As a part of my effort to update this blog more often, I bring you the following.
What I've Been Playing:
Well, school has started up again. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I've decided to go back to school for my bachelor's degree. Add that to a full-time job, a toddler, and a list of chores and repairs that come with owning my own home, and it's a wonder I have time to play at all.
But this isn't a blog about why I'm not playing, it's about what I am playing. Lately I've been playing mainly Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Sims 3, and Minecraft.
First: Star Wars. Sometime recently I was clued into the problem with shadows in The Old Republic. In case you haven't heard, there is a huge performance hit if you have shadows on. I've heard that having shadows set to high does not have the same issue, but I can't confirm that. If you are experiencing lots of performance issues in Star Wars, make sure your shadows are set to "off". This was such an improvement that I can actually play the game on my laptop, though still only at the lowest settings.
So, I've been playing more Star Wars. My main when I played World of Warcraft was a Paladin tank. I really kinda liked tanking in WoW, though I was better at healing. So, for my first character in Star Wars I decided on a Jedi Knight, figuring I'd probably roll a Consular next. So far the storyline for the Jedi Knight hasn't been anything spectacular, it's nice but just about what I'd expect. I'm sticking to the Light Side, though, and I'm guessing that the story can be a lot different if you chose to focus on the Dark Side. I may chose to visit the Dark Side when I roll that Consular, but I just find it hard to justify a Dark Side healer.
As far as crew skills go, I chose to go with Cybertech, Scavenging, and Slicing. Cybertech allows me to create modifications that can be applied to most equipment that will accept modifications, which makes it kind of all-around useful. Later on I think it will also allow me to create earpieces and maybe some other gear. Cybertech suggests two compatible skills: Scavenging and Underworld Trading. The great thing about Scavenging is that a lot of times I get to loot droids for their spare parts. I decided to go with Slicing over Underworld Trading because it allows me to get cash which can be used to buy anything including the uncommon materials I need for my Cybertech.
Next: The Sims 3. While my previous rant about how Story progression needs to be fixed still stands, the addition of the ability to create a Young Again potion and the ability to give gifts to other sims does mitigate this to some degree. Given these factors, I finally decided to turn aging and story progression on in my game and start watching all of our friends grow old and move away. After all, I can always just add new copies from the tray later, right? We'll see what happens there. So my family is now aging and having kids, but none of that is going very fast. One funny thing, though was that when the first child was born I set the Sim lifespan to Epic, then I noticed that it had been several days and my baby still hadn't turned into a toddler. It turns out that on Epic setting, the baby stage lasts for 32 days. So I changed it back to Long, which reset my existing toddler's age to 1 day while Mom was pregnant with Baby 2, the end result being that Baby 1 is only 3 days older than Baby 2, such is life.
On to Minecraft. As I said in my last post, in Minecraft you have to make your own fun. The good thing about that is that I've been making a lot of it. I decided when I started that I wanted to do everything legitimately. The world is infinite, so if I run out of diamonds, I'll just have to go find some rather than hacking my save file or getting a mod that will generate whatever I want. I've also been looking at a lot of the machines that people have been building and I've started making some of my own. My current project is a monster spawner and killer that is taking a long time because I have to light up all of the places a monster could spawn to ensure they spawn in my machine. I'm hoping that my design will actually be able to trap slimes, but we'll have to see about that.
That's pretty much what's been going on the past week. I'm hoping to play some more Savage Worlds soon, so I can tell you all how that's going. If anybody wants to say Hi on Star Wars, I'm on the Hedarr Soongh server and my main is Haledar.
Good Gaming.
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Friday, January 13, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
Happy New Year!
To all my readers, “Happy New Year.” This past year has been wild. Many new things have been going on in my life and the lives of my friends, but one thing has remained constant: gaming is still my number one pastime.
What I’ve Been Playing:
Since my last post I did manage to beat Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I liked it a lot, though the boss fights were frustrating. I thought the story was great and I was really interested to uncover some of the secrets of Jensen’s past. Unfortunately, those secrets are never really revealed beyond a bunch of hints. I was also disappointed with the endings. There are 4 different endings, and if you save after the last boss before you chose your ending, you can see them all in one play-through. I was hoping for some nice cinematics and some plot resolution; what I got was a collection of still images, some stock photos and some generated for the game, accompanied by a voice-over explaining what happened after the end of the game. Yawn. Nevertheless I still enjoyed the game and I jumped right back into it to try to get the platinum trophy before Kevin moved away. I didn’t make it, but I did get a few other trophies I’d missed.
A few months ago I mentioned that my group was planning on starting up a Savage Worlds supervillian game. We managed to get that started, but we’ve only had a few sessions so far. Look for more information on how that game is going in the near future.
I also said that we had found a couple who was trying to start a Rifts game. Unfortunately grad school and pregnancy got in the way, but hopefully we’ll be able to get together with them in the future.
Not surprisingly, I’ve been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic since it came out. As I mentioned previously, my laptop isn’t exactly up to running Star Wars. It makes a good effort, but it just can’t handle it. Fortunately my wife’s laptop is a bit newer and manages the game a bit better. The side effect of this is that I have to borrow her computer to play Star Wars, which means that I haven’t been playing as much as I might have under other circumstances. Technical issues aside, I’m loving this game every bit as much as I did during my beta weekend. I managed to get my smuggler out of the bug I ran into in the beta and got to play around some with that class. Normally I’m okay with “glass cannon” classes, but the addition of the cover mechanic really detracts from it for me, so I don’t think I’ll be spending much time as a smuggler for a while.
I also picked up Minecraft which is great if you can make your own fun, but doesn’t really have anything in the way of quests. And I’ve been playing a lot of The Sims 3 since I got the Ambitions and Generations expansions over the holidays. One thing I can definitely say is a technical achievement in The Sims 3 over The Sims 2 is that you can actually install the expansions out of order and they still work properly.
What I Have Planned:
The biggest thing I have planned right now is building a new computer that will be able to run Star Wars and Diablo III. It will be a while before I can actually do that, but I’m still planning on it.
The Playstation Vita is coming out on February 22nd. I’m still looking forward to it, but based on things I’ve heard from the Japanese release, I may wait for a few software patches, and maybe a hardware revision, before I buy it.
A while ago I had an idea for a con game using the Desolation system. I may still try to get that all planned out for Who’s Yer Con in March, but I’m guessing it’s going to get pushed off until later.
What I’m Looking Forward To:
Diablo III is still slated for a first quarter 2012 release, I’m looking forward to that. I’ve already pre-ordered the collector’s edition even though there is a distinct possibility that I won’t be able to play it until I get my new computer.
