U-Con

Just got back from U-Con last night. Had a really great time. Special thanks to Roy Snyder who put me up in the Goodman Suite and Doug Kovacs who entertained me with wrestling moves. It was nice to finally meet Bill Webb of Frog God Games and I got to give Roy Snyder some original artwork on consignment (one of the pieces I gave him was this one (above) from Goodman’s ‘The Purple Planet‘). On Sunday night I was supposed to go out for Coney Island with Adam Muskeiwicz, Doug Kovacs, Kevin Wojochowicz and Roy Snyder but I didn’t get the directions correctly and was tired and feeling kind of blech from too much restaurant food and too little sleep so I turned onto the highway and headed home. Sorry, guys.

My presentation on how to be an OSR artist didn’t really come off because when I showed up to give it, there was almost no one there. I would have felt bad about this, but a) there is not a lot of art at this convention, so there are not a lot of artists, and b) one of the Con volunteers told me that even the presentations of ‘guests of honor’ were sparsely attended or unattended. The conversations I had with other creatives at U-Con more than made up for the fact that we didn’t really have the round table (and probably would have made it redundant). Donn Stroud of Drink Spin Run showed up and it was great to meet him; I had heard his voice on the podcast and it was nice to finally put a face to the name.

Highlights included lots of really great conversations, some new friends and renewing acquaintances. I had a really great time in Peter Schwab’s “In the Court of the Crimson King” adventure and loved some of the fun ideas he had for involving players with each other. “Crimson King” involved us (the players) traveling to the court to request a boon of the king – each player had to look at his or her character sheet and tell the group what his or her lowest trait score might be (strength, intelligence, personality, etc.). Peter then asked another player to explain why that trait was so low or why that character wanted to address this flaw. In my case, it was determined that my dwarven furniture maker reeked of sour smelling varnish which explained his low personality score. It was a fun way of getting complete strangers to talk to each other and get involved in the story of the other player characters. Peter was also really good at keeping two very young players involved in the game even when their attention wandered. From the view inside a hobby that sometimes attracts the OCD and socially awkward types, seeing this kind of stuff makes my heart grow a little bigger.

I also had a lot of fun in Adam Muskiewicz’s “Quasquetherion” game which took me back to being 13 years old and exploring the underground fortress of Zelligar and Roghan. My Character, Manfred the Man, cleric of the Jesus Lizard, shall be back!