Dundracon 2009 – Part 2

8:00 AM Saturday 2/14

I didn’t get into any games. Yay, for sleep. Kids were sick and my better half wanted to go home. So much for extra sleep. We packed up the van (which was very easy on account of nobody else arrive or departing at that time) and them my wife and children left. I was sad because I wanted them to be around but I could tell they weren’t having a good time. Cons are strange. They started off as a bachelor event for me. After a while my wife and I were missing each other so they started coming and participating. Now she’s grown pretty disinterested in anything but hanging out however, and that can be really hard when you have kids sleeping in the room. So, now it’s looking like I’ll be going solo again for a while. Hmm..

10:00 AM Saturday 2/14

I decided to try and crash Justin’s Firefly game. Call me a fan boy of my own friend, but I’ve so far only been in one of Justin’s games (okay, technically two now) and I’ve talked to him about games for a long time. This adds up to me wanting to play in his one shots when I can. I didn’t get in, but that was actually a good thing. It led to a guiltless pleasure. Usually I don’t sign up for Rich’s games any more. I like Rich’s games but they tend to attract a throng and I just don’t like fighting them off to get a spot. It’s usually some of the same players in fact and they are really obsessed with getting in anything that has its name on it. Sometimes in fact I think Rich should make a game called

Do My Laundry: This is not an RPG
System: Maytag
GM: Rich Taylor
Players: 8 (1 for washing and drying, the rest for folding)
Length: Spin Cycle
Description: Join in Unkyrich’s clothes washing adventure. Players will get rewarded for excellent role-playing with free passes to vacuum Rich’s floor and wash his dishes.

Seriously, he could list it and people would show up. Seriously. But, as Saturday mornings are he had a bunch of no shows for his werewolf game and I was able to take a slot. That meant I got to play in this game:

The Hand You’re Dealt (A Good Omens Production)

Saturday 10 AM in Room 378 for 8 hours
GM: Richard “UnkyRich” Taylor
System: Werewolf: The Forsaken
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: slightly experienced
Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome
Game Content: Mainstream

Patrolling your territory is always both simple and difficult. When something is making the spirits angry, you just go and deal with it, right?

Of course, things are never just that easy.

This is a Werewolf game that is equal parts thought, combat, and world interaction.

Yeah, it was definitely not “that easy.” Rich did a great job of keeping things tense by throwing many urgent situations at us, all at the same time. Anger spirits in our territory for reasons we didn’t know, a kid having his first change (ouch that hurt), Hunters who nabbed three of our pack mates, and to top it all off a pack the Pure roaming through our turf, pissing our totem off. Man, it was bitchen.

What rocked

• I really liked my character. Chloe Base-Jumper. She was a Red Talon Rahu, which pretty much meant psycho bad ass. Her concept was a stunt woman based off of the real Zoe Bell. I haven’t seen grind house but I did my best to play ballsy, crazy and proud. She started the adventure playing the Wii in a sports bra and underwear and stayed that way for a good portion of it because she never had a chance to get dressed. Fun stuff.
• Hitting someone with an engine block. The entire last fight was pretty killer but the hightlight for me was when a pure werewolf ripped the engine block out of my truck and my character went flying through the windshield in Garou (war) form tackling her down, picking up the engine block and smashing the Pure between it and the grill of the truck. Splat!
• Taking on a new change. We had to help a kid through his first change, never an easy process. My job was basically to be a punching back while the other pack member talked him down. It was really fun to be in a fight where my goal was to survive. Yeah, I could have gone on full defense and just tried to mitigate damage but it was more fun trying to disable the pup with a pipe. In the end the Iron Master talked some sense in him, enough for him to change back to Hishu (human) form at which point the damage that I had done to him overwhelmed him and he fell unconscious. Awesome!
• Going toe to toe with Kevan. We had ourselves a good old fashioned stared down after a fight. It was very cool to be able to exercise my pride and have real consequences evolve from it. The Alpha cut me down and put me back in my place. Exactly as he should have.
• As mentioned before, the slew of situations that kept the entire 8 hours tense and exciting.
• Several short and brutal combats. Instead of one or two long once, Rich kept them really brief, which meant we all got to bring lots of awesome. It was really cool. I’m a big fan of this for combat heavy games like Werewolf.
• Group chemistry. I had played with all but one of the players at the game, and they were all very cool. I had really personal connections with most of the other characters and it was fun playing that out. I think we gelled very well.
• Organized Hunters are scary. They couldn’t take us toe to toe, but they managed to lose only two of their team (the same number we lost coincidentally) and set our Alpha on fire. Very nice. Oooh, almost forgot. I got to put him out by running over a fire hydrant and then tackling him into it. Woot for Stunt Driver!

What could have been improved

• I really doubt there is much we could do about this, but was getting tired at the very end. The fight was cool but I was losing my energy. It might have been good to take another short break just before the last encounter. Not sure though, we were all pretty pumped up about it.
• I liked the group size better than a 6 player game. I think it might be cool if the game was listed next time as 5 players instead of 6.

6:00 PM Saturday 2/14

I didn’t get into anything in the 6PM slot… which was good, I couldn’t have taken another RPG, I was too tired. Kevan, Matt, Greg and I went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant near the hotel. The food was fine, but our waitress was on crack. She screwed up our order, forgot about is, took forever to bring us food and generally seemed like she was missing her meds. I wouldn’t have minded if I wasn’t so bloody hungry. As is, I started getting snippy because it took forever to get fed.

While there, however, I bumped into an elderly couple who asked about our badges. I told them about DDC and found out they had a son who liked Dungeons and Dragons. Based on their age, their son was probably in his 30s or 40s but apparently didn’t know about conventions. I did a bit of gaming evangelism, which I love doing and it’s possible he was there on Sunday, I’ll probably never know.

8:00 PM Saturday 2/14

Matt and I grabbed his copy of Dominion from his room and headed down to the board games area. I played all kinds of board games: Dominion, Zombie Flux, Monty Python Flux, Pass the Brain and many, many games of Zar, which is like Uno on crack. Around 1AM I talked to my roommates and asked if they wanted to come down or hang out but apparently they wanted sleep instead… so I flipped cards till 4AM. Yikes.

Part three coming soon…