In Thoth's Wake! - A Pulp Adventure for Fate Core!

Wow, it's been almost two years since I've posted something here and a lot has happened in that time!

I've been remiss in not touting a little project I've been working on for a while. Just over two years ago, my Chicago area gaming friends convinced me to use Kickstarter's Zine Quest to make it a reality. 

So, with their help, the help of 125 backers, and the support of friends and family, In Thoth's Wake! Zine QuestEdition! was brought from old Spirit of the Century campaign notes to a fully realized pulp adventure for Fate Core!

The Final Zine Quest Cover!

The Pitch

A mysterious woman’s dying words send your intrepid adventurers on the path to find the temple of the Egyptian God Thoth. Secrets to Thoth's genesis are hidden within. Could they lead the adventurers to an ancient lost Greek civilization?

In Thoth's Wake! is a scene-based pulp adventure written for use with the Fate Core roleplaying game system, but can be repurposed for the system of your choice. It's loosely set in the 1930s and assumes the players will be taking on the roles of a united group of adventurers. Playing through this adventure will take between two and four standard-length roleplaying sessions. It contains six possible major scenes and includes five different maps of exciting locations.

Fate Core was designed to be open world and non-linear, which seems counter to designing an “adventure module” such as this. However, I've noticed several Fate-specific discussion threads with players and game masters lamenting the lack of pre-generated adventures. Likewise, game masters new to the Fate Core system may be more comfortable with the familiar adventure module format. 

As a Fate game master, you can use this adventure in whole or in part. If you like the story but Fate isn’t your cup of tea, it should be fairly trivial to strip out those bits and drop in your preferred system-specific mechanics and characters. Perhaps you just like some of the scenes and would like to reskin them for your campaign. Or maybe you'll just enjoy the maps or Non-Player Characters.

It is currently available on DriveThruRPG. 

Initially, it was going to be a one-and-done thing. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, I made it available for pay-what-you-want for the first year of the pandemic and donated the proceeds to artists who lost income due to gaming conventions going virtual-only.

I hope to do the full color version some day...

My One Page Dungeon Contest 2017 Entry

So, thanks to Twitter, I discovered this little thing called the One Page Dungeon Contest. This literally* got the wheels turning in my head and I had to put the wheels on paper. Three days later, that concept of a dungeon made up of five rotating intersecting chambers became my first-ever entry.

Here's the sales pitch: "Who would have need of such a brutal shifting thing? A trial by fire! And ice. And earth. And water... There's no going back—only forward!"

Since some GMs may want to print out the map for clarity or to actually cut out the pieces and rotate them in real space, I've included it here in 300 DPI - including a COLOR version!

The folks at the One Page Dungeon Contest also kindly posted an update in their blog.

*Literal, as in I saw them in my mind's eye. Not physical wheels inside my skull.

Atomic Robo RPG Character Generation Worksheet

Last year, I ran a few sessions of Atomic Robo - The Roleplaying Game. In the writeup of the first session, I mentioned and posted a link to an ARRPG character generation worksheet I put together.

Since it got lost in the text, I'm reposting it here: Atomic Robo Character Generation Worksheet

Enjoy!

Dystopian Universe RPG Beta Playtest - Organization and Character Generation

Towards the end of July, Evil Hat Productions put out a call for playtesters to try out the Beta version of The Dystopian Universe Roleplaying Game. It's a modified version of the Fate system set in the same world as Indie Boards & Cards' games Coup, The Resistance, and One Night Revolution. Long-time gaming friend Marty got accepted into the beta playtest and asked fellow podcaster Alex, my friend Adam, and myself to participate.

So, on August 28, we got together over Roll20 (another first for us) and started building out Paris Nouveau and our characters within it.

Although we did character generation first, I'm going to show the steps in reverse order as, in hindsight, that makes the most sense. Particularly since building the Government before La Resistance gives them something to resist against.


The Government!
Taking into account that every Citoyen is plugged into Augmented or Virtual Reality (AR or VR) and is doing pattern matching for the Government, it makes sense that they'd try to convince their drones that servitude leads to a better AR/VR experience. Therefore:

Slogan: Paris Nouveau: A Better Reality for Every Citoyen

We decided that there's just not enough resources (food, water, living space, etc.) for the citizenry, therefore, it's best to let the weak die (or kill them outright for the smallest infraction). Since all the wastewater gets recycled, it makes sense to also recycle the biomass. Therefore, deceased Citoyens are reprocessed into Artificial Protein Extract (APE).

Scandal: APE is People!

Advancements:
Trying to limit The Government's ability to mess with us directly, we chose:
Corporate: Investing in Infrastructure - During the debrief, if you have any leftover fate points, you can put up to 2 of them in your bank.

However, Marty made sure he could mess with us, so he chose:
Security: Surveillance Optimization -  You start every scene with +2 blowback.

La Resistance!
Adam decided he wanted to play the Malcontent and named her Coquin. Since Coquin became the de-facto leader of our little party, we let him choose our Manifesto. He simply chose to borrow from events happening in Real Life™.

Manifesto: Make Paris Nouveau Great Again!

Since Adam's Malcontent will have the social skills covered and my Cleaner will have the combat skills covered, we wanted to give Alex's Hacker, Raphael, a place to shine.

Weakness: Plagued by Compromised Communications

Advancements:
Trying to give Coquin a leg up, we chose the branch of the tree that would get the people behind her:
Support: Hearts and Minds - Whenever you create a prep advantage with Maneuver, it gets 2 additional boosts.

I tried to talk Adam and Alex into going further down the Support branch, but they decided having access to gear and supplies was more important. They chose:
Resources: Hijacked Shipments - With a prep action, you can requisition equipment with a total cost of 1 or lower.

Viktor Le Nettoyeur (Viktor The Cleaner)
It should come as no surprise that I'm a big fan of Luc Besson's films and Jean Reno's acting. So, when presented with the opportunity to play a French Cleaner, of course I jumped at the chance! I even went so far as to call him Viktor, although I changed the name slightly and chose Dolph Lundgren as his stand-in (sorry Jean!) - I can't be TOO obvious...

With my archetype chosen (and thus my social class), I printed out the provided playsheet and started filling it in.

Aspects:
The playsheet provides questions that prompt you to generate your aspects. Here are mine:

WHAT MAKES YOU THE BEST CLEANER IN PARIS NOUVEAU?
The mission comes first.
WHY DO YOU KILL SO OFTEN?
I am too efficient for the general good.
WHO IS THE ONE PERSON YOU TRUST?
Coquin and I are of like minds.
WHO DO YOU WISH YOU COULD REMOVE FROM PLAY, BUT CAN’T?
The Ambassador is too far reaching.
WHY DID YOU JOIN LA RÉSISTANCE?
Enough Citoyens have paid the Government's price.

