Going Medieval

Yes, yes, lousy blogging lately. Blame the Post Office. But during the last week we 1) ended our Pendragon campaign set in Lindsay, and went to our local Medieval fair. Here's the evidence!

 Sven getting ready to game. Dice, paper, Becks, Newman Os...yep, we're ready! (Sven also brought his Viking encampment down to the Medieval Fair, along with extra costumes for the rest of us. Huzzah!)

 Setting up the Battle Board, aka our card table. All snacks off, please!

 "24 on 10d6?! What the...!"
Greg is also famous for being a lousy die-roller, much to the player's delight.

 When I travel I look for foreign dice. From left to right, that's a d6 from Japan showing a 2, a bone d6 from Iceland showing a 3, one of the crazy Polish d20s I got at Tentacles Omega in Germany showing a 19, and a Zocchi d6 showing a 6. And that's the character sheet for Sir Theudic le Garde, knight of Leicester, familiaris of Count Agwar, Candlebee. Oh yeah, and traitor to King Arthur. D'oh!

A man and his game having a good time...hey! who left a beer on the bookcase?

Tsk, gamers.

 All the Candlebees are down. King Arthur didn't even have to draw Excalibur (which would have been a better end for us!)

So that was the end of the game. It's always a strange campaign when the GM is also play-testing, though Greg might lay the strangeness back on us, the players...Let us raise a horn of spirits to the men of Leicester and their (few) allies! Sir Gwalchmai, dragon-slayer and Round Table knight; Sir Brandagoris of the Ham-bone, fearsome slayer of Saxons; Sir Bledri, the most reckless of all Candlebees; Sir Gwair, a ladies man to the end and the spark that brought about the rise of the County of Leicester; Sir Cynfyn, Devil to the Irish but loyal to a fault to his lord; Sir Padern, gruff and rough and a teacher of young knights; Sir Rhun with the most beautiful hair until the Queen came to court; Sir Amadis, the peasant-knight who finally killed the Black Annis; and finally, our lord Saint Edar Allington, Count of Leicester and Lambor, once King of Oriel and brother-in-law to both King Arthur and Prince Valiant, savior of Britain and known from Norway to Byzantium. Adieu.

 The kid in the red tunic is Tristan, getting ready to boff at our local medieval fair. His dad's Steve from our Saturday night group. Steve's character, Sir Extavius, successfully evacuated our player's surviving wifes and children from Britain to Trond, to live at the court of the good Price Valiant (uncle to Count Agwar).

Ooh, game geek!

I got my hair braided at the fair—people didn't recognize me at work the next day! I did take the flowers out, but even so...

Is it okay to weasel?

Got a call from Greg this morning, who had a few minutes before he had to dash off to a LARP. The Kraken game convention is going very well, and he's having a great time. He's been showing the Europeans Crisis, a boardgame by the Hain Bros. It's a riff of the Life board game, except with crime and a bus pass for those who can't afford to start off with a car. Greg somehow managed to squeeze the box into his already-full luggage. Since they didn't make a lot of them, it's hard to come by and a lot of people have never played it. (Valley of the Mammoths, a really fun game, wouldn't fit in Greg's bag with Crisis already in there, so he left it. Too bad, too, since down the road from the schloss where The Kraken takes place is an elephant sanctuary. Plenty of atmospheric odor when the wind is right, says Greg.)

Does this make me look medieval?

So, Crisis. American gamers gleefully play weasel cards on each other ("I see you downloaded some movies off the Internet...that's illegal! Tell you what: you can pay a fine of $200, or give me $100 not to say anything!") but Greg said the Europeans were having trouble getting behind weaseling. They didn't feel comfortable doing that to each other! Which is not what I would have guessed from reading The Economist every week.

Except the Finns and the Dutch. They got right into it, no hesitation at all.

Sure does seem to be a lot of french fry consumption this trip.

The Pendragon Eschille

Got a letter and package in the mail the other day. The books were for Greg, but this was for me:

Stoked! I didn't get to go to Continuum, out in exotic Leicester, this year, where The Pendragon Eschille unleashed its awesomeness against gamers during a role-playing tour de force. When Greg mentioned the Eschille and what they were doing at the con, I said how cool would that be, to have a Pendragon Eschille t-shirt...and lo and behold! those great guys sent one to the Schlepper of Books at Conventions.

Thanks, guys! It will be my official Pendragon GM tee when we start up the next campaign in a few weeks time.

A message

The Castle of Butter? ...

Mmm, whatever that was, it was good!

 Oh, the message!

Held prisoner by k richard's men
See facebook for detAils
I am working on an escape

Ahh, coffee!

Somebody's having fun in France...

After Tentacles Comes...the Kraken!

Castle Stahleck, photo by Darran Sims

Tentacles was the best gaming convention I ever attended, hands down. That's Castle Stahleck, on the Rhine, where the event was held every year. Awesome! Chris Jensen Romer interviewed Fabian Kuchler, one of the organizers, about the event and its successor, The Kraken. If you're a true gamer, and have a week or so to jet off to Germany, it will so be worth it.

Schloss Neuhausen (c) Schloss Neuhausen

From castle to chateau...or schloss.

