Seek the Wolf in Thyself!
March 2014 meant not only that I turned 45, but also that MACE West moved to Asheville, NC, home of the Biltmore Estate! It was a new area for us and they seemed very welcoming to us on Facebook, but I wasn’t sure how accepting they would be about how we do things. We are a little more organized than what they may be used to, which I freely admit is sort of a double-edged sword. They could love the organization or they could think we are too “nazi” about the way we do things.
Many of my gaming friends have mentioned Hawk the Slayer as a movie I should see. I had heard of it but never sat down to watch it at length. It is now considered a cult classic. So I found a copy and decided to see what the big deal was about it.
After reading through the Three Kings adventure the first and second time, I set out with a plan to try and run this single adventure as a convention game. It is funny how one can read through an adventure more than once and completely under estimate the potential. It really goes to show you that you don’t truly know an adventure until you run it. This is especially true in the case of the Three Kings adventure, as I found out.
Once again, I delve into a movie from the vast library of Roger Corman; another fantasy adventure staying Lana Clarkson (from Deathstalker) and a whole cast other women in various stages of undress. Master of low budget and reuse, Corman as producer reused much of the set from Deathstalker, and well as costumes I recognized from other of his fantasy outings.
Dates: 4/2/2014 to 4/16/2014 Where: Grail The Decados presence on Grail apparently got wind of what Halman was up too and was not pleased. Posing as Killroys, the raid his home and wait for the party to return. Instead of fight their way out, the party is able to negotiate and con their way out.
It’s pretty hard to find a bad movie I have not seen, unless it is a movie I have simply chosen not to watch. Eliminators turned out to be a movie I vaguely remember as a kid but never saw. There was something about that cyborg on his mobile unit that looked familiar to me. Starring some sci-fi greats like Denise Crosby (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Andrew Prine (Steven from V, the original mini-series), and Roy Dotrice (most recently from Game of Thrones), this movie had a lot of potential. It pulled in a ton of cool elements but never really explored them to their full potential. The acting was fairly poor as well, despite having such well known actors. This was obviously early in their career and they were still trying to find their feet. The name of the movie was an obvious attempt to cash in on Terminator, although it is a terrible name for it.
The Rogue Mage RPG Player’s Handbook is a RPG core players handbook from MisFit Studios/Bella Rosa Books. Through the years of running sci-fi and gaming cons, I have had the pleasure to meet some very interesting and smart people. Christina Stiles and Faith Hunter were two of them. Faith Hunter is the author of the Rogue Mage series of novels, and Christina Stiles is a RPG industry extraordinaire. Together they developed this volume of work that is the RPG to the Rogue Mage universe.
At Origins 2013, I saw a lot of demos of a game called Castellan being played and I really wanted to try it out. Try as I may, I could never find an open table with someone there to teach me. It looked like a very simple game, reminding me of that game you play with your kids in restaurants while waiting for your food, connecting the dots and making more squares than your opponent. I was very curious on how they made this into a board game.
System/Setting: Realms of Cthulhu/Achtung Cthulhu An excellent adventure that I worked hard to make a 4 hour session game. I ran it first at RonCon Spring 2014, then MACE West 2014, and then all year in other cons in 2014 until MACE 2014. I submitted my ideas to the publisher and I hope they will…
One game that has really impacted me this year is Spartacus, A Game of Blood and Treachery. Not only am I a huge fan of the series but the game itself is great, whether you like the series or not. It is one of those games that has so many satisfying elements in it that I crave to play it every opportunity I get. However, one of the more disappointing aspects of the game was the player limit. I prefer games that allow for 5 or 6 players and the base game only allowed 4. Enter the Spartacus: The Serpents and The Wolf expansion. Not only does it allow for 5 or 6 players, it brings a lot more to the arena.