Means:
In this variation of Fate, they've distilled your abilities or skills down into four Means, similar to Approaches from Fate Accelerated. I wanted Viktor to obviously be capable of taking someone out and to be able to watch from the shadows, therefore I chose:

Fight: +3, Manipulate: +1, Maneuver +2, Observe +2

Stunts:
Once again, the playsheet provides a list of stunts; I just had to pick them. I ended up with:
Great Wealth (Default) - The cost of equipment that I buy is 1 lower than usual, to a minimum of 1.
Stealth Augmentations - I can spend a fate point to disappear from a scene. I can show up during a later exchange in a different scene.
Kill Without Hesitation - When I deal physical harm, I can give the GM 1 blowback to force my opponent to mark an additional condition, provided my intent is to kill.
Slippery - I get +2 to avoid detection with Maneuver.
By choosing four stunts, I had to reduce my Refresh (starting Fate points) by one.

Backstory (Extra Credit):
Coquin is making a name for herself in La Resistance. So much so, that her name has come to the Government's attention. As such, they have decided to put Viktor close to her. Providing a cleaner to La Resistance is quite a bit of overkill (literally), but that's what La Resistance is looking for and The Government trusts Viktor to get the job done.

Little does the Government know, but Viktor is starting to feel the pressure of being their favorite precision tool. Particularly since target selection has widened from well-known dissidents to faceless rabble-rousers.

Being this close to Coquin, Viktor realizes her words and his feelings are not so very different at all. Late night discussions with Coquin huddled around gas lanterns in La Cave have grown longer. It wouldn't take much to push Viktor's alignment needle over to that of La Resistance.


That does it for organization and character generation! We're now ready to play!

Gen Con 2016 Recap

I'll give this year's Gen Con, "The Best Four Days in Gaming™," a solid 'Good Time.' But, for me, it was also strange.

It didn't feel quite like Gen Cons of years past. It could have been that we were screwed by both the housing and event lotteries (luckily, we got housing sorted out). It could have been that this was the first year I actually Game Mastered a couple of roleplaying sessions (I've done so at other cons, just not THE Con). It could have been that I didn't do nearly the miniature painting I've done in previous years.

Will Call line out the door and around the block, but we get our own Grand Ballroom?

Most notably, attendance exploded again, but seminars weren't well attended—the prevailing theory is that gaming culture is more accepting and expanding, but there is now so much more to do, that some events suffer. Likewise, the exhibit hall was expanded by about a third, but several vendors seemed to be absent (or maybe I couldn't find them?).

Mmmmm... Ham, turkey, bacon,
cheese and wasabi on a pretzel bun...

Wednesday:
Ten of us arrived in Indianapolis early Wednesday afternoon. After checking into the hotel and taking care of parking, we went to stand in the Will Call line to get our badges. In years past, the line wound its way through a half or three-quarters of the Indiana Convention Center. This year, we joined the line just outside the Northwest doors. (See the picture above, taken as we were returning to the hotel...)

To avoid the restaurant wait we had last year, we hit up the food trucks. I couldn't wait to get my hands on a Greedo sandwich from Der Pretzel Wagen!

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and staked out a game room. After checking with hotel management, we ended up with a whole Grand Ballroom to ourselves. Weird...

Shortly after, since I was running two sessions of Numenera for Monte Cook Games, I had to step out to attend the Volunteer Game Masters meeting. There I picked up my MCG shirt and badge holder, the adventure book containing the games we were running, and a nice Cypher System portfolio. Afterwards, there was a meet-and-greet with the designers and staff of Monte Cook Games. I didn't stay long as I wanted to get back to spending time with friends I hadn't seen in a while, so back to the Grand Ballroom I went.

By that time, Marty, Alex, and Jason from Play The Game Podcast joined us. Since there was a request to play Fiasco, Andy, the three Fiasco virgins (Brendan, DJ, and Shashank), and I secured a table and started the setup.  We all agreed to run Marty's and my playset, The Depot. I finally got a chance to try it outside of a playtesting capacity! I ended up the crime lord, Roscoe Biggins, of this frozen micro-community. DJ and Andy ended up as call girls, Betty Sue and "Diamond" Johnson, in my employ. Shashank was the town sheriff, Morgan Truman Wainwright, with a drug addiction - that I was providing for. And Brendan was the town deputy, Brant McGunter, who had some weird relationship with Diamond. Check out the wonderful mess we ended up with:

A picture is worth a thousand... oh, whatever.

Thursday:
Since I didn't have any speed painting to do yet, I thought I'd participate in the Exhibit Hall Opening Ceremonies, which is really just waiting for the doors to open and riding the waves of bodies surging into the hall. I made a bee line for the Infinity/Warsenal booth to pick up the Gen Con 2016 Bundle, which includes the Operation: Red Veil box set, Miyamoto Musashi (a beautiful two miniature set), and the Gen Con exclusive Unknown Ranger. While I was waiting in line, I couldn't take my eyes off Warsenal's Kum Garage. I ended up circling back and picking that up later.

At 1:00, I was able to fill a seat in the Impact! Miniatures Speed Painting event. I was hoping we'd paint an urban warrior or something, but we were given a Chibi Evil Fighter to paint. Chibi's not my thing, so my heart wasn't in it. Somewhere during that session, Mike arrived and acted as my own private heckler. Following that round, at 2:00,  Mike and I both secured seats for the Reaper Miniatures Speed paint. We were given Salim Ghadafar to paint—a really cool miniature with a lot of detail. I like what I did with it, but apparently I didn't have enough contrast.

Afterwards, Mike and I attempted another run at the hall. The one takeaway from that run was that we came across the Role 4 Initiative booth. They were selling decent quality, slightly larger, EASIER TO READ polyhedral dice at $3 a set with a buy-three-get-one-free deal. Mike jumped at the deal. If I wasn't already swimming in dice, I would have too.

We quickly stopped at the Serendipity Mobile Catering truck to pick up a Mac & Cheese Grilled Cheese with Truffle Fries and a side of crab cake. Yum!

After devouring dinner, Mike and I parted ways as I was heading to Evil Hat's State of the Hat panel, ran by Sean Nittner and Chris Hanrahan.

7 new books and 3 ENnie nominees! That's 10 products.
This will become important later.