We have a local tabletop gaming convention here in Indianapolis called Who’s Yer Con (link above) that’s coming up in March. Maria and I are planning on going and are thinking of joining the Pathfinder Society and going to a couple of their games.
That’s pretty much what’s been going on. Lots of exciting stuff has happened and is on the way, so stay tuned.
Until next time,
Good Gaming!
What I’ve Been Playing:
Since my last post I did manage to beat Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I liked it a lot, though the boss fights were frustrating. I thought the story was great and I was really interested to uncover some of the secrets of Jensen’s past. Unfortunately, those secrets are never really revealed beyond a bunch of hints. I was also disappointed with the endings. There are 4 different endings, and if you save after the last boss before you chose your ending, you can see them all in one play-through. I was hoping for some nice cinematics and some plot resolution; what I got was a collection of still images, some stock photos and some generated for the game, accompanied by a voice-over explaining what happened after the end of the game. Yawn. Nevertheless I still enjoyed the game and I jumped right back into it to try to get the platinum trophy before Kevin moved away. I didn’t make it, but I did get a few other trophies I’d missed.
A few months ago I mentioned that my group was planning on starting up a Savage Worlds supervillian game. We managed to get that started, but we’ve only had a few sessions so far. Look for more information on how that game is going in the near future.
I also said that we had found a couple who was trying to start a Rifts game. Unfortunately grad school and pregnancy got in the way, but hopefully we’ll be able to get together with them in the future.
Not surprisingly, I’ve been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic since it came out. As I mentioned previously, my laptop isn’t exactly up to running Star Wars. It makes a good effort, but it just can’t handle it. Fortunately my wife’s laptop is a bit newer and manages the game a bit better. The side effect of this is that I have to borrow her computer to play Star Wars, which means that I haven’t been playing as much as I might have under other circumstances. Technical issues aside, I’m loving this game every bit as much as I did during my beta weekend. I managed to get my smuggler out of the bug I ran into in the beta and got to play around some with that class. Normally I’m okay with “glass cannon” classes, but the addition of the cover mechanic really detracts from it for me, so I don’t think I’ll be spending much time as a smuggler for a while.
I also picked up Minecraft which is great if you can make your own fun, but doesn’t really have anything in the way of quests. And I’ve been playing a lot of The Sims 3 since I got the Ambitions and Generations expansions over the holidays. One thing I can definitely say is a technical achievement in The Sims 3 over The Sims 2 is that you can actually install the expansions out of order and they still work properly.
What I Have Planned:
The biggest thing I have planned right now is building a new computer that will be able to run Star Wars and Diablo III. It will be a while before I can actually do that, but I’m still planning on it.
The Playstation Vita is coming out on February 22nd. I’m still looking forward to it, but based on things I’ve heard from the Japanese release, I may wait for a few software patches, and maybe a hardware revision, before I buy it.
A while ago I had an idea for a con game using the Desolation system. I may still try to get that all planned out for Who’s Yer Con in March, but I’m guessing it’s going to get pushed off until later.
What I’m Looking Forward To:
Diablo III is still slated for a first quarter 2012 release, I’m looking forward to that. I’ve already pre-ordered the collector’s edition even though there is a distinct possibility that I won’t be able to play it until I get my new computer.
We have a local tabletop gaming convention here in Indianapolis called Who’s Yer Con (link above) that’s coming up in March. Maria and I are planning on going and are thinking of joining the Pathfinder Society and going to a couple of their games.
That’s pretty much what’s been going on. Lots of exciting stuff has happened and is on the way, so stay tuned.
Until next time,
Good Gaming!
Friday, September 30, 2011
[Insert Generic Title Here]
So, it's been a month. Considering my track record that's not really so bad. In this post I'll talk about what I've been doing recently, what I'm planning in the near future, and what I'm looking forward to in the coming months.
My son is 17 months old, so he doesn't play games with rules yet. He plays a lot, and I love playing with him, but it's so freeform that I'd hesitate to call any of it a "game". Also, since he's so young I can't play any violent video games while he's around. In general I don't like to play video games around him too much because I think it's important that I get down on the floor and play with him.
When I wasn't crawling around mountains of Duplo blocks with my son, I managed to beat Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines for the PSP. I got all of the accomplishments except for the three pertaining to getting combo-kills. I never really figured out how to do combo-kills, and I don't care quite enough about getting those last three acomplishments to go back through a significant portion of the game.
Kevin bought a Koei game called Warriors: Legends of Troy. Man, was that game ever frustrating! I was expecting essentially a Dynasty Warriors game that was set during the Trojan War. To pe perfectly fair, that is what I got. I won't say that there weren't some good parts to it, but the game angered me so much that I put it down and didn't look back. If I were serious about trying to write reviews for games, I'd switch it over to easy mode and slug my way through it, but there are plenty of venues out there for people to get well-informed reviews.
Kevin also bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He finished that game and has now loaned it to me. Now I'm not good at shooters. I'm zen with this truth. So, I don't get into competitive shooters very much, but I do enjoy a good RPG/Shooter hybrid. I liked the first Deus Ex even though I never finished it. I'm really enjoying Human Revolution. It feels really good, and I don't mind too much that I get shot in the head a lot. One thing that bothers me, though, is that I can't use my sniper scope from cover. I have yet to find a situation where I can be hidden and shoot someone, rather than just have them looking the other way.
Also, we're getting together with some of our old gaming group that has moved out of town and we're planning an online Savage Worlds game from Pinnacle Entertainment. We'll be playing in a savage setting called Necessary Evil where everyone will be playing a supervillian. It'll probably be a lot of fun. We're going to be getting everone together online over a product called Epic Table that I picked up at Gen Con. Expect more information on that in the future. It's still in beta, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.
As far as the blog goes, I'm trying to get a video card that I can take some screenshots of my console games with. I have some plans for a couple of things I want to do with the blog, but they're on hold until I can get this.
Diablo III recently got puched back to 2012, but long-time Blizzard fans have gotten used to the company's "It get's released when it's finished and not a moment sooner" attitude. I'll admit that I'm a touch worried that it will be a monotonous click-fest, but only time will tell.
There was a rumor that the PlayStation Vita will be coming out at the end of February. I'm excited for the system, but part of me is glad I won't have to fit it in with my other holiday season purchases. Also, the closer it gets to the end of my current cell phone contract, the better. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be able to use the PS Vita for all of the functions I have my smartphone for, allowing me to drop to a regular "dumb" cell phone to make way for the Vita data plan.
