Rob had his detail settings set too high...he could tell you exactly how many field mice were f*&king in a specific pasture 3 counties over.

Some of us ended up getting together for another, "looser" game that Rob wanted to run for us and this would be my real intro to D&D 3.5 since I could start from scratch with my PC, and I had finally gotten a PHB. I probably should have spent more time reading said PHB, but if I had then the rest of this story never would've happened.....

Anyway, I have a habit of running a very specific type PC whenever I start a new fantasy RPG in that I try to make the absolute best Archer that I can. This time I went with some sort of Elven Cleric of a gawd (I know, but "gawd" is an old HackMaster habit I'm not keen to drop) that had a bow as a preferred weapon. One casting (I hope I remember the spell name right) of True Strike and I'm pretty much guarantied to hit my target, especially after I multi-class a bit into Fighter.

I end up naming this PC BALADAR (yes, it is capitalized!) after a big joke we had while creating PCs. The bit was some back-and-forth about two gamers who get married and have a kid they decide to raise as a self-aware PC. BALADAR was the name we came up with for this poor bastard kid. 1st Day of Kindergarten BALADAR.....btw he speaks of himself in third-person....is sent to school with a pinned note showing his stats "My Intelligence is a 7!" and that 1st day is rough. "BALADAR wants a juice-box! BALADAR wants a nap!" After describing BALADARs various foibles, and laughing for a good half hour at this piece of group fiction, I HAD to name my next PC BALADAR.

We started this new game as 1st level nobodies in a desert seaport. As a group we decided that we didn't want an "urban" campaign and would rather get out of BFE (if you don't know this one......consider yourself fortunate to not have lived there). We didn't have much money between us and figured that it would be much better to get paid to travel to somewhere else instead of the alternative. Working as a caravan guard seemed easy enough, all we had to do was secure employment. BALADAR took off with our Sorcerer.....basically our most Charismatic PC to go find a caravan merchant that needed more muscle.

After some effort we finally find a group that could use more manpower but there's a hitch. The caravan matron, a large attractive-forty-years-ago-maybe, woman has her pick of new guards and why should we be picked up instead of another group? The Sorcerer pitches our abilities.....having a Cleric and Sorcerer as well as a couple of fighters (one was actually a thief, but why mention that?) could prove useful, but to no avail. In what I'm sure is a bit of the GM fucking with the player, the Matron would much rather get a little kick-back in the form of being "serviced", by the Sorcerer. The desert can get cold and lonely at night, after all......

Now these little side discussions between NPCs and PCs were rather common in Rob's games to begin with, and usually not held at the table, so those not actively involved rarely pay much attention. Hell my PC isn't even actively involved....he's just "there" off to the side, but I am trying to listen in the best I can.

So here we have, in-character, some old-fashioned straight-up sexual harassment Quid Pro Quo. Can't get much worse, right? Well the Sorcerer decides instead of taking one for the team, or declining outright....., he'll go ahead and pimp out my PC instead. Wait, what?

He does the old, "My buddy at the bar wants this on his tab.....*waves at guy to get him to nod and/or wave back*" trick and this part I completely fell for 'cause I didn't hear the lead-in. The GM has me enter the conversation and explains that not only did the Sorcerer explain that BALADAR was more than happy to "service" the Matron, my acknowledgement from across the room was considered binding. 

Again....wait, what?

Of course the Sorcerer has hightailed it and BALADAR isn't going anywhere until the deed it done, as it were. This is when I had what I thought was an epiphany....BALADAR wasn't a 1st level Fighter, he was a 1st level Cleric. I have just the spell for this occasion (I hope at least one of you sees where I'm going...): Command.

Command (Enchantment/Charm)

Level: 1    Components: V   Range: 1"    Casting Time: 1 segment   Duration: 1 round    Saving Throw: Special   Area of Effect: One creature