As I had mentioned, event attendance was off. Previous years, the room was mostly full. This year, there were maybe seven of us in the audience. These were the tweets I sent during the panel:

• Lenny Balsera is now Fate Line Developer for Evil Hat?!?
• Kaiju Incorporated card game and RPG to be released at the same time. First half of next year?
• Dresden Files Accelerated and Cooperative Card Game second half of next year?
• A bunch of Fate Toolkits and Worlds of Adventure in the pipe.

If you are looking for a more complete list of topics covered, Sean Nittner posted his notes for that panel in the comments of this discussion: https://plus.google.com/+ScottAcker/posts/bNAxdPBuEG7

At the beginning of the panel, they handed out some nice swag: Spirit of the Century patches and Fate bookmarks. At the end, Sean pulled an Oprah Winfrey and told us to check the back of the patches. Each patch had a number written on it. I was number 1! Sean then called us up in order and allowed us to pick and keep from the ten products (eleven if you count the Fate Dice). I chose War of Ashes - Fate of Agaptus as it's gorgeous and I didn't already own it. If you're keeping score, that also means a few items still went home with Chris and Sean.

From there, I ran back to the hotel to collect my thoughts and my Numenera gear to be ready to GM my first session of Skein of the Blackbone Bride for Monte Cook Games. It's important to note that in all my um-teen years of going to Gen Con, this was the first time I was running a role-playing game. I've game mastered games at other cons to varying success, but this is the Big League. Fortunately, all my prep work, including subjecting the regular Friday night gaming group to a Numenera side-track, paid off. I knew the adventure well, was able to keep pacing up, and the players completed the session with a win and with just a bit of time to spare. The game ended with applause! Definitely the highlight of the con for me!

After basking in the glow, I returned my gear back to the room and joined the rest of the crew back in the Grand Ballroom (no longer the only table there) to round out the evening with some quick games.

I ended up filling in for Chad as they were playing Entropy. Blurb from the website: "Entropy is a fast-paced competitive card game of risk and deception, combining simultaneous action selection mechanics with order resolution." It's a very pretty game, particularly when you can piece together all four of your fractured Realities, which I did, to win the game. Unfortunately, the ease of understanding the rules is mired in setting-specific jargon.

We finished out the night playing I Hate Zombies, created by Board Game Geek and published by Steve Jackson Games. Players alternate taking the role of zombie or survivor and the zombies take turns attacking the survivors. Combat is resolved with rock-paper-scissors! Each survivor card has a special ability perk that gives them a chance against the zombies, but, out of three games, the zombies never lost.

Friday:
The next morning, I got up early to try to get into the 10:00 Painting with Angel Giraldez class as I was unable to score any of them during event registration. Unfortunately for me, all ticket-holders arrived.

So, I decided to return to the Exhibit hall to continue the crawl through the aisles. This year, Upper Deck Entertainment released their deck-building game, Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China. I did not check it out, but I couldn't pass up snapping a picture of the Pork Chop Express!

"Like I told my last wife, I said, 'Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it's all in the reflexes.'"

At 2:00, I headed back to the Miniature Hobby Events area as I had an actual Reaper Speed Painting ticket. We were given Vonsalay, the Half Orc Wizard to paint. Since she had a flowy gown on, I thought I'd try an experiment with translucency, and try to show a little leg through the gown. The experiment started out fine, but I guess I put too many 'glazes' on and the detail was lost. The judge gave it about a two second glance.

From there, it was off to Game Design 101 with Mike Pondsmith, of Cyberpunk 2020 and R. Talsorian Games fame and game designer (and DJ and comedian) Ryan Miller. I didn't get much out of the panel, but it was nice to see Mike Pondsmith back on the speaking circuit.

The early morning was getting to me, so I went back to the hotel for a quick nap before prepping myelf for my second session running Skein of the Blackbone Bride. This session didn't go as well as the first. The pacing wasn't as tight and the PCs had a rough time getting through the big boss battle at the end. I'm going to chalk it up to the following: I didn't read the players' frustration early enough, the adventure pits first tier PCs against seventh tier baddies (which I nerfed, but not enough), players may not have seen all the resources available on their character sheets, and the tactics were off. Live and learn, I guess.

After returning to the hotel, I popped back down to join the crew and play a quick round of Gloom. I forgot how delightfully dark the screw-your-neighbor card game is. Just before we finished it up, Brendan showed up with a new copy of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu. It's a different, Lovecraftian take on traditional Pandemic, where you have to seal four gates while trying not to wake The Old Ones. At first, we found it to be too easy, however that was before we realized we weren't following ALL of the rules.

Saturday:
Saturday I slept in a little before resuming my "hall crawl". Then, at 1:00, I headed up to the Miniature Hobby Events area to take my Two Brush Blending class with Bryan Beck of Paladin Miniatures Studio. I've done two-brush blending before, but this helped me hone my skills—you want translucent paint, pull the blend from only the top edge, use a soft damp brush, and clean up the excess water and pigment.

Since the Monte Cook Games seminar was the same time as the class, I ran to their booth to find out what I missed. To my surprise, it was still going on! So, I hustled over to the Westin, was handed a T-shirt, playing card, and a magnet, and then sat down. My butt wasn't in the seat for longer than a minute before they thanked everybody for coming and ended the session. However, there was an excited murmur about a Kickstarter for a new game called the Invisible Sun and a mysterious black box. So I headed back to the booth to find out more.

Invisible Sun is MCG's new premium roleplaying game focused on storytelling. It's supposedly designed to take into account the current-day gamer's busy lifestyle in that it can handle short gaming sessions, missing players, and even includes a mobile app to handle some between-game mechanics.

Here's a bunch of relevant links:

• The announcement at the MCG seminar at Gen Con: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q4wbmfHMEM
• The official announcement: https://www.montecookgames.com/announcing-the-invisible-sun-rpg/
• The announcement video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJOeHfQFBy8
• Game Play Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDlXierCCeQ


• Website #1: http://pathofsuns.com/
• Website #2: http://invisiblesunrpg.com/
• Path of Suns Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/pathofsuns
• The Google+ Community, where all the speculation, oh, and geocaches are being discussed: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/108827865414792038629
• And a picture of the prototype box and contents:

When I got back to the booth, I saw folks lining up to have the card they received at the seminar stamped, and then they were handed a secret envelope with a seal and a "do not open until" date. Fortunately, I didn't lose my card in all the running about, so I presented it for a stamp and received my secret envelope:

The Kickstarter for Invisible Sun starts on the same date - August 15 - and I'm excited to see what's in the envelope.

