See you all tonight (tomorrow, etc)!
Don't forget if you have an Acaeum pin you can put it on your con badge to help us identify other Acaeumites!

Waiting for my flight to Dallas right now

From all of us who couldn't make it to the con, to you - Safe travels and happy gaming !

And we have arrived!

NTRPG CON REPORT

The main vendor room.


About half of the NTRPGCON staff.  We were never in the same place at the same time.

I had a great time at the con and played in quite a few games.  The best part is socializing with people who love gaming as much as you do.  As Bill Webb so simply said, "It's like coming home to family."  One other notable quote was when I was asking Badmike what someone looked like.  He said, "Well, he is short, balding, he has a beard, and wears a black…..never mind, that's how half the people here look.  I'll point him out to you when I see him."

I must mention a few good souls who gave me some free food.  Steve Marsh's wife always cooks cinnamon rolls and his daughter cooks a mean Key Lime Pie.  Fortunately, I was able to sample both.  Skeeter Green's game gave me a slice of pizza, and it was really good, probably because I was super hungry at the time.  I ate probably half a dozen apples thanks to the hotel. Finally, as the hotel staff was closing down the food area Friday night, one of the workers gave me a free BBQ sandwich, and it was delicious.

I played in eight games overall.  All of the games were worthwhile and all the DM's were at least decent.  In other words, there were no sadistic DM's who make it their goal to kill off all the players or anything like that.    I rolled well in most of the games and really well in a couple of the games, but I never rolled that great for any of my character's stats, but I find that is rarely important to gaming success or fun.  I ended up in three games with Kingofpain, and I always enjoy gaming with him.  Overall, I didn't play with a lot of fellow ACAEUM'ers, which was disappointing.

My first game on Wednesday night was a "Dungeon Tiki Valkarie A Go Go."  Even the DM called his dungeon "bonzo," and that was an appropriate descriptor.  We were Viking-like men who entered an undersea dimension with groups of creatures and humanoids of all kinds.  There was a sunken aircraft carrier with wererat surfers, for example.  While the encounters were interesting, the goal of the dungeon was to explore, and I prefer games with a mission.  Our gaming table layout was impressive with lots of decorations and each player received a free tiki-themed cup and tiki idol necklace.  I like free stuff!

My Thursday morning game started at 9:00 AM, and most all of us were clearly tired.  The dungeon was "Malevolo's Fortress of Wonder," and it was also an interesting and varied puzzle of puzzle rooms.  The DM was solid, but all of the players, including me, were slow to figure out the varied rooms we entered.  We struggled for a long time in a room with mirrors, wardrobes and a bottomless chasm, just trying to figure out how everything interacted so we could cross the chasm safely.  Below is a picture of that game in progress.


Thursday afternoon I played in bbarsh's tournament adventure, "The Great Race Across the Waste."  Fortunately, the DM rolled horribly and we rolled well, and we came in first place!  We had one player who seemed to comment on everything, which wasted a lot of time, so I did not anticipate us placing that well, but we did have some people who solved problems well, and that helped.  I heard later that most every team had players who died, but we only lost two (including me) but our character's deaths happened at the end.  Below is a picture of that game in progress.


Thursday night‘s game turned out to be one of my favorites even though my expectations were low.  It was the K&KA Social game with lots of beer for everyone (and I usually avoid alcohol for genetic reasons).  Even more daunting, the game hosted twenty-four players and two Dungeon Masters!  Only one player in the room was female. :O  Anyway, I could not envision this going well.  Fortunately, I rolled up my character with the magic item, Magic Carpet, and I realized this would likely prove valuable, and it did.  Our goal was to retrieve the Gygax Cup by going through a bunch of puzzle rooms.  As the evening progressed and people became more drunk, I was wondered whether we would even finish the dungeon.  Not only did we complete the mission, we also "killed" each of the DM's!  Not only that, each participant received a boxed copy of the dungeon we played in!  :O  Below is a picture of that game in progress.


My first Friday game didn't start until noon, and I was grateful for that as I slept in a little.  This was a Boot Hill game DM'd my Steve Winter, and he always does a great job.  I was a ranch hand and my boss' ranch was being encroached upon by an evil, greedy, bigger rancher.  I had never played Boot Hill before, and I found it a lot of fun as it involved a lot of role-playing and a lot of shooting.  Everyone worked well together, and we killed the bad guy and all his expert hired guns.

My Friday evening game was also DM'd by Steve Winter, and it was a Savage Worlds game called "7 Assassins."  It was a great mix of players who worked together well, and we had a blast.  I rolled unusually well and wiped out some serious monsters.  It has an unusual dice dynamic where, if you roll the highest number on a dice, you roll again and add that rolled number to your total.  As long as you keep rolling the highest number, you keep rolling!  :O  We accomplished our mission and killed the bad guy and all his demons and elementals.  Below are two pictures of that game in progress.

