Saturday, November 7, 2015

Gameholecon, Part 1

Like everyone else, I wish I had the leisure time to do one huge entry about Gameholecon. Alas, this is going to be done in short discrete chunks. Apologies for the inevitable multitude of posts, but hey - people have been asking for con reports, so who am I to hold back just because I don't have time to get it all into one entry?

Let me state up front that I had a nefarious purpose in attending. A few weeks ago, I finally picked up the slipcase edition of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and wanted to use my time breaking that thing in, getting to know the rules, the flow of gameplay, and just plain immersing myself in DCC. I had just drawn up a draft of a DCC Patron in an effort to more fully grasp the game mechanics and "feel" of the system, and I was ready to put this knowledge into practice. More importantly, I looked forward to meeting and gaming with several people, a few of whom I had already met and/or gamed with in person, many of whom I had not met outside of the hallowed halls of G+. Yeah, I was a little pumped!

So, here's what greeted me on my way in Friday morning:


Now, while I thought this was pretty cool, I am, frankly, completely burned out on steampunk. Excuse me for snobbery, but I'm just so over it. So while I appreciate the construct (and never did find out who built it, though I'd like to know), I let out a little internal groan and moved on. Besides, I was there to see real people. The statue was just gravy. Oily, steamy gravy.

The night before, +Reid San Filippo and I had a fun conversation about . . . wow, about a lot of stuff. Suffice it to say that Reid is as interesting and thoughtful as you would guess he is, if you've ever read his publications, particularly his Crawling Under a Broken Moon series of zines, which are excellent. So I ran into him again first thing in the morning. After shaking out some early con schedule bugs, we hung out with +Jason Bossert for a little while . . .

Until my phone rang. It was work. WORK! Argh. Well, I have only myself to blame. In my excitement to get the heck out of work the day previous, I left a spreadsheet open. A spreadsheet that our production schedule macro happens to need control over in order for my company to do its thing. Thankfully, I work about five minutes away, so I went in, closed the stupid spreadsheet, and came back in time for the first session of my day: Mutant Crawl Classics with the gentlemanly (unless he's killing you) +Jim Wampler. I must admit that , after listening to the Spellburn podcast for several months (which really led me to go ahead and buy the DCCRPG rulebook), and knowing his love for Gamma World (an old love that I share, going back to 1980), I was a little starstruck thinking about it. I was a touch nervous, too because . . . well, you know, you just get that way once in a while. Then I pumped up my courage and headed to the table. Heck, I *live* right near the Barony of Horn, one of the earliest outposts of post-apocalyptic role-playing. What the heck was I worrying about? Still, I was just a smidge nervous, Only a smidge . . .
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