Under New Management: Castle Ravenloft

But the property taxes are a killer

Before Gencon, the Gothic Greyhawk game saw the players defeat Strahd and continue to explore Castle Ravenloft looking for Strahd's storied treasures.  Now that Strahd is gone, a lot of the remaining undead are becoming free-willed and will harass the valley for some time to come - so the players will likely decide to spend time clearing the castle and pacifying the valley.

Castle Ravenloft:  horse & carriage not included

They've expressed an interest in taking the castle over as their latest real estate venture.  It's what players do - clear dungeons and then claim the property if they think it's worth something.  They used to own a nice secluded tower and a crumbling inn, but those areas were overrun by thousands of zombies and I think they'll have to consider them a loss.  But Barovia has beautiful mountain air, scenic vistas, tough and hardy peasant folk, and an opening for the top job of ruler - I'm thinking one of the guys will be getting a jump on domain ownership.  Since no one is sure of the status of the zombie war in the lowlands, it could even be a while before the Earl of Sterich gets wind about the new Lord of Barovia and has something to say about it - neither Strahd nor Barovia were vassals, but he may want to annex Barovia when it's under new management.

Adventurer Conqueror King (ACKS) has some campaign rules to help adjudicate domain management for your D&D game, so I figured I'd test them with Barovia.  Here's what an ambitious PC could be looking at if they wanted to claim Castle Ravenloft.

Barovia is fairly depopulated after Strahd's reign; the village has only 32 families left in it and another 96 in the surrounding countryside, giving the 6 mile hex for the domain 128 families (640 people).  Based on population density, the ruler of the castle will need to claim both valley hexes (2 - 6 mile hexes - 1 Borderlands, 1 Wilderness).  If I did the math right, it will generate 1,024gp in land revenue, 512 gp in services revenue, 256gp in tax revenue (total of 1,792gp per month in revenue).

Now for the expenses.  It takes a garrison to secure a domain, so the PCs will have to secure the services of 512gp value in mercenaries or men-at-arms.  No free followers appear until 9th level!  512gp would buy around 40 heavy infantry or crossbowman - typical chainmail wearing mooks.

Now - how about that amazing castle?  First off - has anyone seen Castle Ravenloft?  It's got to be one of the most over-the-top Gothic monstrosities around.  Assuming I calculated the costs right, Ravenloft would have cost something like 1,152,500gp to build new - over a million gold pieces.  The curtain walls are 90' when the standard castle might have 30-40' walls; towers are 90' or higher when 40' towers are the norm.  Based on the upkeep calculation, keeping Ravenloft in good repair would cost 5,762gp per month.  Winning Castle Ravenloft is like being bequeathed Graceland or the Neverland Ranch and then realizing you're going to owe more in property taxes than you make in a year.

Still - if you want to be a high flying adventurer and show off your bling, you should have the right crib, too.  Nothing says "We came, we saw, we kicked some legendary ass", like setting up shop right in Castle Strahd and mounting a few vampire teeth on a plaque.  "And over here we have the ashes of the previous owner on the mantel, right next to Lareth the Beautiful's dented helmet, the Hand of Vecna, Eclavdra's tentacle rod, and one of Bigby's  lesser spell books."

In other words, the upkeep means they won't be lacking in motivation to go sack some dragon hordes for extra money to maintain that 'lifestyle of the rich and famous'.  Eventually, you'd hope the population in the valley starts to grow so the revenue base improves, and the castle become supportable.

Some final considerations.  The morale of the populace was demoralized under Strahd (to say the least) so there's plenty of room for improvement under new management.  The players can expect to tithe about 179gp a month to the church to start turning around that morale.  Barovia is a class VI market (the smallest kind) and seems to generate Hides, Glassware, Gems, and Monster Parts (duh) as popular trade goods, based on my random rolls on the trade goods tables.  Spices are a commodity here, and one would do well to bring Spices to market in far off Barovia if you want to turn a profit.

