August 15th, 2008
This was definitely a day of ups and downs, for sure. I was up bright and early once more; couldn't sleep, as I had too many thoughts going on in my head, and the day before had been really wonderful for the most part. After
I took a couple of minutes to familiarize myself with the booth area where I was going to be running the demo, and checked out the encounter that I was to run. It was the sequence from the Free RPG Day scenario, "Stranded in the Hollow Earth", where the characters wake up on the boat, and have to face the plesiosaur. Not my favourite game sequence by far, but one I could handle well enough as I had run it several times (the module, that is). One of the neat parts was that
After chatting a bit longer with Jeff and the others at the booth before my shift ended at noon, Linwood (MikeD) arrived at the booth. He and I had plans to go out and eat, and talk about a scenario that we would design together. While I really enjoyed working at the booth and running the demos, I have to say that my feet were a bit sore by the time the 2 hours were over. I was very glad to be wearing comfortable shoes!
The aggravation was enhanced by the fact that when I arrived at the table to start setting up, there were no copies of the rulebook, no dice, no dice, and no Style chips. Luckily, I was able to convince Rabbit in the Moon (Kate) to split the stuff she had at her table. She's a terrific lady, and a good friend. Naturally, I needn't have worried. At around 4:00, the various players showed up at the table to play in Illinois Central at Union Station. The other five players showed up for the game, and it turned out that four of them were friends. They told me that they had another game to get to at 8:00 pm, and that they were going to have to leave by 7:00 pm so they could grab supper before playing the later game. I decided to cut a few scenes and make the various sequences go a bit faster, as I thought that I could wrap up the scenario by 7:00 pm, and have the players be satisfied with the game. The game went swimmingly well, except the guy who was playing the weird scientist decided to play him as an enigmatic Rorschach (of Watchmen fame)! And some of the names the players choose. Less creative than I would have liked, and some downright...pun-like and bland. The highlights of this particular game were few and fear between. The fight against the animated mummies was really neat; the guy playing the Captain had a mummy explode out of the coffin in front of him as he was chasing a cultist, and he pumped 6 Style points into a shot from the Colt .45 and took the mummy down in one shot. Absolutely brilliant! During the sequence where the characters chased the cultists through the streets of London, the engineer, who couldn't drive, was the one to hotwire one of the cars parked on the street, and then attempt to take off in the car after the cultists. The guy playing the Captain suddenly says that it's *his* car, and blames them all for breaking into it and hotwiring it - when he had the car key all the time! Lovely stuff.
And then...an hour earlier than they stated, at 6:00 pm, the four players who were going to be playing in the other game later decide that they are going to leave at that point. The scenario is finally at the critical stage, where the characters are about to engage in a simply hare-brained chase scene with some terrific stuff going on (a Nazi flying saucer, inside a gigantic flying fortress, being pursued by Nazis in small aircraft!) - and these guys take off at the climactic moments of the scenario! Well, I couldn't finish the scenario with only two players. I had been stressed about running the scenario to begin with, and was now seriously annoyed at these folks for walking out early like this, and was actually quite depressed about the whole business. Needless to say, I experienced another minor crisis when I realized that I had forgotten the arrangements for getting the "Conquest" scenario to
Kate,
By this time, it was around 10:15 pm or so, and we decided to check out the ENnies. The four of us (we had retrieved Charles) walked over to the Westin Hotel, a good walk and enough exercise to make up for dinner, but I wished I had taken a coat. There was a brisk breeze, and it was rather cool. When we got there, we found the ENnies had ended, and no one at the hotel could even tell us who had won what! Idiots! The four of us went and took a look at the Artists Row on the lower level of the hotel. Most of it was anime based, and they had anime films showing there as well. Kate is really educated when it comes to the art and stuff, and had some interesting comments and observations about stuff there. We headed back to the Omni, though I couldn't help but wonder where Jeff,
Like I said, a day with some ups and downs. That pretty much wraps up the second actual day of GenCon Indy. I'll post up Saturday's report on the games and stuff when I have a bit more time. For now, off to have a cup of Chai tea.