Post-Apocalyptic Armor 2: The Road Warrior

Played a session with the new armor rules. I went in with each piece having weapon die modifiers, fumble modifiers, armor check penalty modifiers, fractional modifiers. It was overkill and stupid. Here are the streamlined Wasteland Armor rules, and a list of wasteland armor.

1. Armor does not (generally) modify Armor Class. Instead it soaks damage.
2. Armor Class is modified by Reflex Saving Throw Modifier.
3. Armor die is determined by moving up the Die Chain for each Armor Die Step.
4. After a hit, the defender rolls its Armor Die. The result reduces the attack's damage by the number rolled. 
5. On a roll of 1 on the armor die, one piece of armor of the defender's choice is damaged, reducing it's effectiveness by one step. If reduced to zero, it is destroyed.
6. Some pieces of armor do not provide armor die steps, they are there for when ones are rolled to keep the good stuff from breaking.
7. Fumble Die is equal to the total armor die, unless additionally modified by an armor piece's SPECIAL NOTES.
8. These rules only apply to player characters of at least first level and special bad guys. Otherwise shit would slow down too much.
9. Shields work normally, granting a bonus to AC.

Helmets

Armor Piece	Armor Die Steps	Armor Check Penalty	Special
Hockey Mask	1	-1
Catcher’s Mask	1		Pointy attacks ignore.
Football Helmet	2	-1	Increases fumble die one step.
Motorcycle Helmet	2	-2
Riot Helmet	2
Welder’s Mask	1

Body

Armor Piece	Armor Die Steps	Armor Check Penalty	Special
Shoulder Pads	1	-1
Spiked Shoulder Pads	1	-2	Grants +1 to AC. Increases fumble die one step.
Catcher’s Chest Protector	1
Leather Apron	2	-1
Tire Tread Chest Piece	3	-2	Increases fumble die one step.
Hubcap Breastplate	2	-3	Increases fumble die one step.
Metal cuirass	*	-3	Grants a d4 Armor Die in addition to Armor Die provided by other Armor Pieces.
Leather Jacket	2
Riot Gear Torso	3	-2
Flak Jacket	*		Grants a d6 Armor Die in addition to Armor Die provided by other Armor Pieces.
Leather Chaps or Pants	2

Additional Pieces

The following do not provide armor dice, but may be worn as additional protection to be sacrificed when armor is damaged. There is an Armor Check Penalty of one for every two pieces worn (round up).

• Elbow Pads
• Forearm Guards
• Spiked Elbow Pads (Provide +1 AC, but incur additional -1 Armor check Penalty and increase fumble die by one.
• Razor Bracers
• Shin Guards
• Knee Pads
• Goggles

I made this equipment character sheet to simplify tracking the armor. Each piec will go on a little post it that is stuck in the roughly corresponding position. I also made a spot for usage dice (Stolen from +David Black's Black Hack), and the items thing is for a LotFP meets Black Hack, style encumbrance rule set. I also got some ideas for this from Last Gasp, namely having "Ready Items." 

PDF of the Equipment Character Sheet.

DCC RPG: Post Apocalypse Armor

So far in the two sessions we've played, there hasn't been much armor floating around. In the first session some slaughtered boat people had their fancy high tech body armor taken, and that's all anyone has gotten.
It was just sort generic, I only threw it in so that they'd get the idea that the boat people were operating at a more advanced tech level than their village. By the end of the last session, they were battling The Shunned, a gang of cut-throats in a city ruins. These are the kind of guys that would have Naked Raygun, Mad Max, New Barbarians type shit.

Now I could just describe the armor, all shoulder pads and codpieces and give it an armor class, but it's such an essential component of what makes road warrior apocalypse shit so rad, I think it needs to be special. As homework I started with what Adam at Kickassistan posted last summer about Armor-less AC and what Claytonian posted over at the G+ DCC group recently.

What I'm stealing from Adam is that a character's reflex save is their armor class bonus and armor reduces damage. From Claytonian I'm pulling the variable damage soak.

