New Diversion: Lone Wolf Action Chart

I was a huge fan of the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks when I was a kid. I don't own them all in multiple versions or whatever, but I do own US Books 1-20, the Gray Star set, the Magnamund Companion, both pairs of Combat Heroes, and some other related books.

When Mongoose announced they were rereleasing the entire series I decided to splurge and pre-purchase them all via their Collector's Edition Mega-Deal. I've gotten two of them so far and I've been very happy. (The expanded Flight From The Dark is a little hard to hold open at paperback size, but that's a pretty minor quibble.)

Given what I've paid for them, the last thing I'd want to do is write in the book. Even when I was young I used notebook paper for my character sheet, keeping the same sheet from the destruction of the Kai Monastery to becoming Supreme Master. So I've started working on a Lone Wolf character sheet...err...Action Chart and Combat Reference. You can grab it from http://www.esglabs.com/othergames/.

I'm pretty happy with it, at least for a first version. The one major thing it doesn't have is space for notes on your items. I know I used to write that on the back of the sheet; what I don't remember is if I moved the Special Item list to the back or if I just made notes on specific items when I needed them. I think I did wind up putting some or all of the item lists on the back and then used the extra space for combat effects in the CS/END areas, but I don't know for sure. Bah.

It also doesn't have built-in Lore-Circle notes, which can be handled by a quick note somewhere but might as well go into the sheet if I go to two pages. I didn't bother Acrobat Forming this one, both because it's a work in progress and because I didn't think people would be printing it every time their Disciplines changed. (That's the main thing that remains constant throughout a Lone Wolf run.)

Anyway, I hope people like it. Feel free to post comments here or email them to me.

For Sommerlund and the Kai!

Cosmic Encounter re-release in 2008

I know I'm late to the party, but one of our local game publishers, Fantasy Flight Games, will be putting out a new Cosmic Encounter set in 2008. It's great to hear that a true classic is going to be available again. Now let's just hope it's better than the Avalon Hill set! (Even with FFG's long line of overly-gaudy parts, I don't think it could be worse.)

Here's hoping they can sneak a playtest copy out to Con of the North... :)

Gen Con Indy 2007 Final Thoughts

Pros

• Paranoia Trek rocked as always. If there's only one named-group-that-isn't* whose events you consider playing, make that group Evil Fleet Productions.


• In general, the games I got to play were a lot of fun. It was nice being primarily a player this year.


• Sunday gaming rocks once again! Screw Badge Points, I have happy gamers!**


• The Collectibles auction was fun. If you're not doing anything else on Friday night, come by and see the rarest and/or most interesting items that are appearing in the Auction.***


• The Omni hasn't let us down yet, and after being one of The 200 we were glad to be there.


• We brought our food in boxes this time, which worked out very well when packing up all of the stuff we bought in the Dealer's Room.

Cons

• The misprinted tickets and last minute event rearrangements combined with the spread out events was a killer. Some examples:
  
  • None of us ever found where the OotS games that were supposed to still be happening were.
  
  
  • One of us was sent between multiple booths and rooms all over the convention center trying to find the Killer Bunnies tournament and then trying to get his money back, most of the time getting no actual help from the volunteers or temps. Note that many of these people had working laptops and he's holding an actual event ticket for said tournament.
  
  
  • Later on another buddy had to wander between a couple rooms before someone suggested yet another room which happened to be the right one. Again, people with laptops and actual event ticket.
  
  
  • We found the Errata board to be less than helpful close to an event time since it takes quite a long time to cycle to your event number and it still uses dates instead of Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Could this be supplemented with kiosks where we can look up our events?
  
  I know not all of the changes are under Gen Con LLC's control, but the customer service issues afterwards are, and not getting any help is what was truly frustrating. It was enough that on the ride home we (almost?) wished they would go back to having the registration system crash on us and onsite working OK for those who preregistered instead, like previous years.


• It'd be a good idea to post a volunteer or kiosk in the Union Station Conference Center as well as in the hotel. If the guy from Goodman Games wasn't there I would have had no clue where to go for help other than back to the ICC.


• That Star Trek game sure sounded fun. :(


• With the coming of the new GM tracking/reward system, will this year's GMs be penalized for doing the best we could to run our events where we were told they were supposed to be? If our players were split between locations, if we were placed by the local HQ in one place then our players were sent to another, if we had to pick up and move our events partway through a slot due to event rearrangement, will we take the fall when tickets were turned in "No GM"?


• Is there an official way for an independent GM to coordinate with those who run the loosely-assigned areas (Board Games, Card Games, Miniatures) so that I can be sure that all of my events in a continuous block of time use the same tables? Sunday's just not busy enough to where I should have to pack up and move twice to run three two-hour events in the half-empty board game room, but that's apparently how they had me scheduled.


• How much did the open gaming area on the third floor of the Hyatt get used for open gaming, and how much did the area GMs take it over for their ticketed events and/or the HQ "schedule" events on it throughout the weekend? I guess here it's the thought that counts.


• I don't think I'll eat a ham sandwich for at least a week. I need a wider variety of lunch/dinner food.

