Gen Con Indy 2012

The Dreaded Balloon Dragon of Doom!!!
Beware the breath weapon...

Well I just got back from Gen Con in Indianapolis yesterday and it was a lot of fun as always.  I drove up on Wednesday with my good friend and GM Tony of the Savage Sword of Scadgrad and his kids and we met some other friends there where we had an adjoining room for ease of hotel gaming.  I wandered around in the exhibit hall for a bit on Thursday where I visited the OSR booth and bought a few modules and books and visited a few other favorite company booths.  Then I dropped off some of my old 3.0/3.5 books to sell in the auction and browsed the consignment area where I picked up a few things including Dungeon Module B4 The Lost City and a fairly decent copy of Unearthed Arcana.  I attended Gen Con last year and didn't play in any of the scheduled events (a big reason to go to the Con for me) so this year I vowed to sign up for a few things and/or sit in on a few games with generic tickets. 

I played in an AD&D game on Friday for a while set in the World of Greyhawk with a group of guys.  Four of these guys were there for a reunion of their old D&D group from back when they were kids who had drifted apart over the years after having moved away from each other.  We played a starter adventure available as a free download called Spider Farm by Stuart Marshall from the Knights and Knaves Alehouse.  I played a wizard (we were all 1st level) who obviously had magical darts - really I just rolled three 20s to hit in two rounds during the big fight with the brigands which was crazy lucky.  He also managed to save the day a few times with his one sleep spell and miraculously didn't die.  Afterwards we leveled up and set forth on another adventure to seek the source of the Goblin incursion within the Dreadwood Forest.  We found the dungeon that was their source which was guarded by a large group of giant spiders but unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could make it into the dungeon to where the evil Shadow Goblins had come from to attack the good citizens of the Yeomanry.

Then I sat in on a Runequest Second Edition game on Saturday for a little while with the same guys - I hadn't played Runequest since high school so that was fun too.  It was mostly a jousting tournament which was a blast (my guy got skewered but an NPC I ran afterwards nearly killed one of the player characters due to some extremely lucky dice rolling on my part (01 on my joust attack roll) and extremely unluckly dice rolling on his part (00 on the parry roll).  The healers attending the tourney healed him up afterwards though.

After that I played a Flames of War demo in the miniature game area where it was three guys playing allies in the early desert war (each guy had two platoons of light tanks - 2 with crusaders and one with Stuarts) against three guys with either three panzers (2 guys with two mark IIIs and a mark IV short barrel) and one guy with six Italian light tanks which were pretty much the same as the crusaders (fast but with very little armor or firepower and AT).  The mission was meat grinder so if your tanks got blown up, they just came back on from reserve at a random location so you could keep playing.  Playing light Allied tanks against German armor reminds me of why I like playing the Germans - not surprisingly, the Germans blew up about 30 of our paltry little light tanks and ended up winning the game but it was still a lot of fun.  This was of course made worse because in the desert there is little if any cover for the fragile little tanks to hide behind (really just some hills but mostly wide open desert terrain).

We also got in a game of the Blood Bowl team manager board game, two games of Swords and Wizardry White Box (0e D&D) and a game of Basic Action Super Heroes a.k.a. Bash (pretty much rules light Champions) in the hotel room as well which was also a lot of fun.  All in all it was a blast and a great vacation...