GenCon 2010 Thursday

Today I got to play in two (2!) Paranoia events, and they were both a blast.

I got going a bit late, but still was able to make the walk from the Holiday Inn Express around the ICC to the Hyatt in 20 minutes. That's a pretty good clip for me, your almost stereotypical fat gamer. (I shower! :)

Anyway, the title of the event was Botpocalypse. Bots were going haywire across our sector, and we were assigned to hunt them down. Hilarity ensues, from turning a PLC blast shield into Cold Fun to being caught between the bots busy rewiring other bots to kill everyone and the scrubbot army replicated from one of our R&D devices, intent on cleaning everything in their path mercilessly. We even had a party wipe before getting out of the corridor from our dorm to the elevator. It was a good time, and was inordinately pleased to see that the GM used my character sheets. (Yay, they're helping!)

We also talked a bit about how there's less Paranoia going on nowadays. (Mongoose hasn't been pushing it as much lately, IIRC.) Still, 8 events is better than 0.

Early afternoon was spent spending money in the Dealer's Room and Auction Store. Picked up the new Dungeonquest game, the expansion for Galaxy Trucker, some more Queen's Blade books, the Gambling? I'm In! set that can be used with Red Dragon Inn, this year's dice set from Crystal Caste (blue speckly, much prettier than last year), and a bunch of other miscellaneous cool stuff. Also got my 11th RiddleMaster badge sticker from Cloud Kingdom's booth. (Their books are good if you want some riddles for your RPGs, and Castle of Magic's a fun group game! Poke, poke.)

It took a bit to haul all that back to the room in the ~90 degree heat, and I zoned out a bit after I got back. Still, I was able to eat some stuff and lumber back (again with 20 minutes before game time) to the Hyatt for Paranoia Trek IX: The Shangr-I-LAA Ripoff.

Folks, if you're looking for some fun events, Evil Fleet Productions runs some great ones every year. Their signature event is Can of Whupass ("the only slugfest where good role-playing increases your chances to win", and it sounds like a blast) but the one I play in every year is Paranoia Trek. It's pretty much what you'd think: Romulans replace Communists to produce Rommie Mutant Traitors, Klin-G-ONN guards are everywhere, you play as various characters from across the Star Trek incarnations, and so on.

We were off to experience the greatest vacation spots that the complex had to offer, and what a whirlwind trip it was! We earned a bit of money playing Weakest Link (without questions, just multiple choice answers). Then we cruised on the LUV boat, singing karaoke with our "partners" (Scott-Y and Mcco-Y, who would've guessed?) and trying to escape after we hit the inevitable iceberg. Next was wandering through the woods and some horribly ineffective dice rolling in a combat between us and Robin (60's Batman) and his Merry Men. It all finished up with some southern puppet comedy in NAS/CAR sector followed by the giant car race that ended with the anticipated giant explosion that took us all out. Debriefing followed with typical results.

Two interesting demographic notes about this session: the Brits outnumbered the Minnesotans 4-3, and the ladies outnumbered the guys 4-3.

On Friday: M.U.L.E. and Car Wars!

Gen Con 2008 Sunday

(Another temporary post, sadly, as I'm feeling really sick from some kind of cold thingy.)

Great turnout for 8 AM CE: 15 people! Thanks again to Derek for bringing his EON set and I hope everyone had a good time.

Dungeonquest was a first: all 8 players (the full event) turned in actual event tickets. I promise I'll have the two sets tuned up for next year.

I had two interested people show up to play Return of the Heroes, and I stepped in as a third. We all maxed out our main combat ability cubes and the luck of the Guard draw had me winning the game. I can agree with the assessment of the table: a fun game, but if you have something similar (Talisman, Runebound, Prophecy, etc.) then probably not one you need to pick up. Still, I like its limitations now that I know how it works.

I was tired and sniffling all day from a cold and lack of sleep. Hopefully this will blow over quickly.

More and a wrapup when I get the chance.

Gen Con Indy 2008 Saturday

(This one is going to be a quick summary as I'm running games early tomorrow morning. I'll flesh it out later.)

I spent most of my day in the Dealer's Room. Normally this is an exercise in both fun and henchman ability tests as I watch my money flow from my wallet to the various vendors. This year, though, there wasn't nearly as much stuff that I wanted. No new comics, no Paranoia releases, and so on.

I did pick up some cool art from a number of artists, some books to read from the $5 per book places, and one of the Lost Worlds books I didn't have already.

One cool person I ran into while wandering around was Clinton Boomer from the PHB PSA series on YouTube (among other things). Cool guy, cool series, and nice Presto costume.

I watched part of a Journey to Jupiter game (because I got there late. :( It's pretty much Killer Bunnies with the addition of a map where you fly around and get shot while trying to collect carrots in space. It looks like an additional layer of chaos on an already chaotic game, and I don't think I'll be picking it up.

I won the game of OotS: the Shortening I played tonight; I chose Elan and helped everyone I could. The new rules both sound pretty good and the cards are fun, but there's still some tweaking to do.

OK, have to run games in less than 8 hours. Be back later.

