Dominion

I finally learned Dominion from Rio Grande Games this weekend. What a great card game! The idea of having a built deck game where you build the deck as part of play is ingenious. I played the "If this is your first time playing" game. I lost, but I caught on quickly. Final score 76 to 42. Yet another game to add to my Buy list.

Then that night, I dreamt about playing Dominion. Weird.

Con of the North

Con of the North, a local Saint Paul con, had its 20th anniversary this year. This was the first game con I've attended for several years. I had a great time.

Saturday, I played in three games, back to back, from 10a to 10p. The first was an Over the Edge adventure on Al Amarja. This is surreal modern setting on an independent island in the Mediterranean. It was fun and crazy. One PC was a talking gorilla veterinarian. I played a bicycle messenger who moonlighted as a high-tech thief. I can't really tell you what happened, other than a fantastic X Games-style bicycle free-styling run down a hill to knock out the bad guy, including skidding down a bannister and hitting a jump at the bottom. We laughed pretty much non-stop.

The next was a musketeer adventure in 17th century Paris, investigating the nighttime injury and maiming of other Musketeers. The adventure ended with a bang, literally, due to an explosives-obsessed alchemist. Unfortunately, though the sorcerer involved was killed, so were a number of Musketeers. But I got to kiss a beautiful succubus!

The last game was the highlight of the weekend. The setting was Pirates of the Caribbean, if the Aztecs and Incas had had magic, and therefore didn't get conquered by the conquistadors. I played a Aztec warrior/diplomat. We chased a pirate ship whose captain could control the wind with an ancient Olmec artifact. A fantastic ship battle and boarding ensued, and then a quick trip to the Meso-American underworld to play a game of Tlatchtli, or Mayan court soccer, against other lost souls. Thanks to the selfless sacrifice of one of the players, who leapt to the top of the court to confront the unnamed Olmec god, we scored a point (yours truly), nabbed the artifact, and vamoosed out of the underworld with the artifact and a few lost crew of the ship.

This was a new game GMed by the author (Hi, Chad), called Heirs to the Lost World. It uses a unique dice pool mechanic that gives players a large amount of flexibility in putting effort into their actions. Each culture has some form of magic: alchemy, voodoo, blood magic, sun magic, and shamanism. I liked the system.

The last game of the con was the Sunday morning Tekumel adventure, run by John Till, who played in a T:EPT adventure I ran for his birthday last fall. Called Jakalla Nights, it was a typical "Fresh Off the Boat" tribe in search of new home scenario that had very atypical results. I got to play my favorite nonhuman race, a Tinaliya. We got working passage on board Captain Harchar's ship. We had to do some sailing and shoveling bird guano. But just before we were going to disembark in Jakalla, we discovered that Harchar intended to sell us into slavery. So, we rioted, killed Harchar, and convinced the new captain to let us off in the swamps across the river from Jakalla. We were sick of 'civilized' people trying to screw us and wanted to find a home in the jungles similar to our previous home. Yay for self-determination!

I ended Sunday playing some Chrononauts and Monty Python Fluxx, thus getting my urge to play fun card games out of my blood for a bit.

All in all a good con.

I get to play!

This week is Con of the North, the local game convention celebrating its 20th year. I've been going for most of that time with hiati (hiatuses?) over the years. I remember being stuffed into the Landmark Center in the early 1990s, with most games played in the enormous atrium.

This year, I'm not running any games, just playing. And I get to play in Tekumel for once. The fellow for whom I ran a game for his birthday last fall is running a "Fresh off the boat" game on Sunday. I'm looking forward to what ever he has in store for us.

I haven't played in Tekumel for decades, so this is going to be fun.

Adventure help

I'm coming back to adventure building after a long hiatus, and I don't feel like I was ever that good at it to begin with. I pulled a couple books out of my library and wondered what the opinion of the assembled minds were of them before I commit time to reading them.

The first is Dungeon Master's Design Kit by Harold Johnson and Aaron Allston from AD&D 1E. It is an adventure design kit that has three parts -- Book 1: Adventure Design, Book 2: Forms Book, and Book 3: Adventure Cookbook. The forms are sheets for planning out your villians, and other aspects of the adventure.

The second book is the Dungeon Builder's Guidebook by Bruce Cordell for AD&D 2E.

Any thoughts? Useful to read? Total crap?

Are there more useful books? I've heard the AD&D 1E DMG has good advice.

Speak up, please.

Retro D&D

We started a new campaign in my Tuesday Night Gaming Group. We're using Swords and Wizardry, the OD&D reboot. Yesterday was character rolling and the initial setup. I had a blast.

But there's a problem. I'm the only warrior amongst a dwarven fighter-thief (emphasis on thief), a cleric, and an elvish multi-classed magic-user. Not only that, but I have the lowest hit points in the party. I do have a bow to fight things over there instead of right here, but still -- we're all going to die. The cleric also has a dog, who has one less hit point than the whole party combined. That dog is going to save our collective ass, I predict.

My character had the treasure map, so now we have a goal.

So, meet Tarmac the Glib, 1st level fighter:

Str 13
Dex 15
Con 8
Int 12
Wis 7
Chr 17

Hit points: 2 (bad rolling and -1 for Con)

Bastard Sword
Short bow and 40 arrows
Ring Mail
Shield
Treasure map

P.S. Coming up with the name was fun. It's been awhile since I've played low-level fantasy with punishing names.