AdamCon -- report
So AdamCon was a success. I am exhausted from lack of sleep, poor eating habits, mild drinking, and constant gaming, but I had a blast.
Friday
bluekitsune (SarahScott) arrived early in the afternoon and kept Steph and I company while we finished up a few chores around the house. Other people started arriving around 5 or 6. Some of us ordered Chinese food.
By 8, I'd set up the plastic conference in the main floor living room and gathered a handful of people to play Dogs in the Vineyard, a game of moral judgment in a Wild West that never was. nevern02 (Brandon), jon_ezra (Jon the Younger), jeisen (Jon the Elder), beezle121 (Woody), and SarahScott played extremely well and provided me and each other with plenty of wonderful and twisted entertainment. Woody played a Dog who didn't like guns and who used knives with the Tree of Life emblazoned on them to deflect bullets. Brandon played a sociopath (it was a trait!) with the Tree of Life tattooed across his entire chest. Jon the Younger was friend to the Mountain People and he had a small Tree of Life etched into his chest via scarification. The funniest scene was when Brandon and Jon both had their Dogs rip their shirts open to display the Tree to one of the Town's upstarts in order to intimidate him. I had the NPC also bare his own rippled chest (full of combat scars), and I declared it Gay Porn.
Saturday
Saturday morning, I woke up around 10:30 and then proceeded down to the basement to wake everyone up. Next year, I won't schedule the first games of the day till, like, 2 PM.
dscleaver (Dave, whose real blog is at davidc_rss) drove down from the middle of fucking nowhere to game with us for the afternoon. He took part in my playtest of the latest Verge revision. Also playtesting: Brandon, Jon the Younger, Jon the Elder, and bobson (Dan, who watched and contributed ideas, but didn't play). The game went very well. Verge is a bizarre thing, but it mostly works. I have a lot of ideas to improve it thanks to these people. I'll write up a real Actual Play report later this week.
After that game, some people played Munchkin. I joined stephdray and a handful of people who were just hanging out on our wonderful patio (now with tiled table and comfy chairs), who were geeking about Firan in the cool evening air. Once the Munchkin game ended, most of us headed out to Bill Bateman's in Reisterstown for yummy food. I have no recollection of Saturday evening after that, except that I fell asleep on the couch in the basement after drinking one hard cider. I think we watched TiVo'ed episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
Sunday
Again I woke up before most everyone else to get people moving. I had two games scheduled for Sunday. A bunch of folks had gone back to their own houses to sleep in their own beds, including dexlira (Jen), who took Tara (LJ?) and John the Elder back with her to Northern Virginia.
I played some games of Magic with Brandon. He had some cards and had played a couple games online but had never built a deck or played with the actual cards. I helped him construct a playable deck from the cards he owned, then played through a couple games with him, using my ancient "discard" deck and then my Stasis deck. Then Dan jumped in and we played a three-player game. He used my white "weenie" deck (with 4 Armies of Allah) and I played my Merfolk deck. I almost lost that game early, but then Dan and I teamed up on Brandon and that gave me time to build up. Eventually, I had two Merfolk lords out and a couple power-ups for all my blue creatures, turning my half-dozen smallish merfolk creatures into 5/5 and 5/6 monstrosities. I won.