Explanation/Description: This spell enables the cleric to issue a command of a single word. The command must be uttered in a language which the spell recipient is able to understand. The individual will obey to the best of his/her/its ability only so long as the command is absolutely clear and unequivocal, i.e. "Suicide!" could be a noun, so the creature would ignore the command. A command to "Die!" would cause the recipient to fall in a faint or cataleptic state for 1 round, but thereafter the creature would be alive and well. Typical command words are: back, halt, flee, run, stop, fall, fly, go, leave, surrender, sleep. rest, etc. Undead are not affected by a command. Creatures with intelligence of 13 or more, and creatures with 6 or more hit dice (or experience levels) are entitled to a saving throw versus magic. (Creatures with 13 or higher intelligence and 6 hit dice/levels do not get 2 saving throws!) BALADAR casts Command: Orgasm Yeah, suck it GM! I got over on your little machinations, anc screw that other player too! Should work, right? Yeah......no. That spell block above...that's for 1st Edition D&D, which was what I was used to. D&D 3.5 run the spell a bit differently...d'oh! Command Enchantment (Compulsion) [Language-Dependent, Mind-Affecting] Level: Clr 1 Components: V Casting Time: 1 standard action Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels) Target: One living creature Duration: 1 round Saving Throw: Will negates Spell Resistance: Yes You give the subject a single command, which it obeys to the best of its ability at its earliest opportunity. You may select from the following options. Approach On its turn, the subject moves toward you as quickly and directly as possible for 1 round. The creature may do nothing but move during its turn, and it provokes attacks of opportunity for this movement as normal. Drop On its turn, the subject drops whatever it is holding. It can’t pick up any dropped item until its next turn. Fall On its turn, the subject falls to the ground and remains prone for 1 round. It may act normally while prone but takes any appropriate penalties. Flee On its turn, the subject moves away from you as quickly as possible for 1 round. It may do nothing but move during its turn, and it provokes attacks of opportunity for this movement as normal. Halt The subject stands in place for 1 round. It may not take any actions but is not considered helpless. If the subject can’t carry out your command on its next turn, the spell automatically fails So now I'm fucked, literally? We get back to the game table and the GM explains to the other players what happened and how bad I failed to thwart the Sorcerer's manipulation. Good news though! We can still take our place as caravan guards for this trip since BALADAR stayed true to his "word" and made sure the Caravan Matron was "pleased" with her hiring decision. Yeah........not sure if I was more pissed or disappointed. I know I'm an adult and if it really bothered me I could have shot a proverbial flare up and waved the bullshit flag. I got worked over and thought I could flip the script through creative spell use, but nope. I'm not sure how this scenario was supposed to have gone, not sure how I would've gotten revenge either, but that's because it was all too much for BALADAR. He died in out very 1st combat encounter. Since 3.5 isn't exactly thought of as an overly deadly game I'm thinking he died of shame, it just took a while for the dice to come around to do their part.

From Fever Dream to Initial Thoughts on New Disease

 

[I'm recovering from what I assume is a bad cold/light flu....NOT COVID....doubt I'll even get tested at this point, and last night I didn't have much of a temperature, but I did have one.....and this post comes straight out of my dreams last night.]

Rarely do I dream about gaming, and even then it's a pretty one-sided affair, like I'm dreaming about being in a game (as a player slinging dice) or I'm dreaming in-character. Last night I had the same dream over & over, but from different viewpoints. The result was an odd stream-of-consciousness that I think was about a HackMaster game, but the reasons for that should be apparent.

Starting from a player perspective there was one player at the table that had the hots for the woman playing a female druid at the table. He wanted to force her PC to fall in love with him, er his Sorcerer PC (yes, it was as creepy as that sound like) and created some magical potion that would do the trick. At this point another female Druid, this was the in-character mother of the would-be victim, discovered the ruse and was all, "Over her dead body". That phrase was a bit off, but I remember it clearly. So this older Druid performs some ritual that twists the magic of the potion so it doesn't work, but it has an unexpected side affect.

The younger Druid drinks the potion and appears to get rather sick, looking a little gaunt. The symptoms fade quickly enough and the Sorcerer, and player, leaves the group before his plans get out.....evidently the older Druid did not just out the guy, which would have made more sense to me. What isn't discovered is that the potion has a nasty side affect that remains hidden until the Druid changes into an animal form. Instead of changing into an expected form the Druid becomes an undead abomination that is an amalgamation of undead and lycanthrope. What's worse is that this state is transmittable through bite or claw attacks. The Druid is able to shape-shift back to human form, but her victims......they're stuck in this undead state.

This new disease, commonly referred to as Zycanthropy, starts off slowly at first and is confined to a single game world. Soon though PCs start getting affected and these PCs are taken to tournaments (why I think this is a HackMaster game) and the infection spread through the greater gaming community. Some game worlds the infection is recognized early and eradicated, but in others.....it just takes over. One issue is that Zycanthropy creates these pseudo-undead, but in doing so it usually severs the connection Clerics have with their Gawds, so higher-level Cure Disease spells are just about non-existent.

Zycanthropy is just decimating the gaming industry as game world after game world falls to this plague. Patient Zero and her home group hops from game table to game table trying to find the Sorcerer that created the original potion. They do end up getting to the right game table/game world, but this world is one the verge of being completely overrun by Zycanthropes. The Sorcerer is unrecognizable as he's some sort of Vampire now, but he's been working on a cure ever since he got infected. The cure is finished, and it works, but there is a big drawback in that it turns you fully Human (even of you were another race before infection) and if you get re-infected that infection is fatal. Doesn't sound terrible, but if you're the under 1% of humanity of a world of Zycanthropes......you're pretty fucked.