Gaming in Germany

Just back from Tentacles Omega, a very fine convention in the European style (high-quality rpgs, tabletop, and freeform games, attendees from around the globe, almost no dealers, and alcohol) in the best setting ever for a game con: a castle-now-hostel perched above a medieval town on the banks of the Rhine. Yes!

Gregory brought his elaborate tabletop Escape from Innsmouth game; people ran freeforms for Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Joss Whedon's Serenity 'Verse, and the Second Crusade; Greg introduced the Pendragon battle system to a room full of thirty people; Sandy brought a couple of new boardgames (Dominion and Race for the Galaxy) and happily played them with whoever wandered by. So many of us had small children in tow that a creche would've been handy.

And because it was the last one, everyone was there: gamers from the US, France, Germany (natch), the UK, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Australia, Singapore, Poland, the Netherlands. I don't recall anyone from Canada, Spain, or Italy, but I don't remember where Pablo's from.

It took a long time to say goodbye.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown: Sven in the InfoShrine.

L-R: Pummel, Chrissy, some dude I don't know, and Hahn in front of the microfleet of European cars.

From a previous Tentacles: Fabian and Greg get ready to Do What Is Necessary to Daughters of Darkness.

Also from a previous Tentacles: Greg and Sandy's secret game designer's handshake. Shhh.

The Butcher of Bacharach has been grilling for a few years now. At a previous Tentacles, Charlie and Hahn prepare at the local Rewe. This year, Charlie estimated he grilled about 100kg of meat.

Awww...reunited in the InfoShrine. (Greg got picked up at the airport; I took the train.)

Daniel Fahey out in the courtyard. He spent most of the con cradling either a bottle of hooch or Gregory's daughter Amandine. But not at the same time.

Alex, Sandy, and Grant Spawn of Sandy, also out in the courtyard of the castle. Did I mention they had an espresso machine this year? VERY handy, but I think I spent about 30 euro on coffee drinks during the con!

ConFabian with his Commanding Cap of Obedience. He foolishly set it aside during our trip to Dreieich after the con. It was like herding cats.

That's the gaming part. For the food part, Charlie Krank (Chaosium) busted out his grill—the one that lives in Germany—and cooked whatever was brought to him: pork steaks, beek steaks, duck sausages, Thuringer sausages, bratwurst, a Turducken (with gravy! thanks, Megan)...we ate a lot of meat. Including a fun wildegoulash in the castle cafeteria made with venison. And doner kebaps. And Turkish pide. And flammekuchen (Alsatian pizza).

We also ate a lot of ice cream. Well, gelato really. Including Riesling gelato and spagetti ice.

Other notable foods eaten: handkasse mit musik, dinkelbrot, green sauce over potatoes and eggs, apfelwein, and a shitload of beer.

More photos, including German bumper cars, after G-man gets back with the camera.

Feeling dreadful?

Courtesy of yog-sothoth.com

Lou Zocchi!

The godfather of polyhedral dice speaks:



It's long (almost ten minutes!), but if you're a gamer you'll want to hear classic lines like

...a lot of game masters prematurely kill off characters that deserve to live...

Damn straight they do! I just know I want one of those green d20s.

Otaku

Even though today was a gorgeous day, and I did indeed spend a chunk of it outside gardening, a large part of it was spent indoors, parked in The Comfy Chair with a rotating cast of cats, reading the New York Times, well worth the $5 it costs to truck it into Humboldt County.

The magazine had an article on Will Wright and his strangely textile-free home in the East Bay hills. Back in the day, when it was still called the Computer Game Developers Conference down in Silicon Valley, Greg ran into Will. This was just after SimCity had come out, a gaming phenomenon. Greg was anxious to talk to Will, as SimCity was such a departure from the usual computer gaming dreck. But with SimCity being such a hit, everyone in the hall wanted to talk to Will Wright.

So Greg politely stood among the circle of people waiting for their chance. And waited. Greg was successful in catching Will's eyes, but Will kept on talking to others in the tightly-knit circle around him, including a pair of Japanese publishers. Very intense talk. Until one of the Japanese men happened to notice Greg standing there and broke off his conversation with Will, saying "Oh excuse me please, I must talk to Greg Stafford!" And the Japanese guy turned away and started talking to G-man. How rude, and how un-Japanese! He then apologetically turned back to Will and said, "Greg Stafford very famous in Japan."

I think that was the last time they, uh, met.

Dork!

Shitastic

So long, Rory.

See you in the ninth sub-circle, friend. Save me a seat.

w00t!

Crazy! I was off yesterday, I was off today, and since tomorrow's Sunday that'll make a sweet, sweet three-in-a-row days off. And the weather's been nice!

Then, while I was out grubbing in the bad garden we got a delivery:

The card read,

Suzanne HAPPY BIRTHDAY (tomorrow!) I know, I know, but your birthday is on a freakin' Sunday! Anyway—have fun. Thanks for renting out your husband to us!!! Fabian & the Tentacles team

Guys, that is so awesomely sweet. I love getting flowers. Thank you! Especially since, this being Tentacles Fumble, my husband is not gaming at Castle Stahleck but typing away right here at the New Vitality Homeland.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow we're having a potluck here at the house and building a chicken coop. Let the eggs begin!