While we finished up, I had my D&D players start making characters. 1st level characters, 30 point-buy, Player's Handbook classes only. Brandon played a paladin, which was a nice switch from his sociopathic, rusty-meathook-wielding Dogs in the Vineyard character. Dan played a gnome sorcerer. SarahScott played a half-elf barbarian with a greataxe. csthomas1311 (Chris) played an elf rogue. haranalee (Jeni) played a cleric. I dug out Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, a TSR Silver Anniversary, AD&D 2nd Edition homage to the original Basic D&D "B2" module, Keep on the Borderlands. I had cut my gaming teeth back in 1980 on the original Keep module with my brother Jason (who never posts in his LJ, cianweasel) and my gradeschool friend, Mark. I even used one of the old dice that remains from those days, a terribly worn cyan d20. I adapted the module on-the-fly for D&D 3.5 and only really ran into one translation issue, when I couldn't find stats for a lurker above. (Good thing I didn't use that set of stats, because they're a wee bit tough for a party of low-level characters!) Everyone started at 1st level but I gave out triple experience points and everyone managed to get to level 4 before we ended the game. In the meantime, they met Castellan Devereaux at the Keep, made a deal for bounties and rewards, chased away a harpy in the woods, got frightened by some bones on a hill, killed some zombified kobolds under a bridge, slew goblins and hobgoblins in the Caves of Chaos, dispatched a nasty troll (who literally tore Brandon's paladin in half, slaying him instantly), and parlayed with two ancient, undead wizards. They almost met their end in The Hidden Temple when the rogue became entranced with an illusion of an beautiful eldritch goddess. When the party interfered with her dais and throne, her guardian skeletons and the bewitched rogue started attacking the rest of the party! They used magic to keep their friend at bay while they eliminated the skeletons (who could not be turned). The rogue did wake up at the end and was forced to use his dreaded sneak attack damage against his friends. We ended there. Oh, the creepy "shy tower" on the bone-ridden hill was an extremely powerful 30 Hit Dice monster that would have pounded the entire party into splinters. Good thing you turned back, Chris...
After D&D, I gathered people for The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, the satirical game of academic power struggles among tenure-track professors who are controlled by an ancient, evil, Sumerian cockroach. I had an enormous group for this and I'll probably forget people, but here's who I remember playing: Brandon, Jon the Younger, Jon the Elder, Dan, Woody, Jen, Kate, and Brad. Oh, and me, since the game doesn't require a GM. Roach is one of those games that happily accommodates as many people as you can fit in a room. Character creation takes like 30 seconds if you know what you're doing (choose either Assoc. Prof. or Full Prof.; choose one of a dozen or so Specialities; choose two of ten or so Enthusiasm; make up a name -- done!). I explained that in four hours of play, we probably wouldn't get through all six events, but that's fine. I explained the rules and then took the first scene, my Associate Professor of Mathematics, Dr. Schneider, displaying his self-destruction and wit by making loud, smart-ass remarks in the back of the auditorium during the college's Convocation. The other players seemed to pick up the rules and strategy pretty quickly and everyone seemed to get the sick ethos of the game. By the end of the first Event, people were doing Very Bad Things to PCs and NPCs. By the last Event, full-on forced sodomy was the course. I willingly took the roach in the second Event to displace my frustrating "personal die is reduced to d4 for all scenes in this Event" draw at the beginning of the Event. I drew a roach card in the third and last Event and shed the roach, but I hadn't won enough Reputation to win the game (I wasn't far behind though). For our events, we'd chosen the Convocation, the Follies (Kate was playing a Drama teacher), and the Football Game. Nothing too terrible happened to Regina Sutton, sadly. We ended after midnight.
I was wiped out and a sane person would have gone to bed. Instead, I played Munchkin. How long can a game of Munchkin be, anyway? Well, the answer is "about two hours." It was the Game That Would Not End. By the time SarahScott won, we were all at 9th level and we'd all tried several times to beat a monster and win, but someone always spoiled it with this card or that. Dan and Jon the Younger had customized the blank card with an "Annoying" card that added +10 to a monster if the person fighting it was level 8 or less, but +25 if they were level 9. That card got played several times and foiled at least three different players' attempts to let us go to bed. It was fun, though at least one very tired player nearly broke down in tears of frustration. I got to bed around 2 AM.
Monday
We gently kicked people out around 3 PM. The house was in pretty decent shape thanks to several wonderful folks cleaning up a little bit every day. I had Monday and Tuesday off, but I'm still recovering from the weekend. I look forward to this coming weekend, when I can sleep in late and catch up on my sleep. I had a wonderful AdamCon, which is really my extended birthday party. There are a couple things I'd do differently (like taking better care of Steph) but I consider it a huge success. Thanks to everyone who contributed in small or large part to my birthday party weekend.
