Gen Con Day 2 -- Raucous Laughter, Giant Ants, and "The Plant With No Name"

Just got back from running my two Mutant Future games at Gen Con. As before, I'm just hammering out thoughts and opinions on the day's events as they come to me:

• The table near mine was playing a Champions game where the team were sidekicks and superpets. It was played for laughs. I know this because the raucous laughter from that table filled the room, and I had to SHOUT over them to run my first game. I don't begrudge them from having a great time, but damn folks...bring it down a friggin' notch for the other 5 tables trying to play in the same 10' X 10' conference room.
• Before I get too high on my horse, I played in a Paranoia game at a Con once, complete with airhorns, whistles, and shouts of "YES, FRIEND COMPUTER!" We royally pissed off the Call of Cthulhu game running at the table beside us. Perhaps this is Karma tapping me on the head, saying, "There ya go, jackass. Payback."
• Just ate my first Chick-Fil-A sandwich. I truly do not understand the worship these things get. It was a chicken sandwich. Not bad, but not orgasmic.
• I had two no-shows for the first game and one for the second game. Shame because they went very well, and we had a great time. Your loss, dudes. Hope you enjoyed whatever it was you did instead.
• Note to self: Next year, do NOT schedule your games to run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Those are the hours of the Exhibit Hall. I'm gonna totally miss it Friday and Saturday this year.
• Pictures will be sparse, I'm afraid. The digital camera I brought eats batteries like a ravenous spidergoat. I've already swapped out batteries TWICE and the newest ones are down to half-charge already. I'll get what I can, but if these die out, that's it.
• Tomorrow I'm running a TOON game and a Ghostbusters game. Hoping for big laughs. But not big enough that I piss off other tables (see previous note).
  

As for the first game ("Gimme Shelter"), we had the following occur in 3.5 hours:

• Pigmen ambush
• a giant rock guy hurling a curled-up armadillo into an enemy and missing
• an appearance of Medusaweed (I fretted because I forgot it was this morning's blog post, so I was afraid one of the players had seen the post about it)
• a PC falling prey to the Medusaweed (he hadn't seen the post)
• a fight with a couple of hardy Mants, ending with one of them getting his head crushed in by a thrown two-handed club
• the armadillo trying to convey "friend, peace, no attack" to a giant ant via hand motions (the giant ant was befuddled as to what the mime was all about)
• Finally, an attack by the Mant Queen which ended quickly when the android character fired his optic beams at the ceiling directly above the Queen. He opted to use the d30, and I decreed anything over a 20 resulted in a damage modifier. He rolled a 27, for a x7 damage modifier. A roll of 11 became 77 points of crushing cave-in damage to the Queen, ending the combat and the game in the EPIC WAY ONLY A D30 CAN BRING. Great game.

The second game was just as epic ("Dead in the Water") with the following scenes occurring:

• dead mutants and humans crawling their way out of the sea to attack a fishing village
• a crawdad mutant decapitating one of the Drenched with her giant claw
• a thorn-throwing plant with Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western mannerisms
• a PC uses the shriek mutation, flattening two foes...and two teammates as well
  
• a half-man/half-wasp trying to grapple a Great White Gull in mid-air
• Captain Laird, the sentient seaweed fishing boat captain
• (cowering behind a computer console) "I'm hiding behind science!"
  
• The PCs win initiative against the Big Bad Thing at the endgame. The half-wasp faces up against it, spits acidic saliva at it, opts for the d30, and does 29 points of damage; followed up by The Plant With No Name firing a thorn into its eye and rolling the (sigh) d30 for ANOTHER 30 POINTS OF DAMAGE. (Note: the Big Bad had 60 hit points.) The killing blow came from, appropriately enough, a sling and stone ala David and Goliath. They totally pwned my biggest, meanest critter within one combat round. The d30 - Love it. Hate it. Game with it.
  
• "Norlins Saints." Heh.

Overall, I consider the two Mutant Future games were successful as everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. I think a few of 'em may pick up a copy or two of the rules over at the OSRG booth (#1541) tomorrow.

And here are shots from the two games:
We had a fifth player in this picture to the left who got cut off. Sorry 'bout that Jeff!