What I'm adding to the mix is that any 1s rolled on a soak die breaks the armor one step down the die chain, and that multiple pieces combine to step up the die chain. Some special things will give extra dice. I have to work out the specifics, but here's a quick maybe examples:

Shoulder pad armor: one step up

Spiked shoulder pads: one step up and +1 to AC (those spikes get in the way of wallops)

Motorcycle helmet: two steps up

Leather duster: One Step up

Armored Breastplate: Additional d4 armor die

So let's say Eggfart has gotten herself Shoulder pads, a helmet, a leather duster and an armored breastplate. 

Crack! Vicious clubbing for 6 points of damage. All together she rolls a d4 for the breastplate and a d6 for everything else. And she gets a 1 and a 5. Cool, that soaks up all the damage, but oh no, that 1 means the breastplate is damaged and now is only worth a 1d3. Better kill these Shunned and take their chainmail crochet dress.

Will try and get something more codified before the next time we play, and figure out how exactly the fumble die will work.

Tarot Card Sandbox Toys

So in the last post I wrote about how I had my group create a home village for a post-apocalyptic DCC game. Part of that process was to record all their answers on separate note cards. In addition to helping keep things manageable, it also lends itself to this goofy idea I've had for a while to incorporate tarot into my games. On the off chance Nick, Marty, Rob, Kim or Denny are reading this, you should probably stop.

My original plan was to try and tie elements of the game to tarot cards which had a similar meaning. This quickly became way to big a hassle. So I took all the elements we came up with and assigned each to a card. I did this by shuffling the tarot deck and placing one card on each notecard. If the note card had a couple of different elements, I dealt out however many extra ones, so that at least for now, each card has a discrete element. A couple of things might be tied to multiple cards, but I'm figuring this out as I go.

To record the information, I gave each tarot card a notecard. On the notecard I wrote down the associated word from the deck's Little White Book, and underneath that I wrote down the campaign element. There were some weird synchronicities, like here we have Bill from the General Store being the Page of Coins, and that dude looks a lot like the way I bet Bill does. And Ace of Cups represents emotion, and it's tied to the prior safety of the town that was partially due to Whiskey Know How. And there's a canteen! WITCHY!!!

To get ready for our next game I did a six card spread as outlined in this deck's Little White Book. I'm using Omegaland an apocalypse themed deck, so the language used to describe the spread works pretty good with my game.

1 = Location (Present situation)
2 = Food (How to sustain oneself)
3 = Weapons (state of mind and strategies)
4 = Fuel (what you need to move ahead)
5 = Drink (Feelings)
6 = Stockpile (Planning ahead)

So for Location, I got the 2 of Coins, which corresponds to Ophelia Up, a village debutante, and zero level who survived, but isn't going to keep adventuring.

Food card was the Queen of Wands, which corresponds with Diane, the mother of Alistair a zero level kid that made it through and is turning into a First Level Halfling, sorta like CUBM, but not feral. The Player of Alistair, Denny got hockey game tickets, so she is bailing on the game. So with this, I'm figuring Alistair needs his mom, and the session will start off with the absent Alistair and Ophelia Up heading back to the town which was attacked and likely overrun our first session.

Weapons, or strategies I pulled the High Priestess, which corresponds with "What Happens in the Fog Area." The fog area is an area of radioactive fog where "deviants" from the town are sent. So I'm thinking this will mean I'll drop some clues that the solution to the coordinated attack from the Boat People, Honey Badger Cult, (did I write about the Honey Badger Cult? There's a Tea Totalling Honey Badger Cult that is an sorta underground opposition movement that coordinated an attack with the alien looking Boat People Others) might be found in the fog area.

Fuel, or what is needed to move ahead pulled the Page of Coins, corresponds to Bill from the General Store, the witness to the band's looting and attacking of town guards. This might be that Bill is leading a posse to retrieve the stolen goods and exact justice on the cowardly deserters, or maybe it will be something bad happens to Bill and their crimes are forgotten.

Drink, the feelings, is the Ace of Cups, the town's prior safety which was a result of their whiskey know how, and the fog among other things. These are all coming together in a weird way. Divination! Witchiness!

The Planning card was the 10 of Wands, that thus far does not have an associated game element.

