Not Dead Yet...

Okay...

I went into the convention suffering from lack of sleep and some ConCrud/Head Cold variant. Came out of the convention with a lack of sleep and a ConCrud/Head Cold variant, but I had run four successful events over the weekend.

Like I feared, the system (DICEBAG) made some folks go into vapor-lock looking at the character sheet initially. There's a LOT going on in terms of information on the sheet, and it just sort of front-loads the confusion for new players. However, once we got started, and people got what I was aiming for with the system, they picked up things fairly quickly.

Once things were finished, I had received a fair number of compliments about how things flowed and the mechanics worked. That is encouraging. If, by next year, I can get the first draft of a complete core bore written, there are a number of people I'd like to pass it onto to do some more testing.

As for the after-Con, I took Monday off due to illness. I was back at the store today, though, and in uniform. No pictures as I had a family emergency pull me away from the store a bit early, but after around two months of very hit-and-miss compliance, I should be ramping up back to full necktie-wearing uniform standards fairly soon...

-- GopherDave

Post-Election Stress Disorder...

Okay, the election is over. Obama won, Romney lost, and now the world can get on with its bad self.

If you didn't vote, don't gripe. You gave up that right when you chose not to vote. If you voted and "your guy" didn't win, you can gripe, but please do it in a constructive, move-the-country-forward manner. If "your guy" won, well, good on ya. Now is the time to help him "put up or shut up". You got four years and the clock is ticking.

Meanwhile, a small chunk of Deadlands: the Last Sons got run last night. It would have been more, but we were all kind of glued to the election. The posse managed to save Wovoka, chief of the Paiutes and big muckity-muck of the Ghost Dancers, but they lost almost the entirety of his remaining entourage. The group ended up a touch more wounded, but overall, they lost more bullets than blood.

One of the players cannot make the next session due to work stuff, so we'll use the next time to level some folks up and deal with the aftermath of the fight, and maybe, MAYBE finally get these guys to Deadwood where the fun *really* begins...

-- GopherDave

Ballots & Bullets...

It's Election Tuesday here in the United States. Today, I got up early enough to go vote, and actually went and did so. The ballot looked amazingly sparse. President... a couple of congressmen/senators... some local offices... some judges... Weird. I did have a high school regression moment where I realized I was filling out a glorified ScanTron sheet instead of poking holes through a card.

Once I get done with the store, I'm off to go run my Deadlands: the Last Sons campaign. I didn't run this last week due to my head not being in the right space after the Terracide debacle. I call it a debacle, but overall, I've gotten over my own BS and have figured out a way to run with the situation as it stands. I'm actually looking forward to it.

Now, I'm off to do some more store stuff and contemplate my navel...

-- GopherDave

Someone Is Not Getting It...

I ran another session of my Deadlands: Reloaded - the Last Sons campaign last night, and I figured I should at least give a rundown of what has happened thus far...

[WARNING: There will be spoilers, so if you end up playing in this game, don't say I didn't warn you.]

When the group starts out, they are in an armored stagecoach travelling from Bismarck, Dakota to Deadwood in the Sioux Nation. Well, some of the group is in the coach. Three others had actually purchased horses, and so were traveling with the coach as and for protection. There's safety in numbers, don't ya know.

As the group is travelling, the front wheels of the coach hit a trench that's been dug across the road. The front wheels of the coach break as the horses go running off in the darkness. Here is one of my disconnects with this initial adventure. How did the horses miss the trench? Individual horses I can see gracefully stepping over with the possibility of their rider not noticing anything because the animal adjusted and did it in stride. A team of horses attached to stagecoach, though? Not so much. They'd stop in their tracks at the very least. Anyway, the horses run off, the coach flips onto its side, and the group is accosted by the infamous "Oblivious" Sam Bass (see an earlier blog post for references on how Mr. Bass gained the "oblivious" tag. Our posse deals with Blind Sammy and his crew, and then the settle to assess damage and go after the horses for the coach. Never mind the horses the outlaws had... *sigh*

Levi and Walker (two of our intrepid posses) go to retrieve the horses from the coach. When they catch up to the animals, they here a train whistle in the distance and the squeal of rail brakes. Taking the horses back to the coach and consulting with the rest of the group, the posse decides to investigate. The crest a hill rise to see a dim train lantern about a mile or so. Better eyes notice the symbol for the Iron Dragon rail line, which makes sense as Kang has the only non-Native American train lines allowed to Deadwood, or anywhere else in the Sioux Nation.