I'm still upset that Sony decided to make AT&T the exclusive carrier for the Vita data plan, but I'm sure there were plenty of financial reasons for making the commitment. Also, it looks like I can add a wireless hotspot to my cell phone plan for probably the same price as the Vita data plan. Plus I can use it if I get a tablet.
So, that's what I've been up to, what I've got planned, and what I'm looking forward to. If anyone is actually reading this blog, please leave me a comment. So far I'm not really sure there's anybody out there, and it would be pretty cool if I found out somebody actually read this.
Good Gaming!
What I've Been playing:
Being a parent is time consuming. At some time in the future I'll probably say something about how gaming and parenting affect each other, or about how they're similar, or something, but that's not this post. I bring up parenting because I've been doing a lot of that. A lot of parenting and not a lot of gaming.My son is 17 months old, so he doesn't play games with rules yet. He plays a lot, and I love playing with him, but it's so freeform that I'd hesitate to call any of it a "game". Also, since he's so young I can't play any violent video games while he's around. In general I don't like to play video games around him too much because I think it's important that I get down on the floor and play with him.
When I wasn't crawling around mountains of Duplo blocks with my son, I managed to beat Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines for the PSP. I got all of the accomplishments except for the three pertaining to getting combo-kills. I never really figured out how to do combo-kills, and I don't care quite enough about getting those last three acomplishments to go back through a significant portion of the game.
Kevin bought a Koei game called Warriors: Legends of Troy. Man, was that game ever frustrating! I was expecting essentially a Dynasty Warriors game that was set during the Trojan War. To pe perfectly fair, that is what I got. I won't say that there weren't some good parts to it, but the game angered me so much that I put it down and didn't look back. If I were serious about trying to write reviews for games, I'd switch it over to easy mode and slug my way through it, but there are plenty of venues out there for people to get well-informed reviews.
Kevin also bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He finished that game and has now loaned it to me. Now I'm not good at shooters. I'm zen with this truth. So, I don't get into competitive shooters very much, but I do enjoy a good RPG/Shooter hybrid. I liked the first Deus Ex even though I never finished it. I'm really enjoying Human Revolution. It feels really good, and I don't mind too much that I get shot in the head a lot. One thing that bothers me, though, is that I can't use my sniper scope from cover. I have yet to find a situation where I can be hidden and shoot someone, rather than just have them looking the other way.
What I Have Planned:
Unfortunately there were problems with the Pathfinder game, so that's not happening anymore. On the plus side, we met a couple that's running a Rifts game from Palladium. Maria and I are really excited about that, and hopefully we'll be able to join in soon.Also, we're getting together with some of our old gaming group that has moved out of town and we're planning an online Savage Worlds game from Pinnacle Entertainment. We'll be playing in a savage setting called Necessary Evil where everyone will be playing a supervillian. It'll probably be a lot of fun. We're going to be getting everone together online over a product called Epic Table that I picked up at Gen Con. Expect more information on that in the future. It's still in beta, but I'm looking forward to giving it a shot.
As far as the blog goes, I'm trying to get a video card that I can take some screenshots of my console games with. I have some plans for a couple of things I want to do with the blog, but they're on hold until I can get this.
What I'm Looking Forward To:
I already preordered Star Wars: The Old Republic. I've been looking forward to that one for a while and now I finally know that it's coming in December.Diablo III recently got puched back to 2012, but long-time Blizzard fans have gotten used to the company's "It get's released when it's finished and not a moment sooner" attitude. I'll admit that I'm a touch worried that it will be a monotonous click-fest, but only time will tell.
There was a rumor that the PlayStation Vita will be coming out at the end of February. I'm excited for the system, but part of me is glad I won't have to fit it in with my other holiday season purchases. Also, the closer it gets to the end of my current cell phone contract, the better. If everything goes according to plan, I'll be able to use the PS Vita for all of the functions I have my smartphone for, allowing me to drop to a regular "dumb" cell phone to make way for the Vita data plan.
I'm still upset that Sony decided to make AT&T the exclusive carrier for the Vita data plan, but I'm sure there were plenty of financial reasons for making the commitment. Also, it looks like I can add a wireless hotspot to my cell phone plan for probably the same price as the Vita data plan. Plus I can use it if I get a tablet.
So, that's what I've been up to, what I've got planned, and what I'm looking forward to. If anyone is actually reading this blog, please leave me a comment. So far I'm not really sure there's anybody out there, and it would be pretty cool if I found out somebody actually read this.
Good Gaming!
Friday, July 29, 2011
Another year between posts.
Well, it's almost Gen Con again. it looks like the last time I actually wrote a blog I was also talking about Gen Con. Excuses aside, it's been a long time. What's that? "What have you been up to, Mike?" I'm glad you asked.
General Life:
Dante's a little over a year old now. He's really cute. I know some people say that all babies are cute, but they're lying. Dante, however, really is cute. He gets that from his mother.
My friends and gaming cohorts, Elly and Mike, got married in December. Elly got into The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme so she and Mike are moving to Japan for the next one to three years. Other friends and gaming buddies, Victor, James, and Solomon, are moving to Chicago. We really need to find new blood for our tabletop group.
Tabletop Games:
I really wish I had more to report on this one. We finished our end-times mage campaign. I personally stiched Ananasi and the Weaver back into one being. We released the Wyrm. And the Wyrm destroyed the world. we all died, but we got the satisfaction of knowing that the Tellurian was preserved so the world could be remade within it.
After that we really haven't tabletopped other than the occasional board/card game like Dominion or Red Dragon Inn. I'm working on a bite-sized Desolation adventure that could be run at a con, but it's kind of stalled for the moment. I would love to get back into a tabletop RPG. Time to start looking for new bodies.
Video Games:
This one I have been doing a lot in. I finished God of War III, Dante's Inferno, Portal 2, and Bayonetta. I started The Force Unleashed, Assassin's Creed, Infamous, and Mortal Kombat. I've been trying to earn a platinum trophy on Final Fantasy XIII, so I haven't finished that one yet.
Cataclysm came out. I got it and took launch day off of work to play it. In February I was still only 83 and let my account lapse. I started it up again in May and finally hit 85.
Stuff I'm Looking Forward To:
I'm really looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. I wouldn't consider myself a "huge" Star Wars nerd, especially compared to other huge Star Wars nerds. Having said that, I have high hopes for The Old Republic.
