Gen Con 2010 in retrospect

All things considered Gen Con 2010 was a great time. It was the first time I took the wife and kids and everyone had a blast. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights) of my time.

Best:
- Playing the Red Box D&D4 with my kids. It was awesome and it felt like "old D&D" to me. I know there is a lot of FUDing about this (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about the new Essentials line, but I can tell you this it was fast and fun.
- My Ghosts of Albion games went great! Ran Obsession and I loved seeing how the different groups dealt with the same problems.  Kurt Wiegel of Game Geeks fame played in one of my games and it was great time.  Earlier in the same day Andrew Peregrine of Victoriana fame also played in my games. I always try to get in a game of Victoriana at Gen Con, but couldn't this year.  So it was nice to get Andrew in a Ghosts game instead.  By the way, Andrew got a silver for Best Writing  for Victoriana at the Ennies this year!
Wanted to run some more games, but didn't have the time.  Having the boys with me made the social and gaming dynamic very different.
- Playing our regular D&D 3 game in the hotel lobby with my boys.  I wanted them to have the full Con experience.  We only played for about an hour, but they managed to get pretty far.

If you have that Facebook thing on teh internets at home then you can see my photos.

Looking Forward to:
- Ravenloft board game.  Saw it run at the Con and it looks fun as hell.
- D&D4 Red Box.  I know this send hordes of people that like to read my blog scratching their heads in disbelief, but I played and it was fun.
- Ravenloft campaign setting.  That was totally unexpected!

Sorta Bad: I bought nothing the entire con. I decided to pick up the books I want at my local game store instead.  I am buying Advanced Player's Guide, Smallville, and DC Adventures.  I might also pick up Icons, even though I have all of these on PDF already.  So I'll head to Games Plus and buy my stuff.

What was up with the White Wolf booth anyway?  Were they selling anything at all?

Kinda Bad/But also Good: Son and I tried to get into a D&D4 game but the line was longer than his stamina. We wanted to play but went down and had chili dogs and soda instead.  Again, the full Con experience.  I have to admit I was getting tired too and having a chili dog and a soda with my little guy was a fantastic way to spend the time.

Worse: Some guy fell asleep on I-65 back to Chicago and hit us doing 75 miles an hour. We went across 2 lanes of traffic and landed in a ditch on the side of the road.
Kids and wife are fine, no one was hurt. Had a lot of help from some really nice locals. Really killed the post-con high we had going.   We will be back next year of course. But I might be taking back roads home.

Other News

The Ipad seemed to be to tool of choice this year.  I can easily understand why.  Once they have one big enough to hold all my PDFs then I am there.

Ghosts of Albion did not make it to print for Gen Con this year.  But I understand that we are going to be seeing it in game stores in a couple of months.  Frankly a Halloween release would be awesome.  I'll write a new Halloween themed adventure for it to run when it is out.

Not Gen Con related

Amber Benson has some updated information about Drones on her blog.  I support Amber. Mostly because I know her and I have known about Drones for a while. Long enough to support her claims.
http://amberbensonwrotethis.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-are-these-two-things-different.html

I made the OSR News!  And not for any of my OSR support or my insane liking for the new Tomb of Horrors. ;)  They liked my Dark Druid adventure!  Thanks for the nod guys.  It really made my day today when I saw that.

Crazy Omar's

You walk into the shop that is size of a small keep.  All around you are other "adventurers", some holding tickets with numbers on them, others hold what are obviously enchanted items.  All around are gnomes running this way and that.  In the back of store, past the "do not enter" signs and ropes are two of the largest ogres you have ever seen. More gnomes running all over, some with tickets in their hands, others carrying weapons of all sorts.  Further back you see a hut run away on chicken lays chased by several more gnomes.  Abruptly a stouter than usual dwarf approaches you.  He is wearing silk pajamas, fuzzy slippers and on top of a mane of unruly black hair sits a purple fez with a gold tassel.  He looks at you with through a monocle and after a few seconds laughs out loud.   You are not sure, but you think he is laughing at you.
He holds out both hands to grasp yours and shakes so vigorously you feel your teeth will fall out.
"Welcome to Omar's!" he booms "Will ya be buying or selling today?"


Omar's is something of a long standing tradition in my games.  It was something my DM used in his games and he got it from his DM, a cousin that taught him how to play from the LBBs.  So there has been an Omar's in operation since the first days of the game.
Omar (and no one calls him "Crazy" to his face) is the ultimate adventurer shopping center.  Starting characters go to get "Omar's Adventuring Kit" which includes everything a starting character needs (torches, rope, spikes, backpack...) for 50 GP.   The contents vary from time to time (and depending on what system I am using at the time).  The price is somewhat less than buying the items separate, and the characters and Omar know this.  But Omar feels that the best customers are the ones that keep coming back.

