The Power d4 Can Barely Be Contained!

A pleasant surprise this week was a small package containing the five Power d4 dice I pledged for on Kickstarter. 

It was nearly the perfect Kickstarter, clear goals, no stretch goals, and even a *gasp* limitation on the rewards. 

The only problem?  My one Power d4 immediately jumped out of the packaging and onto the floor.  That same die has subsequently bounced off the table numerous times in my test rolls and dice rub mojo tests. 

I'm hoping it's just a factory defect and not curse, but while I'm away most of the weekend, I've kept it away from the other dice.

(Kickstarter) Introducing the "F6" Die

Do you need for your dice to me as emotional as you are on a failed roll!  Fear no more, for there is now a Kickstarter for dice I will only call F6's.

(Kickstarter) Pulp Sci-Fi Heroes & Villains

Classic pulp gets a lot of love, put classic pulp sci-fi not so much, especially more generic use figures.

Crooked Dice Game Design Studio has launched a Kickstarter for Pulp Sci-Fi Heroes & Villains, a set of 8 heroes and 8 villains cast in white metal.

Lost Dispatches of Feraso #53 - To the Late Viscount's Daughter

11th Day of QuaDec in the Imperial Year of 1028

Feldkurton, Barony of Greyhawk, Viscounty of Verbobonc

To the Fair Lady Helena of Verbobonc

Again, my heartfelt condolences for the loss of your father.  It has been a trying time for all of us who were loyal to and loved him.  I can only hope Eger can continue his wise path of governance.

It was a pleasure to see you again, and I greatly appreciated your attendance in the Viscount's Court upon my impromptu installation as Baron of Greyhawk.   I had not been properly briefed on such an appointment prior to my recall to Verbobonc.

The world is full of a number of unfortunate things.  You, an accomplished scholar in your own right, was not offered the hereditary title due to your gender and marriage.  Had I not already secured my bride to sire a son and secure a continuance of power in my tiny dominion, I would have offered my own services, and hoped my recent pedigree would be sufficient to be an acceptable spouse to you and the deciding powers.  Perhaps we would both be at far more acceptable stations in our lives.

I apologize for my lack of conversation regarding certain topics of your interest.  Despite my pleadings, Andrei has left me. The Tower of Enerk in Hermetus proved just too tempting and he purchased it outright.  He spends his days carefully re-engineering the Clockwork Horrors that remained in the remote corners of the tower.  Despite being the midst of Spring, I am trapped in Feldkurton with the duties I personally accepted.  Perhaps a trip to Hermetus will be in order for next year.

Yours in Service,

Sir Elsderth Greyhawk, Baron of Greyhawk
Your Friend in Perpetuity

DM Notes:  Lady Helena was never going to be Viscountess.  Too smart for her suitors, too bold to be subservient, it would not her nor her father's generation to change to rules of the title of Viscount.  Alas, that belongs to her cousin, Eger.  Eger is Viscount merely by the patriarchy.  His better qualified cousins, Lady Graham and Lady Graysteel are a famed crusader and adventurer, respectively, but alas, they have no spouse.  Eger, being married, with a son, and an active and quite capable member of the Verbobonc Guard (the infantry company, not the famed Verbobonc Lancers), he would be the "safe" and preferred choice.  

I'm not quite sure of the fate of Lady Helena.  She may continue to fight for the welfare of the Viscounty, she may succumb to social convention.  She might find a mixture of both.  Such is the life of an NPC that did not exist prior to Elsderth's first encounter with the Viscount in this series. 

As this is a short letter, I might as well tackle another topic I've been working through since the original Order traverse the Weissmach:  Elsderth's relationship with Andrei.  

I'm not quite sure, but as I continued to write episodes, I saw opportunities to ensure the relationship between the pair could simply be a true platonic friendship that Elsderth couldn't get from the true warrior caste that dominated the Order.    

Or there could be a simple romantic relationship, possibly hidden by social conventions such as marriage and siring an heir, with all the adventuring and "holidays."  His pining for him in the confidence of Lady Helena might push that to one of the decisions, but in the end, I'll leave it up to the dear reader to decide on the impact and extent of their friendship.    

NEXT: #54 - Krasimir Tower

Mandatory Basketball Rant - Week 2

It's been a week of dealing with coaches scrambling for more practice time, and most find it completely unacceptable that the few time slots I have available are either 5-6pm or 8-9pm. 

Work crushed my enthusiasm for anything this week.  I literally walked away from my computer for my Monday night D&D game with 15 minutes left in the session, simply due to exhaustion... and the week went downhill from here.

I was so rattled by work-related problems, and absolute idiots on the commute home, that by the time I got to practice, I completely forgot to lower the basket for the girls.  Rebounding and dribbling drills went well, but I've got three girls who simply can not grok the concept of a zone defense.  It's worked for the one girl, who simply wandered away from her girl to get to the ball while playing man-to-man.  My wife took the kids to their basketball practices in the West Hazleton league, and sat in the driveway, completely dejected.