My dream kind of ends there. Actually it generally restarts and shows things from another perspective, or just re-hashes aspects already covered.

Zycanthrophy: A disease in which the affected become an racial-undead hybrid which is based on their level. For example a 1st level Elf affected by Zycanthrophy would appear extremely gaunt and skeletal, where upon approaching 2nd level their appearance becomes much more ghoul-like. Infection sets in if a creature loses 1/2 of their hit points to a Zycanthropes natural attacks (claw/claw/bite for 1d2/1d2/1d3).

On Minis and Convention Parties

 

Lately, for reasons, I've been a bit nostalgic about my early (non) gaming days. I remember hanging out with my one friend in middle school that had slung dice before....and more importantly, had some game catalogs he brought to rural Bumfuckistan Iowa from "the city".

I remember just pouring through those catalogs and while I cannot recall who put out the catalog I clearly remember the line-art drawings of the miniatures inside. I remember making little checklists of these Ral Partha and Grenadier minis I wanted, not that I ever got them.

Looking for these particular catalogs/graphics has been a fruitless endeavor, but I have discovered a couple of cool websites specifically for looking at these old minis, namely the Lost Minis Wiki (Minis Workshop) and DnD Lead.

When doing my quick down & dirty research I did discover that I can still get some HackMaster minis if I wanted them from Iron Wind Metals. 

I'm pretty sure I was at a GenCon (might have been Origins) party where Iron Wind Metals was throwing an epic room party to celebrate something.....a successful Kickstarter campaign maybe? My memory, for a couple reasons, is fuzzy, but I remember getting a few (older) Ral Partha minis, a large cup-full of loose weapons, and a kick-ass knife. Evidently one of the guys behind the party owned a knife company as well and rumor was he was something-military-that-I'd-normally-call-bullshit-on. Thing was this "thing" was a rumor about him and not something he was pushing. Anyway we're having fun, bullshitting, and he mentions he spent some time in the same bit of turf overseas that I had. After giving me a nice, way-too-expensive-for-my-taste smoky Scotch I told him in that overseas turf-language "Stop, or I'll shoot". It was a phrase we not only had to memorize, but carry around on a card.

That got me a laugh and some more bullshitting. I had a great time and thanked my host by giving him one of my challenge coins. Actually the one from my 1st duty station 'cause that's the one I had on me. He was moved and had his girlfriend go and get "the good stuff" from his room, the good stuff being a $5K bottle of Scotch. Beautiful hand-blown bottle and hand-carved wooden carrier. Can't tell you how it tasted because I declined.......because my palate is not sophisticated enough and the Scotch would have been wasted on me. I think he understood because he got me another shot of the smoky stuff (not normally my thing, but the smell......so good) and handed me a large box of knives for me to take my pick. Not sure if it was a good idea to give someone in my state a nice knife.......but I still have it and I've been working on improving my palate.

I know I started talking about old minis and went to a Con party gift, but you know....that's what happens when you start to get all nostalgic. I kind of warned you in the 1st sentence of this post.

Some Thoughts on Player vs. Player at the RPG Table

 

Even though lately I've been fortunate to be more of a RPG Player, at my heart I'm most definitely a GM, and I tend to approach things from a GM perspective.

From a GM perspective I theoretically have absolutely no problem with Player vs. Player (PvP) combat and that bleeds over to my thoughts as a Player, but in reality I am hit with the full-force of what I can only call the "societal norms" that PvP is bad.....m'kay. Sure, you may be sitting around the table with friends, family, and/or strangers trying to have fun, and stabbing your fellow party members in the (proverbial) back really takes away from that shared fun.

I think the argument for PvP is the "anything goes, we're all adults here" mentality that kind of assumes that a) we're all adults here and b) we're all rational adults at that. The thing is, my personal experience with PvP runs about 50/50, at best, with the actual reasons for players attacking each other's PCs being in-game vs. out-of-character, and even then the in-game stuff often seems like an excuse for actual out-of-character issues.

I know I've related my 1st HackMaster kill which was my then Brother-in-Law's charismatic Bard being set upon by the clingy party Druid when he switched allegiances to the Big Bad Guy (BBG) in the final battle. Sounded 110% like an in-game reason, but in reality the situation was that my BIL wasn't into RPGs in general and was writing off the experience as a one-off.

