AdamCon: Success!
I had almost 20 people show up for fun and games this Saturday and we had a blast.
I ran my Extreme D&D for seven players. They made 1st level characters and I dropped them at the front door of QUASQUETON in the Return to the Keep on the Borderlands adventure from D&D 2nd Edition. I mentally updated the game for 3rd Edition as we played. The "Extreme" bit was simple: characters gained 3x normal experience and thus leveled much quicker and I handed the players the map so they could decide where they wanted to go. If they wanted to "find" a secret door shown on the map, they simply went there and made a Search check. They made it to 3rd level by the end of the game (last year, they made it to 4th). And this year? Total party kill. The tunnel entrance took them into the Lost Temple ("K") section of the Caves of Chaos. They had a blast smashing countless zombies and skeletons and mistreating an evil acolyte. When they found the main temple dedicated to a pair of evil deities (and full of 60 "dormant" undead), I decided there was a chance that they'd blundered in at the wrong time, just as the servants would sound the gongs to summon everyone to worship. One of the players rolls a 1 on a d20, so they're SOL. They could have hidden (most did) but instead a couple of them decided to stay and see who came. When the high priests showed up and failed to recognize the fighter (even though she was dressed in one of the red priestess robes), they sounded the alarms and the entire temple was upon them. 30 skeletons, 30 zombies, two 6th level clerics, a number of lesser clerics, 5 shades, a handful of 4th level fighters, and so on all descended on them. They were trapped. We played out a few rounds of combat but, since the game's slot had ended a half hour ago, I let them know what all was coming and that their chances of survival were about zero. They took it all in with a laugh, though, and seemed to enjoy the "extreme" hack and slash adventure.
During my D&D game, Daniel (dikaiosunh) ran Schism for too large a group, who seemed to have enjoyed it immensely, even if it wasn't what Daniel expected. He's posted about it in his own blog.
After that, Daniel led six of us through character generation for Trollbabe. He had to leave suddenly when his wife got ill (update: serious but not life-threatening; she's okay). We'd gotten through one scene per player and the game was looking really promising. I'd love to play some more.
I took Daniel to the subway and when I got back, played Settlers of Catan. I got to try out my Cities & Knights of Catan stuff finally, and it's awesome. It really adds a lot to the game. I did terribly though. I made a poor choice of city location in the beginning due to a misunderstanding of a rule and that killed my resource production for a while. I don't think I'd have won the game if I'd chosen differently, but I don't think I'd have come in last either.
While we played Catan, a bunch of people went downstairs to play with the Wii that Jon the Elder (jeisen) had brought with him. Steph got quite the workout during her many rounds of boxing and she was still very sore last night. We need to get a Wii if only for the exercise value.
Around 10:30 PM, I ran my playtest of the latest revision of Verge, which is way alpha. I'll write a lot more about that later, but it went really well. There are still a ton of problems getting from the setting generation bits (which rock on toast) to productive play (which was pretty good all on its own). Fred (drivingblind) and I discussed some possible fixes and I have a few things I want to try out. I'm thinking that this is the last rewrite before I distribute a playtest version and inevitably publish it. Yay!
It was a really fun weekend. Thanks to everyone who was a part of it!
I ran my Extreme D&D for seven players. They made 1st level characters and I dropped them at the front door of QUASQUETON in the Return to the Keep on the Borderlands adventure from D&D 2nd Edition. I mentally updated the game for 3rd Edition as we played. The "Extreme" bit was simple: characters gained 3x normal experience and thus leveled much quicker and I handed the players the map so they could decide where they wanted to go. If they wanted to "find" a secret door shown on the map, they simply went there and made a Search check. They made it to 3rd level by the end of the game (last year, they made it to 4th). And this year? Total party kill. The tunnel entrance took them into the Lost Temple ("K") section of the Caves of Chaos. They had a blast smashing countless zombies and skeletons and mistreating an evil acolyte. When they found the main temple dedicated to a pair of evil deities (and full of 60 "dormant" undead), I decided there was a chance that they'd blundered in at the wrong time, just as the servants would sound the gongs to summon everyone to worship. One of the players rolls a 1 on a d20, so they're SOL. They could have hidden (most did) but instead a couple of them decided to stay and see who came. When the high priests showed up and failed to recognize the fighter (even though she was dressed in one of the red priestess robes), they sounded the alarms and the entire temple was upon them. 30 skeletons, 30 zombies, two 6th level clerics, a number of lesser clerics, 5 shades, a handful of 4th level fighters, and so on all descended on them. They were trapped. We played out a few rounds of combat but, since the game's slot had ended a half hour ago, I let them know what all was coming and that their chances of survival were about zero. They took it all in with a laugh, though, and seemed to enjoy the "extreme" hack and slash adventure.
During my D&D game, Daniel (dikaiosunh) ran Schism for too large a group, who seemed to have enjoyed it immensely, even if it wasn't what Daniel expected. He's posted about it in his own blog.
After that, Daniel led six of us through character generation for Trollbabe. He had to leave suddenly when his wife got ill (update: serious but not life-threatening; she's okay). We'd gotten through one scene per player and the game was looking really promising. I'd love to play some more.
I took Daniel to the subway and when I got back, played Settlers of Catan. I got to try out my Cities & Knights of Catan stuff finally, and it's awesome. It really adds a lot to the game. I did terribly though. I made a poor choice of city location in the beginning due to a misunderstanding of a rule and that killed my resource production for a while. I don't think I'd have won the game if I'd chosen differently, but I don't think I'd have come in last either.
While we played Catan, a bunch of people went downstairs to play with the Wii that Jon the Elder (jeisen) had brought with him. Steph got quite the workout during her many rounds of boxing and she was still very sore last night. We need to get a Wii if only for the exercise value.
Around 10:30 PM, I ran my playtest of the latest revision of Verge, which is way alpha. I'll write a lot more about that later, but it went really well. There are still a ton of problems getting from the setting generation bits (which rock on toast) to productive play (which was pretty good all on its own). Fred (drivingblind) and I discussed some possible fixes and I have a few things I want to try out. I'm thinking that this is the last rewrite before I distribute a playtest version and inevitably publish it. Yay!
It was a really fun weekend. Thanks to everyone who was a part of it!