So with these things I have an idea of how I'm going to run the session, and if I get to doing some prep, I'll stat out Diane, make some notes about Ophelia, to make the start of the session about her departure, figure out some rumor tables and who exactly will be spouting these rumors about the Fog Area, and maybe throw some radiation suits in for treasure. Bill and his posse will get statted up, and maybe I'll put some "feelings and ruminations" on the encounter table. Reflections of the way life used to be, reflections of the love you took from me. Like China Beach.

When we play, I'm going to have these tarot cards sitting out. This might just be for psychological effect, but I might also do some sort of luck point spending on certain cards for certain effects. Each spend will somehow "boost" the card. The intent is that the players will slowly figure out first that these cards are influencing the background events, and then which cards correspond to who.

Last week I saw Card Based Mission Generator by Jens D posted on Google Plus, and it's coming at this from a sorta similar direction, but the specifics are quite different. Last summer I read a post from Scott Kellogg about using the tarot for story elements and NPCs. I think our three approaches sort of exist on a spectrum of ways to use cards to create game ideas, and if any of this that I wrote seems the tiniest bit useful, you may want to check out these posts as well.

Collaborative Village Creation Guide for Sandbox Kickoff

In the last post that recapped the campaign kickoff (we have already decided on two days that for sure wouldn't work for the next game, but at least it's progress) I referenced the collaborative village creation. Here I'll give a rundown of how we did it, how I tied it in to DCC character creation. In a future post I'll go through how I'm pulling the seemingly set aside bits we came up with as return hooks in the sandbox we'll be playing in.

Before getting together, I put the following questions onto notecards, so I could have notes on the answers to specific questions in one place, and for bookkeeping reasons as the campaign continues. Before we started I gave the group a blank piece of paper to for them to draw a map of the village and the surrounding area. As we went through the questions they drew stuff on the map, and just doodled things. Some answers inspired follow up questions that I wrote down on additional cards. After we got through all of the questions, we had a pretty clear idea of what the town was all about.

We took smoke break screw around break for a few minutes, and during that time I wrote down all of the characters who were specifically named, or professions that were mentioned onto a numbered list. This became the Occupation list for the 0 levels. Weapon and trade good I just sort of winged after they rolled. I then rounded it out to 60 with entries from the Crawling Under a Broken Moon Occupation List.
So there's had specific people, like Beckett the most irritating guy in town, Texas, the oil bum, and honey badger cultists. For the specifically named characters I gave a bonus to the relevant stat, smartest guy in town, Einstein the scientist, got a +2 to Intelligence, Hercules Berkeles got a +2 to Strength.

The map they made.

Village Creation Question List:

• What is special about the village?
• Describe the village's terrain
• Give a detail about the terrain
• Each player name a resource
• What does the village produce (commodity, trade goods, etc)?
• What Else
• Why has it been safe so far?
• Who does it trade with?
• What is the religion, ethos or guiding philosophy of the village?
• What is the competing, underground or forbidden movement?
• How is the village governed?
• Are the people satisfied with this arrangement?
• If opposition exists, who is involved with it?
• What or who is the greatest threat to the village?
• If there is any other threats, what are they?
• Who is the most irritating person in the village? Explain.
• What is the community's open secret?
• Who is the oldest person in the village?
• Who is the town gossip?
• Who is the youngest?
• Who is the ugliest?
• Who is the most beautiful?
• Who is the smartest?
• Who is the most trusted?
• Who is the strongest?
• Who is the dumbest?
• What is the worst thing to have happened to the village in the last five years?
• What was the best?
• What is the village's favorite pastime?
• What will make the village prosper?
• What is a typical meal?
• What is the most common chore
• What job is the most honored?
• What is the least desired job?
• Who should have been exiled?
• Why weren't they?

Part of the occupation list.

Filled out Note cards 

Post Apocalyptic DCC Kick Off Session Report

My long time gaming group has in recent years stagnated into EuroGame regularity, a mocking caricature of the cartoon in the D&D book of adventurers playing Papers & Paychecks. Keraptis and +2 Spevs are now efficiency experts in German Factories and optimizers of power grids. We now manage the medieval monasteries that as Evil Gnomes we once pillaged. Panfilio the Wild Mage is replaced with a red cube that allows me to build buildings.