Edited: Added description of Dogs game and a mention of a real Actual Play report for Verge.
Friday
bluekitsune (SarahScott) arrived early in the afternoon and kept Steph and I company while we finished up a few chores around the house. Other people started arriving around 5 or 6. Some of us ordered Chinese food.
By 8, I'd set up the plastic conference in the main floor living room and gathered a handful of people to play Dogs in the Vineyard, a game of moral judgment in a Wild West that never was. nevern02 (Brandon), jon_ezra (Jon the Younger), jeisen (Jon the Elder), beezle121 (Woody), and SarahScott played extremely well and provided me and each other with plenty of wonderful and twisted entertainment. Woody played a Dog who didn't like guns and who used knives with the Tree of Life emblazoned on them to deflect bullets. Brandon played a sociopath (it was a trait!) with the Tree of Life tattooed across his entire chest. Jon the Younger was friend to the Mountain People and he had a small Tree of Life etched into his chest via scarification. The funniest scene was when Brandon and Jon both had their Dogs rip their shirts open to display the Tree to one of the Town's upstarts in order to intimidate him. I had the NPC also bare his own rippled chest (full of combat scars), and I declared it Gay Porn.
Saturday
Saturday morning, I woke up around 10:30 and then proceeded down to the basement to wake everyone up. Next year, I won't schedule the first games of the day till, like, 2 PM.
dscleaver (Dave, whose real blog is at davidc_rss) drove down from the middle of fucking nowhere to game with us for the afternoon. He took part in my playtest of the latest Verge revision. Also playtesting: Brandon, Jon the Younger, Jon the Elder, and bobson (Dan, who watched and contributed ideas, but didn't play). The game went very well. Verge is a bizarre thing, but it mostly works. I have a lot of ideas to improve it thanks to these people. I'll write up a real Actual Play report later this week.
After that game, some people played Munchkin. I joined stephdray and a handful of people who were just hanging out on our wonderful patio (now with tiled table and comfy chairs), who were geeking about Firan in the cool evening air. Once the Munchkin game ended, most of us headed out to Bill Bateman's in Reisterstown for yummy food. I have no recollection of Saturday evening after that, except that I fell asleep on the couch in the basement after drinking one hard cider. I think we watched TiVo'ed episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
Sunday
Again I woke up before most everyone else to get people moving. I had two games scheduled for Sunday. A bunch of folks had gone back to their own houses to sleep in their own beds, including dexlira (Jen), who took Tara (LJ?) and John the Elder back with her to Northern Virginia.
I played some games of Magic with Brandon. He had some cards and had played a couple games online but had never built a deck or played with the actual cards. I helped him construct a playable deck from the cards he owned, then played through a couple games with him, using my ancient "discard" deck and then my Stasis deck. Then Dan jumped in and we played a three-player game. He used my white "weenie" deck (with 4 Armies of Allah) and I played my Merfolk deck. I almost lost that game early, but then Dan and I teamed up on Brandon and that gave me time to build up. Eventually, I had two Merfolk lords out and a couple power-ups for all my blue creatures, turning my half-dozen smallish merfolk creatures into 5/5 and 5/6 monstrosities. I won.