Omar offers another service, the buying and selling of magic items.  I don't have too many places like this in my world.  Sure there are places where a magic item can be sold, but Omar's always offers the best deals, depending on the mood of management.

Omar's is also the largest warehouse of magical item in my world.  Yet no one has ever tried to steal from him.  It is rumored that the local thieves guild has a long standing agreement with Omar and they will not steal from him and there are the rumors of other things that Omar keeps in his warehouse.

So last night my boys wanted to play our Dragonslayers adventure, but I realized I had not finished calculating all their magic and treasure from the last adventure.  So a quick trip to Omar's while they role play haggling their magic items for money or other items made for a fun little adventure AND a way for me to figure out what items they had.

Despite the name, Omar is not really crazy, nor is he the original Omar.  The original Omar was more gruff and a hard nose merchant. This Omar, his son, takes more after his mother who happens to be the Xothia of the Rock; a sort of Dwarven witch that everyone fears but listens to anyway.  So his style of dress is uncommon as are his manners.  He does this to put customers off guard.  Plus the reputation of being crazy is often worth more than extra guards and advertising. He hires only gnomes ("Dwarves are too greedy and want to be paid more.  I can pay these guys in the magic items I don't want.") and he always gives deals to pretty women ("I am too kind to the ladies, it will be the ruin of me I know it.") of any race. In back he has an appraiser, a stern and serious elf named Kerin (a former Bard now semi-retired),  If Omar can't identify the item in question (which rarely happens thanks to his Monocle of True Seeing) he will call out Kerin.  The old, stern elf will peer at the itme through his similarly enchanted spectacles.  He will then pronounce the value on the spot.  Omar and Kerin often argue over Kerin's estimates.  Kerin, who never lies, gives the true value for the item, Omar wants him to round it down, like to 20% of market value.  Kerin never budges and Omar fumes.  Kerin is also the store's accountant.  He knows every copper that goes in or out and knows about every magic item in the place.
When not dealing with customers Omar walks around his warehouse singing dwarven opera at the top of his lungs.

Day and night Omar's shop is busy.  Given that many of the item he deals with are likely stolen he pays heavy fines to both the city and the thieves' guild; but they are not as heavy as Omar lets one believe.  He has made all sorts of deals knowing that his is a symbiotic relationship with both factions.  They need his goods, he needs their protection.  The mutual benefit has worked so well that the original Omar has retired and purchased his own island country where he sits on the beach all day.

Omar's also serves another great purpose; a source for rumors.  I plan to have the characters over hear the details regarding their next adventure (which will be B3 Palace of the Silver Princess).  While it is "off quest" I have GMPC in the group to provide some magical support and will claim that this in in her home town (which, in fact it is) and the characters will go to investigate.

So if you use Omar in your games drop me a message to let me know how it went!

Favorite Modules

So thanks to the magic that is Half-Price Books, eBay and my local game store, I have managed to score over the years nearly every classic AD&D Module and many of the 2nd ED ones and a fair number of 3rd and 4th ed ones too.

I am a-wash in adventures.

I want to run my kids through some of the greatest adventures of all time.  They have already been through X1 Ilse of Dread, B4 the Lost City and a few others.  They are going through B2 now with another DM using Pathfinder and will be going through B3 as soon as tomorrow under D&D 3.x.

I am itching to take them through S1 (I have versions now for every edition of D&D), S3 and S4/WG4.  I am dying to get them through Ravenloft and Castle Amber (X2) and Death's Ride (CM2).

They will also hit the GDQ mega-adventure someday, either with me or our other GM.

So what are your favorite adventures and why?
Help me narrow this down to the "must dos".

Thanks!

Would you like an "A" or 100 XP?, Part 2

So my son indeed got home tonight and we sat in the game room. He had his notebook, all my D&D books, including 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions of the Dragonomicon, and he wrote a history for me on why is character wanted a life of adventure.

Here are some excerpts:

Teragon is a Blue Dragonborn Sorcerer.   His dad was famous for killing Tiamat, the Queen of Dragons. Now Teragon wants to be an adventurer just like his dad and so does his brother, Sligon, the Black Dragonborn Paladin. 

When Teragon was 11 his dad died of a disease called "dragonitis". 

Teragon found a magic dagger and a scroll with a spell that made his dragon breath into blue fire. 

Ok, so it won't win any Ennies, but it is still awesome.  I like the part about how his character wants to be like his dad (win!) but not so much about the part where his dad dies of Dragonitis! There was a lot more, thngs about a dragon's cave and how he adventures with his brother.