Then there was the time, again HackMaster, where we were at one of the two "big" tournaments...we being four of us from our home group and a couple of add-ons. We had a problem player who just didn't play well with others. I won't go into details, but we later found out he had an illegal PC, and his actions eventually got him banned not only from our events, but from the convention itself for a couple of years. Before that happened, however, we just asked the tournament organizers if he could be removed from our table as he was not only dead-weight, but we didn't want him to play with us for reasons....

The organizer's initial response was that we should just handle the situation in-character and assassinate his PC. Of course being a tournament, that would have just hurt our point-total, taken up too much of our limited time, and we'd still have had to play with the guy up until then....and deal with the fallout after.

Ugh.

I really doubt my experiences are that far off with regards to PvP than a lot of other Players and GMs. I'm going to assume that these shared experiences are what help shape the aforementioned societal norms that dictate you just don't attack fellow party members......

....unless.

Of course for some of us there is no "unless". Breaking these norms is just taboo and even if you can somehow justify or rationalize your "bad" behavior, you run the risk of being admonished, ostracized, or even being removed from the group. At a minimum, unless you've got some mental/personality defect of character (narcissism, psychopathy, etc.) you should feel really, really bad for breaking a taboo.

So imagine my thought process when I decided, kind of on a whim, to have my Magic User attack a party member. Yes, I had a rationalization......and it still makes sense to me, but fuuuuuuuuuuuck I really thought I might get myself kicked out of the group. These guys have been playing together for a while now, or at least it feels like they've been gaming together for years, if not decades. Me, I think it's been about a year now. Regardless I'm the newb of the group.

We're exploring these ruins and know there is a BBG somewhat secured in a big-assed room/chamber. We don't know what this BBG is, and based on the motifs and henchmen we've encountered I'm thinking maybe....maybe it is a Medusa. I'm sure now it isn't a Medusa, but not in-character, and definitely not at the time of this event. We have this Thief sucking on fumes hit-point wise and he volunteers to quaff a potion of Gaseous Form and seep into the room and scout things out for us. See if our efforts to contain the BBG are effective or not. My MU is tapped for spells, as is the Cleric, and it's been a bit of a slog, although we're probably much better off than I'm realizing. 

Anyway the Thief comes back and he's completely enamored with whatever this BBG is. Clearly he's been charmed and it's clear this is the BBG's passive effect, probably a line of sight kind of thing. I'm off to the side grilling the Thief to the best of my ability and all he wants to do is let the BBG out and make some introductions. I'm playing along a bit in character, but I'm thinking it's a matter of time before this goes sideways.

This is when I openly tell the GM I'm going to sucker-punch the Thief in an attempt to knock his Charmed ass out. The group is surprised, rightly so, and the GM's initial ruling is that I out-right killed the Thief with the attack......

.....wait....what?

So not my intention.

The GM walks it back, not sure if it was a rule/ruling or holy-fuck the MU just killed the Thief. Wearing my GM hat I suspect it was walked back 'cause it didn't make sense for the MU to bitch-slap the Thief to death. It wasn't a crit and I was clear about my intention. I think the whole thing was a bit of a shock.

We ended the session minutes after and the time between my declaration and the end of the Zoom call.....man did I feel like I just ripped a massive fart in church. Everyone was staring and judging and it was a matter of time before the GM reached out to me to have "the talk". I've been on the receiving end of "the talk" once before (but seriously, fuck that GM....I had already quit, so asking me to not come back was more like him trying to save face). 

Well, that talk never came and everybody seemed ok at last night's session, and maybe it is. I think I've survived and probably will survive this PvP session, but I don't plan on making this a regular thing....

That One Time I Expected my PC to Die

 

I've mentioned that my favorite game was 4th Edition HackMaster, which is definitely a crunchy game and arguably the very 1st OSR retro-clone. I especially liked how the game had a big fan base that allowed for an organized play group where you could bring your home character to a convention and play an adventure with said character with a new group/new table.

Of course there has to be all sorts of rules and conditions to make this possible and fair to the whole group of players. One of those rules had to do with rationing magic items. Magic items had an experience point value and PCs had magic item value caps based on level. You generally needed to be at your level cap so you had the stuff you'd need to survive a tournament adventure.

Actually this is all just a little backstory 'cause I was thinking about what was probably the most fun/exciting tournament game I ever had......

Ok, at this point I'm thinking there is at least one eye roll and "OMG, he's going to tell us another fricken PC story!" At this point you're probably wondering if you have access to one of those Get out of PC Story, Free cards. For your trouble, you can print one of these off....

I made these up as business cards for me and my ex-wife, based on the "originals" that the KenzerCo crew had. Our contact info was on the flip side, along with our pictures done up in similar fashion....