While we finished up, I had my D&D players start making characters. 1st level characters, 30 point-buy, Player's Handbook classes only. Brandon played a paladin, which was a nice switch from his sociopathic, rusty-meathook-wielding Dogs in the Vineyard character. Dan played a gnome sorcerer. SarahScott played a half-elf barbarian with a greataxe. csthomas1311 (Chris) played an elf rogue. haranalee (Jeni) played a cleric. I dug out Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, a TSR Silver Anniversary, AD&D 2nd Edition homage to the original Basic D&D "B2" module, Keep on the Borderlands. I had cut my gaming teeth back in 1980 on the original Keep module with my brother Jason (who never posts in his LJ, cianweasel) and my gradeschool friend, Mark. I even used one of the old dice that remains from those days, a terribly worn cyan d20. I adapted the module on-the-fly for D&D 3.5 and only really ran into one translation issue, when I couldn't find stats for a lurker above. (Good thing I didn't use that set of stats, because they're a wee bit tough for a party of low-level characters!) Everyone started at 1st level but I gave out triple experience points and everyone managed to get to level 4 before we ended the game. In the meantime, they met Castellan Devereaux at the Keep, made a deal for bounties and rewards, chased away a harpy in the woods, got frightened by some bones on a hill, killed some zombified kobolds under a bridge, slew goblins and hobgoblins in the Caves of Chaos, dispatched a nasty troll (who literally tore Brandon's paladin in half, slaying him instantly), and parlayed with two ancient, undead wizards. They almost met their end in The Hidden Temple when the rogue became entranced with an illusion of an beautiful eldritch goddess. When the party interfered with her dais and throne, her guardian skeletons and the bewitched rogue started attacking the rest of the party! They used magic to keep their friend at bay while they eliminated the skeletons (who could not be turned). The rogue did wake up at the end and was forced to use his dreaded sneak attack damage against his friends. We ended there. Oh, the creepy "shy tower" on the bone-ridden hill was an extremely powerful 30 Hit Dice monster that would have pounded the entire party into splinters. Good thing you turned back, Chris...
After D&D, I gathered people for The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, the satirical game of academic power struggles among tenure-track professors who are controlled by an ancient, evil, Sumerian cockroach. I had an enormous group for this and I'll probably forget people, but here's who I remember playing: Brandon, Jon the Younger, Jon the Elder, Dan, Woody, Jen, Kate, and Brad. Oh, and me, since the game doesn't require a GM. Roach is one of those games that happily accommodates as many people as you can fit in a room. Character creation takes like 30 seconds if you know what you're doing (choose either Assoc. Prof. or Full Prof.; choose one of a dozen or so Specialities; choose two of ten or so Enthusiasm; make up a name -- done!). I explained that in four hours of play, we probably wouldn't get through all six events, but that's fine. I explained the rules and then took the first scene, my Associate Professor of Mathematics, Dr. Schneider, displaying his self-destruction and wit by making loud, smart-ass remarks in the back of the auditorium during the college's Convocation. The other players seemed to pick up the rules and strategy pretty quickly and everyone seemed to get the sick ethos of the game. By the end of the first Event, people were doing Very Bad Things to PCs and NPCs. By the last Event, full-on forced sodomy was the course. I willingly took the roach in the second Event to displace my frustrating "personal die is reduced to d4 for all scenes in this Event" draw at the beginning of the Event. I drew a roach card in the third and last Event and shed the roach, but I hadn't won enough Reputation to win the game (I wasn't far behind though). For our events, we'd chosen the Convocation, the Follies (Kate was playing a Drama teacher), and the Football Game. Nothing too terrible happened to Regina Sutton, sadly. We ended after midnight.
I was wiped out and a sane person would have gone to bed. Instead, I played Munchkin. How long can a game of Munchkin be, anyway? Well, the answer is "about two hours." It was the Game That Would Not End. By the time SarahScott won, we were all at 9th level and we'd all tried several times to beat a monster and win, but someone always spoiled it with this card or that. Dan and Jon the Younger had customized the blank card with an "Annoying" card that added +10 to a monster if the person fighting it was level 8 or less, but +25 if they were level 9. That card got played several times and foiled at least three different players' attempts to let us go to bed. It was fun, though at least one very tired player nearly broke down in tears of frustration. I got to bed around 2 AM.
Monday
We gently kicked people out around 3 PM. The house was in pretty decent shape thanks to several wonderful folks cleaning up a little bit every day. I had Monday and Tuesday off, but I'm still recovering from the weekend. I look forward to this coming weekend, when I can sleep in late and catch up on my sleep. I had a wonderful AdamCon, which is really my extended birthday party. There are a couple things I'd do differently (like taking better care of Steph) but I consider it a huge success. Thanks to everyone who contributed in small or large part to my birthday party weekend.
Edited: Added description of Dogs game and a mention of a real Actual Play report for Verge.