Steve enthusiastically telling us that we were going down!  


The final ambush!

The Saturday morning game was ALSO DM'd by Steve Winter (I like his games that much), and it was a Gamma World Game called "Mutant Murder Madness."  It was so fun.  My character essentially had the body of Drax and the mind of Mantis(from Guardians of the Galaxy), which made for some interesting abilities, and at one point, I believe it saved us from annihilation as we confronted to main bad guy (and I use that term very loosely).  Below is a picture of that game in progress.


My final game on Saturday evening was "The Floating City of Zerzura."  Frankly, I joined the game because it seemed to be filling up faster than any other Saturday evening game that were still available.  It turned out to be a great choice.  Our DM, Jason, had outdone himself preparing for our game.  We had pre-gen character sheets with lots of helpful information, which really helped since this was my first 5th Edition game.  Most impressive though were all his miniatures and his Dwarven Forge dungeon layout, which probably took half an hour, at least, to set out.  Doug's son, David, played in this dungeon, and everyone worked well together.  We ran into some nasty monsters, and even though I likely didn't take advantage of all my player's abilities, everyone said I did well.  I certainly had fun and we retrieved the stolen magic item and rescued the kidnapped princess.  Below is a picture of that game in progress.

benjoshua wrote in North Texas RPG Con: 2017:The other important impression from this con was that it was good to see Doug smiling and looking good.  I can imagine many of us were wondering how he was doing.  I can report that he was slightly slimmer and had a little less hair, but he looked great.  He was as much fun as always.  So many people came up to him and encouraged him and asked how he was doing.  Even when his truck died and had to get a new battery and alternator on Wednesday afternoon, he was smiling. We are all grateful he was here and doing well.

Thanks for sharing the update on Doug, very encouraging!

Badmike wrote in North Texas RPG Con: 2017:This year we will have two digests at the con, an interesting reverse-dungeon crawl by Edwin Nagy (you start out in the Dragon's Lair, and have to get out from there) that would be good for tournaments, and a reprint of Jennell Jaquays classic Night of the Walking Wet with an essay about the Dungeoneer by Jennell.  The essay is an amazing piece that details her work on The Dungeoneer and early history in gaming, very candid and informative (runs about five pages or so).  Night of the Walking Wet, From Dungeoneer's #5 & #6, is reprinted in it's original glory, but as a bonus we present Night of the Walking Wet Reloaded, where Zach and I cleaned up the layouts and fonts, did a few spelling and tense corrections, and made the maps readable. It looks great, and can be run with OD&D rules.  Jennell also contributed a new cover for this!

Purchasing information can be found here:
NTRPG Con 2017 Digests

I have read both of these adventures, and enjoyed them both.  Night of the Walking Wet was definitely old-school in feel and presentation.  I had never read this adventure before, so it was a journey back in time.  For one thing, these older modules allowed "magic" to do almost anything.  Ironically, it feels like magic in fantasy rpg's began to be guided by more realistic, ie constrained, parameters as D&D grew and matured.  While I understand the reasons for this, it's refreshing to look back when creators were…more creative with their adventure writing.  Badmike's edits definitely made the adventure more readable and playable.  While there is no statement about the recommend level of characters, or total character levels, I would guess it's an adventure for 4-7 characters of 4th to 6th level, or about 25 total character levels.  There is only one recommended addition/edit and that is the Slime God description on page 28 should include this ability "Missile fire will not affect; only 20% of all blows will cause damage; fire and ice deadly."

Dragonmount was an interesting and well-presented concept.  I spoke personally to the author, Edwin Nagy, about the beginning of the adventure where a party teleports into the dungeon near a dragon.  I asked if he had ever play-tested the adventure and had players survive.  He said, "Yes, but I don't have the dragon breathe fire every round."  I asked if he had ever considered having the dragon open to negotiating with players regarding his trapped state since his entrance/exit was caved in.  He said that's an interesting idea, but the players would have to communicate telepathically since he was a non-speaking dragon.  I added that, "Of course, the dragon would renege on any deal once the light of day was once again visible due to it's chaotic evil nature."  He agreed.  One of the main things I noticed, other than the lethality of the dungeon was that I did not catch any grammatical errors and the maps were well-done.  It's a quality adventure worth owning.  However, in his entry to room #49, The Library, there are parentheses which state, "See Handout" but there is no handout included with the adventure.  When I asked Edwin about this he said that was a note to himself, and that he would e-mail this information to me.  As soon as I have it, I'll post these on the forums where everyone can see it/them.  