Along with a significant portion of the population, I am eagerly awaiting Diablo 3. Hopefully we'll get more information at BlizzCon. Also from Blizzard, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm has been revealed and looks awsome. I really need to finish Wings of Liberty. And I am really hoping to hear about Blizzard's new IP MMO.
That pretty much sums it up. I promise that I'm planning on updating more regularly. Luckilly, I'm not really apologizing to anybody because no one reads this blog anyway. Who knows, maybe that will change soon. My next post will most likely be a Gen Con recap.
Until then,
Good Gaming.
General Life:
Dante's a little over a year old now. He's really cute. I know some people say that all babies are cute, but they're lying. Dante, however, really is cute. He gets that from his mother.
My friends and gaming cohorts, Elly and Mike, got married in December. Elly got into The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme so she and Mike are moving to Japan for the next one to three years. Other friends and gaming buddies, Victor, James, and Solomon, are moving to Chicago. We really need to find new blood for our tabletop group.
Tabletop Games:
I really wish I had more to report on this one. We finished our end-times mage campaign. I personally stiched Ananasi and the Weaver back into one being. We released the Wyrm. And the Wyrm destroyed the world. we all died, but we got the satisfaction of knowing that the Tellurian was preserved so the world could be remade within it.
After that we really haven't tabletopped other than the occasional board/card game like Dominion or Red Dragon Inn. I'm working on a bite-sized Desolation adventure that could be run at a con, but it's kind of stalled for the moment. I would love to get back into a tabletop RPG. Time to start looking for new bodies.
Video Games:
This one I have been doing a lot in. I finished God of War III, Dante's Inferno, Portal 2, and Bayonetta. I started The Force Unleashed, Assassin's Creed, Infamous, and Mortal Kombat. I've been trying to earn a platinum trophy on Final Fantasy XIII, so I haven't finished that one yet.
Cataclysm came out. I got it and took launch day off of work to play it. In February I was still only 83 and let my account lapse. I started it up again in May and finally hit 85.
Stuff I'm Looking Forward To:
I'm really looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. I wouldn't consider myself a "huge" Star Wars nerd, especially compared to other huge Star Wars nerds. Having said that, I have high hopes for The Old Republic.
Along with a significant portion of the population, I am eagerly awaiting Diablo 3. Hopefully we'll get more information at BlizzCon. Also from Blizzard, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm has been revealed and looks awsome. I really need to finish Wings of Liberty. And I am really hoping to hear about Blizzard's new IP MMO.
That pretty much sums it up. I promise that I'm planning on updating more regularly. Luckilly, I'm not really apologizing to anybody because no one reads this blog anyway. Who knows, maybe that will change soon. My next post will most likely be a Gen Con recap.
Until then,
Good Gaming.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Gencon 2009 Report
Okay, I know this is really behind. I would have done it earlier, but I really wanted to finish telling the backstory from the Mage game before I moved on to anything else. So here's my bit about Gencon 2009.
2009-08-12 Wednesday
My wife and I got to Indy on Wednesday evening and checked into our hotel. We already had our badges and all of our event tickets (I need to remember to get a few generics next year). It was about 8 when we got all of our stuff up to our room and settled, so we decided to go ahead and see if we could get our swag bags. The hotel that we stayed in is about a 15 minute walk from the convention center if you're not in any hurry, so we got there and the staff was telling everyone that the desks were all going to close at 9. The line for badges & tickets was pretty long and I don't know if everybody that was in it got through, but we just jumped in the swag bag line and had our bags in less than 10 minutes.
The bag was a bit lighter than last year, but I can't really complain. There was the obligatory "Gen Con '09" d6, a Magic booster pack, a flyer for a local gaming store that I still haven't been to, a few post card sized ads, and a "University of Catan" bumper sticker. one thing that was an upgrade, even if a small one, was the badge holders. Last year the badge holder was a small plastic envelope with two little pre-cut holes in the corners to feed a little elastic band through. They handed out lanyards with clips, but the only way to get the clip to fit to the badge holder was to punch the hole yourself for the clip. Of course the only punch thy had was a standard 3/16" round hole punch. This year the badge holder was of a slightly thicker plastic that didn't tear as easily and it came with the hole for the lanyard clip pre-punched. I know it's a tiny thing, but it made an impression on me.
After looking through the bag for a little while, we started looking through the convention hall for an event guide book. we walked almost the whole length of the convention hall before we found one. So, then we headed over to Steak N Shake to eat and look through the book for something more to do. we didn't really find anything much that interested us for Wednesday night, so we went back to the room to get an early start to our Thursday.
2009-08-13 Thursday
Thursday was the official beginning of the con. We hung out at the front of the vendor hall around 9:30 in hopes of seeing some of the opening ceremonies before heading off to our 10:00 game. Unfortunately the ceremony didn't get started until after I decided that we had to leave if we wanted to get to the game on time.
Our first game of the con was Desolation. Desolation is a fantasy RPG set after an apocalyptic event called the Night of Fire. It's kind of like playing in the Wheel of Time 18 months after the Breaking of the World. I was playing an elf sorcerer who could wield the powers of fire and air. The other members in the party were a Rover performer, a Dwarf scavenger, and a Mongrel Ranger.
We were all from a small settlement that had managed to survive through the Long Winter. Unfortunately the settlement, I think it's name was Green, had been swarmed with locusts and lost all of its crop. We had set out for a place that had been a town in the Before. On our trip through the forest we were attacked by a 2-headed bear that looked like it hadn't eaten in weeks. I noticed it before it pounced, so I solidified the air around its feet to slow it down enough for the others to get in more attacks. It managed to break through and took a swipe at me, but we put it down without much trouble. On the corpse we found a brightly painted collar.
On up the road we found the burnt out remains of a wagon. It looked like the fire had happened about a day before. As we kept going we found another small settlement. Camped outside the village was a troupe of performers and animal handlers with wagons that looked like a match to the remains we had found. After some pleasantries where I tried to convince the carnival that I was nobility and that the others in my party were my servants, the ringmaster asked us to help find a few animals that had been lost in the brigand attack the night before.
We failed to mention seeing a two-headed bear with a bright collar, but we did say we'd help look for the missing wolf. We tromped through the forest for a while more and eventually found what seemed to be tufts of fur high in the trees. we followed them and came to a cave. A wolf-man jumped out of the cave and swiped at me before bounding off a short distance and proclaiming that it wasn't his fault and he hadn't meant to do it. feeling the need to lash out, I pulled out the trick I had used earlier and solidified the air again. This time the air that I solidified was around the wolf-man's head. It didn't take him long to realize that he couldn't breathe, but at that time the carnival troupe had come up behind us and proclaimed that I was an evil magic user and had to be killed. A big fight ensued that ended with few of them dead or unconscious and the rest fleeing. I also passed out from the strain of casting. It wasn't a very satisfying end to the game, but it was only a two-hour game.