This is not to say that I do not like these games, they are great and I sometimes wonder how to resolve shit in D&D beyond a Roll and Move without complicating things to a painful crawl. We don’t even get the press your luck of a Yahtzee. Iis a worker placement RPG possible, let alone desirable? Enough of these thoughts...

Like a long suffering couple looking for their lost spark we headed to a cabin in the woods of Southern Ohio. Instead of Dr Ruth, couple’s erotica and a bag of silicone dongs, I had a backpack of DCC. Friday was Russian Railroads, Blue Moon City, a failed attempt at the Werewolf Card Game, and finally an aborted Dead of Winter. I don’t dig a lot of the RPG-lite board games, and my Can’t-Hang-itis really flared up when my two characters were both killed in the first round on one roll each. People complain Tomb of Horrors sucks, but at least I’d have been able to say “I climb into the devil’s mouth.” I got a new card and was told that it really is fun, but I soon apologized for sucking and crashed out.

Originally I thought my friend Marty was going to run a Narcosa trip on Friday, but that didn’t happen. We couldn’t squeeze it in on Saturday because the game I ran went way long. For this Marty, I am sorry. Word on the street is he is pissed.

But the game I ran while long, was good, and here I will recount what transpired.

My original plan was to run a DCC-ified Savage Worlds, like the Outer Space Mining Disaster I did at BASHCon, but in a post-apocalyptic setting. When I started to pull my strands together for this Magical Weekend Game That Better Be Special, it occurred to me that I have had the most fun playing DCC, so why would I only import aspects of that to another game, rather than adjusting DCC to my needs? Because ‘you are lazy’ I replied to myself. A ha! But in a funnel, a zero level is a zero level, there is no need to make classes before this session, so I was convinced. The intent is that this will be a kick off to an ongoing campaign, so I decided to run with what I am currently most stoked over. I’ll figure out the rest when I need to.

So what about the game? I’ve read a little bit about people collaboratively creating their adventuring world using Microscope, saw at RPG Tips some sort of put your best ideas on a notecard, read about Beyond the Wall, then heard the Drink Spin Run play through, and those things got me thinking. I also played through half a season of The Quiet Year, and the map making town building gave me a couple other ideas.

A month or so ago I had asked everyone what sort of game they’d be into playing in and the consensus was post-apocalyptic. I was imagining something closer to Mad Max than Gamma World, but fuck it, I’d open it up for whatever. In preparation I created a series of questions to guide where we’d be going, stuff like “Why has this village been safe so far?” and about the specific residents of the town. I’ll do a full post with the process and question for those who may be interested.

We ended up with a tropical coastal settlement of about 400 people that grew and roasted Foffee, a coffee like thing, and also had good old boys distilling whiskey and rye, some of whom found out that this’ll be the day that I die. The town was powered by a small hydroelectric station on a river, and was also a sea port. This sea port was now not functioning because there was a blockade in effect conducted by Others on a cruise ship. These Others looked sorta like large nosed greys. The town was no utopia, a strict hierarchy was enforced. This was tolerated and even celebrated because it kept everyone safe and mostly drunk. There was an underground honey badger cult that forswore booze, and did not like the way the town was governed.

The political entity in charge was a council made up of representatives from the Foffee family, the Whiskey family, and a seemingly meritocratic scientific community.

We took a little more than an hour sketching all of this out, and also named some residents of the town. The resident created by the question “Who is the most irritating member of the village?” was named Beckett.

While everyone rolled up their slate’s ability scores I quickly put together a 1d60 table of occupations pulled from what the group came up with and also placed the named characters on the list. The named characters conferred an additional bonus based on the qualifier that was attached to them, for example, Hercules, the strongest guy in the village got a +2 to Strength. Beckett got a -2 to Personality.

After character creation we had probably been going for two and a half hours. A simple introductory encounter probably would have rounded out the session. Instead we barrelled onward.

In the town there was a dangerous bridge near the powerstation that spanned the river. People liked to get drunk on the bridge, and people would then fall off the bridge. This was one of the quirks of the town. The proper adventure began with all 24 characters hanging out at the bridge. Soon they heard an explosion. They quickly came to realize that the barracks and armory was on fire. Immediately there were grumblings that this must be the work of the Others on the cruise ship.