To offset that, I also got an email from the mom of our brand new player, thanking me for the time, the patience, and the enthusiasm towards her daughter. 

With no game this week for the community league, all attention was pointed towards the last week of the Fall ball league before the playoffs.  Maja and Millie finally got a chance to play their friend Ary (she missed the last match-up and my girls slaughtered that team). 

This time, it was Ary vs Maja with everyone else watching.  With the girls down 16-14, Ary had 12 of the 16,  Maja 5 of 14 and Millie 3 of 14.  With six seconds left, Millie stripped the ball, streaked down the sideline, and placed a beautiful bounce pass to Maja for the game-tying shot.  Maja added a quick bucket five seconds into overtime, but the other team pulled ahead to win 20-18. 

If I can get the girls to rebound better, and Millie can drive to the basket and draw a number of fouls, week 3 might be a better report.  

My Day-Trip to Fall-in! 2019

The last three years, I've managed to get Fall-In! into my convention cycle.  Cold Wars is supposed to be my "guys weekend", Historicon is whatever suits the family's schedule, but Fall-In! has been the weekend I take my eldest daughter Maja to the con.

This year, a recent promotion at work and trouble in that paradise kept Fall-In! as a last minute decision.  So last second, in fact, that I didn't register for the con and get things settle until late Thursday afternoon.

The plan was to put my youngest, Millie, on the bus, and take Maja into work with me for an hour so I could leave for Philly with a clear conscience.  We (Maja included) ended up having to deal with every executive in my company with "Chief" and "Officer" wanting to talk to me about issues that could wait, and it was almost Noon before we could dash out of the office and hit the turnipike.

Fifteen bucks in tolls later (and a stop for Roy Rogers), we were in the parking lot for the Radisson, trying to figure out which way the registration desk and pre-reg pick-up scan were.  Its location made perfect sense to me after the fact, but a few more signs to 80% idiot-proof the process would have been greatly appreciated.

When Historicon made the move to Valley Forge in the aftermath of the Baltimore fiasco, I have fond and distinct memories of running and playing games near the dealer hall, in an area which is now the casino proper.  The only noteworthy walks I remember were through the byzantine passages to get from the convention center back to the hotel (first H'con), as well as the horribly steep parking lot (second H'Con).

I'm still amazed the labyrinth-like hallways are still there, and even more amazed that the hallways rise and fall with ramps when I swear the casino/dealers hall is downhill from the Radisson.

We didn't even make it to the dealer's hall on the first attempt over three, as we happened upon Hobby University, and everyone's favorite gnome guy, Jim Stanton.  We hung out there, caught up on things, and were happy to say hi to every other friend who happened by Hobby U.

A LOT more space for Hobby University here than at the Lancaster Convention Center

We made a single foray into the dealer's hall and left half-satisfied.  Literally half of the items I was looking for were available because half of the items weren't brought to the con.  I get that some of the dealers can't  haul their huge catalogs of figures, and I also get the concept of a simple email from me to the company asking if they were going to bring Chilean dragoons or Buddhist monks in thongs ensures that the company will bring something related to the desired item.   But some of the items were brand new releases within the last 90 days, so by Friday at 3:30, we should have some stock available, or at least point at the empty spot where the figures were.

Finally, the dealers!

After a trip to Chili's for dinner, we came back and celebrated Toys for Tots with a Squighopper (aka Gnome) Joust.  The great thing about the joust is that it doesn't matter if it's knights, goblins riding squigs, or gnomes riding roosters, it works. 

Maja was ruthless in her jousting and did far better than me.

I got knocked out early, not by the usual run of kids, but the opposite, a senior citizen brigade that included the Gnome King's mom!  For her first con, she performed more than admirably, finally falling in the finals to the Fall-In! 2019 Joust Champion, Todd Pressley.

The Gnome King working the joust brackets.

Even better than previous years, this year's joust raised funds towards the Toys for Tots program run every year. 

The Toys for Tots volunteers do a great job each and every year.

With that, we were a few minutes short of Wally's Basement (aka the flea market), so Maja and I went back to the car, drove it over to the casino side of of the facility, and by that time, descended in the debauchery of sales already in progress.  Twenty minutes later, we were in the car and heading back home. 

The Valley Forge Casino & Resort/Radisson:  My last two conventions here, I didn't have much time to explore.  This time, I needed to explore to find the bulk of the games.  Most games appeared to be in rooms centralized in the Radisson, but there were so many rooms all over the place.  Air flow and climate control were bearable, although in any warmer weather, I might include a box fan as my gear.   The only on-site food we suffered through was horribly overprice Dunkin Donuts (even for casino fare), which we grabbed on the way out.  My iced coffee was wrong (who screws up cream and sugar?), and my daughters' drink had bits of plastic in it.  An angry letter to the casino and Dunkin were sent before I typed this up, for what it's worth. 