.....but there was a catch, which you've clearly noticed by now. Assuming you had the Get out of PC Story, Free card I could counter with my card, which was the lesser-seen Listen to my PC Story.

So now we've virtually swapped cards, even though I provided both cards, and now you're going to listen to my PC story, but don't sweat it because I'm not going to get anally-specific and droning on about the fine details (like at my age I can remember the fine details anyway...).  A story, at least one worth listening to, has some point and I'll not bury the lead....

The absolute best games are those where you are expecting to lose your PC but manage to survive to continue playing....

The party was hired to investigate some strange goings-on in part of a neighboring kingdom that the ruler was unable to get details on. Armed scouts, scrying, spying....nothing worked. The party was to be stripped of anything magic and sold as slaves to a group none to provide slaves to the area where the trouble was brewing......basically that was the extent of the knowledge. Now, for a group of 5th to 7th level PCs....well we have a LOT of magic stuff and going into an adventure blind and unarmed, is not a promising proposition.

My 7th level Double-Specialist Invoker is already Paranoid and having to forgo all his stuff, including having his Gold Tooth of Purify Beverage, was painful. At least I was able to tweak my memorized spells to take advantage of spell components I could be expected to find. HackMaster is crunchy, so keeping track of actual spell components is a thing.

The first round of the tournament adventure was basically just gaining our freedom and trying to bust out, re-arm, and start investigating. What we discover in the first round was that a Red Dragon, along with some allies, had taken a Gold Dragon hostage and was forcing her to lay eggs and then was using magic to alter the eggs and create some humanoid-dragon monstrosities (think the Draconians from Dragonlance). We get in to the second round and we get most of the way through the second adventure, just shy of freeing the Gold Dragon and taking on the Red Dragon.

Now another thing to know about HackMaster tournaments is that they are limited to a four hour time limit. This is kind of a good thing because if you're on the losing side of the Big Boss Battle and time runs out, instead of your PC dying you get to go home. It's not a win, but it's not a loss/death either.

So what we have is a bunch of players who ran out of time with that Big Boss Battle still looming. We've been beaten & battered and the players are pretty certain it's a toss-up if any of us could survive the final battle. Facing a likely TPK (Total Party Kill) with characters we've all spent years playing & building up, not fun...

.....but it WAS FUN. We all wanted to finish the adventure. Luckily the convention gave us our own HackMaster room for the weekend, so if we could convince the GM to continue..... which we did. After taking a quick break we were able to spend a good hour fighting the good fight. One of our party, a BattleMage, was tapped out spell-wise, so we made him the Designated Survivor and even though we could use his help, somebody needed to let the King know what was going on in case we failed. Since we had discovered a Teleportation scroll, we were able to send him off immediately. At least our impending deaths won't be in vain. As a group, the remaining party members took on the Red Dragon and during the battle we managed to secure the magical key that would allow us to free the Gold Dragon, which ultimately is what kept us from a TPK. We did lose one guy and the thief lost an arm, but the rest of us made it through with single-digit HP.

The entire battle, we all stood around the game table. Nobody could sit still for this epic clash. I think if we went one more round without the Gold Dragon's help that would have TPK'd us. During the lead up to this BBG Battle we did manage to acquired a lot of magical items, but we had to use almost everything for the fight. Still, loot wasn't lacking, but probably not nearly as much as expected for the level of difficulty of the adventure.

I think I ended up getting a couple of spells out of the deal and a new staff. As a reward from the Gold Dragon I was allowed to make a request as far as my reward and I asked for one of the Red Dragon's bones to fashion into a new staff. Even though it came from an evil Dragon, a Dragon-bone weapon probably wouldn't be seen favorably by a good-aligned Dragon, and my PC was smart enough to realize this. As part of my boon I was able to get in inscribed in multiple languages to denote not only where this bone came from, but who gifted it, which allegedly would give my PC a pass of sorts.

I've had a couple of my PC's immortalized by commissioning a portrait by the wonderful Fraim Brothers, who have done a lot of art for KenzerCo/Knights of the Dinner Table/HackMaster. I try not to be too specific in what I'm looking for in a Character Portrait and just briefly describe the character. In this case I mentioned he was a magic-user who carried a crossbow, spellbook, and had a Dragon-bone staff with runes on it. I know I mentioned he kept a mask on and I think I added the amulet around his neck. Whatever the Bros. come up with I knew I was going to like....and I did.

PC Deaths can be a Good Thing....no, Really!

Special Note: For the record....I'm typing this up on a Saturday morning, hours before my bi-weekly game. Just have to mention this in case there happens to be a coincidence between the game and today's subject matter.