The villagers made their way to the armory, one brave soul even venturing in. After a few failed luck checks, this was the first to fall. Others came with bucket in hand but came to realize it would do little good in extinguishing this inferno. A few others pressed their luck, and spent it too, and managed to make it in and out of the armory with machine guns. (I sorta used the Crawl gun rules in Crawling Under a Broken Moon, and I sorta winged it.)

Some sharp eyed fellow noticed a sketchy character sneaking away into the night. He shortly thereafter met his end, much to the consternation of those that thought information might have been garnered had the miscreant been captured and questioned rather than slain, but hotter heads ruled the day.

The crew went down to the shore line to find three more suspicious figures attempting to shove off in an inflatable raft. The first flying side kick missed, but someone else figured shooting the raft would stop the escape. Once trapped, the saboteurs pulled out some wicked shock sticks, electrified maces designed for killing and frying not prodding or subduing. A few of the allies fell, but those that remained killed two and captured the last.

“Why did you blow up our armory” a member of the band asked.

“So you don’t have weapons when we come to kill you and take your stuff.”

“How many of you are on the boat?”

“A hundred thousand, so it's not even worth trying to stand against us.”

After a couple more questions and answers of which the veracity was doubtful the captive received a crossbow bolt through the back of his neck.

This brutality brought a couple of grumbles, but on the whole it seemed the band were happy fascists in a happy fascist town. The bind of the fasci might have been overlooked, because the group decided to run away from town.

To Be continued....

BASHCon 2016 Wrap Up

BASHCon was a lot of fun, though the RPG component was pretty sparse. I think the only RPG event that wasn't Pathfinder or Peryton Affiliate game was a Marvel Supers game. I saw a pick up Paranoia in progress, but didn't get to play it. When I walked up to it I was like "Wow dude awesome, Paranoia. It's like one of my favorite, one of the best..." And the guy I said it to was like "Yeah, whatever, we're on break, beat it. You're annoying." So I slunked off.

I only played in one game, Robin's Crystal Rifts of Tartarus. This was a cool trip out to Pluto to fuck up a renegade faction of a MegaCorp's science outpost that was working with extra dimensional beings and Pluto's anti-living natives. She ran it using the Cypher system which I thought was pretty solid. Somewhere I had read that it was no great shakes, and sorta expected a D20 with extra stuff, but instead I found a neat little package. The spending ability scores at varying costs turned out to work fairly well. I think when I had read about the levels of difficulty shifting based on paying points that are also your hit-points my mind started to glaze over and I might've made a jerk off motion at the computer. I was wrong about that, it was easy and neat. Also liked the rolling dodges instead of the GM rolling hits. I'm not sure I'd ever run it, or even buy the book, but I'd definitely play it again. Still haven't decided on the "Blankety Blank who Blanks" character descriptor aspect. I was a "curious explorer who moves  like a cat." I can't figure out if it's cutesy and dumb, or just as good as any other way of giving a class combo. The adventure itself was a  nice combination of fighting and discovery with weird aliens.

I ran three games: Gimme Shelter using Tom's Crawlspace rules, Scream Bloody Gore with DCC, and Jupiter Mining Corp Disaster on Ganymede using a bastard Savage Worlds. Gimme Shelter went well, and I still haven't gotten sick of running it. Tom's UFOlogist ran behind a bus and turned invisible, stole squad car keys and an unmarked car, hit and ran some alien henchmen and staged a getaway in the most heroic action of the night. Jerry's Case Worker crawled to the bottom of the bottle but came out long enough to pick up all the other characters since he at least had a car. I don't know if Liam got that his character wasn't actually the mayor in a political sense, but Mayor of Edgewater Beach was just an honorific. But the character was supposed to be deeply delusional, so I guess this is what people mean when they talk about immersion. I didn't find out until days later that the alien ship summoned at the Rock Hall was a Boston Space Guitar, but, Randy, I'm glad it was.

