Chris, Serpents, and the Ides of April

The Ides of April: Advantages and Disadvantages
Although the ability to sign up for game tables at North Texas RPG Con still doesn't start until April 15th, it's time to start thinking about it since that date approaches fast (as USA taxpayers are uncomfortably aware - it's also the deadline for filing tax returns). Another note: it's the deadline for submitting articles for this issue of Knockspell Magazine, so it's going to be a busy day for American-conventioneer-author-tax procrastinators.

One of the things I'm going to do during the run-up to the convention is highlight a couple of the games being run at the convention (the OD&D and Swords & Wizardry games mainly, but some others of note as well).

Me Falling off a Chair, or, "Let Other People Do This Because I Would Die"
The first gaming table to highlight is that of Chris Cain, who will be running his table in the Saturday 8AM to 6PM slot. No, that isn't a typo - it's a marathon 10 hour session from what I can tell. The GMs aren't bound to run the entire length of their allotted sessions, so it might be a bit less, but still. Wow. I need to check and make sure that Mike and Doug didn't schedule me for anything that long, because I usually stand on a chair while running a game, and falling off in exhaustion would hurt.

Chris's Game Table
Ad Limina: What's A Nice Serpent Temple Doing In An Old Mine Like This?
(Sounds good already - what's not to like about serpents, temples, and abandoned mines?)

Game System : Swords & Wizardry
(I don't think Chris has decided yet whether he's using the WhiteBox, Core, or Complete Rules, but obviously that's a minor factor at a convention game - you'll know the rules even if you don't know the rules)

Basic Info: 4-8 players, characters level 3-5, use pregens or generate character at table.

World Setting: homebrew; a town called Limina (Latin for "Threshold") on the borders of a crumbling empire; several nearby dungeons full of mystery and treasure.
(It's nice that Chris provided the translation of "Limina" -- he's totally fluent in Latin, so don't try calling your levitate spell "wingardium leviosa" or your hold person spell "petrificus totalis.")

Short Description: Recent explorations by agents of the Merchants' Guild into The Old Mine, abandoned 10 years ago under mysterious circumstances, have turn led to rumors of fantastic wealth laying about for the taking. It's also produced evidence that an active, full-scale Temple of the Serpent Cult is in this "mine". The Serpent Cult was believed defeated over a millennium ago. What is going on here?

An old school dungeon crawl with plenty of monsters, mayhem, and mysteries to overcome. Come back to the threshold of adventure!

About Conventions (and NTRPGCon Thurs Schedule)

Earlier on I posted a series about the Commercialization of the Old School. One of the conclusions I reached was that, along with the positive effects of the surge in old school publishing since 2000, there have been some negative effects, one of which is the increased commercial communication within the community. That commercial speech isn’t going away, because publishers are a new and very durable part of the hobby’s landscape. However, in this post I’m going to talk about a part of the surge in communications that’s not only unambiguously positive but that offsets the “for profit” buzz generated by publishers such as myself.

That benefit is conventions such as North Texas RPG Con. Note: the only reason I have so much to say about NTRPGCon as opposed to GaryCon is that I can’t make it to GaryCon but I can make it to NTRPGCon. So NTRPGCon serves as my example for everything.

The conventions have a for-profit presence, but since it’s in a dealer room, and since there have always been commercial publishers at cons, and since the dealer room is actually an attraction at conventions, a convention is one place where the presence of new publishers doesn’t create any negative effects, and actually creates a very positive one. “Hey, there are new products here! And they’re old school! Woohoo!” Unlike the internet, where free materials are part of the landscape, you can’t download material at a convention. You didn’t go there expecting free adventure modules, so there’s no broken expectation when the modules aren’t free. If you know that your gaming budget doesn’t include purchases in the dealer room, you don’t feel slighted when things for sale are beyond your budget. Indeed, the low cost of the recently published material relative to the original, marked-up books is a nice thing. Maybe your low convention budget isn’t so much of a problem, and you can walk away with some stuff after all.

In any case, that’s a digression back to an original topic.

Let’s talk about some games.

We’re a little ahead of ourselves, because you can’t actually reserve seats until April 15. It might be that on April 14th I’ll revisit this topic to get everyone fired up for the con. Anyway, first I’ll take a look at Thursday evening’s games.

Probably the biggest event on Thursday evening is the Charity game being run by Jon Hershberger using the OD&D rules. By paying $2, you can watch the game: this might seem like total idiocy (pay to WATCH a game???) until you see who’s playing. The players are: Erol Otus, Rob Kuntz, Tim Kask, Dennis Sustare, Paul Jaquays, Steve Winter, Frank Mentzer, and Jim Ward. In other words, this is a star-studded adventuring party. We’ll see how good these guys really are, and how they do it. I predict high attendance for this event.

However, this isn’t the only show in town. The first heat for the Circvs Maximvs tournament takes place almost in the same time slot, although you can watch an hour of the charity game before tying the reins and stepping into your wheels to compete for the three Red Faction slots.

The first expedition into my “Ruins of Mythrus Tower” megadungeon also takes place on Thursday night, and fortunately this doesn’t roll around until the charity game is three hours in. I want to watch that game, and I’m glad not to miss all of it. In fact, if I were going to miss all of it, I’d be whining at Doug about the scheduling. But I can live with only missing an hour of the expo game.

There are plenty of other games in that time slot (after three hours of the expo game, missing only one hour of it). Basic D&D (Moldvay), AD&D, Paranoia, a game called Urutsk (not familiar with this) and …a Chainmail battle (Five Armies) run by Marshal Mahurin. Miniature wargaming!!!!!!

Thursday night is all I have time (or space) to cover in this post, but I’ll return to the convention’s playlist again to cover the later stuff!

North Texas RPG Con

This post is actually the first in a series of posts about conventions, and there’s kind of a twist to where I’m going with it. However, this one’s the intro post, and it’s just the lead-in to the twist. For those who are wondering, no, North Texas RPG Con is NOT run by drow. It’s run by Doug Rhea and Mike Badolato, who are both more insidious than drow (Mike) and more dangerous than drow (Doug packs “heat,” as they say).

North Texas RPG Con is home. Collectible card games aren’t allowed, and neither are 3e or 4e D&D. Okay, that last was waived one year for the kids of older attendees, but it basically still stands. What you get when you walk into this convention is pure, unadulterated old school awesomeness. Rob Kuntz lingers outside chain smoking, Frank Mentzer is listening patiently and intently to someone as he actually thinks about beer, Tim Kask is acting out the way he talked on the CB radio to get the TSR van across the ribbon of distant highway on the way to a convention. Erol Otus will be there. Dennis Sustare will be there running a Swords & Wizardry adventure. A bottle of Jack Daniels sits in front of the DM screen at Bill Barsh’s table. Want a copy of the original Tegel Manor, or Caverns of Thracia? It’s for sale here. It rocks.

Dates of the Convention: Thursday June 2, 2011 @ 1500 until Sunday June 5, 2011 @ 1800
Link to the CONVENTION WEBSITE

Next post, unless I get derailed, is going to be about the various events and games on the convention schedule. We probably still won't get to the twist.