Origins Report

Origins was a mixed bag this year.  The bad part was all on me though.  I had a very long week at work and I get maxed out on people.  Shocking I know.  Then on Saturday I threw myself into the con without any 'recovery' time.  Little things were pissing me off.

• Standing at the Chessex booth and having a kid step in front of me as I'm looking.  I move down.  He did it again, only this time he's standing on my foot and not moving.  After asking him to move twice, I moved him.  Not really a huge deal, but I was already in a bad mood.  
• Then a girl with some sort of weird wings kept turning and poking me with the end of her wings.  Those little fuckers were sharp.  Most of this I wouldn't bother thinking about it, but...
• Coughing on me.  This pisses me off even in my best moods.  Someone is looking at you or near enough that when they cough they spray you.  Grrr.  Cover your fucking mouth man.  
•   And the last thing, and this was something I was trying to avoid, staying late.  We were trying to get into a 4 o'clock game for D&D Next.  All filled up.  The only slot open was at 8pm, so that means we would get out at12am and would get home until 4am.  We left for the con at 5am.  I had a bad feeling that my companions would be the ones sleeping while I drove home.  Pretty much happened and I didn't get home until 5am.  

But there was some very good stuff that went on.  Origins exhibitor hall was fantastic as usual.  The only disappointment was the Troll and Toad booth.  They brought zero gaming stuff.  All Magic the Gathering cards and some other card game stuff.  No interest.  I wanted to dig through their bins and buy some old modules I am wanting to finish my collections.  There were a lot of interesting demos going on.  Although, the guys at the Steve Jackson games booth must drink energy drinks by the case.  Those dudes are loud and talk very fast.  I asked the one guy to go away.  I was trying to look at books and he kept talking about something.  Sorta like he had a conversation going with someone else then continued it on with me except I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.  And he's one of those dudes who coughed on me.  Grrr.

I did get to play in a D&D Next session.  I'll write a separate post about it.  This post is apparently about me being pissy and the shit I bought.  A lot of cool shit.  With a flourish of my hand, I present to you my Origins '14 loot.

I spent a good amount of time in the author area.  I picked up this Halfling cookbook for Ivy.  hey had a Dwarven one also.  They explained they were actually recipes from medieval times.  The Halfling book was English recipes and the Dwarven book was German recipes.  Thought it would be fun for her.  Then, of course, I got her a cool little Wonder Woman drawing.  I was surprised they didn't have more WW stuff.  Then for me, I got a d30, I needed to get a new one because with +Richard LeBlanc putting out all that golden d30 tables I nearly wore out my other one.  And a new set of dice.  Smoke.  Just because they were dice and I wanted a set.

Another thing I got Ivy (and myself) is the Martial Bliss game.  It's looks like a very cool game.  It's got two types of decks.  One is the Task deck.  The married folk draw five or some number of cards.  The other person is not supposed to see them.  Each card has a task to complete, usually some mushy task that sucks up to the other person, and all tasks are assigned a point value.  At the end of the week you tally up the points of completed tasks.  Whoever has the most gets to draw from the Reward deck.  And that could be something movie night and you get to chose the movie.  Some of you may be disappointed because its not a sex deck, but I got card stock and a sharpie.  I can make my own 'task' cards.

The other two books I bought were just to get some new fiction into my head.  Greg Wilson was cool to talk to.  He's a gamer and runs a game on d20.  He was sucking up to me pretty good because he saw my Steeler hat and made football talk.  Yeah, I'm easy.  But he was interesting to talk to, even had his doctorate dissertation for sale.  I should have bought that to.

+Pelgrane Press Ltd was the big winner this year during my shopping spree.  These are two games I've been wondering about for a while.  I got a decent deal on them.  I bought four books and got one of them free.  And the lady told me why the Hillfolk book was a weird size.  But I can't say.

