May 21st, 2016
I can't say that I slept well on the Friday night, though I got a few hours of sleep in. I woke up on Saturday morning feeling like I'd been dragged under a mack truck. To put it bluntly, I was very tired, somewhat shaky, and had a headache to wake the dead, not to mention my abdominal area was hurting quite a bit. I went upstairs and made some breakfast, and felt somewhat better afterwards. I went downstairs and took my shower, dragging it out somewhat and just luxuriating in the relatively hot water. It felt good, and my spirits perked up somewhat and my headache disappeared, which was a good feeling. I started to think that I'd be able to function pretty well at the convention for the day.
I spoke to
After chatting with Tim and catching up for a little bit,

I went to the CanGames booth, and saw that the booth had mostly board games this year, with something like three or four boxes of roleplaying games under one of the main tables that held board games. All of my stuff that I was hoping to sell was still in the boxes down below. Nuts! :(
By that point, it was around 12:30 pm and time for lunch. Over the next little while,
The game of Polaris 3rd Edition RPG was very good. The scenario that I ran is called "Havoc on Irminger", and while I'm not going to give away details of the plot here, suffice to say that the adventure is a neat little piece of search-and-retrieval at an outer station that goes horribly pear-shaped, and is quite challenging to run - or perhaps that was because I'd only run the game once before (the English edition of Polaris isn't out yet, but PDFs are due any day now as of this typing). The player characters for the scenario are Archetypes - Diplomat, Marine Commando, Pilot, Pirate, Surgeon, and Technician - and the players got to name their characters at the start of the adventure. They certainly got creative with character names, and the personalities of the characters were partially reflected in the character names. RayD called the Pilot character Terrel; Shannon called the Surgeon Dr. Markie; Jean-Yves called the Diplomat Amidalya; Raymond Regular (RayR from here on out) called the Marine Commando Bilko; Ken called the Technician Sparks; and Lily called the Pirate Xipal. Here's a photo of me running the game session.

Photo courtesy of
The game went swimmingly (no pun intended!) well, and the players really liked the game mechanics and the twists and turns in the adventure that I ran. Some of the highlights include: the fact that the players didn't try to learn more about the situation they were going into, and they didn't do any research on the person they were sent to retrieve. Ken and RayD (Sparks and Terrel) obsessed a bit about what the strange underwater weather effects meant during the scenario, but never put the matters together. RayR (Bilko) forced the other characters to take action by moving forward through the events on the station, forcing the others to catch up to him, if possible. Lily (Xipal) played a very laid back pirate, but she got aggressive in the final analysis when she had to. Everyone at the gaming table told me they had a lot of fun with the adventure, liked the characters and the simple way they were presented, though they had a few problems with the colours on the character sheets. The plot is one that is tough to run, as the player characters have to deal with a situation that is out of their control, and a rather dangerous set of circumstances on the station. While in a lot of ways "Havoc on Irminger" is a very good scenario, it's not the type of scenario that is to my taste. I prefer my convention scenarios to focus on some of the highlights of the game world, and while the central game aspect of the scenario makes sense to introduce so quickly, it won't be a focus for any game adventures that I write in future. But it did give me an idea for a scenario (sequel, sort of) down the road. Perhaps next CanGames, who knows?
After wrapping up the scenario and chatting with several players for a few minutes, I started packing up the Polaris game material as I had another game to run in slightly less than an hour.
Most of the players had arrived for the Chill 3rd Edition game by the time we finished eating supper, so I started to set up the gaming stuff for the game. As with the day before, the Rideau Curling Club was pretty warm, and the place was crowded for the night games that were being run, and there was a lot of other traffic just sitting around and chatting. So pretty noisy as well. Once all the players had arrived and I'd checked them in, I started the game of Chill for the evening. As for the scenario, well... "The Beast of Bytown" is a home-made scenario set in 1850s Bytown (which would become Ottawa), about a group of non-SAVE folks investigating a construction accident in the town and the release of some supernatural creatures. The five player characters are Anna Goodwin, the town librarian; Dr. Jane McCarthy, one of the two doctors in Bytown; Richard Swift Cloud, a Native American medicine man who's just arrived in Bytown; William "Bill" Carrigan, a lumberjack and hunter; and Jacques Lariviere, a travelling salesman from Montreal with another secret. Let me tell you, the players were quite surprised at the types of characters and the setting of the game, but they all seemed to relish the idea of playing in the time period and with such an interesting crew of characters.
What made "The Beast of Bytown" so different in some ways is the fact that the player characters are required to engage in old-fashioned investigation (since there are no mobile phones or internet back then), and the scenario deals with a potential menace on two fronts from Native American mythology. The adventure was one I was looking forward to running, as it has some interesting twists and turns and some hard choices to be made at times. The scenario played well, and I could see the players were having a terrific time of it. Thierry played Anna Goodwin, the librarian, and did a great job with her. He played the character well, and realised early on that she'd have to be a font of information for the player characters. Great job. Ken (who had played in the Polaris game immediately before) took the role of William Carrigan, and played the character very outdoorsy and with a good deal of common sense. He was quieter for the most part, but when he acted his impact was huge. Ken's character got temporarily possessed, and he actually tried to kill the doctor with his rifle, using it as a tomahawk! Quite memorable.
I didn't feel too bad after the game ended, having had some celery, gouda in cubes, and some melba toast and a couple of chocolate chip cookies for my snack during the evening. After the game ended, I chatted with several players for a few minutes, including Scott, all of whom commented on how they really liked the game system, finding it relativey simple, and how much they liked the Light/Dark Token mechanics. It was around 11:15 pm by that time. I excused myself, and went downstairs and took my insulin shot and then ate my Cheerios.
I got back to the house around 11:50 pm, and after
And that's the wrap-up of Saturday at CanGames 2016. As you can see this entry was a long one, and had only a couple of photos for the enjoyment of those reading the blog entry. Hope folks enjoyed this journal entry, and if so, please comment with any thoughts you might have on the entry. All I know is I'm just tired from typing this up! :)