While they are on the hill crest, one of the smarter players lays his horse on his side to cut his silhouette. Meanwhile, another one of the characters (an Chinese guy by the name of Vegeta (yes, we are working on a non-Dragonball Z name for him) has heard the slow clop-clopping of a horse approaching from the posse's left. Vegeta stealths off well enough that the rest of the posse has no clue where he is, so Levi begins calling for him... ...loudly. This pretty much defeats the purpose of Walker's trying to be sneaky with the horse.

Investigating the approaching horse, Vegeta finds an Appaloosa with a gravely wounded Indian on its back. Stopping the horse and helping the wounded slide off, Vegeta calls for Doc (the posse's Mad Scientist) to come help. Small problem with this... Doc hates Injuns. After some harassing from the rest of the posse, Doc reluctantly helps "the heathen" and manages to keep him from dying. Once the posse brings him around, the Indian brave reveals that his name is Sky Hawk. He is of the Paiute tribe and is one of the attendants for Wovoka, chief of the Paiutes and leader of the Ghost Dance. Sky Hawk explains that he and his group were ambushed as they slept, and he attempted to leave to get help, but was shot multiple times as he left.

Sky Hawk asks the posse for help, and they agree to do so (Doc is *VERY* reluctant). As they ride west, the air becomes still and the landscape desolate. In the near distance, some members hear sharp, high-pitched sounds, and looking up, see large, bird-like shapes silhouetted against the starry sky. The party continues slowly, and that's when the Devil Bats attack. Five Devil Bats versus five Wild Card posse members and one (heavily) wounded Indian brave, makes for a pretty quick fight in favor of the heroes. The heroes did not come out unscathed, though.

Levi, who was still carrying a wound from the tussle with Sam Bass and his boys, acquired another wound, bring him to two. Doc and Axum Jennings (the Dude from back east) each ended up with two wounds at the end; one from the devil bats and the other from where Doc's Lightning Generator blew up spectacularly in an electrical conflagration. Out of it all, only Doc ended up with any positive healing to bring him to only one would total.

Currently, only Vegeta and Walker are unhurt, and the posse is walking into a nasty situation in an effort to help Wovoka and the Paiutes with three hurt people (two badly) and being slightly underarmed (Doc's contraption will take him 3 to 6 hours to fix, and that's time they don't have).

There are a couple of things I need to read up on before the fight they are heading into. I am just wondering how dead this group is going to be due to one player's seemingly constant need to be contrary and willfully do things with his character that hamper the rest of the group and places the survival of all the characters in jeopardy.

Thing is, I knew this going in, and by agreeing to run this game, I was accepting the challenge. I am just wondering how I am going to approach this when things hit the fan.

-- GopherDave

The Scare Continues...

Though you cannot tell from the picture, the shirt is a light, pearl gray in color. It works well.

Sat down with the daughter to show her Hellraiser last night. As we watched, a couple of things came to my mind. One, the movie is kind of dated. Honestly, most of the movies I have been showing her are, but Hellraiser seemed to suffer from this problem more than the other films we've watched thus far. The other thing that came to mind is that Hellraiser isn't actually all that scary. Some of the ideas and concepts it introduces are frightening, but only after you think about them for a bit. The movie itself isn't that terrifying at all.

We'll be watching The Collector Wednesday evening. It looks to be enjoyable. The girl and I witnessed a preview for the sequel (the Collection) when we went to see Sinister. The preview for that looked pretty creepy, and sort of bodes well for the first film.

Other scares will continue tonight as I dive back into running my Deadlands: Reloaded - the Last Sons campaign. I am hoping to finish the initial plot point tonight, but may not. The group is still new to the system and the setting, and getting them to go in a direction is sort of like trying to herd crack-addled cats. Still, I'm looking for a good time and I hope they are as well.

Onward, into the Weird West and Silver Screens...

-- GopherDave

Learning Curve...

We started the Last Sons Deadlands: Reloaded campaign last night. Things went a touch slower than I had planned due to having a group of brand-new-to-the-system players and a touch of unpreparedness on my part. Still, things seemed to go well as people picked up the system.

Like any good campaign, things got off with a bang and what was supposed to be a simple stagecoach robbery turned into broo-haa-haa of bullets, lightning, spin kicks, and blood. One character almost died as his player did not full heed the warning that Savage Worlds is a MUCH deadlier game for player characters than D&D/Pathfinder is. Coolest moment of the night has to go to the Chinese martial artist who killed a mook with their own bullet via Deflection.

The heroes won in the end, though one was badly wounded and ended up (after all available Healing checks could be made) still sucking on one wound. Every PC got to do something cool, and it is always fun diving in with a new group. The highlight of the night for me, though, was when the youngest (15) and most inexperienced player looked at me and said something to the effect of "I like this a lot. It's easier, and the system makes more sense to me than Pathfinder. I had a great time!". That right there counts to me as a win.