Here are the other two book I bought.  And while I've been wanting to get The 13th Age and Hillfolk for a while, Esoterrorists and Trail of Cthulhu interest me more.  Both use the GUMSHOE system.  I was introduced to the system when +trey causey was running his Weird Adventures wold.  I liked how it worked.  This is a 2nd edition of that and just reading over the rules has my mind going a 100mph thinking of adventure ideas.  I might try an adventure or two with them.

I hit the Harn booth.  Got the map they gave away on Free RPGDay.  That map is fricking gorgeous.  It really is a piece of art.  Then I got two adventures...both featuring trolls...hehe...Harn folks will get that one.  I got them for a very good price.  +Rob Conley had a very interesting conversation with Grant Dalgliesh.  Then went over to Game Science Dice and picked up some old time Hex Sheets.

Tomorrow I'll post my thoughts on the D&D Next session.

Cancelled Due to Weather

Game night went off without a hitch.  Actually we didn't play.  Fantasy Grounds was being particularly shitty tonight.  Most night we have a few issues, but dial it in.  Tonight, it wasn't having any of it.  And in the group we have one computer programer, one military computer information guru, one electrical engineer and one...I'm not sure what you would call it, he makes sure your cell phones work.  We'll call him God of the Signal.  Between all those electronically , computer literate masters none of them could get FG running.  Out of the group I am by far the least helpful and I guess never intend to be.  My contributions were, "Turn it off and on."  Or my favorite, I blamed it on the goddamn Harn weather chart.  Rewind five minutes before crash.

"Fantasy grounds is working great tonight."

"That new broadband you got Rob is making a huge difference."

"Everyone on Skype sounds great."

"What's the weather doing?"

"Light rain coming out of the south.  This is the third straight day of rain.  Everything is muddy."

"Damn you Rusty (Battle Axe)."

*chuckle*

CRASH.

CRASH.

CRASH.

CRASH.

Half hour later.

CRASH.

Goddamn Harn weather.

Sheep Stampede

Last night our game concluded with us returning from the elven forest. We were taking our time traveling a country road when we felt the ground begin to tremble. I thought maybe it was anhkheg or maybe a bulette, but the countryside looked too peaceful to have those monsters terrorizing it. There was a farm to our left and a ridge to our right. From over the crest of the road a farmed came running screaming "Stampede! Stampede!" A herd of sheep charged down the roadway.

Being the mighty adventurers that we are we pulled off the road and were letting the sheep pass. Then two children came down off the ridge and into the road. They stood there petrified and helpless. Rusty Battle Axe put the first group down with a sleep spell and shouted "Count yourselves!" I followed with another sleep spell putting down much of the herd. The few that remained grazed.

The farmer thanked us and asked how we were able to stop the sheep. Rusty Battle Axe put his hand on his hips and said, "We just pulled the wool over their eyes." He chuckled. The farmer laughed as he kicked the sheep to awaken them. A good time had by all.

It smelled of a Harn encounter and I confronted the DM. "Was that a Harn encounter?" He mumbled and coughed before admitting, yes, yes he did roll on another Harn chart. I knew it.

Slow Monday Grind

At work. Weekend went by in two hours instead of two days. I was able to finish my one page dungeon entry (see previous post) so I did accomplish something. Tonight is game night. Ashling, my elf, made it to 2nd level. Which means very little at this time except I get a few more hit points, but effects little else. We trudged over a mountain and Rob got out those damn Harn weather charts and tried to kill us. I am not joking when I tell you those weather charts are more dangerous than a dragon who just stubbed its toe. We had to kill a patrol. Hmm, maybe not had, but we killed them to avoid trouble a little longer. Plus, they had good horses.

We are made our way to a magic circle and found a cavern below that did not seem to be apart of what was going on above. That's where we left off. I got a +1 shield from one of the rooms.

Looking forward to playing tonight. Makes Mondays a bit more bearable. While I battle through the mountain of paperwork my mind drifts to what is going to happen tonight and I hope to what ever dice gods above are a lot nicer to me this session. Last session they were pissed at me for some reason. I gave my dice a new home to encourage positive mojo.

Well, lunch is over and back to treading the steep pile of papers. Just glad as hell that Rob isn't roll on his Harn weather table.