The sunburst maze I created at the booth.

Since I was already in the exhibit hall, I decided to do some more wandering until dinner time. On my way out of the hall, I stopped at the FoxMind booth to demo their Maze Racers Game. I was huge into mazes as a kid and Maze Racers totally tapped into that side of me. I could play it solo just for the zen-like experience. When I found out they were offering it at a $25 Gen Con price, I ordered it immediately. As I was finishing up checking out, Brad called.

Brad already had a table at Mikado Japanese Restaurant, so I rushed out of the hall and met him there. The sushi was decent—definitely get the Seafood Puff, even though it probably goes against all Japanese cuisine. We had a nice long dinner and got to catch up on things—Brad was still excited about watching the U.S. Championship Klask Finals Tournament. He was so into it, he bought a set without even playing it!

Once we settled up the bill, we headed back to the Grand Ballroom to finish out the last night of gaming at Gen Con 2016. I was hoping to meet up with some of the CAGWIC friends to play Fiasco or Nights Black Agents or Call of Cthulhu, but that fell through.

We played a few quick rounds of Klask with Brad's new set. Rich ended up trouncing us all.

BRAAAAAD.....

After seeing the Watch Ya' Mouth video, Brad decided he had to get that game for us to play at Gen Con. He says there are many different games available, but he picked up Watch Yo Mouth because they could ship it to him in time for the con. After some hemming and hawing about how sanitary the cheek spreaders are (yeah, cheek spreaders—Brad brought individual baggies for them and you just toss them in the dishwasher when you're done), we played. It is indeed hilarious to play. We ended up laughing ourselves hoarse! Unfortunately, once you've gone through the included cards, you know them all. They need some sort of webpage or app that generates thousands of phrases to try.

Once we recovered from Watch Yo Mouth, I wanted to keep up the pace with smaller quicker games, so Marty, Alex, Janson, and I played a round of Kittens in a Blender with the Expansion Pack I picked up from the Kickstarter.

We followed that up with Isle of Skye, a bidding and tile placement game similar to the Castles of Mad King Ludwig, but I found that there were too many facets to keep track of that late in the day.

We finished out the night with a few hands of Schrödinger’s Cats, a card game I backed on Kickstarter. It's a bluffing and deduction game, similar to Liar's Dice, with a cute mechanic where each player has a Cat Physicist Doctorate that changes up the rules a tad.

Sunday:
Last day. We packed up the cars, checked out of the hotel, and made one last run at the convention hall for last minute gifts. I finally decided to pick up a copy of the Cypher System Rulebook with a coupon I found on the Monte Cook Games Twitter Feed. I also finally found the Games and Gears booth. I really want these guys to knock it out of the park. I really do! I love the idea of brushes that store into the handles. Great for painting at conventions. Unfortunately, their quality wavers. I still picked up the Gen Con Collectors Brush Set MK3, as it contains the fine-tipped brushes I want from them. Unfortunately, I found clear tape on the brush ends to help maintain a snug fit into the handles and it's already scraping off.

Since I didn't make it to any of the Speed Painting Finals this year, the obligatory photo is replaced by one of our crew this year:

Back Row: Shashank, Jeremy, Jon, Adam, Chad, Brad, Pete, Chewing Lady
Front Row: DJ

Finally, here's a photo of my book haul from this year:

From left to right: The Sprawl (Powered by the Apocalypse), War of Ashes - Fate of Agaptus, Torment: Tides of Numenera—The Explorer’s Guide, Cypher System Rulebook, the Gen Con 2016 Adventures booklet, Cypher System Portfolio

Next year, Gen Con. Next year.

Shadow of the Century - Part 2: Smash and Grab

Last week, we sat down to run our first play session of the Shadow of the Century beta playtest!

The Pharmacy Scene from La Femme Nikita - Yeah, it was released in 1990—but FILMED in 1989!

We ran with three players again, but only one of three had attended the Pitch Session. Fortunately, one of the new players asked me to work up Hackerman from Kung Fury as a character ahead of time. The other new player decided to go with the pregenerated "Loose Cannon" character form the sample characters provided—we modified the aspect Mason's Gunning for Me to reflect one of the NPCs from the Pitch Session, so it became Biggins' Gunning for Me.

So, our characters for the night are:
Raymond James - Brain/Detective/Warrior
High Concept: Centurion Historian
Trouble: “Actually…..”
Call to Action: Following in the footsteps of the Spirits

Hackerman - Brain/Hacker/Inventor
High Concept: Hacker at Large
Trouble: Inappropriate Innuendo
Call to Action: With Great Processing Power Comes Great Responsibility

Officer Riza Colak - Cop/Loose Cannon(Gonzo)/Wheelman

High Concept: Cop on the Edge
Trouble: Biggins' Gunning for Me
Call to Action: None yet

Introducing...

In order to introduce the characters, I decided to do a series of scenes where each player describes their character doing their thing, getting caught, and making a hasty escape—to be scooped up by their mysterious benefactor. Ya know, the ol' "Everyone Meets Everyone" trope.

Ken described a giant Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse, but stacked with rows and rows of cardboard file boxes. Raymond James has pulled several off the shelves and is rifling through them. A security guard shows up and asks him who he is and why he's here. Raymond starts, "Well, sir, I'm from the University of..." and pretends to pat himself down for ID. The guard doesn't buy it and radios in to the front desk. Raymond scatters the contents of a box in the air to conceal his escape and ducks out a side door. Waiting for him is a white and gold custom conversion van. An elderly gentleman opens the passenger door and beckons him to jump inside. Once in, the old man jams a cane on the gas pedal and they're off.

Josh explains that Hackerman is convinced that Tastee-Freez is tied up in some big government conspiracy. He's broken into the back room of a local Tastee-Freez and is in the process of dialing in to their corporate records using a Tandy 1000 and a giant modem, when the assistant manager walks in. Hackerman explains that the sequencing board doesn't match the left-handed thrommel-meister, followed by more technobabble. The assistant manager goes to grab the manager, at which point Hackerman bolts, dropping the chunky modem in the process. Waiting for him is a white and gold custom conversion van. An elderly gentleman in a wheelchair slides open the side door and beckons him to jump inside. Once in, a bookish fellow stomps on the gas pedal and they're off.

