GAMEHOLE CON 12: A Reflection Of My October Gaming With Shadowdark And More!

This past week I went to the GameHole Con in Madison, Wisconsin. For the 12th iteration of the convention, it was me, along with 8,000 other gamers, plus three of my friends, ranging from con-experienced to con-inexperienced.

GAMES I RAN

This year I took it easy and only ran two 3-hour sessions of Miranda's Nightwick Abbey. However, I decided to not make it easy on myself by running one 9-12 PM and then 8-11 AM to the following morning. Ugh.

Similar to the ReaperCon games I ran this year, I used Nightwick's unique geomorph setup to scramble together a singular level made of elements of Levels 1 & 2. This is a unique facet of Miranda's design I've never really seen in any other dungeon. I've more thoughts on it I'll have to share in another blog post.

Then, using Shadowdark's 0-level rules, I ran a funnel where 5 pairs of villagers had to escape the Abbey after being lured there via wine, song, and a vicar who was a most terrible shepard of his flock.

Because Shadowdark uses luck tokens, I also cobbled together a quick mechanism to track different decisions made in the halls of Hell. So PCs started with 1 virtue token used for re-rolls or forcing me to re-roll. But they could gain vice tokens when bargaining for power or performing acts that were particuarly self-serving.

After seeing at ReaperCon how hard it was to remember which of the grey villagers minis were which, I decided to paint each pair a distinct color, which worked out really nicely and pushed me to get my painting station set up. But I have to admit, from an old-school perspective, black with white dry brushing is a cool effect.

For the specific paints, I used a combination of Reaper's Master Paint 2.0 series, given out this year and Army Painter's John Blanche Vol 2 which I picked up on a whim.

How did the game play out?

The 9:00 PM game was novel out of the gate by the appearance of not one but 3 "VIG" badged persons. Which got me a little sweatty, given they shelled out the big money to play at this con so I didn't want to suck. As a group, only 1 or 2 answered "yes" to the first question of if their characters would murder for a weapon to augment what was left of their equipment. This group tried to stay together for the most part but but slightly undone when they turned north, then back west, which was toward their starting point. Eventually, they found themselves cornered by the Blind Brothers and viciously cut down.

The 8:00 AM group, despite the early morning hour, was no less willing to embrace the darkness. This group all agreed to murder someone at the party for a 1d6 weapon. Then, the group proceeded to go on the offensive against the Abbey and ganged up on the marrow-eating creatures in the room with them as well. This group's aggressiveness served them well and they were certainly willing to cut a deal with the Abbey. This included being betrothed! This group also had a very virtuous action by a member who prayed for divine intervention from the God of Law at a critical moment and rolled a nat 20! He saved his party but slain in the process; however, he ascended to heaven even in the Abbey. The rest of his party was not so much. They ended up going into the light, which is the burning, infinite gullet of the dragon of Hell.

But in the end, despite the long odds, each group seemed to really enjoy their time in these hell-haunted halls of Nightwick Abbey.

GAMES I PLAYED

Pirate Borg: I gotta say our "Harbor Master" did a very nice job introducing us to this Borg-hack. Much like its parent ship, Pirate Borg is very flavourful and does a nice job through various random tables of building great characters. 

My pirate, Philip the Unlucky, and his crew explored a mysterious island, battled a giant crab, and stole a bunch of treasure! All aboard our sloop named "Dogg" led by our youngest member Capt. Waffles, who was surprisingly not murdered by the fay spirit he conjured.

Heroquest: A blast from the past as my original version was sold in a garage sale many moons ago. This game was run by Doug Hopkins who is the current line designer for Heroquest. The adventure we were playing was from the expansion that was designed by Joe Manganiello-- so a cool double twist to this experience. 

At the end of the game, I won a set of specialty dice that I gave away to our youngest player, given he and his friends were big fans of the game. But I didn't walk away totally empty-handed because I got a free quest and a pad of blank sheets featuring the Heroquest board to design your own adventures.

Oh, Doug is also the current lead on one of my other favorite board games, Talisman, so it's really great to get a chance to hang with him at the con.

Shadowrun: In middle school, I made friends with a guy whose favorite setting was Shadowrun so, like Heroquest, this was mainly driven by my nostalgia. I had also forgotten how many d6's are really needed to play this game so it was laughable I showed up with a paltry mix-and-matched set of 5.

The setup with protecting a rising influencer star at a gaming convention like TwitchCon, but in the future. I played a pre-gen Smuggler class, but much to the GM's delight/dismay, kept running Edward Norton like a "Face" class. Turns out our charge was more than meets the eye- surprise! But it was a good time. We convinced a second set of runners to be our B-team, we foiled a drone attack, and had a final showdown.

