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A place for random posts about painting and modelling miniatures for historical, fantasy, and science fiction tabletop games.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Post CONjuration 2017 Report



Post CONjuration 2017 Report



Another fantastic convention in the books and a great time was had by all. Great panels, cool performers and amazing cosplay were on display through out the convention. Time was well spent with friends old and new. The staff of the convention was amazing as they are every year. Special thanks to Convention Founder Chris & Angela and Darrin the Professor for putting up with our shenanigans.

This will have been our fourth year as attendees and our third year as panelists and game hosts. We upped our number of games from last year and put on six games this year. We ran a gamut of D&D 5th Ed, AD&D 2nd Ed, and Swords & Wizardry games.

Every year I get the pre-con jitters, and fret something awful.  

Would I suck as a DM? Would our games suck?Would there be conflicts with other panels?  Would we have enough players? Did we forget anything?   

Then the convention started and there was literally no time to think.

The turnout was amazing as all most all of our games were full and some cases overfull.  The average game size was about 10 people per game. We had players who returned year after year to play in our games and we always see new faces coming to the table.

I ran the Sword & Wizardry games and it was a blast. All of my games were full with my first game having 14 players and my second having 10. I had the largest number of first time players who had never played ANY type of roleplaying game before. S&W is really great for this, especially when I streamlined it for Con-Play. 

I did not use any pre-written adventures like I did last year. I wrote all of the adventures I ran myself this year using inspiration drawn from Spencer, Tall Tales of the Wee Folk, Harry Potter and Labyrinth. I even made mock-ups of D&D Modules for the programming guide for the Convention.



My favorite one ended up being my Groundhog Day adventure where the players were struck in a time loop and kept dying until they could prevent the assassination of the Queen of Summer.

The highlight of the games was when two of the youngest players at my table (both 13 yrs. old girls) came to me after the game. They had never played before and had such a great time they wanted to keep playing.  They asked me how they could get their hands on the stuff I used for my game. I was floored to be honest. These are the moments you live for as a Dungeon Master.

Needless to say Swords & Wizardry has an embarrassment of riches for people who want to learn to play and much of it is free. I hooked them up with the S&W Intro Rules, S&W Core (Free Version), and several of the S&W Quick Play Adventures.

One other player reached out to me since the CON and as if I could get her a copy of the adventures that I ran so she could run them for her gaming group. That was another first for me.
We are already started the planning for next year and hope to host even more games and branch out to other game systems and genres.

Thursday, November 2, 2017

CONjuration 2017

It is that time again! CON Time!!

https://www.conjurationcon.com/

My Group the Crimson Blades will be running Table-Top RPGs again this year.

We will be running the following games:

Friday, November 3rd, 2017

Game Title: Into the Wicked Wood
System: 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeon Master: Clark H.
Henchman: Louis H.
Time: 3:00:00 PM - 6:00:00 PM

Game: In the Name of the King
System: 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Game Master: Paul A
Henchman: Joey C.
Time: 7:00:00 PM - 11:00:00PM


Saturday, November 4th, 2017

Game: The Queens of Summer & Winter: Winter’s Hard Heart
System:    1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons (Sword & Wizardry Complete)
Game Master: Eli K.
Henchman: Joey C.
Start Time    10:00:00 AM - 1:00:00 PM

Game Title: To Hell and Back
System: 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeon Master: Paul A
Henchman: Louis H.
Time: 7:00:00 PM - 11:00:00PM

Sunday, November 5th 2017

Game: The Queens of Summer & Winter: Summer’s Warm Embrace
System: 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons (Sword & Wizardry Complete)
Game Master: Eli K
Henchwoman: Janie D.
Time: 9:00:00 AM – 12:00:00 PM

Game: The Bastion of Sorrow
System: 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Game Master: Clark H.
Henchman: Louis H.
Time: 12:00:00 PM - 3:00:00 PM

Review of Swords & Wizardry Continual Light

I have been a big fan of Swords & Wizardry for a while now. I used S&W Complete to run my Barrowmaze Campaign and I use it for my convention games.

Recently a new version has come out called Swords & Wizardry Continual Light.

It is intended as a even more rules lite version of S&W, but more than S&W Light.

This is something as S&W is already pretty rules lite.

 http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2017/02/what-is-swords-wizardry-continual-light.html

After reading, I can see the differences pretty clearly between the different rule sets.

My overall consensus is that this is a neat little rule set and would appeal to new players and crusty grognards alike. 

Good Stuff
  • I like the adventure/level dynamic that replaces experience points.
  • It is very bare bones and doesn't waste time with tons of descriptive verbiage which is refreshing
  • Good Proofreading, I did not see any obvious typos, spelling errors, or grammar issues in my first pass.
  • Great Cover
  • Fun Artwork, Page 11 especially

Bad Stuff
  • Inconsistent Movement - NPC & Monsters have movement of 9,12,18 but PC's have movement of 90' 120' etc
  • The layout is subpar, several blank pages for no obvious reasons, lack of page numbers
  • Text in some of the sections is smashed together but more evenly spaced in others.
  • Too much artwork for no apparent reason
  • The style & ascetic of the cover is not evident in the interior
  • The character sheet in the back is pretty generic and uninspiring.

Other Stuff

  • Descending/ Ascending AC, wish they would have just picked one and have the other in a different section as optional rules 
  • Missed opportunity to try a different format. Could have tried a LBB style or something different
  • If using a standard letter sized page, with they would have included page numbers and consider using columns on some of the sections
  • The entire document looks like it was cobbled together from different source materials. It could have used some smoothing.
  • For a rules lite system, it still holds on to some of the clunkier aspects of old D&D. Turning Tables and Thief abilities. Wish they would have made the turn undead a simple roll with a target number modified by the monsters HD. Condense all rogue abilities into just two skills: Thievery & Stealth