That was the only event we had that day before the vendor hall closed at 6:00, so we went over to the hall to look around. The first stop was at the Cheese Weasel booth. They have a little scavenger hunt type quest, if you visit a bunch of different vendor booths and watched their demos you'd get an entry into a drawing for prizes including a pass to Gencon 2010 and even a gamer cruise. Since we were planning on stopping by almost all the booths anyway, it seemed like a fun little addition.
So, we got to walk through the vendor hall for six hours on Thursday. In most cases I'd think that we'd get around most of the hall in that time. After all, I've been to renaissance fairs that took less time to walk. Gencon is not at all like that. I think we might have gotten through a quarter of the vendor hall in those six hours.
So, at 6:00 I was in a preliminary game of a Robo Rally tournament. Winner of the tournament won the board that we were playing on. That board was built with Hirst Arts Castlemolds and was a recreation of one of the boards from the game. I was doing really well in my game at the beginning. There were 3 flags on the board. By the time I hit flag 2, only one of the other players had hit flag 1. Unfortunately, one of the other players decided that since he wasn't going to win, the guy in front wasn't going to win either. I'm not actually upset about it, because it was a really good game. Really, bad cards did more damage than that guy did anyway. So it was a good game and I had a lot of fun playing.
After the game and dinner, my wife and I took a break before walking back to the hotel and played one of the games that we picked up. The game was called Vapor's Gambit. I'm not going to do a full review of the game here, but I will say that the idea behind the game was okay, but the execution wasn't very good. We did kill half an hour or so before packing up and going to the hotel.
2009-08-14 Friday
Friday started right off by hitting the vendor hall as soon as we got to the convention center. We walked around there for a bare few hours before going to a workshop where I got to build a scalemail dicebag. I've done a good deal of work with chainmail, but I'd never worked with scales before. I was quite happy with how it came out. The only problem is that the scales are a type of steel that rusts really easily. I think I'm going to make a new, larger one out of a different material because I do kind of like the way it looks.
After making the dice bag we went over to the True Dungeon. I'd never done a True Dungeon event before, so I was kind of excited about it. we had signed up for the mini quest. The mini quest was only 4 rooms, as opposed to the usual 8. It was also less intense. We were all given one item token that would represent our Rusty Dagger. The tokens were actually other weapons, but for thepurposes of the mini quest, they were all Rusty Daggers. Also, if we had any tokens from previous runs, we weren't allowed to use them.
If you haven't done a True Dungeon event before, here's how it goes. For each room you have 12 minutes to solve the room. After 6 minutes a gong sounds. After 11 minutes the music picks up and gets really loud. If you haven't solved the room yet at the end of 12 minutes, you are pushed to the next room and take damage.
The first room was the outside of a temple. We had to find a way to cross a moat, then open 3 trick locks. We had one person fall in the moat and take a damage. The locks really were tricky. The one that I opened was fairly simple, it required that one of the buttons on the back of the lock be pressed while the key was turned. The others were a bit harder. We actually almost didn't get the last one.
In the second room there was an all-seeing eye. We had to crawl around the room and not be detected by the eye. I don't know what would have happened if one of us had been seen, we all made it through. Then we had to fire a crossbow at a rune on the wall to deactivate a wall of force. We did finally make that one.
At the entrance to the third room there was a rope maze with some lights attacked to it. The lights represented bells. We had to crawl through the maze without ringing any of the bells and waking the guard. Anyone who made it through before the first person to ring a bell would get a free shot at the guard. Unfortunately the first person set off the trap, so none of us got a free shot, but we did kill the guard.
The last room held a table, a chest of small drawers, and a plaque on the wall that said we needed to knock on the topand speak what we sought to be ushered forth. Or something like that. Anyway, someone knocked on the chest of drawers and said "We seek the truth" (that was a clue we got from the plaque) then we were able to take the drawers out of the chest unharmed. On the bottom of the drawers were letters. We had to spell out a sentence with the drawers, which said "Look to the silver". There were gold medalions along the walls of all the inside rooms. They were spaced about ever 3 feet or so. Well, there was one in the room that was silver instead of gold. That one came off of the wall and was actually the amulet that we were searching for. We all won, hurray!
I had actually noticed the silver medallion almost as soon as we entered the room. didn't actually try to take it off the wall, but I did finger it a bit while we were pondering the first riddle. The GM in the room said that I kind of freaked him out when I almost pulled it right off the wall.
The weapon that I'd been using as my Rusty Dagger was actually a +1 Longsword. For beating the dungeon I got to pull a token from a box and got a biece of armor that added +6 to armor and +7 against missiles. If I play again, I should be pretty well off for someone with so little experience.
We were done with True Dungeon around 6:30 and we had a 7:00 game, so we didn't loiter before heading down to play Legend of the 5 Rings. We've never played Legend of the 5 Rings before, but we go to Gencon mostly to try out new games and systems, so we signed up for this one to see what it was like. When we got to where my table was supposed to be we were told that they had a big event in that room and our game had been moved next door. That room was packed, the fire marshal would have had somesern words to say. There weren't enough tables, some groups had to sit on the floor in the hall. we couldn't find the group where we were supposed to be, and the organizers couldn't figure out where to put us, especially since we hadn't played before. Eventually, we just left. We weren't impressed with the organizers for that event in the slightest. It wouldn't have been so bad since they were moved to a different room, but the big event that was in the room that we were supposed to be in was by the same organizers.
So, with nothing much else to do with the evening, we went over to the Red Dragon Inn that was set up at the Marriot. I guess the guys from Slugfest had come up with a few drinks that were inspired by the game Red Dragon Inn. The atmosphere was cool, the drinks were good, we had a good time.
2009-08-15 Saturday
Originally my wife and I were supposed to meet up with some friends Saturday and hit the vendor hall and do some seminars. They ended up not coming until evening, so we just wandered around the vendor hall from open to close. We managed to see all of it and to complete the afore-mentioned quests from Cheese Weasel. We also picked up a whole bunch of books and games.
After meeting up with our friends for dinner we all headed back to the Red Dragon Inn to have some drinks and to actually play Red Dragon Inn. It was a lot of fun and once again, the drinks were good.