I hope these reviews are helpful as people consider whether to purchase them.

benjoshua wrote in North Texas RPG Con: 2017:

Badmike wrote in North Texas RPG Con: 2017:This year we will have two digests at the con, an interesting reverse-dungeon crawl by Edwin Nagy (you start out in the Dragon's Lair, and have to get out from there) that would be good for tournaments, and a reprint of Jennell Jaquays classic Night of the Walking Wet with an essay about the Dungeoneer by Jennell.  The essay is an amazing piece that details her work on The Dungeoneer and early history in gaming, very candid and informative (runs about five pages or so).  Night of the Walking Wet, From Dungeoneer's #5 & #6, is reprinted in it's original glory, but as a bonus we present Night of the Walking Wet Reloaded, where Zach and I cleaned up the layouts and fonts, did a few spelling and tense corrections, and made the maps readable. It looks great, and can be run with OD&D rules.  Jennell also contributed a new cover for this!

Purchasing information can be found here:
NTRPG Con 2017 Digests

I have read both of these adventures, and enjoyed them both.  Night of the Walking Wet was definitely old-school in feel and presentation.  I had never read this adventure before, so it was a journey back in time.  For one thing, these older modules allowed "magic" to do almost anything.  Ironically, it feels like magic in fantasy rpg's began to be guided by more realistic, ie constrained, parameters as D&D grew and matured.  While I understand the reasons for this, it's refreshing to look back when creators were…more creative with their adventure writing.  Badmike's edits definitely made the adventure more readable and playable.  While there is no statement about the recommend level of characters, or total character levels, I would guess it's an adventure for 4-7 characters of 4th to 6th level, or about 25 total character levels.  There is only one recommended addition/edit and that is the Slime God description on page 28 should include this ability "Missile fire will not affect; only 20% of all blows will cause damage; fire and ice deadly."

Dragonmount was an interesting and well-presented concept.  I spoke personally to the author, Edwin Nagy, about the beginning of the adventure where a party teleports into the dungeon near a dragon.  I asked if he had ever play-tested the adventure and had players survive.  He said, "Yes, but I don't have the dragon breathe fire every round."  I asked if he had ever considered having the dragon open to negotiating with players regarding his trapped state since his entrance/exit was caved in.  He said that's an interesting idea, but the players would have to communicate telepathically since he was a non-speaking dragon.  I added that, "Of course, the dragon would renege on any deal once the light of day was once again visible due to it's chaotic evil nature."  He agreed.  One of the main things I noticed, other than the lethality of the dungeon was that I did not catch any grammatical errors and the maps were well-done.  It's a quality adventure worth owning.  However, in his entry to room #49, The Library, there are parentheses which state, "See Handout" but there is no handout included with the adventure.  When I asked Edwin about this he said that was a note to himself, and that he would e-mail this information to me.  As soon as I have it, I'll post these on the forums where everyone can see it/them.  

I hope these reviews are helpful as people consider whether to purchase them.

Thanks Chris!

I would like to point out the most glaring mistake (to me) was in the first sentence of my Afterword....ugh. Anyway, I think we did pretty good with only a week to finish up (reasons to long to go into here) and I hope now that we have fixed up the layout and presentation it will be used more and more in the next few years. I'm a huge Jaquays fan and although I have seen Walking Wet run at conventions, I hope this new version will be the "go-to" version for anyone wanting to put down some OD&D smack. Thanks for the spot on the Slime God power that was not included in both descriptions, something we will correct if there is ever another printing. I would like to thank Bob Bledsaw Jr for giving Jennell the rights to her adventures back, and of course Jennell for giving us the right to reprint this and make it more readable in the process. BTW we will have her other two Dungeoneer adventures, F'chelerak's Tomb and Borshak's Lair, coming in the next two cons!

Dragonmount is a good tournament/con adventure that also needs to be run. Edwin is the one who edited Lesser Gnome's products and is now engaged in a massive project for Frog God Games so this is the reason the material looks so good.

Of course, the profit for both of these goes to the con and Doug. Thanks for all the purchases!

Mike B.

I'm going to do an edit of my adventure in the digest, that will go out by pdf to everyone who got the digest.  Probably get it finished this Saturday, based on the second playtest I ran of it at the convention.  The first one (last year) ran too long.  This one (this year) ran too short.  I'll get the edits done to make it a better adventure.

Had a great time.  Bad Mike and the rest just outdid themselves.

Tried some different approaches to setting descriptions, approaches and set-up.  Learned from it.

The rings and other game trivia that I gave away as props (players get to keep the props) went over well.  Even the bag of centipedes.

Wasn't happy with a couple adventure points in the two other adventures I ran.  Both the AD&D/Swords and Wizardry and the 5th Edition ones ended up with a saving throw and a party placement issue making the difference between a TPK and an encounter that went too easy (for example, the one party lined up and attacked just out of range of the dragon's breath by five feet, but I realized they didn't have enough hit points to survive a single breath attack so if they had not gone ranged, and the dragon had saved and been able to move and breath when they were in range ...).  That makes for too brittle of an encounter.

But I learned a lot and really enjoyed the convention and the games, probably more than the players did.