Thanks for the write up on the B1 session. My favorite line was, "Now Laggamundo's mom didn't raise no fool"  
I was also fortunate enough to be one of the players. The adventure was a lot of fun. Mike did an amazing job. It was sad when it ended. As soon as we were done I wanted to re-equip and head back in to the dungeon to look for more goblets.

Cheers,
Curt "The dwarf who would be king" Gould

Scalydemon wrote in North Texas RPG Convention 2014: June 5-8:Mike, how was attendance this year compared to previous years?

You and the others that put this CON on really do a service to the old school gaming community and for that I thank you

Not as good as we'd hoped...under 250.  But we had over 20 cancellations, which I believe was the most ever.  It just seemed to be a rough year financially for a lot of people, hopefully it will be better next year and we can have another 30% increase!

And thanks for the kind words....it's a labor of love, seriously.  We are already working on 2015.

Mike B.

Another fantastic NTRPG Con guys!  I'm STILL trying to catch up on all the sleep I missed over the five days I was there.  Once again some really great games to choose from.

Wednesday night was an interesting experience playing in Frank's Battle Royale.  Two teams went head-to-head on an ever changing terrain using AD&D rules.  My team basically said "screw-it-all-lets-just-kill-those-losers-at-any-cost" and threw caution and strategy to the wind for the most part.  The other team planned and plotted and wasted precious time.  In the end it came down to a draw.  My fighter had been hit by their cleric and dropped to zero hit points while holding one of the bridges across a lake of acid on our opponents last turn.  It would have given them the victory but on our last turn, our mage used charm person to have the same cleric that "killed" my fighter, heal him back above zero hit points and preserve the tie.  

Thursday evening was my yearly Paranoia game.  This year, instead of clones, we each controlled a newly sentient robot.  We all "awoke" to find ourselves partially paralyzed and headed towards a grisly death in a robot recycling center.  We had to use our wits and the tools provided us in concert to make it out of the recycling center and search for the "Robot Underground" and safe passage out of Alpha Complex.  Once again, it was a fun, hilarious event.

Friday started off early with a jaunt through the Anomalous Subsurface Environment by Patrick Wetmore.  If you aren't familiar with it, it's a gonzo megadungeon and supplement.  My character was a Moktar, a creature resembling a 7-foot tall housecat.  I just grunted, growled, and whipped a lot of ass during the adventure.  We fought fishmen, cannibal clowns, automatons and a few other oddities (a statue of Angus Young for one).

Friday night was Boot Hill with Steve Winter.  He ran a modified version of "The Taming of Brimstone".  There were 10 or 12 of us I think and our group didn't know each other but had all come to town to seek our fortunes and had run afoul of a band of baddies attempting to take over the town/railroad.  My prospector was able to manage a bit of killing with his trusty rifle but the antics of Bill Barsh and Chris Finch were what set the tone of the adventure.  Just in case the bandits were too much for us, Cimmerian (Finch) wired half the town up with dynamite in order to blow everyone to hell.  Luckily we were able to prevail but we managed to cut the town's population in half while trying to take out the bad guys.

Saturday morning was a trip back in time to a typical Saturday morning when I was growing up.  Thundarr the Barbarian was one of my favorite cartoons back then and Tim Snider made adventuring in that world a reality.  The six of us took on the roles of Thundarr, Ookla the Mok, Princess Ariel, Shara (the teenage barbarian girl), Merlik (teenage warlock), and a teenage Mok (cant remember the name).  Tim used the Mutant Future rules and basically said to be as over-the-top as possible when it came to deciding what we were going to do in combat.  So as you might expect there was a lot of called shots, crazy stunts, and impossible moves made during the game.  We made it as corny as possible using 80's slang and had a great time.  "Demon Dogs" and "Lords of Light" were uttered several times during the game to great effect.  Tim even gave everyone that played a very nice copy of the Thundarr supplement rules.

Saturday night was my first time playing Call of Cthulhu.  The adventure was a shortened version of "The Haunting".  It was creepy and a lot of fun.  The investigative part was cut short due to time constraints but we managed to finish the adventure and stop the "end of the world".  Because of my lack of sleep I nodded off once or twice while the other investigators were doing their one on one (hope I didn't snore) with the GM.  We missed a few key clues and an encounter that might have made our jobs that much easier.  Lots of rats, a nearly unkillable villain, and a scary looking dagger were just a few things in the adventure.  One of the players decided to "speed things up" by waking the torpid villain in the basement of the house we were in.  I told him not to, but it was too late.  So while he and a few other clueless chaps tried fighting the evil creature, I took off with the creature's journal and hightailed it up the basement stairs with an unconscious investigator in tow.  While another player set fire to the house, I locked the basement door and barred it to try and keep the evil one trapped in the burning house.  While it looked like all the others would die, the one with the mystical dagger was eventually able to land a killing blow on the creature.  He was unable to escape the basement via the stairs but did manage to crawl out a long unused coal chute.  Too bad.  

Sunday morning was the last game of the con and it was once again Steve Winter and Gamma World.  I don't know how any of us survived honestly.  It was one big death trap and I think Steve was trying his best to make up for the Boot Hill shenanigans from Friday.  I somehow rolled some crazy percentile scores and wound up with four physical and mental mutations with no negative effects.  The most interesting mutation was the extra organ that allowed me to absorb radiation and then later "poop" out a brick of inert material.  We only had one pure strain human in the party who just happened to be at the con for the first time playing in his first ever game of Gamma World.  He was lost quite a bit but if we hadn't had him in the game there was a good chance none of us would have survived.

