The Gaming Outpost

….Interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse…

I finished off my first night by visiting the Baen Bar, and tossing out a grenade.  But first, I joined in the discussion of movies, and the dissing of Steven Seagal movies (although I defended the honor of ‘Under Siege’ which was really cool even without Miss September.)

The Grenade Theory is based on an observation or two.  Obama wants to drive us off the cliff at two hundred miles per hour.  Boehner rather heroically only wants to do it at 150 miles per hour, but will be willing to compromise.

The Conservatives aka The Real Adults in the R Party need to go into a small room with the RINOS (Republicans In Name Only for those who have a life.), and tell them that either we stop the car, or we don’t really see the reason not to let Obama win.

This is the grenade. Pull the pin, drop grenade and pin on the floor, and let the RINO fix it if he will.  If he succeeds, coldcock him.

It was not a popular theory, but I suspect it will gain in popularity for the obvious reason.  It’s based on reality.

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After that, it was on to chatting with a couple guys about IFGS (boffer sword LARPing) and old dungeons.

I took a hike, and found on my way home that the places I had planned to stop were closed. Ah, and the first place I had planned on stopping was across the street at the WH, but with a flashing police car and large crowds, that did not seem a wise idea.

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Next morning, I’m back early.  I get pulled into a game of Imperium which is basically  ‘You are an amoral, ruthless billionaire investor profiting off the suffering of the European nations.  See if you can beat your other billionaire competitors to maximum wealth.’

The first time I played was last year, and I spent most of the game thinking it was a conquest game like Risk.  I lost badly.  This time my goal was to not embarrass myself.  I succeeded.  Jason, Russ, Cat, and moi with Russ #2, and Adam made up our Corrupt Scumbags Club.

Rhino took Jason and moi to 88 for lunch.  Two buffet plates later, and water (I was already swimming in coca-cola thanks to the excellent Consuite), with good conversation, and we were back to the Con.

I was getting ready to run my very first GURPS game.  Jason had built characters, made place cards, and came up with the adventure which I was going to embellish.

And then my wife, the lovely Bonna, and two boys come in to tell me that they had been in a car crash.  My father had been driving the van.

There were three vehicles involved.  A hit B which then careened over the median to hit my dad’s van up near him.

My father, a computer programmer at Huntsville Utilities, started searching his cell phone.  Bonna calls my brother.  My youngest is mostly upset because he dropped his DS (a Nintendo game machine).

The sliding door is beat up, and the window blown in.

Some unknown guy comes up to check on them, and tell them he’s called 911.  Thanks, man.  The Huntsville police are there johnny on the spot as Bonna just got finished with her phone conversation, and they were there in five minutes or less.  The ambulance was also there very quickly.

My father went to the hospital, and was checked out.   Other than some truly minor scratches, he was just fine.  He has a strong faith which buffered the emotional shock.

Everyone else seems to be physically fine.  Emotionally, the youngest is like ‘eh, whatever, lets’ focus on playing now’.  The older one seems to be doing well too with a little bit of comforting.

We, as the nurses, suggested, took the boys over to Toys-R-Us to help them forget it.  And Toys was having a 60% up to Off Sale as its moving, so that was nice.

So a bit of nerves and such, but everyone seems to be coping pretty well.  Thank you Lord.

…like I said, way too interesting….

They went back to rest and sleep, and I sought my own therapy.  I bought a couple books of Charlie Stross (not my favorite author, but okay) from Booklegger.  And then I came back to run the Vampire game that night.

I heard the same problem I’ve heard before.  GURPS does not do supers well.  Oh well.

Ran ‘World of Obsolescence’ for the second year.  It’s 2050 and ‘privacy’ is a medieval concept, and lamposts have UV lighting which burns vampires, but is effective at reducing nighttime depression among humans by 5%.  Its a golden age in ways for humans.  Vampires? Not so much.  ‘Its like being a Kryptonian on a world where everyone wears krptonite jewelry’ is game designer M. J. Young’s of Multiverser fame pithy analysis.

It was a fun game.

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On Sunday morning, more excellent food from the Consuite (you people who ran it are A-OK), and an interesting discussion or two.  One focused on running an Imperial based Star Wars campaign.  The other involved Les Johnson, writer, and some others about the economic prospects of America and what to do about it.

After that, we had an informal discussion with Craig Goodrick about gaming.  I’m going to try to get my ducks in order quicker for the next year so I won’t have to keep telling him ‘um, we need to change the schedule again.’  And we evidently need a larger gaming space.  Perhaps we can do an overflow in some other area.

I was trying to be helpful to the con for having me as a GM guest, and so I got a pick-up game of 4th Ed. Champions started with a couple players (and Ben Acosta joined in for the hour he had to spare with a good character for doing that.)

It was a hostage scenario at a TV station so I went for every bad pun I could find for the villains names: Mr. Media, Photoshop, Bias (DEX Drainer), Lying Eyes (‘Are you going to believe me, or your lying eyes?’), Character Assassin (Ninja who takes his unconscious victims and photographs them doing disgusting stuff), News Chopper (armored guy with spinning propeller blades in front of his hands), and Anchor (superdense blonde bimbo anchorette obsessed with maintaining her makeup in the middle of kicking the poor heroes around…yeah, she was tough).

They were opposed by opposed by Master Roshi, Mr. Manhatten (no, not that one), and Warp.

It turned out that the heroic arrogant lefty superhero Protector of the People had tried to make a deal with Photoshop to stop the rise of Power Armour companies which would let ordinary humans compete with supers, but he balked when she agreed, and added ‘let’s kill people’.  So she took him over, and pretended he was the leader in his alter ego of Mr. Media.  Of course, he accidentally confessed his unwisdom to Mr. Manhattan’s cell phone at Master Roshi’s taunting, and ended up having to leave the city in dishonor.

Twas a lot of fun.

One last note: I had three guys offer to do pretty much whatever I needed to help me or my family.  Thank you very much, guys.  My eyes are watering as I type this.

….So, I hope to be back next year, but I’m hoping for a much less interesting con in 2012, if that’s alright…