2009-08-16 Sunday
The last day of Gencon and we didn't set aside any time to hit the vendor hall. At 10:00 I had a workshop on building terrain using Hirst Arts Castlemolds. Yes, the same bricks used to make that Robo Rally board. That was fun, but it was really hard to find bricks that went together coherently. I ended up making a very broken-down tower because rubble is easy to cobble together. Plus the piece of foam that I had for a base wasn't very large.
At noon we had our last game of the con. It was a pulp adventure game called the Hollow Earth Expedition. It used the same Ubiquity system as Desolation, so we largely knew what we were getting ourselves into. There were only 3 players in this game. Myself, playing the crazy stunt-pilot chick from the surface. My wife, playing a crazy witchdoctor woman with a voodoo teddybear from the Hollow Earth. And another guy playing an amazon warrior also from the Hollow Earth.
Things start off swimmingly as we are in our hot air balloon being chased by Nazis into a stormcloud. Of course we get hit by lightning, and start plumetting to our our collective doom. The first thing that we attempt to do is repair the balloon, put out the fires, and get the engines to give us some lift. The GM tells us the rolls that we need to make to do this, and it turns out that I'm the only one with the actual skill that I'm trying to roll The others are making their rolls untrained.
We manage to get to the ground at a survivable velocity and jump out of the balloon to start running from the machine gun fire that the Nazis are shooting at us. (oh, I forgot about those guys) We are saved by a group of bird men who attack the Nazis and drive them off. They are nice enough to take us to their flying city (I'm not really sure why we wanted to go there, but it worked out) and tell us that they've had dealings with the Nazis in recent days.
The king tells us that the city is losing altitude and they don't know what to do about it. It's not falling fast, perhaps an inch a year, but it is definitely falling. I offer to take a look at the device that keeps it aloft, though I have no idea how my character would know where to start with the thing. The king also wants us to look at a flying saucer that they've uncovered. I don't actually remember why we needed to look at it, it turned out that it flew very well.
So, we were led to where the saucer was by a bird man with a broken wing. The saucer, predictably, wasn't there. It had been sold by the captain of the guard to the Nazis. We were convenient fall guys for its disapearance. So, the captain of the guard accuses us of consorting with the Nazis and the Amazon struts over and smacks him. At this point the GM loses it. It turned out that he was pretty easily amused, and he'd never had a player just stroll over an hit the guardsman. So we fought. The dude with the broken wing got thrown over the side, but I was able to catch him because my character came packaged with a Rocketeer style jet pack. So we killed a few guards and then were arested when the entire militia showed up and demanded our surrender.
One somewhat tedious trial scene later the king tells us where to find a rocket ship to go after the Nazis with. It needs some parts, and we have to sneak around and steal stuff since we've just been convicted of conspiracy. So we steal some seats and a navigational console and fly to the moon. Not the real moon, the Hollow Earth has a moon too. It's where the systems that regulate the weather are kept. There's an AI that tells us that no one's been around in a while to do maintenance, but that there were some Nazis there looking for something. We get some crystals to help restore power to the bird people's city, promise the AI that we'll be back to do some repairs, and head out looking for some Nazis.
When we see the group of Nazis, there is a zeppelin, the flying saucer, and a few troops with rocket packs. I fly the rocket ship right through the zeppelin and take it out fast. I thought that deserved some kind of reward for being crazy, at least a style point, but it turned out that it was how the GM had intended for us to beat the zeppelin. Whatever. The rocket had some guns, and the Amazon decided to jump on top of the flying saucer to do combat with some dude in power armor. It didn't take us long to take out the flying troopers, and the Amazon managed to beat the power armored soldier until she ripped off one of the suit's arms. She then opened the hatch on the saucer and fired the gun on the power armor arm at random into the cockpit. That would probably have been enough to make anybody surrender, but she also hit enough of the controls that the saucer couldn't be piloted anymore.
That pretty much wrapped it up. We delivered the prisoners and the crystals to the sky city and were exhonerated. We returned to the moon and did some repairs up there. And that was the end of the game. I had a lot of fun and our GM was a blast.
The Hollow Earth game was scheduled for 4 hours, but since there were so few of us, it actually only took us about 2 and a half. So we found ourselves with a little bit of time left to head back to the vendor hall and grab some last minute deals.
That was our Gencon 2009. We had a lot of fun and can't wait for next year. Here's a list of what we picked up while we were at the con. I'll probably talk about some of it in later blogs.
Board Games
Bill of Rights
Blasphemy
Dominion
Munchkin Bites
Red Dragon Inn
Red Dragon Inn 2
Vapor's Gambit
Books
Some 3.5 Dragonlance books
Some OGL Babylon 5 books
Desolation: Survivors
Hollow Earth Expedition: Mysteries of the Hollow Earth
Shard
2009-08-12 Wednesday
My wife and I got to Indy on Wednesday evening and checked into our hotel. We already had our badges and all of our event tickets (I need to remember to get a few generics next year). It was about 8 when we got all of our stuff up to our room and settled, so we decided to go ahead and see if we could get our swag bags. The hotel that we stayed in is about a 15 minute walk from the convention center if you're not in any hurry, so we got there and the staff was telling everyone that the desks were all going to close at 9. The line for badges & tickets was pretty long and I don't know if everybody that was in it got through, but we just jumped in the swag bag line and had our bags in less than 10 minutes.
The bag was a bit lighter than last year, but I can't really complain. There was the obligatory "Gen Con '09" d6, a Magic booster pack, a flyer for a local gaming store that I still haven't been to, a few post card sized ads, and a "University of Catan" bumper sticker. one thing that was an upgrade, even if a small one, was the badge holders. Last year the badge holder was a small plastic envelope with two little pre-cut holes in the corners to feed a little elastic band through. They handed out lanyards with clips, but the only way to get the clip to fit to the badge holder was to punch the hole yourself for the clip. Of course the only punch thy had was a standard 3/16" round hole punch. This year the badge holder was of a slightly thicker plastic that didn't tear as easily and it came with the hole for the lanyard clip pre-punched. I know it's a tiny thing, but it made an impression on me.
After looking through the bag for a little while, we started looking through the convention hall for an event guide book. we walked almost the whole length of the convention hall before we found one. So, then we headed over to Steak N Shake to eat and look through the book for something more to do. we didn't really find anything much that interested us for Wednesday night, so we went back to the room to get an early start to our Thursday.
2009-08-13 Thursday
Thursday was the official beginning of the con. We hung out at the front of the vendor hall around 9:30 in hopes of seeing some of the opening ceremonies before heading off to our 10:00 game. Unfortunately the ceremony didn't get started until after I decided that we had to leave if we wanted to get to the game on time.
