ScanCon 2012!

Scanpocalypse Now!

Once again, buds from 'round the world (including Australia) came to Madison, WI to engage in epic gaming for four days straight.  There was board gaming, wargaming, video gaming, rpgs, tron disc-throwing, delicious food-eating and possibly some spontaneous firebreathing.  What follows are some pictures that were captured of the mercurial event.

Swordquest!

When I was a wee tot I spent many an hour playing games like Combat and ET on the old Atari 2600.  One game that I incessently played but had me completely baffled as to what it was about was Swordquest (Earthworld).  I played it over and over just because the cartridge cover art was so awesome, hoping that my eight year old brain would figure out what the heck I'm supposed to do in that crazy game.  I didn't have the original box or instruction manual, because I think we got the game from some neighbor kid who my brother traded it for Haunted House (which is fine, because Haunted House seriously sucked).  

Swordquest's gameplay was pretty much incomprehensible, where you'd run around and drop crossbows in rooms for no reason, and suddenly you'd have to frogger-style your way up the screen on pink boats.  It made no sense, until now.  Below is a video explaining what the whole SwordQuest epic was about, and now 25 years later I finally understand why that game would spit numbers and hypnotic patterns at me for seemingly no reason. 

Its a true legend and incredible story for video game history.  Behold, the true purpose of... SWORDQUEST!

Thorgrim Steinhammer

In the ancient times there was a warrior dwarf that has such cussitude and awesomeness that he achieved Sainthood. Cory could likely tell you what he did, but he probably crushed goblin kingdoms and smashed giant's knees. (You always gotta go for the knees)

At any rate, there are a few small wooden totems out there that grant a small portion of the Steinhammer fighting spirit to it's carrier.

It's a 5 inch statue carved in the likeness of ole Steinhammer, holding his trusty hammer, of course. Cory described it to me years ago, when we played 3rd edition D&D on FantasyGrounds/Scype. It was a magic item that Cory invented (just for me, I think), which could only be activated by sharing a beer with the statue. You'd have to get two beers, of the best quality you could find, and drink one, and hold one up to the statue's mouth, which he would drink. In the next battle you fought, you would be granted Bull Strength, just like the spell. I think it was +1D4 Strength or something.

I think my Dwarven Character would carry around many extra waterskins full of beer, just in case. Every time we stopped and the other characters cleaned their weapons or tended to their wounds, for my Dwarf, it would be beer time.

It was one of the more memorable and fun magic items I've had during my time gaming. It wasn't even that powerful of an item, but that isn't really what gaming is about, is it. Whenever we'd go to a bar, and get beers, I would get the best one because I was worried that Steinhammer might not work if the beer sucked. Cory never even said anything about that, but I figured that's how it worked.

So this year for Christmas, Cullen gave me my own Thorgrim Steinhammer beer tap handle for my homebrew. He made this bad boy by hand, and put a threaded tap handle mount in the bottom.

It's about 5.8 times better than I imagined it would be. He's wearing scalemail, has a 70's mustache like my old football coach, and his short handled, Dwarven hammer looks heavier than a dumpster full of concrete.

Check out the pipes on this mamma-jamma. Two tickets to the gun show.


And here's one next to my minion for scale.

Tron 2.0

Greetings again Programs!

So we played our second session of TRON this past game night.  At first I thought Tron would just end up being a one-shot game, but so far it looks like it has some staying power beyond just the light-cycle boardgame and some disc combat.  And because of this I had to really stop messing around and create a whole system for running a game in the Tron city of Port1024.

So I figured I'd talk about some of the processes I went through as I've been creating the game.

For the Users!

So after taking a hiatus from game night (after finishing our Warhammer Gathering Storm campaign) for the month of October, I decided at the last minute to make the return to game night extra memorable.  A couple weeks ago I stumbled across some blacklights real cheap at the Halloween store (75% off), which immediately inspired me to run a TRON game.

GenCon 2011 is right around the corner!

So here's a couple of resources to help prep yourself for some gaming madness:

1 - First, MadBrew Labs has put together an interactive map of the dealer hall, so you can check the websites of the folks who want to sell you their stuff, to see what stuff they want to sell you.  (Just zoom out with the mouse wheel and hover over the booths to see what's going to be there).
And don't worry Travis, they're back as booth 1257.  Much closer to the central main-thoroughfare than I would have expected.

Bugman's Best and Saves vs. Death

So usually I do a 2-hour stint of OD&D Tower of Gygax DMing at GenCon, but this year I somehow forgot to check the yahoo group that schedules it and I missed my window, so no running Tower of Gygax at GenCon for me this year.  However, to allieviate my need to declare "SAVE OR DIE!" at least three times a year, I decided to delay continuing our regular Warhammer RP game and put my players through some of the old OD&D Tower of Gygax rooms I still had leftover from yesteryear.

For this one-shot game of OD&D, I included the option to buy an "explorer's kit" for a paltry 15gp from the local tavern owner/ex-adventurer Mung the Befuddler, and it contained a list of things like rope, candles, hammer and pitons, etc. in an apparent attempt to speed up the equipment selection portion character generation (as they would be making multiple characters throughout the session).  Mung also threw in one sealed pint of Bugman's Best Stout into every explorer's kit (yes that's a Warhammer reference and we were playing OD&D, but whatever).