Like I mentioned in "Gothic Greyhawk is getting the ACKS", I don't see why the magic users couldn't get started on their workshops and libraries, the clerics will certainly start rebuilding the faith, and the thief can establish his first hideout.  None of them would attract their free 9th level followers if they started early, but it'd add a new dimension to the game.

Fun stuff - it didn't take long to put together those stats for the domain.  Should be interesting to see what the group does with their shiny new MONEY PIT.  I did take some good natured grief from Mrs Beedo while figuring this out:  "I can't get you to look at the checkbook but you can calculate economics for your fantasy world? ", followed a few minutes later by, "Remind me never to build my own domain when I play D&D with you guys.  The last thing I want to do in a fantasy game is have to worry about paying the rent".

Mythic Monday: Old Gods Never Die...

...They just become demons.

The past few "Mythic Monday" columns have looked at the origins of demons in Dungeons & Dragons and ways to incorporate the theme of demons as 'unclean spirits that perform demonic possessions' into your D&D game.  We've looked at rules for modeling demonic possession and exorcism, and more recently the origins of demons - from whence comes those disembodied spirits?

Recent mythic posts have looked at a few of the historical explanations for demons - fallen angels exiled to Hell, or the disembodied souls of the Nephilim (after the flood).  This week I'm taking a look at a meta-explanation for demons - by answering the question, what happens to old gods?

Pan or Satan?

In real world mythology, the demons of a newer mythology are often derived from the older religions and myths that were displaced; the act of supplanting the old order often involves demonization.  Depictions of Satan in art are often the spitting images of Pan.  Dispater and Orcus were gods of the Roman underworld - associated with wealth and oaths.  Geryon was the cattle monster in the Hercules story, demoted by Dante to Hell.  Dagon was an agricultural deity turned into a fish monster god by HPL.  Perhaps one of the more egregious demotions was Baal, a Semitic god of the sky that competed directly with the pre-Christian version of Yahweh.  Baal got turned into Baalzebub (later Beelzebub - from Lord of the Skies, to Lord of the Flies).

So what would the D&D cosmos be like if the nature of godhood worked in a similar fashion?  The heavens would become a big game of "king of the mountain", and the gods that get to stay on top are the ones with the most followers and believers.  Fall off the mountain, and you keep on falling, and falling, and falling - until you land in the Abyss or the 9 Hells or are exiled in the Prime plane as a disembodied spirit.

Clerics would feel quite a bit of pressure to get the word out for their gods, and evangelism would literally become a life-or-death mission for the cleric.  On the mortal plane, a religion that loses the cultural war falls to obscurity and fades away, but on the spiritual plane, those old gods slide from Law into Chaos and become something no longer divine.  This is a common enough theme in urban fantasy nowadays; it's been explored in a number of works by Neil Gaiman.  The gods and their roles are defined by the believers, and not the other way around.

The practical application in your D&D game would go like this:  you pretty much get to use the various demon princes as they are, but each one started as the echo of an old god, worshipped by a previous culture or a dead race - fallen and demonized by the march of progress and giving way to the new gods.  Existing religions would be militant and expansionist, to ensure the current set of deities don't get supplanted by even newer ones.  These gods would have to take an active hand in the world or encourage a militant following of clerics.  An interesting story line could involve the overthrow of a religion through conquest and the creation of a new demon when the old temples fall and the last believers are slain.

But there's another implication to the thesis "belief defines the gods".  If the premise is that mortal belief defines the nature of the gods, wouldn't it be true that new gods get created by new beliefs?  Could a mortal that declares himself "god-emperor" of a vast realm achieve sufficient fame or notoriety to ascend to immortality after death?

Hope these provide some interesting ways to twist, turn and mangle the cosmology of your game!

Gothic Greyhawk is getting the ACKS

One happy circumstance from Gencon was that a few of my players dropped in on the ACKS playtest and picked up printed copies of the pre-release v.0 rules.  I've been skimming the pre-release PDFs for a few weeks now, but a hard copy just begs to be used at the table, so here we go.