Scream Bloody Gore I've written about here before. This game was made up entirely of Perytonians (Gimme Shelter on the other hand had one stranger) and was a blast. I had some second level pregens, the party ended up being a cleric, Dunston, Huggin the warrior, Decklin the Slick thief and Wizard Myria. Under cover of darkness the band arrived at a village plagued by maggot zombies. Their introduction to the situation was given by a priest tending to the funeral pyres of afflicted villagers, some who still were not dead at the time of their death. They stopped Priest Luckey from burning a baby, and demanded to know who was in charge. Dunston and Luckey shared the same god, Monolopopia, but Dunston was not familiar with this particular practice. The thief stayed with the baby while Jerry ran out for a minute and the rest of the party was taken to see Haskins, the head priest of the town. En route they were attacked by zombies and Liam got some maggots in his arm. Randy's quick witted cleric reacted with swiftness and amputated the infected limb. Liam's limbless warrior was maybe not as grateful as he could have been for the quick save, but the band played on. Around this time Jerry came back and we caught up with the thief and baby. The thief noticed maggots crawling under the skin of the swaddled lad, so he decided to leave it on the ground and make haste back to the group. This was good because you should never shake a baby. All in together, the band confronted Haskins in his shrine. Had they taken a more circuitous route, Haskins would have been like this guy:

And had killed himself to wield awesome power in undeath. But they caught him while we has making last minute preparations desecrations at the shrine to Monolopopia. The band thought Haskins was behind the maggot zombies though he was not. Still he was uncooperative because he was planning on committing ritual suicide to become an undead menace and gain unimaginable power. Soon a fight broke out and the band took charge. Once Haskins figured he was done for, he began chanting hoping Death by Cop counted as much as Hanging Oneself from a Tree in the many thousand eyes of the dark mad gods. Robin's Myria blasted him with a color spray and stopped the winging it ritual in its tracks. Soon villagers started creeping around, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly if you believe social behavior is rational, did not take well to being told their spiritual leader did not have their best interests at heart. At this point just more than an altar boy Luckey got killed, and the burning of the shrine really pissed off the town, and the villagers attacked. They then were slaughtered. At this point Haskins came to and continued his chant. Myria Charmed Haskins and a villager, and defused the situation. Here began an investigation into what was causing the zombie infestation. A few dead villagers and a not grateful enough populace later the band decided to just get the hell out of Dodge. As they left the village they came to a burning field filled with demons, and that's where we ended.

Sunday wrapped up with Jupiter Mining Company Disaster (on Ganymede). I ran this using the goofy Saveage Worlds Funnel random character generation I tlaked about here. They attribute rolling was unwieldy, unituitive and stupid. Afterwards Robin came up with what I think is a much better solution:

For each ability score roll a d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12. Record which die has the lowest result.

That should work much better and I plan on trying that out soon.
Once we got rolling the adventure went alright, but I sorta fucked up the pacing. I think for the most part people liked the tone, that of Paranoia/Red Dwarf/Black Mirror being about how work sucks. Unfortunately I didn't kill off enough people quick enough, and had two maybe villains which is too much for an under four hour con game.

I'm going to be coming back to Scream Bloody Gore and Ganymede. I think Scream Bloody Gore could work nicely as a funnel. Will report back when I have more.

Here's a photo Tom took of the Crawlspace game. I'm the tubby guy in the white shirt.

1d12 Table: Office Small Talk for a Stultifying Corporate Future on Water Outpost

I saw an image macro today about 1984 being Totalitarianism, Blade Runner being Capitalism, and Star Trek being Democratic Socialism. This table could work in any of those futures! So long as there are jobs, there will be soulsucking small talk. This works well with the 100 Occupations from a few weeks ago, and will be getting a test run at BASHCon on Sunday.

Use thes as a starting point for fascinating conversations with NPCs!