Along the way me and the Street Samurai player had assembled a new concept album for our young pop-star. So coming soon from Tigre: Witness Protection- You Can't Hide My Shine (title) with tracks "Boom! Drones on Fire" and "My Technological Romance"

PEOPLE I MET

I did drop by a panel on building a YouTube RPG presence because it featured noted D&D folks Ben Milton and Justin Alexander. It was an interesting hour about some of the realities behind the screen. Notable for me was:

• The social media company's algorithm controls a lot of what is actually seen and you have to be really big for them to even bother sending you an email that something has changed
• Content in a series rarely does well beyond the first item in that series because the audience just halves after each subsequent engagement
• All the panel agreed that while some sorta live-play + DMing advice would be good that sorta content would take too long to produce and suffer from the same sequence problem; ideally, such a thing would have to be edited down from 1-3 hours to 10-30 minutes of the "good stuff" maybe making it hard to follow
• A lot of the biggest "stars" in the RPG space had already made a following from something else and brought those eyeballs to their YouTube channel; same folks often have additional editing teams and or experience to help out

Maybe none of the above is really unknown, but it reinforced to me that there is a lot of other things going on behind the scenes for someone to make a breakout in the social media space. And a lot of that is often hidden in "percetion" of how they got there.

Mica & Doug Kovacs, both of DCC fame: While at the bar, my mentioning of Castle Rat to a friend allowed us to strike up a conversation with Mica who runs a lot of DCC events. It was really cool to meet them and hear some Goodman Games stories. Mica prodded (dared, suckered) me into tell Doug Kovacs he need to listen to Castle Rat.

Cut to me doing just that...and Doug was ready with an opinion! It actually prompted a neat conversation about music, art, and the state of RPGs and D&D. It was really interesting and was cool to chat with him. I learned three things that Doug has

1. Several playlists culled from an old G+ thread of metal music which was cool
2. A set of Talisman houserules he likes to play with to speed things up
3. A war game called Dog Storm which a wargame consisting of bands of 5 repurposed minatures and found terrain- occasionally a storm of plastic dogs are thrown on the battlefield- if they touch your mini it dies instantly.

Final Thought: I really enjoyed GameHole Con this year. I think cons are great because for the most part they are a big gorup of folks who really enjoy *playing* the hobby. That connection is really fantastic!

CON REPORT: GameHoleCon 11 Day 3

 

Rounding out my final con report. While not the final, final day, Saturday was the last night for me running and playing games. On Sunday I did some catching up and a little bit of shopping in the dealer hall. 

Speaking of deals, THE BEST DEAL of the convention was the $10 Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG softcover rulebook. Smart move on Goodman Game's part to go so low, especially given the number of games they ran and the drop-in, drop-out 0-level charity tournament they were running.

NIGHTWICK ABBEY #3

In the final outing Federic (rogue), Frederic (fighter), Freddy (rogue), Quentin (changing), YinYang (magician), and Bob (cleric) delved into the Abbey in search of the vicar of Frogguts.

• The PC quickly got the better of some curious berserkers by fanning out and taking advantage of backstabbing, and then it also put the half-human quarter-dog quarter-sheep "thing" out of its misery quickly. 
• They deliberated for a bit which allowed two floating corpses to drift into the room and provide loud, cackling commentary on their predicament (DM NOTES: Kept rolling "indifferent" on their reaction) and suggesting heading south- which the PCs did only to cause Quientin the Changling to become possessed and running into a room full of the blind dead: We slam the door, hold it shut, and spike the door!

  

  Not a Sunday service you want to attend

  
  
• The party then doubled back and proceeded into a ruined laboratory with suspicious mounds of garbage, after a bit of searching, the moved to a room to the north littered with pages covered in bloody scrawl-- as red scratches formed on their skin, they proceeded to fight the XXXX which decimated 2/3 of the party
• The remaining 3 PCs escaped and decided to continue to delve deeper into the maw of this hell-mouth, which most immediately earned their magician a death in a pit trap and subsequent resurrection as a floating corpse which in turn strangled the remaining fighter!
• The cleric grabbed what shiny items he could and ran out of the Abbey, leaving his poor companion to his fate.
• SCORE: Silver Ending 0.5 Safe Vicar Ending 0; technically the cleric carried enough silver item out, but I feel if the Abbey's forces killing another 5/6 is an Abbey "win"; rooms covered: 9

THE JERRY STEFEK MEMORIAL CRAWL FOR THE CURE

What a perfect context for a charity and also a great way to show case old-school-oriented gaming. Basically, you made a $10 donation to receive a token and the minute a seat opened up near one of 3 DM, you sat down, and received an index card-sized 0-level DCC character sheet from what look like a stack of hundreds.

Yup- 3 hp and a stick (1d4-1 dmg). If you died, you rang a gong (FUN!) and were given another character. We aimed to assemble the lion of Mitra in DCC's take on Jennell Jaquays' Dark Tower. But it doesn't just stop there, you can also make further donations to gain boons and pass out banes to other players, the DM, or other parties (see below).