Sarah sets the scene as a stakeout at a "typical 80's warehouse by the docks". (Josh starts playing "Crockett's Theme".) Officer Riza Colak is there with a fat cassette recorder. She's trying to get evidence that dirty cops from her precinct are getting paid by local drug dealers to look the other way. Just as it gets to the juicy bit, a rat knocks over some bottles, drawing their attention to her. Riza runs for it, bullets whizzing past, and ducks into a nearby parking structure. Waiting for her is a white and gold custom conversion van. A nerd with giant glasses and a mullet slides open the side door. An elderly gentleman in a wheelchair beckons her to jump inside. Once in, a bookish fellow stomps on the gas pedal and they're off.

The elderly gentleman introduces himself as Angus MacGregor. He explains that he's been gathering individuals with particular skillsets to, "help make the world a better place." Riza's not buying it. Raymond steps in to explain that Angus is the Spirit of Longing and a former member of the now defunct Century Club—an organization made up of exceptional individuals who, at one time, kept the forces of evil in check. Angus wants to reconnect old Centurion friends and try to make a difference again. Riza's still not buying it, saying she's got her own corruption to weed out. Angus finally convinces her by pointing out she could be more effective by going bigger: "try to cut them off at the head rather than try to whittle them down at their feet."

Angus directs Raymond to take them to their base of operations—an abandoned police station in the middle of an unpopulated and forgotten chunk of Miami. They park next to Riza's new "squad car"—a shiny new Mustang. Once inside, they have free reign and access to all the resources they could ever need. Hackerman is in heaven!

The Scene of the Crime

After getting settled, Angus calls the three of them into a meeting room. He presents them with a seemingly innocuous newspaper article—a drug store robbery where the crooks got away even though the place was surrounded by police. Something about it seems familiar to Raymond, but he can't put his finger on it. They go to check it out.

The drug store is a mom-n-pop shop currently surrounded by crime scene tape. The front window is smashed in and shelves are overturned.

Raymond heads to the pharmacy counter directly and finds paperwork spilled everywhere. None of the paperwork is newer than three months ago. Drug bottles not on the shelves have been lined up on the counter as if to be counted.

Hackerman makes a beeline to the office and discovers mom and pop have a brand new computer and security camera system. He begins downloading the contents of the computer to floppy disks. He also checks for the video tape of the moment of the break in. Not surprisingly, it's been taken as evidence.

Riza goes to the police station that handled the case to get a copy of the police report. As she's waiting for copies to be made, she notices an officer suspiciously pick up the phone and place a call. She can barely make out him saying, "you told me to call if she shows up. Well, she's here," before he quickly hangs up. With the copy of the report in hand, she stops by the tattletale's desk and makes her presence known before returning to the crime scene.

When Raymond is done examining the drug counter, he heads upstairs to where mom and pop live and questions them. They confirm that multiple people broke in, smashed the place, and took very little – just some loose cash and a couple of bottles of pills. The police arrived quickly, surrounded the place, and the noise from the store below just kind of stopped. The officers were unable to find anybody.

Hackerman starts to unpack all of his gear and starts building a "Magnetic Resonance Convergence Processor" using his Weird Science stunt. He succeeds, and gives it the stunt "When using the Magnetic Resonance Convergence Processor to process electro-magnetic signals, you get a +2 to Hacking to reconstruct those signals". Hackerman starts it running as it reads the magnetic residue image on the head of the video recorder and samples the camera cells and wiring to try to recreate the missing footage of the break in.

Riza compares the police report to evidence on scene. It also confirms that some small bills and a few handfuls of drugs were taken.

The Magnetic Resonance Convergence Processor finishes and ejects a newly minted video cassette. They all decide to pack up and head back to base.

Shortly after leaving the scene, Riza sees flashing lights in her rearview mirror. She diligently pulls over and Officer Joey Biggins steps out and over and leans on her car door. For all his bravado, Riza simply defects everything. Seeing as he's not going to get anything out of her, he smashes the Mustang's taillights for his trouble and moves along. During the rest of the ride back, Hackerman expounds the various ways he's going to make life difficult for Officer Biggins. When it's suggested he sign Biggins up for the Columbia Record & Tape Club, Hackerman states that's over the line as it's equivalent to being punished for war crimes.

Home Base Sweet Home Base

Back at base, Hackerman makes a big production of wheeling out the front-projection TV and gathering everybody around to check it out. Everybody gets a good chuckle when Raymond suggests this is an awful lot of effort just to show off his porn collection.

Hackerman ignores the comment and loads up his video reconstruction. A fuzzy black and white image appears on the screen...

Interior of the drug store.
A brick enters the frame, shards of glass following.
Three individuals enter, two bulky men and a woman with large hair.
One man enters the pharmacy and starts going through stacks of paperwork, throwing them on the floor as he goes.
The woman disappears into the office.
The other man starts pushing over shelves and smashing things.
After a minute or two, the woman returns with a scroll of dot-matrix printout.
Flashing lights begin to reflect off the walls.
The man in the pharmacy stuffs some pill bottles into his jacket pockets, smashes the register on the floor, pockets some cash, and throws the cash drawer at the ceiling light, plunging him into darkness.
The woman returns to the office and flips off the lights.
The remaining man makes a few false starts in various directions before deciding on a darkened corner.
Police officers enter the building from various directions, their flashlights reveal empty spaces where people were just moments before.

Riza loses it. She can't believe people just disappeared into the walls. Angus MacGregor asks her, "now do you see what we are dealing with?" Riza storms off for a stiff drink.

It finally clicks in Raymond's head: That's where he knows that ability From! The Grey Ghost used to able to do that! Angus confirms Ray's discovery and surmises that somebody has the Grey Ghost captive and is somehow extracting his powers.

Hackerman starts reconstructing the contents of mom and pop's computer from floppy disks...

Shadow of the Century - Character Workup: Hackerman

When we sat down to do the Pitch Session for Shadow of the Century, a few of our regular players weren't able to make it, because Life™. One player, Josh, sent the following consolation note:

"Make me this guy as a character:"

That's Hackerman, from the crowdfunded short film, Kung Fury. Which, itself, is a love letter to the 80's. I need to sit down and watch the completed film, but what I've seen is FANTASTIC!

So, just before the first play session, I worked up Hackerman based on just the above video (really, I should watch the whole thing). Here's the result:

The above is all "Beta" – the final version may be different.

I decided to give him a gonzo stunt to see how the "take two stunts, mash them together, and give it some wacky flavor" works out in play.

I did want to give him a stunt that allows him to hack anything as long as he could conceivable connect a computer to it. However, I decided to stick with the spirit of the playtest and use only stunts as written.

Josh was pleased.


