A Quick GenCon Revision

Unable to secure a room under our own means, the storied "lottery" that seems to favor everyone that just probably booked through GenCon organizers the Summer before, the PeryPubber clique's, Steering Committee (the folks with enough money to pay for a nearby, private room), have opted out of attending the convention this year. But that left me with a dilemma, I had about eight people that had opted to help with the LARPS and we still had a free room for them combined with the Steering Committee's events. So while other get-tegethers are being planned, the GenCon schedule has had to be modified into "OPERATION: LARPs-R-Us." The eight people have become six, which actually works out better for the living arrangement. All this said, PeryPubbers are coming on strong, even if all we're doing is Crawlspace.

Thursday 1pm-5pm
Title: "Cthulhu at the Sands"
Description: The Rat Pack doesn't like to meddle, but something about Liberace's next show just isn't right. An event with four GMs, six different sub-plots, and probably some singing-- oh the horror.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 40

Thursday 8pm-Midnight
"Rat-Pack Versus Cthulhu: The Search for Dino"
Description: Things just haven't been the same since Dean Marten got his head bitten off by Dagon. Jerry Lewis has a plan to get him back. Back from where? The moon, where else? An event with four GMs, six different sub-plots, and probably some singing-- oh the horror.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 30 players

Friday 1pm-5pm
Title: "Outbreak"
Description: Something is going to go wrong at the Hengrove Biomedical Complex.
Everyone remembers where they were when the end of the world started. Would you like to be at Ground Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse? Four GMs and plenty of action. There's going to be a little surprise at the end, the players from a zombie killing event come barging in.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 40

Friday 3:30pm-5pm 
Title: "Extraction"
Description: Something has gone wrong at the Hengrove Biomedical Complex.
The end of the world has started. Your military team does not have time to worry about it. Your job is to get into the zombie-infested research facility and get the survivors from a scenario called "Outbreak" out of its laboratories.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 10

Friday 8pm-Midnight 
"Rat-Pack Versus Cthulhu: The Sword of Sammy"
Description: Sammy Davis Junior has found the sword of Samuel. Can he save Frank Sinatra from Lillit? An event with four GMs, six different sub-plots, and probably some singing-- oh the horror.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 30 players

Saturday 10am-2pm
Title: "Outbreak"
Description: Something is going to go wrong at the Hengrove Biomedical Complex.
Everyone remembers where they were when the end of the world started. Would you like to be at Ground Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse? Four GMs and plenty of action. There's going to be a little surprise at the end, the players from a zombie killing event come barging in.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 40

Saturday 12:30pm-2pm
Title: "Extraction"
Description: Something has gone wrong at the Hengrove Biomedical Complex.
The end of the world has started. Your military team does not have time to worry about it. Your job is to get into the zombie-infested research facility and get the survivors from a scenario called "Outbreak" out of its laboratories.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 10 players

Saturday 3pm-7pm
Title: "Outbreak II: Patient Zero"
Description: Now that the Hensgrove Virus has spread as far as Outer Mongolia, this zombie craze needs to be taken seriously. Let's send in the egg-heads to figure out how to cure it. Just a little problem, zombies are still hanging around.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 20 players

Saturday, 5:30pm-7pm
Title: "Extraction II: After Action Review"
Description: The egg-heads going into Ground Zero, the Hensgrove Biomedical Complex, may have gotten in a little over their heads. Your SWAT team is being sent in to save any survivors from the zombie attacks.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 5 players

As for my single scenarios, those will be ran at Origins and a private Hoot.

Launch into Orbit, SPACERS Core is Out

On Sunday, home sick from work, I decided to get "Book 1: Spaced Out" into the electric sphere of publication. My core rules of Spacers has been finished for a while now, but I was fiddling with it. Mainly the ending part wasn't coming to me. It was during my sick day, that I decided that I wouldn't have an ending to this part of the rules. "Spacers Universe" is still being worked on so I be a bit more wordy in that work.

Awake after a fifteen year nap? We've got a little something.

For right now, there needs to be a set of rules that isn't me handing friends rough photocopies. I have BASHCon coming up in February, where the clique and I have ten "Jupiter Moon" events lined up. JerryTel could probably use a couple hints as to his Stay Alive "Sy-Fy" notes--don't email me about "sy-fy", I already asked him to go with "S-F" or "Sci-Fi". Beckett is jazzed and doing up his own dystopian science fiction setting around those moons, he has some thoughts about the SPACERS rules as is.

The reader does not get a well-defined, elaborate setting, these core rules have always been about how does a role-player do space, and its space opera genre, in simple terms. This might not be the norm for most reading this blog when it comes to SFRPGs, but don't let that discourage you. Take a look at the Types and run through the spaceship and other rules. Find a special Star Trek episode that you like and apply the following work into translating that airing into a tabletop session. You will find that this set of rules works out nicely.

SPACERS(TM)

For role-players wanting more than quick rules, "Spacers Universe" is just around the corner. In this work, the reader is going to find a lot to work with "hard sci-fi"-wise as well as space fantastic, err space fantasy.