Thanks again to Doug and Mike for running a great show.  Talking to all the special guest, artists, and other gamers was a treat.  It was good to see all of the group.  Stratochamp's display and discussion was incredible and my understanding of why he collects what he does and how he does it makes his collection that more amazing.  Friday night/Saturday am was spent talking to Bracton, Leadjunkie, Bill Webb and a few others out in front of the hotel with a nice bottle of scotch (thanks Mark!) and a few cigars.  I was still a little tipsy during the Thundarr game (probably helped) that morning after only three hours of fitful sleep.  Sorry goes out to Prufrock for any snoring.     I just wish I hadn't missed the midnight auction on Saturday night.  I heard it was a riot with Lucifer showing up at one point.  

Can't wait to see everyone again next year!  Photos to follow later.

Melnibonean wrote in North Texas RPG Convention 2014: June 5-8:Doug and Mike. thank you for running a great convention.  It was the first time to NTRPG for myself and my 2 friends from Northern California.  We all had an amazing time.  We played some  great games and were able to meet a lot of new people.  It was also a lot of fun reuniting with the rpg gang.  I enjoyed meeting both of you in person and look forward to the convention next year.  Great photos by the way!

Hey, I wanted to say it was great meeting you and thanks again for the invite for myself and my son to play in your Metamorphosis Alpha "Golden Ticket Holder" game. Much fun and we look forward to next year!

cgould42 wrote in North Texas RPG Convention 2014: June 5-8: I donated a set of the D&D licensed books/cassettes that I thought would be put in the midnight auction for fun.
They wound up selling in the regular auction...

Curt: Thank you for donating those to the Convention for the auction.
I was excited to see them in the auction and was the lucky winner.... and (IMO) the final auction amount was downright cheap.
The only reason (I think) they went so cheap is that probably only a few people attending the auction that night know how truly rare they are.
The D&D themed Kid Stuff Book sets were licensed under TSR and came in two formats; One was a Record with read along book and the other was a Cassette with read along book.
Kid Stuff published dozens of these sets, but there were (IIRC) only three different Book/Record sets published by Kid Stuff with the D&D theme (TSR).
This teaching tool was meant to help youngsters learn to read, following the story in the book while hearing the words from the book sounded out by the Record/Cassette.

Once the items were removed from the shrink wrap the books and cassettes/records were all too often separated (they were for kids after all).
Normally that meant one of the items (Record/Cassette and Book) were all too often lost making the remaining item pretty worthless.
The records were easier to keep track of than the cassettes as the Book/Record sets included a protective sleeve (inside the book) to slip in and out of, while there was nowhere for the cassette to be kept.
In large part, for that reason; The Kids Stuff Book/Record sets are easier to find (still shy of common).
Around 5-6 of the Book/Record sets sell every year on e-Bay (1-2 might be in shrink wrap) but I have seen only a few of the Book/Cassette sets ever.
The Book/Cassette sets in the Conventions Main auction are the first I have ever seen in the original shrink wrap with the cardboard headers.

The Book/Record sets currently sell for about $60-$75 each (with no shrink wrap) and they are far more common than the cassette sets.
As I mentioned above; I have never even seen one of the Book/Cassette sets in the original shrink, much less for sale.
Honestly, I do not really know how much these Book/Cassette sets in shrink wrap might be worth to a serious collector.
But If posted to e-Bay in an auction listing I suspect the final winning bid (at the convention) for these would not be nearly enough by half.

Thanks Gnat.

I'm very glad they went to someone who knows something about them. Even the ToT did not have much detail on the cassette versions.  For provenance I can confirm that these came from the TSR archive and were of course uncirculated. Some of the materials, including the cassette/booklets that were not used in the Gygax Charity Auction were given to the employees.

Cheers,
Curt

Gnat the Beggar wrote in North Texas RPG Convention 2014: June 5-8:

cgould42 wrote in North Texas RPG Convention 2014: June 5-8:
Around 5-6 of the Book/Record sets sell every year on e-Bay (1-2 might be in shrink wrap) but I have seen only a few of the Book/Cassette sets ever.
The Book/Cassette sets in the Conventions Main auction are the first I have ever seen in the original shrink wrap with the cardboard headers.

The Book/Record sets currently sell for about $60-$75 each (with no shrink wrap) and they are far more common than the cassette sets.
As I mentioned above; I have never even seen one of the Book/Cassette sets in the original shrink, much less for sale.

I've run across a couple of the cassette versions and one was in shrink and didn't pick them up!  Argh.  I had no idea they were that rare.  

Anyone interested in any Richard LeBlanc (New Big Dragon Games, winner of the Three Castles Award 2014 for game design) product?  I am going to order his Dragon Horde digests and wondered if anyone else wanted to jump aboard.  You can paypal me the money.  This might be especially helpful for international orders that have to go through Lulu.  I would charge you shipping plus a tiny bit more to cover costs.  The Dragon Horde booklets I can ship first class; anything bigger will have to go priority mail ($6 domestic, $22/$25 international) flat rate.  I'll start a list here and keep it going until the end of June, then make an order, get the products, and ship them out.  Should get them by mid-July, depends on how many want to jump aboard.  Hopefully this won't overwhelm me (gulp)....

New Big Dragon Games Unlimited | Square Market

Mike B.

Gnat the Beggar wrote in North Texas RPG Convention 2014: June 5-8:I think there was also a book set with the title "Quest for the Cursed Bone"?

*CURSES*  I didn't know about that one!  Argh...  and I thought I was near to having them all.  

I have mine in storage.  I'll have to dig for them to see what all I do have.  But I know I don't have any of the cassette versions.  In the past I've had to choose and I thought the record versions were more scarce so I went that route first.

Tome of Treasures :: View topic - Quest for the Cursed Bone record (1984)