P.S. I watched Kung Fury in its entirety. It IS FANTASTIC! Doesn't add much to the character of Hackerman—the above video does a better job characterizing him.

Shadow of the Century - Part 1. The Pitch Session

In 2006, Evil Hat published Spirit of the Century, a pulp role-playing game set in the 1920's and using the Fate system. Its premise is that, at the stroke of midnight, at the beginning of the century, extraordinary people—Spirit Centurions—are born with an innate urge to fight evil, right wrongs, shine light in the shadows, and generally make the world a better place.

Recently, Evil hat released Young Centurions to Fate Core and Fate More Kickstarter backers. Young Centurions uses the Fate Accelerated rules and posits, "what were the Centurions like as teenagers?"

Fast forward along that timeline to the 80's. Roles have flipped—the bad guys, specifically Shadow Centurions, are taking positions of power in megacorporations and political offices, and the good guys, the Spirit Centurions, are now relegated to the shadows and hiding their identities. However, they are still trying to do good and make change through their proxies: New-Wave Heroes. This is where the players come in.

The brilliance of Shadow of the Century is that it totally embraces the tropes of the 80's. Take several of the movies and TV shows of the 80's: The A-Team, Airwolf, Big Trouble in Little China, Charlie's Angels, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Goonies, Knight Rider, Magnum P.I... and you can imagine the old Spirit Centurions directing the young heroes to go out and make a difference!
(Hannibal, Archangel, Egg, Charlie, Uncle Jesse, Chester Copperpot(?), Devon, Higgins respectively.)

Recently, Evil Hat announced a Shadow of the Century beta playtest. Our regular play group was fortunate enough to get in on it. I've spent the last five days devouring the playtest document. Shadow of the Century uses the Fate Core system, but includes a simplified system of roles for character generation, simplified rules for generating NPCs, and lays out steps for having a Montage! The background text really captures the feel of the 80's—the energy, the excesses, the emerging technology we now take for granted. This Friday, we sat down to do the "Pitch Session".

The Pitch Session is where you set the tone, basic plot, and characters of your game's story. We repeatedly commented on how it felt very much like we were a bunch of writers trying to come up with a new TV show or movie to pitch to some media bigwigs.

Phase One: Format
First, you decide if you will be playing as if you are shooting a movie or a TV series. A movie has big, fast action and a shorter overall story arc. A TV series has a much longer major story arc and several smaller "season" story arcs that can be wrapped up quickly. Since our group suffers from what we call "Gamer ADD" and the fact that we want to get four or five sessions in before the playtest ends, we decided we were going to treat our game as a movie.

Phase Two: Gonzometer
The Gonzometer gives you guidelines for how crazy and wacky you want your game to be—from your basic competent action heroes, all the way to alien invasions and robots from the future. We set it at level 2 (out of 4)—just slightly supernatural.

Phase Three: Issues
It took us a while to figure out in what direction we wanted to take the game. The first thought was to concentrate on the Cold War, but decided that, in nuclear war, nobody wins. Eventually, we worked our way towards a group similar to the crew from the movie Sneakers. Even though that movie was from 1992, we liked the idea of outlaws with special skill sets trying to make up for their previous transgressions—possibly with supernatural abilities.

After some further discussion, it was decided a Centurion runs the group and he’s trying to rescue other Centurions. Since we needed to focus on just one rescue, one player suggested a very old Centurion. Since Young Centurions mentioned the Grey Ghost was from the 1800's, he was our man.

Big Issue: We have to rescue the Grey Ghost.

Subplot Issue: Criminals are using Grey-Ghost-like abilities to commit crimes - this needs to be stopped.

Phase Four and Seven: Heroes

Keith decided he wanted to play the ladies man who's secretly a huge computer nerd.

Mike Smith - Face/Hacker/Thief

High concept: Undercover Nerd

Trouble: Nerdgasm

Call to Action: Repenting former thief

Ken wanted to play the bookworm who's been following the exploits of the Century Club for as long as he can remember. In almost a stalker-like fashion, he wants to be one.

Raymond James - Brain/Detective/Warrior

High concept: Centurion Historian

Trouble: “Actually…..”

Call to Action: Following in the footsteps of the Spirits

And Michael decided he wanted to play a hippie pharmacologist who's stickin' it to the man!

Sunshine - Alchemist (Gonzo)/Detective/Saboteur

High concept: Tactical Alchemist

Trouble: Bad trips

Call to Action: Fighting the Man

Phase Five and Six: Cast and Villains

These phases are kind of a neat twist on Fate world building. In this case, all the players quickly generate three NPCs each by writing down names on three note cards and passing them to the left. Then everybody adds a quick note to each name and passes them on for another round of quick notes.

We changed it up slightly in that we did them as a "card draft": Write down names on three note cards, pass them to the left. Pick one card, pass the remaining two to the left. Pick one card, pass the remaining to the left. Everybody will end up with three cards from different people. Add a note to each one and repeat the process.

We had the most fun with these phases.

Here's what we ended up with. NPCs chosen as "villains" are marked with an *:

Alexa Park - Heiress to a Hotel Magnate, Big into biker culture

Big Pete - Bouncer at TechNoir, Trained in martial arts

Dr. Raymond Cunningham - Has a PhD in Philosophy, Always wears a surgical mask

Lenny the Snitch - Key witness to an ongoing investigation, Has no middle fingers

Mr. Zero - Buys and sells “questionable” electronics, Always wears a Captain Planet Inspector Gadget t-shirt

*Officer Joey Biggins - Detective, Takes payoffs from gangs

Sally Maxwell - Wealthy daughter of the Maxwells of the Maxwell Museum, Never seen without a “boy toy” on her arm

Samantha Patel - Girlfriend of drug kingpin __________, Does his books and is secretly siphoning off funds

*Slick Steve - User car salesman, Makes under-the-table deals with corporate types

*Tryn Velcog - Standoffish Greek hacker, Stands 5’8”, but 6’ with hair

*Vieger AKA “Switch” - Norwegian hacker–Tryn’s nemesis, Split personality disorder

Zed Kalista - Owns a pawn shop, Obsessed with Ninjas

Finally, a suggestion was made for another “Bad Guy”. Here's the notes we took: Technophobe, Can render tech dead with  an EMP-like touch. 

Now I just have to figure out who has the Grey Ghost and why for next week!

Gen Con 2015 Recap

This year's Gen Con was fantastic (and crowded) as usual! However, it's been over a week since Gen Con ended, so forgive me if the details have faded a bit. You won't get all the games played and meals eaten as much as in my Gen Con 2014 Recap.