And yes, a few people I know actually won money at the casino.  No one stole any dice.

Parking:  The old bugbear of the Host is a non-issue at this site. I never had a problem finding a reasonable parking spot.

Dealer's Hall:  Good assortment of dealers, a few local vendors.  I didn't have an extensive list built up for the con, but about 1/3 of it was products the dealers didn't bring, and our limited time at the con didn't allow for restful perusing. 

Swag:  Again, with my limited list, limited stock, and limited patience with the flea market, it really wasn't much:

• The obligatory pint o' mdf bases (with extra mdf "dust" this year).  
• A few Post-Apocalyptic figures from Brigade Games, plus one of the brand new French Gnome Cavalry riding a snail (They are fast in the rules, you should see them escargot!)
• Windsword:  A few Reaper Bones and Wizkids Wardlings figures my local shops simply do not get in, plus some mushrooms and Egyptian terrain 
• Badger: A lone 1898 Teddy Roosevelt mounted figure, but I'll get my old Grenadier dragonmen via an online order. 
• Eureka: Maja got some frogs and a steampunk dog.  She's also excited to get an official HMGS badge holder.   
• Wally's Basement: outside of the sheer pleasure of knocking aside a few absolute jerks of human beings (and confirming why I don't go shopping on Black Friday).  Sixty Wargames Factory zombies on a sprue, a zombie hunter, and an old Hackmaster mini.
• And a big thank you to Kevin, Brad, and any other "Canadians" hiding at the con, who gave Maja a copy of Quarriors.  She greatly appreciated the gesture and is excited to try it out.

For a rushed trip, I had a good time.  I reconnected with a bunch of friends, I have an itinerary for Cold Wars, and I've confirmed a few folks' interest in my "birthday party" at Mepacon in April.

What to Run at Mepacon Spring 2020?

Alright, it's official, my Birthday Extravaganza will be at Mepacon, April 24-26, 2020 at the Mountain Laurel Resort in White Haven, Pennsylvania.

So, the next question I have to figure out is, "What do I want to run/play over the weekend?"

The Mepacon website hasn't even been changed from last weekend's Middle-Earth theme, but theme for Spring 2020 is "Anime and Animation."  The theme isn't a hard, fast rule, but I like to consider them while I ponder my games.

*Theme* Cthulhu Comes to Springfield - The legendary Simpsons Toon game hasn't changed much since the mid-90's, but it's due to be pulled out of the archives.

*Theme* My Little Pony - Seriously, the MLP games I've run before at the con have been short, fun, and well-attended with a mix of players.  Of course, this will be the first con that my daughter Maja is not getting in for free, so I might see if she wants to take over the Pony reins.

*Theme* Octonauts - I got no takers on my version of the Disney Jr show during Mepacon's Aquatic theme.

Car Wars - a - Palooza -   The original birthday concept was a hotel conference room with friends, food, and heavy duty flaming oil jets with the Steve Jackson.  With the Steve Jackson Pocket Box Kickstarter getting fulfilled, I could come in ready to bear...

From wargamedork.blogspot.com

The Battle of Yellowstone - At Mepacon Fall, I spoke about my Gnome Wars game for the Battle of Yellowstone, documenting the US Cavalry's occupation of the National Park during the 19th Century.   It's a high concept game for a convention like Mepacon, that doesn't have a strong wargaming streak, but it might work.  I'm also planning on running this at Cold Wars for the Wargames in Education block, so it should be easy to pack up and transport.

Hackmaster 4th Edition - The Burning Trogs Redux -  With the right attendees to the soiree, I'd love an unofficial evening of crunchy, exploding dice with my favorite Trogs.

Diplomacy - Another unscheduled event, but a potentially horrible idea of running Diplomacy for a select group, preferably in the hotel bar.

Risus (anything) - Risus isn't my go-to convention game, but I'd certainly dig some sort of fun, with the right set-up.  If I have to run it, it might be a great bookend opposite a two-hour My Little Pony game.

Samurai Swords -  Okay, my college roommate Steve would have to bring his copy to run, but my lone game of Samurai Swords is one the fondest (and scariest) moments in the college basement. #AngryHoyce

Maybe some old-school Axis and Allies with 3rd party expansions???

Contemptible Little Armies - Second Samoan Civil War -  It's my birthday, I love skirmishes in the Second Samoan Civil War, I'll run a game if I want to, dagnabbit!

I was running con games for a decade before this picture at Mepacon I, circa 2000.

Anything nostalgic.... We focused on D&D, Battletech, and my Samoa game for the last gala.  More Battletech?  Legions of Steel?  Battlelords of the 23rd Century? A Wrestlerama tournament?  BURNING PLASTIC????

It's maddening!