QuinCon Basic Fantasy Event

[Solomoriah]

I'll be running a demo game at QuinCon 25 in Quincy, IL on Saturday, June 19th during the 2pm - 6pm session. The adventure will be The Flying Island (which will eventually appear in BF3 Dream of the White Hawk), and I'll be providing pregens (specifically, the pregens from BF1 Morgansfort, advanced by about 150,000 XP each).

I don't know how many members here are anywhere near Quincy, though I doubt many are... still, I thought I'd let you all know.

[crazycrypt]

I am working on getting a babysitter for that day, shouldn't be too hard since it is on the weekend. Mom said she would, so unless something comes up I plan on me being there. I think Chris said he was planning on going as well, so I'm sure we will come together. Let me know if we can help in any way.

[SmootRK]

I am much too far for that. Will you do any BFRPG giveaways for your participants? Maybe just a little slip of paper with a lulu discount code for the Books. Maybe the LULU people could give you a limited number of single use discounts for such a purpose... promotes use of their site too.

Just an idea to explore.

[Solomoriah]

Nah, it's just a demo game. I'm really more interested in finding new players than in promoting the game, though the latter effect is certainly possible.

I think they do coupons on Lulu but I'm not bothering this time. Maybe if I make a habit of doing this sort of game, I'll look into it further.

[SmootRK]

How did the game go? I look forward to seeing the module that you used, now that the event has passed. Share some details, eh?

[Solomoriah]

50% good, 50% fiasco.

The session was scheduled in the afternoon, 2 pm to 6 pm. The auction was supposed to start at noon and run to about 3 pm, so it would overlap, but I was led to believe it wouldn't be a problem.

But the auction didn't start until 1 pm. I was set up and ready to go, with the two guys from my regular game and one convention attendee, but the other three guys were apparently still in the auction.

At 3 pm, they were still in the auction, and I had all I would take of the waiting. I parceled out pregens two per player and went ahead and started, with the understanding that, if the other players suddenly materialized, the players already at the table would hand one over the new players.

I took a break at almost 4 pm when the auction was, finally, over, and asked the convention director where my players were. He said he knew all three of the missing players personally, and wasn't sure why they hadn't shown up for the game. I returned to the table and resumed play.

Shortly, two guys who were not on the list showed up and wanted to join in; I think the convention director sent them. We made them welcome and proceeded on, and a good time was had by all. I wrapped the game at 7 pm, which is (I think) when the evening session was supposed to start. The players would have stayed longer, I'm sure, but I was worn out. Turned out later I was a bit under the weather.

...

I ran the Flying Island, which will be part of BF3 Dream of the White Hawk. I've now run versions of Flying Island three times (counting QuinCon) and I think I'm finally figuring out how it should work.

I used several Field Guide creatures, in particular the Fire-Breathing Owlbears and the Great Orb of Eyes. I've decided I don't really like either one. I won't be dropping them from the Field Guide, but they won't be in the final Flying Island. I also used Winged Apes and Prince Frogs, two of my own creations, and they will be staying in the final version.

Oh, yeah... errata. The Great Orb of Eyes has the power to cause blindness, as the (reversed) clerical spell... but BFRPG doesn't allow reversing cure blindness, and thus has no duration set for the reverse. Also, the description of animate dead in the core rules needs revision, as it is missing the bit about not converting class levels into hit dice.

The player of the cleric animated the corpses of two hill giants they fought early on, and used them to good effect in the castle; I have to say, I hadn't thought about him taking that spell. Later on he animated the bodies of a handful of human foes for the same purpose, which is how I found out about the missing bit.

More later... tired now. Just ran my "regular" game...

[SmootRK]

At least it ended as good time, rather than the other way around. Do you have many edits in the module now; will it take a while to put out?

[Solomoriah]

Hah. It's little more than a skeleton. As soon as I add the players from the QuinCon session to the playtester's list, I'll post what I have. But I think I want to drop it from 8th level to around levels 4-6.