You know you're at Gen Con
when you got your badge!

Wednesday:
Eight of us arrived in Indy early afternoon. After sorting out rooms (the hotel pre-registration in January was a nightmare, BTW), we went down to Will Call to grab our badges, coupon books, and bags. We then indulged in tasty food (and slow service) at Granite City Food & Brewery.

Afterwards, we scurried back to the hotel to grab a table and get to gaming. I forget what all was played, but Brad finally got to try out Arctic Scavengers. This time we played with the Medic cards, which made purchasing cards from the common decks much easier.

Thursday:
Initially, I had a ticket to the 10 AM Privateer Press Speed Painting Event, but wanted to check out Evil Hat's "State of the Hat" address, so I talked my buddy Mike into giving speed painting a try. This had an interesting repercussion.

So, I attended the "State of the Hat". Evil Hat has their own breakdown on their site, but here's what I took note of:

• Fate Accessibility - Elsa Henry of Feminist Sonar announced her handbook "for bringing characters with disabilities into games and players with disabilities to your table, using the Fate system as a lens for both."
• Fate of Cthulhu - Think Terminator, but replace Skynet with Cthulhu.
• Portal Jumpers - A kid-centric game along the lines of the 80s cartoon, Dungeons & Dragons, utilizing the Apocalypse Engine. It's my understanding that they will be revealing several worlds over time - fantasy, space, dinosaurs, etc.
• Kaiju Incorporated - From Evil Hat's page: "A satirical setting about corporate excess and profiteering in the wake of wide-scale kaiju attacks..." Will be released as both a card game and an RPG.
• The Dystopian Universe Roleplaying Game - A Fate-system RPG based on Indie Boards and Cards’ games The Resistance and Coup.
• Dresden Files Accelerated - There was a discussion of using "Mantles" as part of character creation.
• Bubblegumshoe - Veronica Mars-like teenage detective RPG using Pelgrane Press' GUMSHOE system. It's been enhanced with relationship mechanics and a fun layout. You can bet Kenneth Hite is involved.
• Dresden Lives - The Dresden LARP continues to evolve.
• Majestic 12 - A supplement for the Atomic Robo RPG with new comic art! I'm looking forward to this one.
• Young Centurions - A young adult prequel to Spirit of the Century using Fate Accelerated.
• Do: Fate of the Flying Temple - A Fate version of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.
• War of Ashes RPG - To sum up in two words:"Muppet wars". It's a loosely Fate Accelerated RPG based on Zombiesmith's miniatures game and capable of using minis. It is in the process of being printed, due in October, and they are taking preorders.
• Shadows of the Century - Spirit of the Century takes on 80s action TV. It is currently in alpha playtesting. I'm SO excited to get my hands on this!
• Blood on the Trail - Vampire Oregon Trail anyone?
• Don't Turn Your Back - Card game based on the Don't Rest Your Head roleplaying game. Just starting to ship to Kickstarter backers.

Say it: "verdigris"

I had to leave "State of the Hat" early as I had another Privateer Press Speed Painting Event at 11 AM. There were some extra seats, so Mike decided to purchase two of them and speed painted TWO miniatures in 45 minutes! I did some nice burnishing, verdigris, and rust effects, but they did not impress the judge.

After that was a quick run into the exhibit hall to hit up the Games & Gears booth for my Gen Con Collectors Brush Set that I preordered. They were kind enough to let me upgrade my set so I could get Mike a set of synthetics, a towel, and some brush soap. While we were there, we ran around looking to take advantage of some of the coupons.  Imagine my surprise when we ran into Trace Beaulieu and Crow of MST3K fame. I totally didn't realize he played Dr. Clayton Forrester!

Trace, Crow, and me!

Trace is starring as the human in the VERMIN Web Show, which just got funded on Kickstarter!

"El Toro"

Mike and I couldn't stay in the exhibit hall very long as I had a ticket for the 2 PM Reaper Speed Painting Event. Mike decided to sit in on this one too. There was some sort of mix-up and we were given clay golems from the Bones line to paint instead of a primed metal pirate. It was difficult trying to paint mounds of flesh and still stand out from the crowd. I decided to paint mine as a luchador complete with an "El Toro" tattoo on his back. Mike painted his as the grown up version of the Coppertone Baby. Surprisingly, I came in second place, beating Marike Reimer! Marike is a real good sport and gave everyone who placed above her a $10 gift certificate to the Dark Sword Miniatures booth.

I couldn't celebrate too long, as I had the "Airbrush Techniques Q&A" class with Angel Giraldez immediately after. It was amazing seeing Angel work up a miniature from a black primer coat to clean highlights with just an airbrush. Immediately after that was "Highlighting & Shading, The Next Step to Competitive Painting" with Golden Demon winner Dennis Smith. I was able to follow what Dennis was doing, and actually achieved some decent highlights on the provided Infinity miniature (pictures don't do it justice), but I was not keen on the color choices – the red came out more orange when we were done.

Since this was my busiest day, the rest of the evening was a blur, but I'm sure I had a Greedo sandwich from Der Pretzel Wagen. Unfortunately, they forgot the wasabi horseradish!

Friday:
At 10 AM, I participated in the only hands-on class I could get with Angel Giraldez: "Painting with Angel Giraldez: NMM". It was my first time trying Non-Metallic Metals under instruction, so it came out surprisingly well. It turns out it's pretty much highlighting up to white. The Non Metallic Metals Set from Vallejo made it relatively easy. I should post a photo...

Angel Giraldez's work on the left, my attempt on the right.

I spent the rest of the day walking the entirety of the exhibit hall, even handing off my 2 PM Reaper Speed Painting Event ticket to Mike. I bought surprisingly little this year, but I did pick up a slightly dinged up copy of Machikoro from CoolStuffInc based on recommendation alone.

Upon leaving the hall, I made arrangements to meet Brad, Scott, and Kristin at Mikado Japanese Restaurant for sushi. Even though they are contemporary sushi, the fish was good and their Seafood Puff is to die for! Yum!

After returning to the hotel and staking out a couple of tables to game on, I followed the ENnies twitter feed. Even though Dungeons & Dragons swept most of the categories, I was happy to see Evil Hat Productions (Atomic Robo The Roleplaying Game), Monte Cook Games (The Strange, Ninth World Guidebook), Modiphius Entertainment Ltd. (Achtung! Cthulhu: Terrors of the Secret War, MUTANT Year Zero The Roleplaying Game), and Kenneth Hite (Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, Ken Writes About Stuff Volume 2) get some lovin'.