What I am Running at GenCon this Summer

Well since JerryTel and Peryton are announcing their events, I figure I might as well.

Thursday, 1pm
Title: "Cthulhu at the Sands"
Description: The Rat Pack doesn't like to meddle, but something about Liberace's next show just isn't right. An event with four GMs, six different sub-plots, and probably some singing-- oh the horror.
Event Type: LARP

Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 40

Thursday, 8pm
Title: "Flotsam Bay"
Description: Like the odd collection of residents, some of the strangest things float up on the shores of this small seaside town. One of those things could prove to be the end of the place.
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 6

Friday, 1pm
Title: "Outbreak"
Description: Something is going to go wrong at the Hengrove Biomedical Complex.
Everyone remembers where they were when the end of the world started. Would you like to be at Ground Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse? Four GMs and plenty of action. There's going to be a little surprise at the end, the players from a zombie killing event come barging in.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 40


Friday, 3:30pm
Title: "Extraction"
Description: Something has gone wrong at the Hengrove Biomedical Complex.
The end of the world has started. Your military team does not have time to worry about it. Your job is to get into the zombie-infested research facility and get the survivors from a scenario called "Outbreak" out of its laboratories.
Event Type: LARP
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 10

Friday, 8pm
Title: "The Dig"
Description: The town of Grover's Bend has been abandoned for nearly a century. Come be a part of the archaeological team that wants to find out what happened to the place. Does it have anything to do with the witch trials that took place there in 1790?
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Crawlspace
Maximum Players: 6

Saturday, 9am
Title: "Nixon World"
Description: August 6, 1979. Commander-in-Chief Nixon is negotiating with Mao Zhedong for the unification of the Korean peninsula. Chancellor Agnew has authorized the use of Emergency Powers to quell anti-Caribbean war protests in LA, NYC, and most of Delaware. The Presidential Legal Militia (the Plumbers) are investigating threats on the Chinese ambassador's life by forces sympathetic to Mekon (The South Indochina Republic).
Guess where the dimension-traveling crew of the Albatross lands this morning.
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Wobble
Maximum Players: 6 

Saturday, 2pm
Title: "Vacuum"
Description: The largest alien vessel that you've ever seen lies dead in the water, so to speak, just past the orbit of Neptune. This is the opportunity of a life time. The problem is, your ship was hit by the same electromagnetic pulse as well. You are spinning in the void as well. Whoever recovers first could very well win the second Human-Others War before it even begins.
Part Two of "the Goldfish Incident" scenario from last year.
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Spacers
Maximum Players: 6 

Sunday, 10am
Title: "Robot Jazz"
Description: Between the Teapot Despot and the scavenging mutants, being a robot in the post-apocalyptic world is a hard thing to be. And then there are those Soapy humans that you are programmed to serve. Will you ever get out of Junk City intact?
Event Type: RPG
Game System: Glow
Maximum Players: 6

Elvismas 16 "The Edge of the Maumee"

I was supposed to get out at 4pm dammit.  I should'nt even have been at work, I worked Christmas and Thanksgiving. Okay maybe I am just a whiner. We'll luckily, I was no longer expected in Cincinnati at 10pm, Friday but Toledo "sometime," Saturday. Getting off of shift at 6:30pm last Friday was just fine.

Showing up at the start of festivities by jumping into Peryton's video ICONS game "Deathwing" right on time. I finally got to play my Demon/Creeper rip-off, err  homage Goblin. While playing in the wife's ICONS campaign, I am still working out the basic conventions of the systems, so I am trying more than the usual amount of characters per campaign-- So far I am at four (three and a half really). To toot my own, I think I orchestrated a pretty good story-arc with the Professor Hemm/Goblin portrayal here.

On Saturday, we showed up in the TOL, where we met with JerryTel, The Boy, and lil' Mickey (a new guy from Akron). Not too expensive, but expensive enough, beer, Napoleon brandy, fatty snacks (for drinking), and just about as fatty pizza appeared in abundance as I waddled my way through a Wobble proto-scenario for nine hours. Debauchery doesn't quite describe the decadence going on.

As usual, The Boy put my adventure outline for "The Edge of the Universe" to the test of how to deal with uncooperative role-players, while everyone else, including the new guy, showed there their skill at table-top role-playing. I suspect that JerryTel hates my Wobble games, but as a good friend he still sat through the session. Peryton was doing the most awesome "trans-Atlantic" accent ever. Micky_Akron showed his deeper role-player by showing that a Greaser could become a trans-dimensional traveler by applying motor maintenance to the larger universe around himself.

A little after midnight, it was determined that the Tele-Con palace was not good enough for me and my posse for chillings. We ended up at a hotel just on the other side of the interstate of the Cinema Casino of Toledo. I hate to admit it, but by 2am I was sleeping hard while my phone buzzed with about 14 text msgs. At 4am I answered my niece, born just after Elvismas on my 16th birthday (I was there), and let the others wait.

 In the morning, I slept in as long as I could, but there was snow. Peryton was mildly outraged, but I had to remind her, that "Snow loves me."