Saturday, November 2nd
I woke up about 8:20 am, and actually felt like I'd slept. My ankle was somewhat sore and throbbing, but I didn't feel too bad that morning. I removed and changed the bedding set-up, and this helped somewhat as it wasn't as heavy as it had been the night before.
I showered and cleaned up and was writing this while
I felt somewhat stuffed up in the head and was feeling a bit hoarse in the voice. I was hoping that I wasn't coming down with something, and thought I could attribute it to the air in Hamilton and perhaps the dryness of the air in the hotel. I was hoping it's not con crud; it was too early in the weekend for that. I planned to spend part of the day with my left foot up and use the ice pack on my ankle. I needed to be able to walk, of course, and there was still another day of the convention after this before
I finished breakfast and went back to the hotel room to brush my teeth, and take care of a few other things. Then it was time to head out and check out the gaming for the day at HammerCon 2013.
The convention was definitely more lively today, and I had a pretty good time. When

Registration Desk

The Silent Auction
Of course, the gaming is where it's really at during HammerCon (and other gaming conventions) of course. There were plenty of RPGs going on at the time slot, and I watched some games, some for a few minutes and others for longer periods of time. There was a neat game called A Penny for My Thoughts going on that was rather fun to watch, and a couple of other games as well. One of the more notable games was Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok, a lovely game with a great look and all. I also got to watch several board games, including Settlers of Catan and the new version of Pandemic. I decided that I wanted a copy of the game, but the dealer in the Pavilion room was closed down until 1:30 pm.

Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok Game
I took the gaming material and headed over to the Executive Club Lounge to read over "Stranded", the Primeval scenario I was going to be running, and to put an ice pack on my ankle for a while. I managed to sit there for about 20 minutes, and that definitely helped the leg/ankle out somewhat! I then went back to the room, took another zitz bath (remember those, folks who don't know the meaning of the 3-2-1 convention rule?) and changed into a dinosaur t-shirt that I had picked up at the Museum of Nature here in Ottawa, and headed to the Victoria room on the convention level to run "Stranded".
The "Stranded" game had had five folks pre-register for the game before the convention, so I assumed it was full, and had told the convention staff that I could accommodate another player in the game, bringing it up to six. Imagine my surprise on reaching the convention floor to discover that one of the players had double booked himself to game, and had dropped out of the game. (This is something that I really, really hate at game conventions, and don't understand why people do that sort of thing!) However, I managed to get a 10-year-old, Dillon, interested in the game, and his folks agreed to let him play in the Primeval game, so that was kind of neat. So I had five players. Yay! I was familiar with three of the players,
Without going into any real detail about the scenario plot, "Stranded" is an adventure that goes outside the typical Primeval box, in that it concerns a university botanist, her kids, her father, and three students taking a field trip to catalog flora in a wilderness area that goes horribly wrong. There are technically six characters - Francine Belmarsh, Marty Belmarsh, Jason Kline, Ling Jin Han, Henrietta Morgan, and Robert Brown - but there are a couple of surprises along the way that can bring in one or two other characters as well. The players chose to play Francine, Marty, Jason, Henrietta, and Robert. Overall a good choice, I thought, though I didn't honestly know what to expect.
Some of the session highlights included:
So, how did the scenario go? Overall, I was pretty happy with the way that "Stranded" went as a convention adventure. The players completely derailed the scenario time-wise when they debated all manner of stuff before and while setting up their first night's camp in the mountains. That made the timing on the rest of the scenario a bit wonky, so I fudged and filled in material at the end of the scenario to bring it all together. I thought the players did a pretty good job (even young Dillon for the most part), and found that all the players had a good time with the game. Several of them commented to me afterwards that they liked the game without the usual cast of Primeval characters, and I have to add to that it was kind of nice to run a Primeval scenario for the game that didn't involve Nick Cutter, Abby Maitland, and the usual cast(s).
After the gaming session wrapped,
So we spent the next few hours wandering the convention floor, and seeing what games were going on. I spent the evening watching an open game of Dominant Species that had some really good moments in it, and rather enjoyed that. Also caught an ongoing game of classic Advanced Civilization that was highly enjoyable to watch. In addition, I wandered around a couple of the rooms and caught a game of Pandemic that looked like a lot of fun. One player had to leave for about half an hour to tend to her child, so I got to sit in on that game, and had a really good time of it. (I managed to take a photo of the game in progress, but it turned out completely blurry. Nuts!) I went back and caught some more of the game of Dominant Species; it was a lot of fun watching some newbies playing that game, and trying to figure out what they were doing and how the rules worked for various aspects of the game.

Dominant Species game play

Classic Advanced Civilization play
So there you have it, the Saturday at HammerCon 2013. Overall, a pretty good day at the convention, and I had a decent time running my game as well as getting to play in a board game for a bit of time as well. The next journal entry on the convention will cover the Sunday events.
In the meantime, hope everyone's enjoying these reads. :)