I did have a couple of quibbles about Sam Bass, the main NPC-bad guy, though. For being such a seasoned outlaw, the guy had no Notice or Fighting skill at all. He could shoot (D10 Shooting skill), but apparently whatever he was shooting at had to be obvious and the easiest way to bring him down was to engage him in a fist fight. Checking his Parry attribute to make certain it wasn't just a typo/misprint revealed the *incredibly* large number of... 2. Oh, and did I mention this was night time ambush?

So, the PCs saved the stagecoach (and themselves) from being robbed by the notorious outlaw "Oblivious" Sam Bass, and his gang (who all had the Notice skill at a rating of D6, go figure). Now, they are roughly 4 days walk from Deadwood in Sioux Nation territory, waiting on a stagecoach repair that will take 12 hours to accomplish. That's plenty of time for something else to happen, amigos...

-- GopherDave

Saddle Up!

This is going to be a LOOOONNNNGGGG day.

I was up at 6am to get ready for a work day that doesn't start until about 10AM or so. Why? So I could take my car to the shop. The shop opened at 7:30AM, and I figured the sooner they got it, the sooner they could tell me what is wrong with it.

Bullet (the car's name -- yes, I name my cars) has had a number of minor issues that has given him character over the years. Well, either a combination of those minor issues happened, or something entirely new jumped into the mix because now Bullet is REALLY loud, sluggish at speeds under 35MPH, and shakes like a heroin junkie who hasn't had a fix in three days. This all being said, the car has not stopped running, nor has it given out on me. It's just really sick. So, I took it to the doctor.

Meanwhile, in happy land, it is my daughter's birthday today. Pumpkin has grown into an amazing young lady, and I am more proud of her with each passing day. She is indeed something special, though she never ever wants to believe that. Loq and I need to work on that.

So, I ended up at the store at roughly 7:45AM. Most of what I need to do for open has been done. I am now currently waiting on shipments and reading Deadlands: Reloaded books. Tonight is the start of the Last Sons campaign I am running, and I want to brush up on some rules and tonight's adventure. It's been a bit since I sat behind the screen (I'm not counting last week), but it's go time, and I've never wilted under game pressure before. I am looking forward to it...

...if I can get there... =P

-- GopherDave

Better Than Expected...

Though you cannot see them, I am also rocking dice cuff links. Boo-yaa...

So, last night was mostly a character building session for the Deadlands: Reloaded game, followed by a sample combat to get the group (who are all entirely new to Savage Worlds) kind of up to speed on how things work in the system. It was also a good way to point out the necessity of some skills in the setting. We'll actually be starting the upcoming campaign this Tuesday. The following week, we'll be doing characters for the DICEBAG/Unveiled game.

That gives me a week to read up on SW/DL:R:/the Last Sons, and two weeks to sketch out and write out a setting document for Unveiled. I've more in less time, but I was unmarried, without kids, and didn't have the responsibility of running a business on top of me. As it goes, I need to get off of the stick and get work done.

As for the sample game, it went well, though I have one player who is overthinking things and wants his character to be involved in everything that goes on, even if his character isn't in the same place as where the action currently is. Adding to this, the player is pretty much a boisterous, alpha-type person who is used to getting his way in a game. I don't want to discourage his playing, but I do want to curb his tendencies to dominate the proceedings, ESPECIALLY in situations that his character has no business in. It's going to be fun.

On a lighter note, there is much less kicking and screaming than I expected in regard to D&D familiarity to Savage Worlds. There were a number of intelligent questions asked, and I did my best to answer them. I did okay, but it did point out that I am out-of-practice behind the screen and with the game system.

I've got a week... =P

-- GopherDave

Back In The Saddle Again...

Yep, it's a little off-kilter, but I was in a hurry as usual...

...In more ways than one...

Tonight, I get to walk a bunch of folks who have not played much beyond D&D/Pathfinder/D20 into the quick as a hiccup system that is Savage Worlds, more specifically, Deadlands: Reloaded.

It's has been about a year, not counting the help I gave Shady at GenCon, since I sat behind the GM's screen. To be honest, it has been too damn long. I know that my absence from the chair is part of what has contributed to my stress and anxiety as of late. It's more a part of me than I realized.

To a certain extent, I am looking forward to it. I love introducing folks to new settings and game systems. I do anticipate some friction due to what these guys have experience with in terms of settings/systems. It's always a shock to be dragged out of the D&D pool. Initially, it rarely goes well, as things no longer work the way a player expects them to. I am pretty much ready for it, though.

As for campaign material, I have looked through the Last Sons campaign book for DL:R and I believe I will be using it as it will free up some prep time for me...

...and time is a commodity that I find myself in short supply more often than not...

-- GopherDave