DunDraCon 28
was this last weekend and once again I went there the whole weekend
with my brother. I reserved a room from Thursday to Monday -- you pay
for an extra night but checking in with no hassle and being able to
check in for Dave Friday morning was very convenient. One hiccup was
that because Dave had my name down for his room too when I checked in
for his room it messed up my registration and we had to clear that up
Friday afternoon.
Thursday I checked
in at 16:00 and got comfortable in the room. Then I had to work on the
DC Heroes adventure I was going to run on Friday night. At this point I
knew that Dave, Woo and my brother Chris would be present and possibly
Eric (though since he was going to go home every night he probably
wouldn't make it). It's a basic and short three scene adventure to
introduce the players to the system. Meet the villains, get captured by
the villains, escape and capture the villains -- nothing too
complicated.
Friday Check into
Dave's room which is right next door. Good in that we're all together.
Bad in that we're all together. I kind of like it quiet which is why I
pushed all the guests into Dave's room leaving my room for my brother
and I. Anyway, I drove to Davis and picked up my brother. Then we had
nothing to do until everyone arrived. Check my email. Oh oh, Donald
wants to game on Friday.
Not only does he not have a written up character yet, he also has a
non-obvious character that should be specifically handled. For me
non-obvious characters are ones that are not straight-up fighters.
Donald has a Dispersal/Invisible heroine and Shannon has his Psychic
Investigator. Write up adventures so that those characters have
something to do and won't break the plot. After spending a few hours
writing up the adventure I didn't feel like working in Donald's
character so I just hoped he didn't show up.
Of course he showed up, as did Eric Fulton. Ack, why don't people ever
warn me ahead of time? Oh well, I just ran it as best as I could. There
was no real reason to be hidden so Donald didn't get to do all that
much effectively (though he did roll an awfully high attack to KO the
bad guy). Eric wanted to play a Scientist/Gadgeteer so I made him come
up with 3 gadgets that sort of worked during the adventure. He created
a combat robot, a laser cannon, and a bagel blaster (toaster on
steroids).
In general the adventure ran well. It takes some getting used to the
DCH die rolling conventions but they learned it quickly. This is a much
less serious campaign than my Star Trek campaign or even my BattleTech
campaign -- acting wacky and zany is great, as long as you still
complete the adventure. My brother and Fulton did well in this regard.
They weren't very effective but they didn't need to be.
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Saturday For most of the day we
didn't do much. I visited the Dealers' Room and bought a couple of
items - the Star Trek Narrator's Screen (finally another DecipherTrek
product in over a year or so!) and The Ultimate Vehicle for the Hero
System. Walked around briefly.
The Rainbow started at 20:00. We actually used the back room for the
main drinking. There aren't enough tables and chairs in the bar, but
then again the back room is kind of quiet and you need to buy a lot of
stuff (which we always do). Ate dinner first so at least I wasn't
drinking on an empty stomach. Therefore I drank six of the seven drinks
(then they had another two or three at the bar afterwards). Ken Hite
was much nicer this year -- he even ignored Dave when he tried to bait
Ken.
Sunday Visited the
flea market several times and bought lots of stuff. Mostly White Wolf
World of Darkness which is low priority for me but there was little
else I wanted to buy. I also bought some Deadlands stuff. I've gotten
to like the new flea market format. Sure it was exciting to have
everything at once for two hours -- that was a mad scramble. Now it's a
smaller room with two hour shifts. It's still somewhat crowded because
of the small room, but there is much less of a rush.
That night Dave, Woo, my brother and I played a bunch of board games.
First was a game of Dungeoneer, which is a card-based version of a
dungeon crawl. You slowly build the dungeon and try to complete your
quests. As you go around you build up peril points and glory points.
Other people can throw encounters at you using your peril points and
you use your glory points to use beneficial cards like items and
enchantments. I do like the fact that with the peril point system
people can't beat up on you -- they can still attack you with their
characters but that's not easy.
Then we played Zombies (with the expansion). The object is to collect
25 zombie kills or reach one of the two helicopters. Each turn each
player turns up another portion of the city with some zombies. It's
definitely designed to have the players screw with each other. Playing
cooperatively is almost trivial since the zombies are controlled by the
players. But playing cutthroat makes this into an impossibly long game
so you probably need some tweaking to strike a balance.
We went back to the room and played another game of Dungeoneer. This
time we laid out the dungeon beforehand and then I proceeded to win.
Dave's dislike for Dungeoneer reached a boiling point. I don't think he
gets the game. A game of Nuclear War which I won (and I didn't have any
25 million people cards!). Two games of Wiz War, one of which I won.
Then finally sleep.
Monday Pack up and
check out. Last minute shopping at the Wizard's Attic booth (they had a
lot of stuff at 50% off). Then I had to take my brother home because he
was sick (maybe not enough sleep). I visited my parents (as long as I
have to go to Davis) and got back home at 22:00. It was a good
convention.
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