I played for about 2-hours and had a lot of fun! The DM's were fantastic and it was one of the most positive experiences I had at GameHoleCon. I hope this event can be replicated across numerous other cons throughout the country.

CON REPORT: GameHoleCon 11 Day 2

It was a fun second day (here's Day 1). I still don't think I have quite a good handle on how to navigate this con, but I did learn that if you run games, your name goes into a random drawing and you can get an RPG or boardgame prize when they draw your name. Saw some Heroquest stuff and a box of Mothership, that went quick, as well as a lot of other neat stuff. The seminars are something I am missing a lot of, which if I go next year, I'll certainly have to add more of. Apparently, GaryCon is where its at.

The other highlights were shaking hands with Zeb Cook and meeting Chris Perkins who is an incredibly genuine person, I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to chat a little bit more with him.

NIGHTWICK ABBEY #2

The second group to brave the dread halls consisted of fighters Bonzo, Cadoc, Garath, and Arthur-- spiritually lead by Phylys the cleric and visually lead by Gunnar the dwarf (DM NOTE: 60% fighters so weird, but that's the fun of random character distribution).

• This group saved a carved-up "manimal" from the torture/vivisection/butchery of a large group of human skin-wearing maniacs; alas while the PCs staunched the poor souls bleeding (Really you're stoping my bleeding with old skin torn from those things?)  refused to carry the hobbled creature (Really you're gonna save me but not carry me?) so it went howling down the hall (Each step is pain! OoooOOooo! It would be nice to be carried! OoooOooo!) which earned it an axe in the back via Cadoc

  

  The water has a minty taste with maggot notes

  
  
• The PCs were pretty upset they were not finding more silver in the Abbey except for Arthur who became possessed after drinking from a fountain-- he started to become more worried about voices that were not his own; turning south they had to make a quick retreat when they stumbled upon a congregation of eye-less corpses all standing with swords drawn-- cleric welded the light of LAW and turn back those damned souls!
• Wandering around a little more the PCs were ambushed by maybe more manimals and shut into a room littered with pages of blasphemous nonsense and started suffering claw marks and welts on their arms, legs, and backs; they kicked the door violently in (the one not bricked up) and made their way back to the ruined laboratory where their would-be ambushed had left
• PC finally hit gold or rather a gold skull when they investigate another ruined lab, but become very worried when the dwarf Gunnar starts talking to himself after picking up the skull (Look, at least we can sell it)
• After a little more wandering the PC finally made their way to the Great Hall where they find the tied up vicar waiting to be served to four identical quadrupled-horned men; the PCs will have none of that and plan their attack! A pretty epic battle ensues with PC almost getting the upper hand until the monstrous Butcher fell a lead fighter with two chops from a large cleaver and the group is pincered by 5 floating, laughing corpses that got freed from an earlier scuffle.

  

  Begining of the End:
  Shame I didn't get a picture 5 mins after this was taken

  
  
• With 5/6 PC dead, the Butcher offers to spare the cleric and let him walk free from the Abbey-- if he personally blesses this most auspicious and (un)holy meals! The cleric does so-- and with the holy light of law draining out of him walks free from the Abbey haunted by the howls and jears of the laughing cadavers
• SCORE: Silver Ending 0.5 Safe Vicar Ending 0; technically the cleric carried the gold skull out, but I feel if the Abbey's forces kill 5/6 and make a cleric bless such a slaughts-- its an Abbey "win".

This group covered the most ground in a single con session having visited 11 rooms and still having enough in the tank to battle the Butcher. Well done! And with an epic ending! It was also nice to meet another player who had read this blog and was acquainted with Miranda's Nightwick from the session reports over at Mycelium Mischef (which my group has reached 99 sessions!)

INDEX CARD RPG

As someone who does use a lot of index cards, I was curious about this system. So I rolled up Holly Winterleaf (reusing a PC who previously died in OG Nightwick to green slime and an incredibly classic way). 

• PC creation is quick, the game mechanics are very intuitive
• I'm not sure I enjoy the flat target number that escalates as you move through a sorta 3-act structure; This is pretty opposite how I run games so it was the most jarring for me, but I know its a popular style of DMing
• I don't think it a bad rules-lite system, but encourages the DM to improvise a bit more which benefits more experienced DMs-- kinda the opposite of the intended effect I think for new DMs; I'll have to think on this more
• Did like the encouragement to use index cards to lay out a quick map or battlefield (see the picture above)

In total, I am interested in looking into Runehammer's other offerings our of curiosity I do think he does a good job encouraging creativity and DIY ethos. And playing games you normally would not pick up or run is a great use of CON time, especially since they often are run by referees who do love the game!