Around that time, you could clearly see fireworks from the window of the room we were gaming in. It was part of a nearby baseball game, but I like to think it was Gen Con's way of saying hello.

Even though we had planned to play Fiasco Wednesday night, Friday was the first time we actually got a chance to. Mike and I wanted to see how Fiasco would handle cyberpunk, so we played the Hard Wired Playset by Alex Mayo. Sadly, it wasn't the best attempt as half the table wanted to do J-pop cyberpunk while the other half wanted to do dark and gritty cyberpunk. I will give Rich credit for staying in character and shooting the kneecaps of two other PCs in the first go around the table, particularly since he hasn't roleplayed in years.

Saturday:
Saturday started with another 10 AM class: "Freehand with Marike Weimer". Found out two interesting things about Marike: 1. Her Real Life Job™ is IT-related (as is mine) and 2. She takes quite a few clever shortcuts when painting miniatures, not that you'd know it. Her freehand is impeccable. Go ahead, check it out. Here's her website again.

After her class, I decided to drop in on the Games on Demand room and see if I could pick up a 2-hour game. Note for newbs: you need to sign up for games at the table in front of the room and games cost generic tickets, generally two. I did none of these things. I wandered in looking for Will Hindmarch to see if I could drop in to his Project: Dark game. Will kindly let me know his game was full, but his buddy Cory was available to run a game and runs them well. So, I stopped by Cory's table, and he let me know I was a newb and how to get things sorted out. At the registration table, under Cory O'Brien (I'm pretty sure this is his website), was listed Fate and Leverage. I chose Fate as I'm always interested in seeing how other folks run it and headed back in. Eventually, the table filled up and we jumped into an animorphic pirate tale full of swashbuckling and shenanigans! Cory does run a fine game, and started by canvassing the players for a list of 'Pirate Codes' unique to our ship – breaking one of these codes created a one time boost against you. Unfortunately, my two hours went quickly so I had to leave. But, I left the metal golem stuck with a "tangled in rope" aspect with two free invocations.

The reason I left early? Another Reaper Speed Painting Event at 2 PM. The miniature as a fur-clad female druid and I tried some of the NMM skills I picked up, but no win for me.

Brad picked up Poop: The Game for my lovely wife who finds humor in all things scatalogical. It's kind of like Uno, but there's a toilet/flush mechanic that can return stacks of cards to your hand and keeping you from going out.

Shortly after, I got a text from Keith Potter, one of the Chicago Area Game Writers Colloquium (CAGWIC) guys, asking if I'd be interested in hosting a Fiasco game for a few friends. We were also able to snag another CAGWIC member: PK Sullivan. I secured a game table at the JW, we decided on the News Channel Six Playset by Chris Norwood, Ken Coble, and Tom Gurganus, and ran with it. I played, Bruce Bauer!, the grizzled veteran news anchor just looking to retire after 60-some years. Keith played the Arts and Events reporter, Olivier Devereaux, who had been around as long as I had, but was having the best time of his life and looking to keep me around for company. His roommate, Jeff Flynn, played by Bear, was an unscrupulous bookie and all-around crook. On the other side of me, PK played the young, fresh-faced rookie, Rob Bolton, with a proper education looking to make it big. He had ousted the previous weekend anchor, Drake Dunbar, played by John, who had slipped into a drinking habit after losing his job of 15 years, wife and kids. The game was rife with ballot-box stuffing, horse racing scandals, and even Rob punched Bruce ON-AIR. Loved it! Easily in my top three favorite Fiasco games!

After bidding my CAGWIC friends adieu and taking a quick breather, I sat down for a full night of card and board games. Specifically:

• Castles of Mad King Ludwig - A tile placement game where you purchase rooms to build a castle worth the most victory points. Players take turns as the Master Builder who sets the prices for the room tiles. It was fun and I won the game (never mind Jose bumping the score track), but I found myself trying to build the perfect castle. Is there a solo mode?
• Red7 - A card game that looks like Uno, but is so much more intricate. Each card has a number, color, and rule attached to the color (and an icon that does special effects for the super-advanced game). The object is to follow the current rule but be higher than the rest of the table by number or color – red being high on the ROYGBIV scale – thus Red7 is the highest. If you cannot play a card to follow the rule, you can change the rule, or both. Yeah, it's tricky. I was just starting to get the hang of it and would like to try Red7 again.
• Tricks & Treats The Card Game - What a way to come down from Red7. You lay out several trick-or-treat baskets, randomly and secretly determine which is your basket, and then play candy cards on top of the baskets, trying to get the most candy at the end without letting on whose basket is whose. Aimed at a younger crowd, methinks.
• Chopstick Dexterity MegaChallenge 3000 - The premise of this Kickstarted game is simple: fill a large bowl with 25 wooden food pieces (in five colors and five shapes), flip over a cardboard token with a picture of a piece of food, and use chopsticks to grab that piece of food and drop it into your smaller dish before the other players do. In reality, it's a mad frenzy of chopsticks jousting, food flying, and bowls clacking! The box says it takes 15 minutes to play. It took us half an hour to get through 10 of the cardboard tokens and we were drenched in sweat. 

Sunday:
Sunday, we packed up the cars, checked out, and headed to Steak and Shake for a surprisingly quick breakfast. Then it was back to the exhibit hall for one last shopping spree.

I headed to the Geek Chic booth to pick up a new "Cowboy" mustache monocle/necklace for the wife. Then I picked up the 3rd edition rulebook for the Infinity tabletop miniature wargame - the art is gorgeous! While I was at the Infinity/Corvus Belli booth, and since my regular gaming group is playtesting the Infinity RPG, I picked up some Infinity Tokens from the Warsenal folks who were sharing the booth. In talking with them about the Infinity RPG, they mentioned that Corvus Belli would be producing miniatures for the Kickstarter when it launches. They just happened to announce the miniatures at Gen Con. Check out these beauts:

I got a chance to thank Angel Giraldez and shake his hand one last time before he had to leave. Before I left the booth, I had to snap a few pics of this gorgeous piece of scenery/terrain:

Finally, at 2:30, was the Reaper Speed Paint Final. We painted the same miniature we had for the final last year, so I decided to go with lighter colors. I did not win. Alas.

And with my brushes, gaming bag, and fresh purchases in hand, we left Indianapolis; Gen Con 2015 came to a close.

Obligatory Speed Paint Finals Photo
Courtesy Pete