Ok, a relatively full report on NTXRPG Con 2015. At least from the DM Mike & Liz PoV!
Wednesday:
Liz was still in Georgia, but Robert M/Treebore drove up from Dallas and hung out Wed. evening until Liz arrived from the airport. Chatted about C&C, Victorious, 8 million year old cats, and other stuff. It was unfortunately the most time we had to spend with him, but our hectic schedule will be revealed below.
Thursday:
As noted earlier, Liz didn’t get in from Georgia until about 10pm Wed night, so we spent half of the night and much of the morning Thursday getting things packed and ready for the con. Traffic wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but bad enough to get us into the hotel around 5-ish. The hotel said our room wasn’t “ready” until 6pm, so we had dinner with the Fialkow boys and others until our room was “ready.” I’ll go into more detail on the readiness below.
Got into the room, then hung out watching episodes of the “Battletech” cartoon with the BT addict of Ben and his brother the quickly comatose Jared. I’m not saying they were on drugs, but both are doctors. Just sayin’. Got to the room around midnight and went to bed….only to discover that the air conditioner was dripping. Not bad all by itself, but the drip kept hitting the AC frame, making nice little Chinese Water Torture™ noise all night long.
Friday:
We woke up bright and early thanks to the lovely air conditioner. Had the breakfast buffet, then got back to the room to dress in our Steampunk stuff. After that, we went to the Big Bear Board Room (?) for the Victorious game. Game went well (I think), with DM Glen, DM Eric T. and his wife Rachel, Hoyt, Dad’s Angry, and Liz battling evil Anarchists and their scheme to get a war started between the USA and Britain in 1891.
Though he couldn’t make the game due to a prior engagement, Corbett from the Gag Men Podcast showed up in his “Leftenant Victory” costume to provide a public service announcement to one and all…involving castor oil.
Afterwards we changed back into our Secret Identities and went to dinner. Then we arrived at 6pm at John “TacoJohn” Hershberger’s 1E AD&D conversion of Maure Castle. By 10pm my dwarf was meat paste and I returned to the room while Liz’s elven MU not only made it to the end but also didn’t take a single hit point of damage! Unfair, I tell you!
Saturday:
Got up thanks to our AC alarm that morning and just had enough time to grab some food and get to M. Rasmussen’s Top Secret game where we were tasked to infiltrate Sheik Aharmered Personnel Carrier. That’s not a typo! We parachuted in, snuck into the camp, dealt with robotic camels as well as merely hybrid camels, then stole plans for new drone technology and stole the Sheik’s car and peeled out to the retrieval point. I played an English reconnaissance expert (Infiltrator class) called Stanley the Butler while Liz played Fifi, a expert thief (Pilferer class). Fortunately one of the players (Steve G.) was kind enough to spring for pizza for everyone during the game so lunch wasn’t a problem. Thanks Steve!
I then made the mistake of being conscientious and checked my online class page. I then spent 3 hours dealing with students who can’t seem to read directions for a week. Got out of there and grabbed dinner to rush to DM Jim’s Mutant Crawl Classics game. I didn’t lose any of my characters (2 Pure Strain Humans named Gomez and Morticia, and my plantient mutant Rustle) despite it being a 0-level character funnel. I think Jim was so wiped out from running CC games that he went a little easy on us. Liz did kill another of our party though, so there were character deaths.
We got out of there around 10pm and spent the next couple of hours actually walking around the dealer room to find stuff to buy. We also got a chance to actually talk to people! Well, until midnight and then we went to the “Satanic Panic” auction. As usual, Satan made an appearance to run the auction…but this year had a couple of lovely helpers. Guys, if you’re lucky you can find the pics of the two succubi online!
Liz and I got several goodies, and she got quite a few pictures. We picked up the “Rapturous Voyage” RPG; whose mode of play someone put up at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR9GY492Pic and its for a friend. Honest!
I also grabbed the TSR minigame Revolt on Antares, which I’d been wanting for years. Viking Gods was thrown in as well. We also finally got a ‘real’ copy of the infamous Dark Dungeons strip, also picked up the “What’s New with Phil and Dixie” compilations vol. 1 and 2.
During the bids for the RV game, Michael Curtis promised to run it next year if someone bought it. We did, and Liz cornered him after the auction to hold him to his promise. We shall see if Mr. Curtis follows through.
Got to bed around 2ish.
Sunday:
Slept until 10am this time, then got our stuff packed and checked out at 11am. We met with Steve and chatted Victorious plans. After this, our friend Kevin ran a 2E AD&D game for those old Tylerites who were at the convention as well as Dennis P., who kept casting covetous eyes at my classic Battlestar Galactica pilot’s jacket. The game ended around 3ish and we came home.
The only addendum is that DM Vince won some swag from Lloyd Metcalf at his artist’s auction. Lloyd got us to take the stuff home, and Vince just stopped by to pick it up a couple of hours ago.
All in all, we had a great time… Our only regret is that we didn’t feel like we got much time to actually visit with folks. We’ve agreed that next year we’ll limit ourselves to 1 game a day so we’ve got more time just to hang out and chat. For instance, we never saw Weiss and Hickman nor Larry Elmore and oter first-time guests. , Only Liz got to chat with Frank Mentzer and Darlene. We saw Tim Kask, and Jennell Jaquays but all too briefly. We shook hands with Jon Peterson in the hallway, and told him we’d chat later but never got to. L
Next year us old coots will slow down a bit!
Mike