ACKS is an acronym for Adventure Conqueror System, a D&D neo-clone being developed by some old time gamers under the imprint Autarch - check out the site and blog (Autarch), it's good reading.  I've mentioned it here on the Lich House a few times; they had a recent (successful) kickstarter that brought in nearly $12k on a target of $4k.  At this point the final version of the core book is getting the layout and art for publication in the Fall.

I love the old D&D Rules Cyclopedia and Mentzer's edits to D&D (BECMI) because they provided rules for domains, economics, and warfare - the D&D end-game - when AD&D and the earlier versions stayed firmly rooted in dungeon crawl ad nauseum.  Name level characters have always had a kicker - build a stronghold and get free followers - but most versions of D&D haven't done a good job of following through.  A wizard builds a tower or a thief builds a hideout, now what?

When I go back on my blog's "Wayback Machine" (which isn't too far - I've only been at this less than a year) - you can see posts where I talk about applying the Mentzer domain and War Machine rules to Greyhawk - "War Machine for Greyhawk?" - and wonder if anyone has statted up all of Greyhawk using Mentzer's system.  While I haven't done it yet, I did build out armies for various holdings around the Earldom of Sterich using War Machine so I could prosecute the zombie war - when the players accidentally unleashed 13,000 ghouls and zombies on Sterich last year.

All this bring me back to the ACKS book and some of the stated goals of the designers.  ACKS takes a very familiar classic D&D chassis (my own Rorschach test sees alot of Moldvay BX and Rules Cyclopedia in there) and builds out interesting campaign roles for the core classes to make use of their strongholds, temples, towers and hideouts.  It provides coherent economic rules for goods, services, trade, and supply and demand, if that's important to you or your players.  Players can seize domains, settle the wilds, and the DM now has systems to help adjudicate population growth, morale, taxes, tithes, vassals and the growth of urban centers, fixing some of the math problems in Companion so they're consistent with historical norms.

Giving Gothic Greyhawk the ACKS

I'm behind on a play report or two for the home game - what else is new - but recent sessions have seen the group defeating the vampire Strahd and begin clearing the rest of Castle Ravenloft.  They have every intention of claiming it as their own and trying to take control of Barovia.  (Barovia is a sheltered valley in the mountains of southwest Sterich.)

It's a perfect opportunity for me to take the ACKS rules out for a test drive and compare them to the Mentzer approach; in the next day or so I'll put up stats for how Barovia and Sterich would look as domains under the ACKS rules.

More importantly, we're going to start implementing some of the campaign roles, as well.  For instance, the group's cleric, Mordecai, wants to rebuild the town's chapel, build out the clergy, begin strengthening the congregation.  How does that work?  ACKS has some pretty simple mechanics for covering the kind of stuff a cleric would do in his down time to expand the faith and spread the religion.

Future rumors and adventures will often come to the player's attention via "Hijinks" - systems for how thieves and their ilk can be deployed for rumor gathering, spying, committing heists, and digging up treasure maps and leads.  (Hijinks aren't risk free, as there are consequences to failed rolls that can lead to imprisonment and worse for the thief, overall they look like a fun subsystem).

For the magic users, there's not so much in the campaign roles at the lower levels unless they want a head start on making potions and scrolls, in which case they'll certainly want to establish a library and workshop.  Higher level mages get assistants, apprentices, and are expected to develop magic items, build constructs, create undead via necromancy, and build and populate their own dungeons to attract monsters.  All those magical creations need components, after all!

Finally, I see us adopting troupe-style play.  All the primary player characters have a henchman, and if the main characters need to spend time establishing some of these campaign roles, it will give us a chance to get some of the henchmen involved - either holding the fort as seneschals or lesser priests, or going on their own missions.