So for his efforts, Teragon has blue fire dragon breath that does extra damage (thanks to a feat he had to choose at 1st level anyway) and he has a +1 dagger.  Oh and Liam for his efforts was given 500 XP.

Tomorrow night I hope to hear about Sligon and why he decided to be a Paladin.

Return to the Palace of Silver Princess

Like a lot of gamers my age I am familiar with the module B3: Palace of the Silver Princess, and like most of those gamers my experience is with the "Green" cover version.  Well I had heard about the infamous "Orange" cover version of course, but never hoped I would see it.  Well Wizards of the Coast had changed that when they released the banned Orange version a few years back along with the story of why it was banned/deemed inappropriate.   An interesting bit of game history, but really I think nearly everyone feels that the edited Green version is the better module.

Reading the Orange version with knowledge of the Green is an interesting experience and one that almost always leaves the Orange one coming up a bit short.  Not that the Green version, with edits by Basic Game guru Tom Moldvay, is a stellar module, it does have it's moments.

B3 holds a special place for me since it is the first module I ever bought specifically to run and not play in.  There was a lot for a neophyte DM like myself in 1981 to like.  The programmed adventure in the beginning was a nice touch to kid just learning how to also program the computers in Jr. High.  Arik of the Hundred Eyes was an awesome sounding bad guy and one I had hoped would make another appearance one day. And it was easy for me to place this all in Glantri from the Expert Set, it seemed to fit well with other things I had going on at the time.

Reading over the Wizard's site this past weekend got me thinking.  I have wanted to use B3 in my kids' game for a while now.  Thanks to the maps (linked below) from the Vaults of Pandius and the update to D&D 3.0 version of the monsters and encounters I could run this is as-is for them now.  Of course I'll want to bump the encounters up a bit to make them more challenging.   Course the maps are for the Green version and 3.0 update is for the Orange version. 

I think I'll take a suggestion from Wizards and run this as "Return to the Palace of the Silver Princess".  The events of the "green" cover happened many years ago, but something went wrong that lead to the events of "orange" cover.  The Eye of Arik wasn't destroyed properly and soon the entire area became cursed.  Ellis the Strong (The Silver Warrior) became the the cause in the minds of the locals.  While the evil energies pouring out of the fragmented eye caused mutations in all living things in the castle.  Plants became vampire roses and archer bushes, the staff became Ubues (gotta explain them somehow), Aliegha, Catharandamus and the dwarves Boron and Xyzom were adventurers that came here previously and are now coming under the affects of the Eye.  Catharandamus is going insane, thinking he can summon Arik, Aliegh is turning into a wolf (or bear or a bear-wolf crossbred-thingy) and the dwarves are slowly becoming orcs.  I do plan on using Candella and Duchess, as randomish NPCs, but they had just gotten there and have not started to mutate yet. I just liked that picture of the two of them being caught by surprise. 

I doubt I will drop any hints here to the upcoming 4e adventures or even the on going Dragonslayer's plot.  So Arik is not really another name for Tharizdun, and I doubt I'll make the Eye of Arik a part of the summoning ritual they need for Tiamat.  Just a little side adventure to amuse me and them while I build them up to the big finale.  Though the Knights of the White Drakes from the Green version allays interested me.  Maybe once the adventure is over I'll have the Knights send them their thanks and offer them a great gift, a Drake (a riding dragon) for them to use in their battle against Tiamat.  My son would LOVE that.  Of course that only works if the the guy on the dragon that everyone thinks is evil is actually good and the characters help clear his name.  I do like that idea.

Links

- Wizard's page for the Orange version, http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20020121x7 

- Grognardia reflects on B3, http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/11/retrospective-palace-of-silver-princess.html

- As does Emerald Lich, http://www.emeraldlich.com/post.php?post_id=1162

- Acaeum overview, http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/modpages/b3.html

- Cool maps from the Mystara uber-site, Vaults of Pandius, http://pandius.com/maps.html

- d20/3.0 conversion at ENWorld, http://www.enworld.org/cc/downloads/files/palace_of_the_silver_princess.rtf

Would you like an "A" or 100 XP?

So rarely do my roles as father, educator and gamer collide as well as they have this night.

I have been working with my sons all summer long on doing extra reading, math and writing.  Yes this is what it is like when you are a teacher's kid.

I know motivation is low for school work, especially in the summer and especially when it comes to writing.  But tonight I offered my boys a deal.

For every paragraph they write about their characters they will get 100 XP.  If they do a whole page then they get 500 XP.  If they can write a good story and tell me something about their character then we consider it "true" , even if that means he gets a new magic item.

We will see how it will go.