Our first game of the con was Desolation. Desolation is a fantasy RPG set after an apocalyptic event called the Night of Fire. It's kind of like playing in the Wheel of Time 18 months after the Breaking of the World. I was playing an elf sorcerer who could wield the powers of fire and air. The other members in the party were a Rover performer, a Dwarf scavenger, and a Mongrel Ranger.
We were all from a small settlement that had managed to survive through the Long Winter. Unfortunately the settlement, I think it's name was Green, had been swarmed with locusts and lost all of its crop. We had set out for a place that had been a town in the Before. On our trip through the forest we were attacked by a 2-headed bear that looked like it hadn't eaten in weeks. I noticed it before it pounced, so I solidified the air around its feet to slow it down enough for the others to get in more attacks. It managed to break through and took a swipe at me, but we put it down without much trouble. On the corpse we found a brightly painted collar.
On up the road we found the burnt out remains of a wagon. It looked like the fire had happened about a day before. As we kept going we found another small settlement. Camped outside the village was a troupe of performers and animal handlers with wagons that looked like a match to the remains we had found. After some pleasantries where I tried to convince the carnival that I was nobility and that the others in my party were my servants, the ringmaster asked us to help find a few animals that had been lost in the brigand attack the night before.
We failed to mention seeing a two-headed bear with a bright collar, but we did say we'd help look for the missing wolf. We tromped through the forest for a while more and eventually found what seemed to be tufts of fur high in the trees. we followed them and came to a cave. A wolf-man jumped out of the cave and swiped at me before bounding off a short distance and proclaiming that it wasn't his fault and he hadn't meant to do it. feeling the need to lash out, I pulled out the trick I had used earlier and solidified the air again. This time the air that I solidified was around the wolf-man's head. It didn't take him long to realize that he couldn't breathe, but at that time the carnival troupe had come up behind us and proclaimed that I was an evil magic user and had to be killed. A big fight ensued that ended with few of them dead or unconscious and the rest fleeing. I also passed out from the strain of casting. It wasn't a very satisfying end to the game, but it was only a two-hour game.
That was the only event we had that day before the vendor hall closed at 6:00, so we went over to the hall to look around. The first stop was at the Cheese Weasel booth. They have a little scavenger hunt type quest, if you visit a bunch of different vendor booths and watched their demos you'd get an entry into a drawing for prizes including a pass to Gencon 2010 and even a gamer cruise. Since we were planning on stopping by almost all the booths anyway, it seemed like a fun little addition.
So, we got to walk through the vendor hall for six hours on Thursday. In most cases I'd think that we'd get around most of the hall in that time. After all, I've been to renaissance fairs that took less time to walk. Gencon is not at all like that. I think we might have gotten through a quarter of the vendor hall in those six hours.
So, at 6:00 I was in a preliminary game of a Robo Rally tournament. Winner of the tournament won the board that we were playing on. That board was built with Hirst Arts Castlemolds and was a recreation of one of the boards from the game. I was doing really well in my game at the beginning. There were 3 flags on the board. By the time I hit flag 2, only one of the other players had hit flag 1. Unfortunately, one of the other players decided that since he wasn't going to win, the guy in front wasn't going to win either. I'm not actually upset about it, because it was a really good game. Really, bad cards did more damage than that guy did anyway. So it was a good game and I had a lot of fun playing.
After the game and dinner, my wife and I took a break before walking back to the hotel and played one of the games that we picked up. The game was called Vapor's Gambit. I'm not going to do a full review of the game here, but I will say that the idea behind the game was okay, but the execution wasn't very good. We did kill half an hour or so before packing up and going to the hotel.
2009-08-14 Friday
Friday started right off by hitting the vendor hall as soon as we got to the convention center. We walked around there for a bare few hours before going to a workshop where I got to build a scalemail dicebag. I've done a good deal of work with chainmail, but I'd never worked with scales before. I was quite happy with how it came out. The only problem is that the scales are a type of steel that rusts really easily. I think I'm going to make a new, larger one out of a different material because I do kind of like the way it looks.
After making the dice bag we went over to the True Dungeon. I'd never done a True Dungeon event before, so I was kind of excited about it. we had signed up for the mini quest. The mini quest was only 4 rooms, as opposed to the usual 8. It was also less intense. We were all given one item token that would represent our Rusty Dagger. The tokens were actually other weapons, but for thepurposes of the mini quest, they were all Rusty Daggers. Also, if we had any tokens from previous runs, we weren't allowed to use them.
If you haven't done a True Dungeon event before, here's how it goes. For each room you have 12 minutes to solve the room. After 6 minutes a gong sounds. After 11 minutes the music picks up and gets really loud. If you haven't solved the room yet at the end of 12 minutes, you are pushed to the next room and take damage.
The first room was the outside of a temple. We had to find a way to cross a moat, then open 3 trick locks. We had one person fall in the moat and take a damage. The locks really were tricky. The one that I opened was fairly simple, it required that one of the buttons on the back of the lock be pressed while the key was turned. The others were a bit harder. We actually almost didn't get the last one.
In the second room there was an all-seeing eye. We had to crawl around the room and not be detected by the eye. I don't know what would have happened if one of us had been seen, we all made it through. Then we had to fire a crossbow at a rune on the wall to deactivate a wall of force. We did finally make that one.
At the entrance to the third room there was a rope maze with some lights attacked to it. The lights represented bells. We had to crawl through the maze without ringing any of the bells and waking the guard. Anyone who made it through before the first person to ring a bell would get a free shot at the guard. Unfortunately the first person set off the trap, so none of us got a free shot, but we did kill the guard.
The last room held a table, a chest of small drawers, and a plaque on the wall that said we needed to knock on the topand speak what we sought to be ushered forth. Or something like that. Anyway, someone knocked on the chest of drawers and said "We seek the truth" (that was a clue we got from the plaque) then we were able to take the drawers out of the chest unharmed. On the bottom of the drawers were letters. We had to spell out a sentence with the drawers, which said "Look to the silver". There were gold medalions along the walls of all the inside rooms. They were spaced about ever 3 feet or so. Well, there was one in the room that was silver instead of gold. That one came off of the wall and was actually the amulet that we were searching for. We all won, hurray!
I had actually noticed the silver medallion almost as soon as we entered the room. didn't actually try to take it off the wall, but I did finger it a bit while we were pondering the first riddle. The GM in the room said that I kind of freaked him out when I almost pulled it right off the wall.