For instance - the big question facing the group is this:  While they've been hiding out in the mountains, either staying at the Dwarven Citadel of Stonegate, or in the remote valley of Barovia, what has been going in lowland Sterich regarding the zombie apocalypse?  Who won the zombie war?

I won't say (yet) but they'll have to go down out of those mountains eventually!  Muhaha.

That's all for now - I should get a chance to post those stats for Barovia and Sterich in the next day or so.

Review and Play Report: The Obsidian Sands of Syncrates

The exploits of Team Lucky Cabin Boy

While at Gencon, I also got the chance to run XPR's 2011 Gencon tournament adventure, The Obsidian Sands of Syncrates.  I met the author, Joseph Browning, and ran a group through the adventure at the convention.  So this will be a review, but with a play report from the convention near the bottom.  I don't see as the PDF of  Obsidian Sands is at the usual suspects yet - looks like there's only a pre-order at FRP Games.  I'll update it if I hear from Joseph.  Spoilers will follow.

The Review
The physical adventure is short - 16 pages, comprising 15 rooms and a rousing boss fight.  10 pregens are included.  The adventure is clearly a one-shot, optimized to run in a 4-hour convention slot, or perhaps a single night's play as a side trek in a campaign.

Here's the basic story:  while traveling across the ocean, the group is whisked away to the Otherworld, where they find their ship beached in a god-sized arena (or for you 4ers, a "god-forged colossus-sized arena").  There are indeed two gargantuan statues in the arena - a gladiator and a lion - with ingress into the foot of the gladiator leading to a series of spiral stairs and dungeon rooms scattered throughout the gigantic statue.

The successful group will overcome various tricks and puzzles, unlocking all the areas within the gargantuan warrior and discovering that various thrones located in the hands, feet, and head are actually control stations to animate the statue like a gigantic Voltron and wade into mortal combat with the 300' tall stone lion.  Awesome!

I generate module stats so I can get a sense on size, density, and how much gold/XP a group would get by clearing the module; below is the stat block for Obsidian Sands.  50k gp might seem like a lot, but it's highly likely the group escapes with zero treasure and just some fighting XP.

============================================
OBSIDIAN SANDS OF SYNCRATES
For levels 5-7

Treasure 52,575 gp (unlikely to be found)
Levels gained  (.5) (unlikely)
Density: 60% (15 rooms)
============================================

Alright - so how would I rate this one?  It's a solid 3+ on the Beedometer - the Voltron fight breaks creative ground and does something I've never seen in a dungeon before, putting the players in charge of a 300' earth shaking gladiator robot.  Gaming is about stories and memories, and folks will definitely remember that.  The puzzles and traps feel like a funhouse and are a bit contrived, but the context works because they're set up as divine challenges to weed out the unworthy.  It does take a large group to successfully animate the statue, but if you challenge the dungeon with a large group, the encounters aren't particularly deadly - I might go with a slightly lower powered group in a home game (providing they had plenty of henchmen).  The deadliest encounter is optional; woe befalls any group that dares to camp overnight.  However, the boss fight at the end is totally awesome.  Well worth playing it through to throw down in the arena.

Play Report
So - how'd it work out in actual play?  I had a large group of willing victims test subjects that spent Gencon time trying it out.  The play test group consisted of Greg, Mark, Mike, Bowser, Ralph, and a few couples - Ray & Carol, Graham & Mel, all experienced with 1E; I even saw an OSRIC book at the table.  Nine players, at a long table, in the massive 'Sagamore Ballroom' where hundreds of table top games were happening simultaneously; the background noise was a dull roar.  Yikes.

So here's one trick I use at rowdy home games that worked well at the con - use a party "caller" and make the caller someone at the far end of the long table.  The issue is, if the DM spends too much time speaking to someone close at hand, the volume drops, and everyone else at the table tends to lose the conversation and feel cut off.  Conversing with a party caller at the farthest point forces the DM to project his voice, and you find that everyone in between the DM and the caller gets to hear the descriptions and can engage in the back and forth much easier.

