Rich and Strange Aeons

Went for the first time since 2006; like that time, just a Saturday run, Amy and I being driven up by a guy from Gamer's Guild. We should probably have left earlier than 11:30... Got there and through lines by 1:30, found that the dealer room closes at 6, so I decided to do that till 4, then look for games. Then I thought about relative frequency and value of RPG one-shots and board games and looked for RPGs to register for... for 4 I got into my 5th choice, a Wild Talents-derived mecha game (Metal Armor?). I later got into an Exalted game for 8, and, let's get this gripe out of the way, got ripped off: we'd bought $10 of generic tickets up front, because I knew I tended to use them and that they were refundable -- or that they had been in the past, and it sure sounded like they were still. But, after spending 8 hours on RPGs, they were useless, so we tried to get ours refunded. Nope! They're just "system credit" against next year. What if you never come to Gencon again? Tough luck, they keep the money. Bastards.

Dealer room: OMG I'd forgotten how big it was. It could have used more time, really. I thought about getting shiny dice, e.g. from Chessex or GameScience, but balked on site. I'd have bought Fudge dice but never saw them. Larry Elmore, of BECMI D&D fame, had a stand, and I was going to buy print but didn't right away, and couldn't find his stand again before I had to go to my game.

But, I found various books. On the expensive end, I got Starblazers Adventures, the space opera spin-off of Fate, and The Art of Exalted from the White Wolf stand. On the cheap end, I found someone selling Exalted 1e books for $2-5: Aspect Water and Air, Time of Tumult, and Dragon-Blooded. From SJG I got GURPS Egypt, Low-Tech, and Reign of Steel for $10 total.

The Wild Talents game... was a somewhat disorganized playtest, with a good a portion of the time spent by the GM soliciting advice on the rules. He works for the ORE company, and is developing this game. Amy ran into the problem of "my female Spock would logically run back to base at this point, but that's not so fun in a one-shot". I had a female Pretty One -- all the characters were run off anime stereotypes -- who could sort of have been Nanami from RGU but I dubbed her Esmerelda Spoor from "Crest of the Stars" and tried to play to match. Our characters had various semi-freeform powers, part Aspect part Stunt; one of mine was Ojousama Bitch-Laugh ("Oh ho ho ho"), which would have frozen enemies for a round, but our human opposition was wimpy and the non-human opposition, well, she didn't try. Also had a tactical planning dice-adding power like my Courtier in Boco's Weapons of the Gods Romance of the Three Kingdoms game, though the people I helped never rolled dice. Amy also found her character was possibly overpowered, what with 4 hard dice to spend at once, though we fought big monsters more than hordes of minions, for whom others powers would have fit.

Nothing epic, but had fun. One nice bit of his planning was that he had 6 archetypes -- Leader, Rogue, Pretty One, Spock, Average One, Lunk -- and male and female versions of each. Same basic stats, different personalities and powers. I was the only cross-player. (Other three players were male, BTW.)


The Exalted game was Dragon-Blooded, members of a Wyld Hunt going after Anathema. Nice turnaround! The other five players (including Amy and one other woman) all took Dynasts, I took a Water Aspect Immaculate who had the honor of organizing the Hunt. We butchered three Lunars and then three gryphons (Wyld creatures), but then I probably derailed the default plot when we ran into two Fair Folk nobles (who'd probably brought the Gryphons. Oh yeah, we'd killed hobgoblins outside the old temple/tomb, that's hardly worth mentioning.) There were reports and suspicions of Solars, and the nobles mentioned Abyssals as well, so my Immaculate got the nobles to help us hunt the Celestials. Fair Folk are low-priority Anathema. Carrot-stick of letting them leave, stick of challenging their Valor ("cowards?") carrot of the glory of fighting Solars.

But then we ran into the Solars and Abyssals all talking to each other. 3 of Each. As I put it, "we're outnumbered 8-6." Amy suspects if we'd fought the Fair Folk we'd have run into separate parties of Celestials. We talked, and found that the mortal Nellens satrap of Greyfalls who'd sent us out had invited the Fair Folk in and sent letters to the Celestials as well, apparently trying to arrange for mutual annihilation. We went back, lured him out with claims of orichalcum artifacts (technically true), and turned him over (to the people holding those orichalcum artifacts) and scurried home to take over Greyfalls and hunt Anathema some safer day.

Exalted combat seems an odd choice for one-shots for me, but still, it was fun. Though the Lunar fight practically ended before the martial artists could get their Forms up; luckily we managed to maintain them to the gryphon fight a short distance away. All the DBs were like Speed 3 or 4 on their basic actions. I think the GM skipped DV penalties from actions, everyone was getting into flurries more than was really wise. Well, except me. He was stingy with the 2-die stunts, though I got the first one of the game.

Boring self-aggrandizing game geekery ahead:

Gamer's Guild has a joke houserule about automatically winning Catan if you build 3 cities around the desert. I verified this was a joke by doing so tonight, though as it happens I won anyway. It all made sense, though.

Desert in the inner tier of tiles. First to build, picked 5-10-9 stone-stone-wheat. Last to build... there were better places pip-wise than the 4-3 wood-brick I chose, but none that would give me those cards, and being able to build a road out the gate is nice. The obvious candidates to build next were 5/ocean/3:1 port, 8 wheat around the desert, 5 sheep around the desert. I went for the wheat, then sheep (my only sheep), picking up more wood and clay, and the port last. Perfectly natural settlements around the desert. First city was the stone-wheat triple, duh! But second? The 5 just turns 3 stones into 4 stones, doesn't give anything else, and risks getting suppressed as an attractive nuisance. Desert cities at least doubled two tiles each, thus not being squelchable by the robber. Thus, cities around the desert. Finally won with a breakout road, and a last settlement -- rolled a 7, but I had a year of plenty in my hand, and might have had enough cards to win anyway, didn't check; would have needed 11 cards total, losing 5 to keep wood wheat sheep and 3 stone to turn into brick. Alternately, the next dev card was a VP, though of course I didn't know that.

It was a close game, two others were one VP card or settlement away from victory, and the last guy still had 8 VPs. Started slow since inland deserts often do that, plus we rolled a ridiculous number of 7s -- discarded all the ones in the first two turns, which was a lot. Later the game picked up, though often was choked for brick or wood at various times, though it really oscillated -- I'd go from having 4 wheat and clay each to having no clay and needing it.

anima got a solid lock on largest army without any natural stone, just by buying it with clay or other stuff. P. never had 3:1 till the end, but still did pretty well trading in sheep, sheep, sheep, and sheep.