CON REPORT: ReaperCon 2024 Day 3 & 4

 

The last days of the convention were a little bit of a blur as the later nights and DMing started running me low on energy (Day 1 & Day 2)

MINIATURE PAINTING

In lieu of gaming, I did another painting class on the very basics of miniature painting: priming, base coat, wash, and dry brushing. It was a good class run by a gentleman, Vutpakdi, I took last year that covered the basic tools you need to start painting minis. He's really good at breaking down things to the basics and he hands out an information packet at the end. I love a good packet!

Miranda Elkins' NIGHTWICK ABBEY Session #3

This session was run on Saturday night during the miniature awards ceremony and was notable because the DM* who ran the classic Moathouse adventure on Day 1 was excited to join a BX game- especially for the froglings.

For this adventure, we had Percy the Cleric, Cledus the Fighter, Bruce the Fighter, Craig the Dwarf, Chris Angel the Magician, and Croaky the Frogling. I must confess writing these sessions 10+ days later makes them a little hazy:

• This time the party is quick to get the jump on the berserkers and release the "man-sheep thing", but as an argument ensued if they should kill the former victim and "Bleeder" slipped away
• The party searches the bodies of the berserker they kill to find find a clear vial with a small fish swimming in it- Croaky knows that this fish is usually a large river bass the size of a frog's chest and its bizarre to find it so small (It was a vial diminution)
• PCs discover the secret room both the "Dragon Room" and "The Book": Experimenting with the book leads to Cledus bleeding himself to feed the book in return for knowledge (I had the player write down "sin" in an equipment slot); the cleric Percy vehemently objects to feeding this blasphemous object and burns the book with a torch (I had this player draw a star on their sheet as a boon); Cledus is also able to open another secret door but in the process ends up transforming his hand into a dragon claw (Another "sin" in the equipment slot, but they player loved it).
• After a fight with the Blind Dead in which Cleric Percy performed a big turning, the PCs eventually make it to the kitchen splitting into two groups: one to save the vicar and one to fight the Butcher
• The fight was pretty brutal, but the shocking move was Croaky leaped to apply the gonne directly to the Butcher's face--- I made a save throw for the Butcher-- Nat 20! The gonne misfires and Croaky is gone the next!
• Amazingly the vicar was saved but with great cost so Total: Forces of Law 2 vs Nightwick 1

Miranda Elkins' NIGHTWICK ABBEY Session #4

The last game that I ran for ReaperCon at 10:00 AM on Saturday. I was anticipating that this would be a slog given that I was getting pretty exhausted by the end of the con. But I grabbed a tall iced coffee and headed to my table because I was determined to not let this last group down!

The final PC group was Dorf the Dwarf, Bellmullet the Fighter, Azure the Fighter, Mudd the Frogling, Teaks the Changling, Grim the Fighter. This was the first group to go a slightly different route.

• The party doesn't discover the secret doors this time and instead makes quick investigation of the cries coming from the west door-- they quietly open the door and get the drop on figures covered in bloody leather; Grim is quick to kill the poor sheep-thing just to put it out of misery
• PCs turn south into a chamber with two baptismal fonts- Grim tries the west one- only to vomit up blood which attracts a swarm of sickly crow-headed rat-things that-- the terrible things start pecking at their eyes!
• Mudd grabs one and attempts to drown it in the font only to watch in horror as it grows almost to the size of a rotwhiller! (DM NOTE: Ha! That was a fun moment)
• Eventually, the party heads south and barely prevents Dorf from being pulled into the clutches of Blind Dead.
• They find themselves in the long hallway leading to the kitchen where they organize themselves into two groups- initially, they do well, but then the fight takes a terrible turn and half the party ends up dead- but the vicar is once again freed from the Abbey! But given how many died in the process I'll give 0.5 to the Abbey:
  
  Final Score Forces of Law 3 vs Nightwick 1.5

And that was my ReaperCon 2024! Its really nice to help participate at local cons. I think one day the others will simply be too big to have fun at-- GenCon already seems this way-- and what I'd love to is continue to encourage play. And hopefully, inspire new DMs to step up.

CON REPORT: ReaperCon 2024 Day 2

 

ReaperCon mascot Sophie

DUNGEON DWELLERS Session #3

Back at it again with the ReaperCon homebrew system. This time I play the elf fighter and played around with the cleave and "overkill" actions where you could continue to move to attack another target provided you killed your previous target. We where back on the hunt for a cousin of our wizard who was suffering from a curse.

• We defended a bar from what turned out to be clay rats. Since the owner left out of fear, we decided that we owned this terrible bar. The NPC minutes used were also all painted in black with white highlights so our table kept joking that it was a Goth bar.
• Then we traveled to the farmstead where the cousin was located and defended it from clay spiders which let us learn about the location of a clay pit to the north
• The climatic fight at the claypit, where we observe crystals falling into the water and clay creatures arising. Looking up, there were crystals of all sizes in the ceiling. 
• In what was a nice old-school play, I asked the wizard to web the largest crystal in the ceiling to prevent it from falling in the water.

Miranda Elkins' NIGHTWICK ABBEY Session #2

A fresh band of brave (and conscripted) adventurers looking to save a poor lost vicar (and clear their own previous misdeeds) descended into the mouth of hell once again! The party composition: Kevinson the Grave Robber (a Nightwick "half-class"), Ironfist the Dwarf, Astrid the Fighter, "Stringy" Jack the Changling plus Sven & Percival.

• This time players quickly found the secret door in the West Tower because they were brave about touching things
• Once through the secret door, the player find a mysterious book that speaks to them asking for blood in return for answering a question-- that draws a very negative reaction, so they cut the book off its neck-like stand
• Heading south they find a potential secret door that just requires someone to stick their fingers into an image of bowl of communion wafers held by a devilman-- "Stringy" Jack decides to use the fried frogling fingers found earlier to punch the holes-- and opened a secret door to a room full of the dead!
• After holding off the corpse congregation, the players made it to the kitchen to find the tied up vicar; after a few rounds the battle did not go well for the PCs-- Kevinson and Percival took off after Sven was killed, a couple of more PCs dropped but landed heavy hits at the Butcher
• In the end, the PCs agreed to the Butcher's bargain to leave the vicar and keep their lives!
  
  Total: Forces of Law 1 vs Nightwick 1

Quick DM notes on running convention games:

• In addition to pre-gens, rolling 3-4 random encounters prior the to the game and giving them objectives really helps streamline and speed up the experience
• Also not the OSR way, but I might consider an alternative to the Death & Dismemberment table because again, you only have 3 hours to be 2 hours in and have a character die and have to mentally reset might not be what players want (in my home game, I am very much "If he dies, he dies)

PAINTING CLASS: Fun And Simple Weathering

Weathering is a great way to add character to scenery so I thought this would be a good class to take especially since I have a few pieces of dungeon terrain I'd like to give some weathering too. The class was really quite good and my big take away was (1) when applying rust, thing about how water pools on an object; (2) using a sponge to help streak slime; (3) how to apply small highlights for both.

This door is stuck...

PAINTING FUN: Sophie Says

Good times! Try and paint a miniature with a "cutie mark" while wearing oven mitts, using a paintbrush attached to a plastic axe, and while wearing 3D glasses. Or whatever else Sophie Says.