Last But Not Least

Despite the scattered, rearranged events, I had a lot of fun at this year's Gen Con Indy. I played in some fun events, ran some fun events, I learned a lot about my playing and GMing limits, and I think next year I'll have the right balance of GMing vs. playing vs. money spending/other time.

But for now, I'm glad I'm home and that I'm not going to think about conventions for a while. Wait...Con of the North event submissions are due in a couple weeks.

A gamer's work is never done. Sigh.

-=-=-=-=-

* In terms of how you're classified by Gen Con LLC, there's a big difference between being an "official" Gaming Group and an independent GM who just put a name into the Organization box when purchasing a badge. You can tell Group GMs because they have a badge with Gamemaster printed onto it seperate from their name, bar code, etc. ESGLabs.com is not a Gaming Group; it's just me and my friends.

** Re: Seto Kaiba in Episode 1 of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. Also a reference to this year's changes in how you earn back your badge money as an independent GM.

*** Did anyone buy the car?

Gen Con Indy 2007 Sunday

For the last few years, I've been running a bunch of events: Paranoia, Car Wars tournament, and some board games. Unfortunately, the Car Wars tournament was never very well attended. I planned on replacing the tournament with a single, smaller event and running more board games to compensate, thus still getting enough player-hours to earn back my badge money.

This year, Gen Con LLC changed the rules for how GMs earn their badge and hotel rewards. Rather than using straight player-hours (# of players in an event times the number of hours that event runs), they went to a points system where some events are worth more than others. With the changes, there was no way for me to earn back a badge using the plan I had, so I decided to just scale back and play more games this year. The only thing I kept was my all "board game" Sunday.

Following in the long-time Con of the North tradition, my Sunday started off at 8 AM with Wake Up With Cosmic Encounter. Sadly I didn't finish my custom set, but I had three sets available and another person brought his Eon set. We wound up with 13 players, and it looked like everyone had a good time. I always have mixed feelings about running CE in this way: I have access to multiple sets so I want to open it up to let lots of people play, but then I'm not able to put my full attention as a GM to the various tables. This year I didn't have a second GM (I try to arrange it so that my roommate can help out) and I spent most of my time at one board teaching people who hadn't played before. Hopefully my other players didn't feel put out; the last thing that I want is to be compared to the worst of the Game Base 7 events/GMs.

My 10 AM Dungeonquest players were sent to another table; either I misunderstood where the people at BGHQ wanted me to go or they forgot where they told me to go so I didn't have to move between events. Eventually we met up and a full four players entered the castle. Sir Rohan once again died by falling into the Bottomless Pit, the castle claimed 75% of the people who entered it, and no treasure was taken from the Dragon. Even so, it was a lot of fun.

The same wrong-tables thing happened at Noon: I had two people who found me to play some M.U.L.E., then a group of six (!) came over from where they'd been sent by the HQ to where I'd made a M.U.L.E. sign. This left me in a difficult position, as I had 8 people (2 real tickets) for 4 slots. To the others who came to play, my apologies. (Drop me an email or post here so we can play some next year!)

Once the elimination happened, we got everything hooked up and started to play. In order to allow for 4 players on my emulated Commodore 64, I built "The Hydra". It's an interface between 4 Atari/Commodore joysticks and my computer that I built from an I-PAC VE, some wires, and some 9-pin male sockets. The Hydra worked well, the emulation ran mostly smoothly with only a couple of input hiccups, and they managed to make a colony that survived...barely. (Tents for everyone!)

From there we headed out and now I'm in the Sleep Inn in Rockford, IL, resting up for the final leg of our trip home.

I'm starting to throw around ideas for next year, ideas centering on classic multiplayer games and the same kind of board games I usually run. If I did run a block of classic video games I'd want to work something out with the GenCon folks so I'm in a fixed location and have power. At the very least, I want to make a sign and bring it so that people can find me even if I'm in the "wrong" spot.

Gen Con Indy 2007 Saturday

My Saturday started off with Car Wars: Gasoline Alley. The theme is 30s gangsters, and that worked well. The rules are 3x variation of Car Wars using Crimson Skies-style damage rules and modifed weapons for the era. The damage rules lower the effect of rams (they go across the boxes instead of penetrating) and make individual hits more likely to cause internal damage (because they penetrate). I'm not a big fan of this (basically, any two hits that go to the same hit location will disable part of your vehicle) but I think it works for this scenario. The pieces were cut-and-paste/fold together printable buildings on painted foamboard and Hot Wheels-style cars appropriate for the era, so it looked very good visually.

Sadly, the GM didn't show up for my second game, A Star Trek to Canyonside. Too bad too; we had 11 players ready to go and it looked like a fun adventure. At least I had fun talking to my fellow almost-players. :(

Afterwards I returned my unusable tickets (as all I'm doing Sunday is running events), spent more money in the Dealer's Room, and used the evening to pack and test my big experimental event for Sunday.

Only one more day? Aww....

Gen Con Indy 2007 Friday

Today was a good day to die. Except that I didn't, despite one heck of an attempt.

