U-Con Day 2: Fumbles The Dwarf, Brother Fahthur, And My Old-School Dice Bag

 

And Day 2 of U-Con draws to a close at 1 a.m. Today's entry is gonna be a bit sparse content-wise, as I spent most of my time in the vendor's hall manning the Goblinoid Games / Pacesetter booth. But I still met several interesting folks, and have a report to share about my time at today's U-Con. And although I didn't get to run a game, I got to play a game. So here is today's report live from the convention (or at least, it was written "live" throughout the day...):

• Got to the booth this morning, and made the acquaintance of my new booth-next-door neighbors. Matt and Noah of Float a Goat Games are selling their card game "Something Different" that was successfully Kickstarted earlier this year. Matt and I got into a lengthy discussion of the awesomeness of the Ghostbusters RPG. I was more than happy to point him to the Nerdy Show's Ghostbusters RPG Franchise Kit as well as my own two Ghostbusters RPG adventures. Nice to meet you, guys!
• There have been a surprising amount of requests and inquiries for supplemental material for Starships & Spacemen. Sold a few copies of the rules, in fact. Looks like the space opera genre is popular and in need of support!
• Just had a flashback to my days as a convenience store clerk, as I played the "How Much Is This Game" a lot back then. A pre-teen walked up to the booth and picked up a game. "How much is this?" "That's $15.00." He sets it down and picks up the next item. "How much is this?" "$20.00." Down it goes and the next item is picked up and the price is requested. He ran the table, asking for prices on everything, then moved to the next booth and started the process again. After 45 minutes, he had the prices of everything in the vendor's hall before he walked out without buying anything.
• Just spent some time talking with fellow blogger Larry Hamilton of Follow Me and Die. We discussed our respective "entry points" into role-playing as well as attending cons throughout the country. (We also commiserated on the "overwhelming big-ness" of Gencon.) Good to meet you Larry!
• Brought some stuff for the auction. I then stopped by and saw what other folks brought for the auction. Huge lots of crazy rare and oddball stuff. I decided not to bother as my paltry offerings paled compared with some of the awesome games and such up for grabs later today.
• Stopped by Roy Snyder's booth to take advantage of his Buy 3, Get 1 Free sale. I was surprised, stunned, and very pleased to find the core TORG rulebook set for $10! Grabbed a few supplements for it while I was at it too. I've always loved the game and have been looking for an excuse to wade back into The Possibility Wars again!
• When I stopped back later, Roy presented me with a brand new dice bag. And this dice bag is now the most legit "old school" item I've ever owned. We laughed about the fact that this item was not designed or marketed to role-players, but it was sought after and coveted by role-players back in the day. See the pictures below for a photo of the old school item in question.
• If you were interested in picking up Deviant Database, Deviant Database 2.0, or One Year In The Savage AfterWorld, I'm sold out. Sorry.
• The auction is underway, and the vendor's hall has emptied out while it's going on. Amusingly enough, all of the vendors used the mutual "downtime" to shop at each other's booths.
• During the booth downtime, the other vendors and I discussed The Hidden Alignments of D&D (Lawful Stupid, Chaotic Dick, etc.) as well as misused 1st-level magic-user spells. We agreed that there should be a podcast looking at various spell effects from a real-world scientific perspective. Proposed title: "Wizards Breaking Physics".
• Ran off to my game room at 8 p.m. to run Cryptworld, only to find that no one had signed up. I was disappointed, until I saw Roy Snyder about to run his game of DCC's "The Tower Out of Time," and he let me join the team. Adam, Peter and I were tasked to find out everything we could about this odd tower that suddenly appeared in the middle of our forest claim. I played a cleric (Brother Fahthur) and a dwarf (Nameless Anon, later renamed to "Capt. Fumbles"). During the course of the game, I healed a hireling named "Skeeter" who eventually became "My Pet Skeeter"; my dwarf shot into combat and hit our thief, then fumbled his axe, then suffered a mental attack paralyzing him for a few rounds (which is when he became "Fumbles"); my cleric rolled a critical hit -- and max damage -- WITH a paralysis spell active on the weapon (poor ape-man had his legs shattered, but he couldn't scream because, you know, paralysis...). Our game ended when our warrior, enlarged to 25% of his normal size as well as blessed by the cleric, grabbed the Bad Guy and hurled him into a blazing beam of red fire AKA "Doing what Vader did to the Emperor." All but two of us managed to escape just before the tower teleported 29,000 years into the future. Great fun! (In spite of Fumbles' constant disappointment with the dice.)

And now, onto the pictures of today's events...

 The Goblinoid / Pacesetter booth is restocked and set up for Day Two.

The auction piles were getting bigger and bigger as folks turned in their valuables up for bids.

And the auction is well underway. However, during the auction, attendance ainthe vendor's hall dropped off to zero.

The Possibility Wars are about to relaunch! Core Earth is once again under siege!

Now THIS is an "old school" dice bag. Thanks Roy!

Our intrepid team of adventures just before things went downhill fast in The Tower Out of Time.