I'd like to think that I've had less than my fair share of PC deaths, which is interesting since I like to play HackMaster, which is known to be crunchy and deadly. Of course I might actually have more than my fair share of PC deaths and I just don't remember them because they aren't remarkable or because they were low-level PCs. Who really regrets the loss of a 1st level nobody?

As a GM I have kind of relished killing off the PCs, and have exercised some bragging rights when doing so. In truth though I try to be a bit of a tactician and I'm trying to have and share in the fun at the table. I get a metric shit-ton more mileage out of almost killing a PC. Now I'm not the type to fudge the dice rolls, but bringing a mighty PC down to low single-digits or castrating their abilities in some way......good times. The players fear for the safety of their PCs and the party has to tie up resources covering for the new weakness in their ranks. This can lead to a snowball effect that either makes the party escape by the skin of their teeth or suffer a crushing defeat. I'll risk one for the other any day, but I'll not let you know which one I'm rooting for in the moment...... 

"Fear for the safety".....do players really have feelings about their PCs? I sure hope they do! I want my players to be proud when their PC pulls off something mighty & heroic, and get a bit miffed when things don't go their way. Downright sad, for a while, when their PC actually dies....this is a good thing. No, I'm not a sicko GM.....well maybe I am, but not for this reason. The way I see it, players should be emotionally invested in their PCs. It's what makes the game fun and I think it's what can help make a game, for the lack of a better term, "real". Sure, players can have fun simply because they are hanging out with their friends and generally having a good time, but they can also just do that over pizza a beer.....don't need to be adding dice to the mix then.

What makes role-playing games an actual hobby is this emotional investment and the bond a good game group establishes with each other. I personally look forward to my next game, my next get-together, and I think this is because of this emotional investment in my PCs. Hell, I would also argue this is one of the reasons so many players don't do regular game conventions, unless they end up going with some of their home group members.

<insert Wayne's World doodly-doo noises here> Deep in my old records I have a write-up from my very first official HackMaster tournament as a GM. It's a rather in-depth (and lengthy) account because my table didn't fair so well and there were quite a few PC deaths. At one point there was some yelling/swearing and a chair was kicked a fair bit. I had heard, and disagreed with, how another table breezed through a couple encounters and assumed that the players from the one home-group that sat at my table would file a compliant (I didn't blame them), so immediately after the game I took my notes and wrote up the game. Wow, did I make a bunch of mistakes. With one exception they were all in the players favor, both the player and I had simply forgotten about one of their PC's magic items, but the players really didn't play well. You'd never guess this was an established home group used to playing together. I think the fact it was a late night game hindered their collective cognitive abilities because one PC could have avoided death simply by side-stepping 5' in almost any direction....and this was pretty obvious. <insert Wayne's World doodly-doo noises here>

Back to the intended train of thought.....this group lost several mid-high level PCs and were super pissed in the moment, and not that happy for the rest of the convention. They had been playing these characters for years and had a lot of investment, clearly not just time, in them. I'm sure they were able to resurrect the PCs, albeit with some new quirks and flaws (par for the HackMaster 4th Edition course) and carry on. I'm certain the extremity of their initial reactions were a bit much, but that's the chance you take.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained......had the players made a couple different decisions, like the aforementioned player stepping left two paces or the one player reminding me her PC could run like the dickens due to her magic item, then the party would have gotten their asses handed to them, but the would have survived. The players would have been high-fiving each other and they probably would have won the tournament.

Just remember this the next time you lose a PC and you're pissed off.......this is actually a good thing. Surely more a silver lining, but still.....a good thing. Stop short of kicking that chair, thank you GM, and figure out how you could have avoided that death. Worst case, pick up your 3d6 and hope you can get pissed when you lose this one as well....hopefully a long, long time (and many more levels) than last time.  

Halloween is Over! (Too early to prep for next year?)

 

For some reason two things I like to do here at the Tavern is confess shit and tell stories, which seems appropriate since that's something I'd normally do at a tavern, but then I'd be dressed in more than my underwear and probably have less sugar and more alcohol in me.....

For those of you who don't know me personally, I worked a fair number of years in retail and Halloween marked the official beginning of what I could only call "the suck". When I worked at Fred Meyer I didn't get to "do" Halloween, instead I got to come in late and when the store closed at 11 PM we got cracking and swapped out the Seasonal Department from Halloween to Christmas. In later, and arguably better, retail (State-Run Liquor Store) Halloween is a big party holiday and the start of the busier selling-season. Halloween on a Saturday.....you know that was a busy day at the liquor store!