Small Talk Table

1. I just got the New Valued Employee Badge, I think I’m going to make it my profile default.
2. Did you hear Hooks found some bacteria in the line up in desalination? They think it's Life. Like Discovered!
3. Word is some college research team is gonna be coming out here.
4. Have you seen the “mew” clean bot? It looks just like Agit-Cat! It’s the best.
5. I chatted with my dad yesterday. He said the consciousness upload is awesome. Like better than being alive even.
6. I’m at 67% achievement completion for consciousness upload priority! And I’ve only worked here for 43 years!
7. Have you talked to Mike in accounting since he went digital? I always liked him. Now he’s even more helpful and fun!
8. Did you hear about Mike in accounting? He was only at 95% completion for consciousness upload. But they traded the rest of his achievements in exchange for his Passing Benefit. They treat us so good, it makes me want to cry sometimes.
9. Did you hear about that, pardon my language; asshole on Io? That… Oh, he makes me so mad.... But that A-hole, he had an illegal Consciousness Assistant!
10. Dude! They read my comment first on Civil Commons: Review Cast! I said that we have to consider both sides before deciding, if we want to be an engaged citizen.
11. Ohemji! Did you see the Real Heroes of Regular Everyday that just posted? Ho man! Kinderman was paragliding above sharks and he went one handed and sang at the same time. It was CRAZY. I had to comment like eight times, and then reply to my replies. It took a while but that was so awesome. And I made headway towards getting an achievement that will put me closer to getting on the show!
12. Did you see the Unistat Amber Alert post! It’s so so so scary. How can POENAH Purity of Essence Nihilist Anarchist Horde Hobbysheet #4 even exist? Why would anyone even want to think like that?

BASHCon 2016 Events

BASHCon is coming up in a few weeks, February 19-21 at the University of Toledo, and I'll be running a few games.

BASHCon 1988 was the first D&D convention I ever went to. I had just turned 9 and the trip to Toledo from Cleveland was my Birthday present. I bought a Potion of Paper Aging and got sold on a space exploration game called Expendables. After a couple of hours poking around in the dealer's room my dad came back from the university library and we headed back. The next year we got a to stay in a hotel room that had adult shit my dad had to keep off the TV and adult shit going on in the neighboring rooms.

This turned into a yearly thing until I turned 15 when I hit my low point of D&D playing and stopped doing stuff with my dad. Sometime in my early 20s I came back, and found Yu Gi Oh and heroclix and not much on the RPG front. Still there was fun to be had. My dad was pretty amused when I told him I was first going back and maybe somewhat satisfied our old activity stuck, and that I had found a something in which I can find joy. This will be the first one since the old man died, there is a lot of memory and nostalgia tied up in this thing.

BASHCon is also where I met my now good gaming buddies Tom and Robin. And it's where a woman told late 20s me that her 14ish year old daughter ought be very desirable because she was a female gamer. And she kept pushing it, like Walder Frey. It was the Times of a Dying Pancreas, and i had been puking in the parking lot earlier, so there was an onedge haze to the day already. That is one of the weirdest things to ever have happened to me, game related or not. I'd entertain it being a deranged figment of my imagination if my buddy Nick wasn't there giving me what the fuck is going on looks. Whodini told me the freaks come out at night, not at D&D conventions.

This will be the first year in many that I run events at BASHCon. When I was 11 I registered to run a game. When my players arrived and saw it was a kid refereeing, they suddenly remembered they were gonna be late for work and had to bail. A bit later my friend Justin and I saw them playing D&D in a lounge area on the way out. Justin called them out on faking work, I just wanted to climb into the Catacombs of Doom. This experience now presents me with a potential dilemma. If I ever show up to a con game and it's a kid sitting there running it, do I stay or cut? On the one hand I remember the humiliation I felt, on the other hand I kinda hate kids...

What I'm running:

Gimme Shelter for Crawlspace. I've written about his one here, its a mad camp romp often fueled by drugs (real and roleplayed) to get to a homeless shelter while avoiding cops and cultists.

Jupiter Mining Company Disaster using the DCC-ified Savage Worlds rules from last week. Disaster will strike the paper pushers of the future who do the busy work on a Ganymede water extraction outpost in order to maintain fictions about labor and human endeavour. And there will be robots that have grumpy cat heads.

Scream Bloody Gore DCC-RPG. Based of the death metal record by Death (Florida). My first and second posts on here were on this idea. Dark fantasy, undead, deranged priests. Each song of the ten songs corresponding to a point on this point crawl, and also serve as the clock/timeline of events. Was gonna run it with second level characters so there's some mercurial magic hyjinks, but maybe I'll do zero level with a suspicious number of dark grimoires available to the bakers and swineherds.