The other thing is to just keep things moving; don't let one player take up too much spot light, try not to break up the group, keep all the players engaged.

Our farthest player was "Bowser", so he was nominated captain of the party's beached ship, and quickly got the action going with a sweep of the arena, a cursory scan of another beached vessel, and the decision to plunge into the open archway of the statue.  Continuing a theme of the weekend (employing entertaining NPC henchmen) we ruled that one of the crew survived the transportation to the Otherworld from the real world, and through various suggestions around the table, we learned that he was the cabin boy, nicknamed Lucky, but his real name was Roger.  So Lucky Roger the cabin boy was inducted to carry the light source, and the group was off.

They took the idea of this being a tournament adventure quite seriously, and made an effort to avoid wasting time with needless searching.  Empty rooms were skipped for later.  Alacrity was the order of the day, and the group quickly motored through many of the rooms, solving puzzles efficiently and dispatching foes effectively.

There was one puzzle room (containing a series of pools) that I thought would prove to be a significant time sink; the Mark the mapper figured out an acrostic phrase from the pool substance names, and the sharp duo of Mel and Graham identified a missing symbol in a sequence of puzzle pieces, so the group ended up solving that one quite quickly once they found the missing piece.  They cleverly used an unseen servant to deal with much of the mess.  I expected it would eat up a lot of time when I read the adventure, but like I said, it was a smart group. None of the other puzzles really stood a chance.

With such an emphasis on business, there weren't as many hijinks as some of the other games, though I did get a kick out of the halfling, who quickly surmised that the big thrones would allow the statue to come alive, and who insisted on climbing into each chair and going through a litany of spoken and mental commands trying to get the statue to operate - each time.

When all was said, they had cleared the module when the four hours were up and we were gearing up for the boss fight.  Optimal deployment of party resources was crucial to controlling the statue effectively to take on the gargantuan lion, and that seemed to be fun figuring out the best way to deploy different PCs to control the statue.   The fight with the lion took an extra half hour after the time slot was over, but most of the folks didn't mind staying to see it all the way through.  It was a close fight, but the Voltron-gladiator defeated the lion and the characters were returned home.

Oh - one other thing - Joseph made the rounds to see how the different groups had done as far as exploration and scoring - these guys scored well and were crowned the winners.  This is why your player groups should generate a quick name - I could call them something like, "Good job, Team Beedo", rather than, "Good job, Team 9-Random-Gencon-Gamers-that-love-1E".  Or "Team Bowser".

But Team Lucky Cabin Boy will have to do.

Gencon Play reports: The Spire of Iron and Glass (x2)

Here was an interesting experience at Gencon - I got to run the same adventure for two different groups and compare play styles.  One of the groups was mostly new-schoolers, and the other group was dyed-in-the-wool old-schoolers.  It could have been a social experiment.  Which group would you think "did better" in the module?

Let me reiterate how totally awesome is the Spire of Iron and Glass.  I gave it a good review some months ago, and getting to run it twice during Gencon did nothing to diminish my enthusiasm.  It's a fun exploration in an unusual dungeon environment with plenty of physical elements for experimentation and tinkering, and it rewards out of the box thinking.

This was my first time DMing Swords & Wizardry, too; it's a charming rules set, really stripped down.  Only a single save value, no thief class - just fighters, magic users, and clerics.  The ability scores are flattened to a mere +1 (as opposed to Moldvay's +1, +2, and +3).  Otherwise very similar to Moldvay BX.

The New-Schoolers
We had a small group on Thursday, just 3 players, so I let them run 2 characters each.  The group consisted of Dennis, Brian and Adam.  They were all 3.x or later players, except I think Brian said he had some 2E experience.  The adventure supplies the party with henchman, men-at-arms, mules, a wagon and equipment; they chose not to make much use of it other than to bring a man-at-arms to the entrance to hold a rope from the walkway.  (After the walkway disappeared an hour into the module, the man-at-arms was left clinging precariously to the outside of the egg by the rope; they thus named him 'Cliff').

