NTRPG Con - Thurs Night

I realized that I can write something almost every night this week.  I may try to do that.

Thursday, June 4th.....the North Texas Role Playing Games Con officially starts at 6pm.  I wanted to get there by noon to have lunch with a special guest or two and hang out with old friends.   But Susan needed me to drive her to the doctor and drive her home, then she wanted a lunch with just the two of us (which was really nice).  I finally got over to the con at almost 4pm.  Checked in and dumped my stuff in my room.  The Bedford Holiday Inn's hallways looked like that scene from Poltergeist in which the hallway narrowed and elongated.  The ceiling was maybe 7 feet.  The room was nice but the toilet was weak.  Not good when two older guys are sharing a room.

I checked in and got my registration packet.  I had forgotten that I had bought 10 raffle tickets.  Filling out all the tickets and dropping them in the appropriate hopper, I noticed that there was a silent auction set up.  Nothing worth bidding on when I did a cursory view.  Wish I had looked closer.  Apparently the items rotated out and new ones were brought in a couple of times a day.  I was disappointed that no one had put our registered games in our packet.  Next year, I'll be sure to print it out.  I did know that my first game was set by tradition: Mythus Tower with Matt Finch.

Looking at the con layout, I realized that no one at the hotel knew how to handle a con.  One set of gaming rooms and the registration table was at one end of the hotel.  The other gaming rooms (including Mythrus Tower) and the Guest Sessions and Panels were at the complete opposite end of the hotel.  Great, lots of walking back and forth.  Did I mention that I had a large backpack filled with gaming stuff I wanted to get signed?  Yeah, it weighed a ton.

Dewayne and I met up with Charlie and headed to the bar.  We had at least an hour before the game.  In the bar, Matt comes in.  I get him to sign a couple of things.  As we're standing there, Michael Curtis comes in.  He did the Stonehell Dungeon as well as The Dungeon Alphabet (excellent resources!).  I tell him how privileged I felt to get to meet him as well as how I stole his idea of kobold workers and made them a union.  He loved it.  He signed my books, even referencing the kobolds. Pretty cool.  As we stood there and talked, I got to meet two guys from previous years and who are on the Knights & Knaves Alehouse forums.  This was an auspicious start to the con.

Dewayne ordered us a couple of pizzas from Papa John's and we headed over to the game.  Matt dug around for our character sheets but couldn't find mine.  I think I had died last year but I couldn't remember.  So, Dewayne & I rolled up characters.  I made a halfling fighter named Dalf (I like that name) and Dewayne was Salf the Dwarf.  We were brothers, twin brothers.  We entered the Tower with the group and started heading down into the deeper parts.  Charlie wanted to steal a door.  As we were working on getting a door loose in game, several of the guests started showing up to visit.  Tim Kask told us that doors were one of his favorite items to take when he explored dungeons.  That's all the encouragement we needed.  In game, the noise of removing the door summoned two carrion crawlers.  The ensuing battle was quite interesting because Charlie rolled a 1 when trying to drop a door on a crawler and instead ended up being pinned under it by the crawler.  Our party of 10 soon dropped to 3 after a few paralyzation attacks.  We did manage to kill the crawlers and no one died (I think).  We also learned that halfling urine breaks the paralyzing power of the crawlers, if a saving throw is made. 

We took a break and we all decided we were too tired to carry on.  So, a couple of late comers took our spot and we retired back to town.  Not bad.  I plan to get more rest before the next con though.

Next post, Friday's games: Gamma World and another Swords & Wizardry game run by Dennis Sustare (creator of the Druid class in D&D).