One thing I've never done, and I've heard it's something folks visiting this page would be wont to do, is run a special Halloween game. I've played in zombie-heavy campaigns, and I have only a couple sessions of Call of Cthulhu under my belt, but no special themed game just for Halloween.

Of course it being November 1st, I'm shit out of luck doing it this year......

Honestly though, I'm on the fence about a themed game to begin with. Probably because I'm a bit of a wuss and haven't been into scary movies since I was in High School. Sure, I have no problem watching an old Friday the 13th flick, but Cabin in the Woods? Actually I might like that one, but I cannot name any of the current crop of horror movies out there. What I do like is the comedy/horror blend. Figure out a way to run Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and I'll go grab my dice. Just don't expect me to write the damned thing.

I'm used to a small amount of comedy in my RPGs, but mostly because the players are gathered to have a good time and like to screw with each other.....ok it's me.....I enjoy screwing with the other players, or my players if I'm the GM. Nothing serious & lasting in-game mind you, but just as friends around the table.

I've written one adventure that was comedic in nature, for a GM-only game at Origins, but I have never written an actual "scary" adventure. The closest I've come is an adventure seed, something I call a Tweak & Toss....because I assume no matter how well-written I think I can make something (and I've seen adventures far too over-written!) any GM worth their salt is going to heavily tweak what I've done and toss it into their home game. Instead of a lot of pages of highly-focused content, I've been going with a few pages of more generic information that the GM could use as the base for them to spice it up to their specifications......

.....anyway, that's a long segue to my Tweak & Toss that had to be inspired on some level by Motel Hell. If you aren't familiar with this B Movie horror gem.......believe me you're better off. The Horrors of Halfling Hollow was something I had put up on my blog as a freebie download on DriveThruRPG. I think I'll keep it free for another week and let anyone here grab a copy so you can have a entire year to tweak it for a right proper scary Halloween game next year (the implication is you'd have to tweak it in order for it to be scary).

I'd love to hear from GMs/players who took part in an actual Halloween-themed game that was fun and NOT Call of Cthulhu. Don't get me wrong, I like CoC, but I'd rather hear about the normal game/table having an in-game one-off and not a "let's play this other system tonight" type of thing.  

A Little Bit of Impromptu Show & Tell

 

I'm going to start this week's Not Erik post (I don't know why I find the Not Erik tag funny, but I do.....) with a bit of a confession: I'm something like 1/2 a hoarder, but please be nice and refer to my problem with the adjective "collector".

I collect things. I cannot help it, it is in my blood. My father's a collector, I moved around a lot as a kid and the only two constants for me were my brother (and then only up through High School) and my stuff. I'm not going to necessarily say I really enjoy having "stuff", but as a collector I love the hunt. I enjoy searching for things and get a bit of a thrill when I find that thing I've been looking for....and sometimes I admit I didn't even know I was looking for it!

I've mentioned a few things before, like my growing Appendix N collection and probably my Gamescience dice, but I have a bunch of other potentially cool things that I've picked up over the years. Not necessarily part of some larger collection, because face it......one piece of a larger collection probably doesn't hold a lot of meaning, but it can. I pretty much buy every used copy of Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Misenchanted Sword I come across in the wild. I only have the one copy at home, but those other copies get given away rather quickly.

Anyway, my point is I have some gaming "things" I've picked up over the years that I enjoy which aren't part of a collection per se and I thought I'd share them with you today. My inspiration for doing so is one of the items that I have hanging over my TV so it overlooks where I play my every-other-weekly-Saturday-Night-OSR-game. When looking for a picture of it I came across this one I took four years ago and I realized pretty much everything in the shot has some story or some such behind it:

Now this picture has been quickly photoshopped to remove the reflection of my ugly mug from the empty top right quadrant of the display case. This was a well-built case discarded from one of the liquor stores I was working at. It was missing shelves, but nothing I couldn't throw together.

In no particular order (except for the last show & tell item):

A buddy of mine, along with his brother, got a license from Kenzer & Company to produce these resin busts of Knights of the Dinner Table Characters. KenzerCo got some cash and some figurines for themselves and they sold some on behalf of the brothers. I cannot recall if it was Origins or GenCon, probably Origins, where I had been volunteering running GMs/Tables/Games everyday and hanging out helping with the booth in the vendor hall when there wasn't a game. My (ex)wife and I would do this every year and help tear down/pack the booth. Technically a big no-no as we usually had regular attendee badges, but if you hide your badge and work like you're getting paid for it, con staff/security can be cool about it. Anyway, I had decided I was going to buy the set of the Knights at the con, IF there were any left when the con closed on Sunday. We made the drive from Boise to SLC regularly enough that we could purchase them directly easily enough. Sure enough there was a complete set left at the end of the con so I bought them......only to find out we got set #3! Sets 1 & 2 went to the brother's home group and we weren't looking to get a low-numbered set, but nobody had really gone through them so we just lucked out. Knowing we had set #3, when the other seven figures came out I was allowed dibs on the #3's. I enjoyed picking up the Blank Hands and later Gary & Squirrely. 