Before 9 AM I staggered over to the Hyatt to join in the Hackmaster Wurld Championship after missing it for the last couple years due to scheduling problems. (I'd schedule the events I was running based on when the Hackmaster tournament was the previous year and then they'd rearrange the tournament so that I couldn't advance. Aww....)

Anyway, eventually I joined up with another group with my quite nice pregen and we headed off to adventure! We reached a monastery early on, then got into a huge fight that ended our day. The other players had home characters that were below the level of the pregens, but even if we were all that level we would have been hosed at that point. Only myself, another pregen guy, and the guy we raised survived. It was still fun since the other players were fun to play with, but I think that the one encounter would have been too much for us even if we'd been better players and chosen the right path through it. Ah, well. That's tournament Hackmaster for you.

I almost didn't go to my Shadowrun event (Round-Up Time), but I decided to stay and check it out. It was OK but not great, thanks to me choosing the weapon-oriented pregen in an event that turned out to have no combat. Again, some goofy moments and the other players kept it from completely sucking.

It also finished an hour early, giving me time to stop by the Dealer's Room again and pick up some art and some Lost Worlds books. Cool stuff.

I will say that the GMs in both events did a good job and I wasn't unhappy with them at all. The adventures could have maybe been improved IMHO, but I'm pretty certain both of them were stock adventures being run by volunteer GMs who may not have had any input into their creation. (I know the HM tournament works this way; I don't know if the SR event was, but it certainly felt that way.)

I spent the evening hanging out with Brian at the Collectibles Auction. More cool stuff. They had a Blade Runner board game (using the movie license) that was designed by a company that went under before the game was released. Only ~100 were made and the one on sale was someone's play copy...and they'd just opened a new copy to be their new play copy. Ooo...

There was all the usual cool stuff you see too, like woodgrain box D&D sets and prototype dice from Crystal Caste. More cool stuff!

Tomorrow: Car Wars, Star Trek, and more Shadowrun. Or maybe packing and testing M.U.L.E.

Gen Con Indy 2007 Thursday

Paranoia Trek: The Evil Fleet guys are awesome. Play games with them. And I'm not just saying that because my portrayal of Wrinkl-Y-HED (Worf) tied for second best roleplaying with the pair playing Touch-Y-FLY. :)

Otherwise I spent some cash in the Dealer's Hall and Auction Store and did some more testing for Sunday's M.U.L.E. game.

I once again feel sad for those stuck in the registration line, as this year they ran it outside and down the block in the heat and humidity. Prereg, folks! It's good for you!

Tomorrow: Hackmaster Wurld Championship attempt #4. Go team prefab!

Off to Gen Con Indy 2007!

Yup, I'm about to head out to GenCon Indy. I've packed up three CE sets (2 Mayfairs and an Avalon Hill), two DungeonQuest sets, my laptop with M.U.L.E. in the Commodore emulator, the main book for the games in which I'll be playing, and a bunch of other stuff.

Unfortunately, I still haven't finished my custom CE set. My summer job with Honeywell and work on the Con of the North website have eaten all of the free time I'd planned to use on these projects. However, I did get the four joystick interface complete. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll work well with the laptop.

See you in Indianapolis!

CWVD 10.8 Finally Dusted Off

With SPARK finally about to resume dueling after an unfortunately shortened 2056 season, I've dusted off the CWVD and begun working on the next version. It features two major changes:

1. I've moved to using Office 2003 for development. Hopefully nothing bad will happen to people on older versions.

2. The revamped Weapons page is finally going to be finished. Here's two previews: More Info, Collapsed. Don't worry too much about the Spaces Available section or the whole vehicle numbers; those things aren't done yet.

The new weapon entries are bigger than I was hoping but the dual dropdowns make finding the weapon you want much easier. I thought about going to triple dropdowns (type, weapon, ammo) but that would be even harder on an already straining Excel and involve a lot of table rewriting. One thing at a time.

While going through the weapon accessories and other allowed choices I had to make some arbitrary choices over what goes where. Compare Spinal Mounting to Tracer Ammo: neither is seen that often, both could be either a Mod or an entry in the Weapons table. Which way is better? I should probably follow the existing paradigm and add xxx+Tracer entries for all of the appropriate weapons, but I think this will be less work. (In a less restricted app, you would choose ammo loads separately from weapons and these sorts of things would be mods for their related weapon/ammo entries.)

I didn't want to fill the Mods section of each weapon entry with a ton of checkboxes, so I kept it down to ones that can be used by the most weapons. Let me know what you think about my choices. (Ooo...waterproofing! Unlikely to be used since you can't make a boat with the CWVD, but it can be applied to almost every weapon... :)

GenCon Indy 2007 Events

I was debating whether or not to actually run any events this year after they changed the system used for GMs to earn their badge back. In the end I decided to scale back, which means no free badge. Sorry to everyone who loved BLUD Bowl, but I'm not going to have the time this summer to get it set up properly.

So, what am I running? Cosmic Encounter, Dungeonquest, and M.U.L.E.! Check them out at ESG Labs.