Dungeon Wallop among Dark Clouds

So last Saturday was the “Minicon” event in Anaheim, and the earlier part of the day went well. I’m pretty heartened by the fact that I played a con style game session with pretty much strangers and still had a good time. I had at this point in life given up entirely on that, but enjoyed the game and the other players. No, I don’t think hell froze over (but I’m sure I’ll find out if it’s hot or cold down there soon enough).

One thing I didn’t mention in the last post was the fact that I attended this thing with a bit of a dark cloud hanging over my head. As you might have read in this post a few weeks ago, I played in local guy Christian’s 3rd edition game and did not exactly have the kind of experience you want when you sit down at the game table. My post ended up having more teeth than I expected. Although my only real direct criticism for Chris was the presence of a waste of space player that he had as his prime player, I think he was struck by fingers being pointed at the DM by comment makers regarding the situation. In retrospect, I agree with lots of them, and might have more to say on it in the near future.

But the (sad) fact is Christian was not only going to attend the Minicon thing as a player, but also as a GM. Well, within a couple of days of my original post Christian pulled out of the event entirely. The online community is a fairly small one, and the ramifications spread to places like Dragonsfoot and OD&D Discussion forums. Wild. And naturally the only thing you can take from that is he was not going to attend because of me.

So I was showing up to this thing with that hanging over me. I wished Chris had at least tried to talk to me about it, but looking back on it now all I can really think of is what a pussy move it was. We could have been at this thing shaking hands and laughing about it, but now I guess there is no smoothing things over – assuming there ever was anything needed smoothing. So I have some unwanted advice for Chris, but I will save that for another day.

There were also quite a few personalities from Dragonsfoot forums in attendance, but I’m pretty sure none of them were folk that I got into some “spirited” debates with there. Pretty much all of them were cool on me, and a couple went out of their way to come up to me and press flesh before they took off for the evening. One of the DF opinionated souls, Mobad, even sat in for my evening session.

So Cyclopeatron’s Gamma World went great, and afterwards I was in a great mood for running my OD&D session. But would anyone be there to play it? It was almost 7PM, and the gamers were slowly making their way out. Like I said, I did get a chance to briefly talk to some Dragonsfoot folk in attendance who had been in other sessions, including Wheggi and Telecanter. I’m hoping to get the chance to talk to some of these guys more in the future, and also hoping the Minicon can maybe be a twice a year thing rather than one.

So I did indeed have a small contingent of folk there specifically to play my OD&D, and I was very jazzed about that. But about half of my eight players for the evening were drop-ins who were (I think) planning to play in another evening session, but as it turned out mine was the only late shift session. We had the big beautiful room to ourselves! I took advantage of that fact and got my boombox out of the trunk so I could play some Vasen and a few of my video game soundtracks (Chrono Cross and Vagrant Story) during the dungeon wallop.

OK, game recaps are generally boring, so suffice it to say that it turned out to be a very fun session. Everybody was enthusiastic and into their characters, which were a nice mix of all the possible types (no hobbits, sadly). They moved around the 1st level mostly, fighting various low level pests with great humor. I even managed to kill a character, a cleric, in my giant centipede room. The player rolled up another cleric on the spot, and even got much better stats so I don’t think he minded the demise at all. He just continued plugging away with the new guy. Awesome. It all went by so fast, and before we knew it 11 o’clock hit and we had to wrap it up. I made sure everybody got my email in case we had a chance in the future to continue with as many of the players as possible. At least a couple are interested in me doing a session in or around the Socal Smackdown convention Labor Day weekend. That will be great if we can work it out.

So I think the big thing here is that I played with and DM’d for a bunch of strangers, and it was not the shitty experience I have had with that sort of thing in the past. I found that I can have some fun outside my own group, and that is a good thing. Heartwarming, really. Like that a-hole the Grinch’s heart growing all big.

One thing I want to mention is that around 9PM there were huge explosions outside nearby, and I almost freaked. Then I realized we were practically next door to Disneyland, and the fireworks show was going on. I cannot believe that I was so into the gaming that I had long forgotten that Disneyland, a place I loved so much as a kid, was right there. Pretty cool.