After 2009's GenCon....I was again helping tear down the booth the the guys from the Steve Jackson Games were nearby tearing down their booth and they brought out the Munchkin costume. For some reason I HAD TO try it on and after some hard-core convincing they let me try it on. They knew it was disgustingly wet with sweat, but it was still better than spending a few hours in MOPP4 gear (I know a couple of you get that reference...and felt that pain!). I got a picture of me wearing it and the next year I was able to show John Kovalic the picture and get him to draw me wearing it on a blank Go Up a Level card. You can't see the card, but it's with the bobble-head I purchased as part of the transaction (was more a buy something and get something signed kind of thing....those Steve Jackson Games guys know how to sell).

Harder to see is this stone carving of a dragon and village scene. It's pretty cool and I practically stole it for something like $5, maybe $10 at the CONduit convention in SLC. This is the convention I first got to play HackMaster. We used to go every year until we realized we were paying $$$ to basically sit in a room and play HackMaster with our friends. Everything else we did at the convention was free: the dealer's hall and the art show/auction. We eventually transitioned to playing at our hotel and visiting the convention afterwards. The convention would have this silent auction every year for a bunch of cool art, with the proceeds going to the conventions literacy charity. As expected, most of the art was traditional prints/painting, but there were sometimes things like painting on silk, carvings, sculpture, etc. I would make a point of bidding on these commonly-overlooked items and in this case I got my item on the low opening bid. It's actually pretty cool, and definitely took some skill, but just not what the masses wanted I guess.

The next three items all come from the same source, but I'll go over each individually. This mini is a bit on the delicate side so it doesn't go in with my regular minis. It's of a "Lecherous Beholder" and was painted/gifted by Jolly Blackburn. He's a rather generous guy and just thought I'd like this when I was over for a visit. He was right. I wasn't able to get one of these and the eyes are delicate enough I'm pretty sure I would still have it in a blister pack had I managed to get one. I have a metric butt-ton of KenzerCo minis, but very few have been painted, so this unique one gets a place in the shelf.

How many of you can legitimately claim to have an actual Callie from the Origins Awards? I've had two now, both were ones that Jolly had won/earned. This is the second one which was actually gifted to me by Jolly.....more on that later. The first one was straight-up stolen, not by me mind you, but filched at the big party we all had after the awards ceremony (there were several Callies at the party). It was given to me, I think, by the thief himself/herself and we decided it would be cool to turn it into a travelling trophy of sorts for the fans. I took a bunch of pictures and even started a blog of Callie's adventures. It was more a "letters home" kind of thing and the blog had pictures of the letters (in original Greek, mind you) and then the translation. Callie went from Ohio to Illinois to Idaho and then was sent to Canada, or was it Australia? Either way the whole affair got cut short when she got lost in customs. So not cool.

This second Callie was gifted as part of a joke. Jolly thought it'd be funny to cram it in my suitcase so either I'd be surprised when I got home or strip searched at the airport when I unintentionally lied about my bag being packed by me and being aware of all its contents. I'm going to assume the former, but the latter is funnier in my opinion. I travelled enough to know what 50 pounds feels like and I noticed the bag was a couple pounds off (I used to travel a LOT), so the ruse was discovered before we even left the house, but I told him I'm keeping it....so I did.

The biggest thing, and probably one of my most precious gaming "things" is this large hand-drawn & colored "poster" of the Knights done by Jolly as a gift. He's probably done a few more by now, but at the time this was the second one he had ever done, the first being for a charity auction. I was unemployed and at the time money wasn't terribly tight, but only because I was draining my 401K. Jolly did this drawing up and gave it to me with the intention that I could put it up on eBay and get maybe $300 for it. I was touched by the sentiment, but I'd sell a kidney (I don't know if that' actually a thing) before letting something this sentimental go. It looks good (much better than the picture implies) on the wall and reminds me daily of the friendships I've made over so many different gaming tables. It is a heartfelt message that brings back a lot of memories....and promises of more memories to be made.

That concludes this particular entry of Not Erik Show & Tell.

Bonus Pics:

2009 GenCon

Frugal Munchkin

2010 Origins (Staged)

Next Morning w/Callie