I don't know how familiar you are with the Spire of Iron and Glass; the adventure involves exploring a sequence of gigantic, egg-shaped crystal domes that have stood unexplored for ages.  The only way into the topmost egg is via an invisible causeway that appears once per year over a 3-day period (I placed it at the summer equinox).  Once the characters cross the causeway, there's a tunnel down into one of the eggs from the top, and then they're on the first dungeon level.

The dungeons themselves have no roofs; instead, a ceiling of coruscating electricity flashes overhead.  There is a lot of machinery and other things for experimentation throughout the levels, including ways to turn off the lightning ceiling, allowing the characters to climb the room walls and access other areas from above.  It's awesome!

For the new-schoolers, it was all about getting as deep into the dungeon, as quick as they could.  I'm talking reckless abandon.  If they found a teleport circle, everyone else typically  followed the first person in.  Levers were for pulling, buttons for pushing, downward tubes that resembled gigantic drain pipes were meant for jumping and sliding down - bottom's up!  They made it to the bottom level fairly quickly and actually fought the boss.  I couldn't believe it.  The dungeon is quite large for a 4-hour convention slot.

They definitely had fun along the way, there was plenty of humor and they had fun with their guys.  Typical moment: when someone tripped a teleport circle near an alien statue, Adam's cleric began beating the statue with a wooden staff: "Curse you evil horse-headed man, why did you take my friend away?"… followed a moment later with, "Thank you, beloved horse god for returning my friend to me…"  Gamers.

The Old-Schoolers
The old school group took a far different approach.  Careful and circumspect, they checked for traps everywhere, listened at doors, approached things warily.  There were a few times I was tempted to say, "It's just a gazebo."  You get the idea.  While the new-schoolers merely scouted the first level and skipped most of the rooms, the old-schoolers methodically mapped every room, exhausting every door and passage before considering a descent.

They brought a lot of fun to the table, too.  They took a henchman and a number of the men-at-arms with them to use as resources, and much of the humor involved the henchmen.  One of the recurring shticks was when Dave bequeathed a mace to his henchman, Derk; every time something needed to be tested, he called Derk back over.  "Hey Derk, let me hold your mace a second, buddy", and Dave's fighter Hurak quickly tossed the mace into whatever needed testing.  The mace was teleported a few times, thrown into the lightning field, plunged into goo, all sorts of stuff.  "Thanks buddy, here you go - you can have it back.  Oh, don't pout - I'm sure that stuff will wipe off."

Results
Treasure was the primary scoring mechanism if you used the module tournament style.  The new-schoolers only ended up with 2060gp after breezing through all four levels.  But they got a huge bonus score by discovering a new way out of the spire.  The old-schoolers, with their careful searching, actually scored 3,130gp from the first level alone.  Unfortunately, the module scoring recommends you lose -8000 points for not finding an alternate way out, and time ran out.

Two members of my home group sat in with the Friday night old-schoolers, and afterwards we talked about the different approaches.  Mike remarked, "All I'm saying is, those 3xers don't play Raggi modules, where you touch the door handle and get killed by a poison bite via save or die."  The numerous instant death dangers of old school play reinforce cautious and methodical play.  Is the converse true, that the more powerful characters and greater degree of balance in 3.x or 4E encourages players to act boldly and recklessly, not expecting any serious harm without adequate warning?  Hard to say with such a limited sample, but it's fun to conjecture.

The main thing is, both groups really seemed to have a good time and enjoy the challenges of the adventure and it was fun meeting a bunch of new players.  If any of you find yourselves north east of Philly, we've got a weekly game that can accommodate a guest appearance.