The weapon that I'd been using as my Rusty Dagger was actually a +1 Longsword. For beating the dungeon I got to pull a token from a box and got a biece of armor that added +6 to armor and +7 against missiles. If I play again, I should be pretty well off for someone with so little experience.
We were done with True Dungeon around 6:30 and we had a 7:00 game, so we didn't loiter before heading down to play Legend of the 5 Rings. We've never played Legend of the 5 Rings before, but we go to Gencon mostly to try out new games and systems, so we signed up for this one to see what it was like. When we got to where my table was supposed to be we were told that they had a big event in that room and our game had been moved next door. That room was packed, the fire marshal would have had somesern words to say. There weren't enough tables, some groups had to sit on the floor in the hall. we couldn't find the group where we were supposed to be, and the organizers couldn't figure out where to put us, especially since we hadn't played before. Eventually, we just left. We weren't impressed with the organizers for that event in the slightest. It wouldn't have been so bad since they were moved to a different room, but the big event that was in the room that we were supposed to be in was by the same organizers.
So, with nothing much else to do with the evening, we went over to the Red Dragon Inn that was set up at the Marriot. I guess the guys from Slugfest had come up with a few drinks that were inspired by the game Red Dragon Inn. The atmosphere was cool, the drinks were good, we had a good time.
2009-08-15 Saturday
Originally my wife and I were supposed to meet up with some friends Saturday and hit the vendor hall and do some seminars. They ended up not coming until evening, so we just wandered around the vendor hall from open to close. We managed to see all of it and to complete the afore-mentioned quests from Cheese Weasel. We also picked up a whole bunch of books and games.
After meeting up with our friends for dinner we all headed back to the Red Dragon Inn to have some drinks and to actually play Red Dragon Inn. It was a lot of fun and once again, the drinks were good.
2009-08-16 Sunday
The last day of Gencon and we didn't set aside any time to hit the vendor hall. At 10:00 I had a workshop on building terrain using Hirst Arts Castlemolds. Yes, the same bricks used to make that Robo Rally board. That was fun, but it was really hard to find bricks that went together coherently. I ended up making a very broken-down tower because rubble is easy to cobble together. Plus the piece of foam that I had for a base wasn't very large.
At noon we had our last game of the con. It was a pulp adventure game called the Hollow Earth Expedition. It used the same Ubiquity system as Desolation, so we largely knew what we were getting ourselves into. There were only 3 players in this game. Myself, playing the crazy stunt-pilot chick from the surface. My wife, playing a crazy witchdoctor woman with a voodoo teddybear from the Hollow Earth. And another guy playing an amazon warrior also from the Hollow Earth.
Things start off swimmingly as we are in our hot air balloon being chased by Nazis into a stormcloud. Of course we get hit by lightning, and start plumetting to our our collective doom. The first thing that we attempt to do is repair the balloon, put out the fires, and get the engines to give us some lift. The GM tells us the rolls that we need to make to do this, and it turns out that I'm the only one with the actual skill that I'm trying to roll The others are making their rolls untrained.
We manage to get to the ground at a survivable velocity and jump out of the balloon to start running from the machine gun fire that the Nazis are shooting at us. (oh, I forgot about those guys) We are saved by a group of bird men who attack the Nazis and drive them off. They are nice enough to take us to their flying city (I'm not really sure why we wanted to go there, but it worked out) and tell us that they've had dealings with the Nazis in recent days.
The king tells us that the city is losing altitude and they don't know what to do about it. It's not falling fast, perhaps an inch a year, but it is definitely falling. I offer to take a look at the device that keeps it aloft, though I have no idea how my character would know where to start with the thing. The king also wants us to look at a flying saucer that they've uncovered. I don't actually remember why we needed to look at it, it turned out that it flew very well.
So, we were led to where the saucer was by a bird man with a broken wing. The saucer, predictably, wasn't there. It had been sold by the captain of the guard to the Nazis. We were convenient fall guys for its disapearance. So, the captain of the guard accuses us of consorting with the Nazis and the Amazon struts over and smacks him. At this point the GM loses it. It turned out that he was pretty easily amused, and he'd never had a player just stroll over an hit the guardsman. So we fought. The dude with the broken wing got thrown over the side, but I was able to catch him because my character came packaged with a Rocketeer style jet pack. So we killed a few guards and then were arested when the entire militia showed up and demanded our surrender.
One somewhat tedious trial scene later the king tells us where to find a rocket ship to go after the Nazis with. It needs some parts, and we have to sneak around and steal stuff since we've just been convicted of conspiracy. So we steal some seats and a navigational console and fly to the moon. Not the real moon, the Hollow Earth has a moon too. It's where the systems that regulate the weather are kept. There's an AI that tells us that no one's been around in a while to do maintenance, but that there were some Nazis there looking for something. We get some crystals to help restore power to the bird people's city, promise the AI that we'll be back to do some repairs, and head out looking for some Nazis.
When we see the group of Nazis, there is a zeppelin, the flying saucer, and a few troops with rocket packs. I fly the rocket ship right through the zeppelin and take it out fast. I thought that deserved some kind of reward for being crazy, at least a style point, but it turned out that it was how the GM had intended for us to beat the zeppelin. Whatever. The rocket had some guns, and the Amazon decided to jump on top of the flying saucer to do combat with some dude in power armor. It didn't take us long to take out the flying troopers, and the Amazon managed to beat the power armored soldier until she ripped off one of the suit's arms. She then opened the hatch on the saucer and fired the gun on the power armor arm at random into the cockpit. That would probably have been enough to make anybody surrender, but she also hit enough of the controls that the saucer couldn't be piloted anymore.
That pretty much wrapped it up. We delivered the prisoners and the crystals to the sky city and were exhonerated. We returned to the moon and did some repairs up there. And that was the end of the game. I had a lot of fun and our GM was a blast.
The Hollow Earth game was scheduled for 4 hours, but since there were so few of us, it actually only took us about 2 and a half. So we found ourselves with a little bit of time left to head back to the vendor hall and grab some last minute deals.
That was our Gencon 2009. We had a lot of fun and can't wait for next year. Here's a list of what we picked up while we were at the con. I'll probably talk about some of it in later blogs.
Board Games
Bill of Rights
Blasphemy
Dominion
Munchkin Bites
Red Dragon Inn
Red Dragon Inn 2
Vapor's Gambit
Books
Some 3.5 Dragonlance books
Some OGL Babylon 5 books
Desolation: Survivors
Hollow Earth Expedition: Mysteries of the Hollow Earth
Shard
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