Gen Con 2008 Friday

Today was our big game: Drivin' and Killin' with Jimbo and Ned, pitting the players as the South Park folks vs. the GMs as Jimbo and Ned. The map tiles worked wonderfully, the vehicles all worked out well (especially since Brian, who made the military vehicle, didn't know the specifics of the cars being used against us). We had 6 players who did a bunch of damage to each other as well as Jimbo and Ned. Our TIMMY! wound up taking out the engine of Jimbo and Ned's car and won the event, while our Chef was given the roleplaying award, donated by SJG's MIBs. (Thanks guys!)

Before that, I hit the Dealer's Room and picked up a copy (one of about 5 sold today!) of Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries. Can't wait to try it! Also picked up a copy of Red Dragon Inn 2 and some 3.5 books. My last purchase was The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising. A bunch of the actors and actresses were there signing, which was cool. (As it turns out, the Chainmail Girl loves Nordic Countries!) Last but not least, I stopped by the FFG booth and checked out a playtest demo of Cosmic Encounter. I like their selection of powers, including the changes I got to see (like the common single Macron tokens on the cone are worth 2 points for rewards). It should be a good set.

I was pretty tired and wound up napping through the Roborally game I was going to play, but I woke up in time for "Now We're Troubleshooting with Portals", a Paranoia event. This was one of those silly games that could have been run in any system, but Paranoia makes it easier since you can't argue with the railroading. Dying while playing with the portal physics was fun, though, and we had a good time. At the end we all sang along to the Portal song.

All in all a good day. Tomorrow, more dealer's room and licensed games!

Gen Con 2008 Thursday

Today was my long day of running Commodore games and Cosmic Encounter. Had a bit of a hiccup finding my tables and getting set up; I had missed the location of an outlet that was behind the Train gamers' booth, partially because they had run their power over to the Rogue Judges' area and partially because I didn't search hard enough.

After that, though, everything went swimmingly. For M.U.L.E. I had 6 players and an observer in the early session and 7 players and an observer in the afternoon. Everyone seemed to have a good time, even the player who accidentally lost a M.U.L.E. in round 1 and was pretty much out of the game afterwards. I need to work on my instructions a bit. (I think an intro video would be cool.)

Sadly, nobody came to play Oil Barons. I may have to leave it out next year in favor of something like Archon.

CE Thursday was a reasonable success, but only 9 of my 16 players showed up for it. One of them brought his EON set, which was very cool. I played with three other guys on my half-built Mayfair set.

The only blemish on the day was that I was scheduled to play in this year's edition of Paranoia Trek after running all of these events but fell asleep back in the room after getting some dinner. I missed one of my favorite ongoing Gen Con events! :(

New Rule: No gaming after running eight hours, even if it's just board and computer games.

Big thanks to Odie and Brian for helping me haul stuff to and from the con. I think it's time to look into a sturdier folding dolly, though. And more bungees/straps.

Tomorrow: A glimpse of the Dealer's Room, Car Wars, Robo Rally, and perhaps some actual Paranoia...?

Gen Con Indy 2008, Day 0

We've arrived safe and sound. Got our hotel room, settled in, and went to pick up our stuff. As usual, our total wait time was about 5 minutes for badge, bag, and GM stuff. As irritating as the registration system is, it's much better being frustrated in the spring than the day before the con.

I went to the Forum Stink but didn't hang out much. Wasn't really in the mood this year, which makes sense since I didn't spend much time on the forums this year.

Tomorrow: 8-bit games and Paranoia Trek!

'Twas the Night Before Gen Con Indy 2008

packing...printing...
packing...packing...printing...
packing...packing...washing...packing...

Lots to do before 3 AM! AHH! Too much pressure!

CWVD 10.7.5 Released

It's been over two years since I've released a CWVD. I never thought that the 10.8 Weapons page update would take so long to do. Sure I've had distractions (finally finishing school, volunteering for Con of the North, SPARK taking a year off) but two years?

Ah, well. That's life, I guess.

To help tide everyone over, I've taken all of the bug fixes (thanks to everyone who reported bugs!) and ported them back to 10.7.4. CWVD 10.7.5 can be found at the SPARK Vehicles page; the change notes are below.

One big difference is that I've moved on from Excel 97. Hopefully everything will still work for people on versions of Office before 2003, but I can't guarantee that. It should, however, eliminate the corruption problems I was running into with 97.

Enjoy the new CWVD!

• This and future versions of the CWVD will be developed in Excel 2003. Please let us know if you have a problem opening it in an earlier version. (Minimum: 97 or higher on Win, 98 or higher on Mac)


• Fixed metal accessory costs.


• Fixed ram accessory cost and weight.


• Fixed acceleration for vehicles with Turbo lag and Overdrive.


• Fixed spaces for Solar Panels.


• All Accessories now show their Notes, even if the note is too long to display. (Click the cell to read it all in the formula bar.)


• Added gas tanks to the vehicle summary.


• Fixed B hubs/guards saying they were F in the summary.


• Changed all Misc dropdowns to the flat look (instead of 3D shaded).


• Resized all Misc spinners to be the same.


• Fixed Yet Another Order Problem on the Design Sheet.


• Fixed FT effect text.


• Negative Divisions now show an error and are considered Unlimited.


• The Set Zooms preference buttons now disable redrawing, which should eliminate their flicker and speed things up.