Plug for a New Author: Realms of Ashenclaw

One of the local guys (Gary) in my town recently self-published his first fantasy novel and had the chance to meet RA Salvatore while we were at Gencon.  You can check his RA Salvatore post over on his blog, Eye on Ashenclaw.  I know there are a fair number of bloggers out there that are also aspiring writers that could drop in, say hello, and share ideas on writing and publishing; Gary's trying to learn the biz.

He's sat in on a few of our old school games; now if we could just get him to drop the 4E stuff and play our weekly classic game all the time...

Beedo's Gencon

No longer a dice apologist - plus a d30!

Got back yesterday, starting to feel normal today; we drove all night Saturday and didn't get too much sleep yesterday.  Got in some good D&D games at Gencon, played a bit of Heroclix, and bought stuff.  The usual.

Just getting to Gencon was an exercise!  We had planned on  leaving around 9pm Wed, driving through the night, and getting to the convention Thursday morning with enough time to get oriented.  Work problems with one of the guys put us on the road later than we wanted (10:30pm) and then a huge accident and hazmat spill on the Pennsylvania turnpike shut the high way down for almost 4 hours.  We were stuck about a mile back from the spill, totally penned in by trucks, and way too far past the previous exit.  It was surreal, walking around the highway at 2am amongst rows and rows of shut down trucks and cars, while the emergency lights and work crews cleaned up the spill just up ahead.

My first Thursday game was set for 1pm, and we rolled into the parking lot of the JW Marriott right at 1:05pm.  I had my badge sent via Fedex in advance, so I didn't need to do will-call; motored up to the room and got my first game rolling 5 minutes later.  That's the way to get thrown right into the middle of things!  That gave Mike and Bo a chance to check in to the hotel, get their badges at will-call, and visit the dealer area; we met up later for dinner.

I was able to run two sessions of the Spire of Iron and Glass, as well as Joseph Browning's Obsidian Sands of Syncrates.  The games were a lot of fun, I took down some notes along the way, and will write actual game reports / mini-reviews this week.

Spoils of Gencon

The OSR booth was really well done and had a prominent corner along one of the central aisles; I hope it did well!  My contribution was getting a copy of Anomalous Subsurface Environment (ASE) and Red Tide.  I've been following Pat's game reports about ASE and love the tone of the dungeon, so I'm really looking forward to reading it.  Red Tide is an intriguing campaign idea, and I know the Sine Nomine guys did interesting things with sandbox structure in Stars Without Number, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in D&D.  Reviews for both should be forthcoming.

Wizkids and Heroclix was a disaster.  There's like a 400 post complaint thread over on the HCRealms main board on everything that was wrong about how the events were being run the first few days; no need to rehash it here.  By Saturday, they finally had a workable system for running events and I was able to play in a couple of them (which I luckily won) snagging the convention exclusive versions of Wonder Woman and Moonstone.  But it killed the day.  I did get some figures and maps in the dealer room, the whole Watchmen clix set, and a set of game science dice.  No longer need I be a 'crappy dice apologist'.

ACKS in hard copy - it's alive!

Mike and Bo got fairly frustrated with Wizkids and split off to check out the ACKS playtest, which turned out to be really good for them.  I had been talking up ACKS and the idea of dropping in on the play test on our ride out to Gencon, so I was glad to see they visited Tavis and the crew - the ACKS guys were super hospitable.  By the time I got over to the Omni, the session broke and folks were gone for dinner.  Bo and Mike came out as ACKS converts.  Mike's a big fan of 3.x and really liked the 3.x style feats that were added to the ACKS mix, whereas Bo likes to know the world has a coherent system behind it, like the economics.  They got signed copies of the version 0 books, and that's pretty much all we talked about on the way home.  I'll be working the economics and campaign play suggestions into Gothic Greyhawk immediately, and running a play test of the character system to see how the feats would work bolted on to BX.

That's my Gencon.  I'll get out some game reports this week, work on some new reviews, and grab Mike's ACKS book for campaign planning once he gets the first read through finished.

Edit:  Added a pic of the Watchmen as Heroclix: