Got back from NTRPGCon about a week ago. Still a little bruised and sore from moving the weekend prior, I’d signed up to run 4 games and play in more. Overall, it was a great time. Every game I ran and game I played in was a fun time, even the rough playtests. Got to see those friends that you only see irl at conventions, and met some cool industry folks such as Matt Finch, Jacob Hurst, and Courtney Campbell. Plus, I got to catch up with folks like Skeeter Green, Karl Rodriguez, Levi Combs, Dave Baity, and Luau Lou. In a brief conversation with Matt and Courtney, Matt relayed that he believes you have to do this “ttrpg business” thing for about 10 years before you start making real money. I’m not sure that means I’ll actually be quitting the day job in 7 years, so I’ll just make sure that I have a good time along the way.

Oh, real quick before I start talking about all the games I ran, I am launching a Kickstarter on Tuesday, June 13th. If you like Mutant Crawl Classics then check it out! I got a zine (Marvels of the Multiverse) with a 2-hour funnel that takes place on the shards of the broken moon above earth, I got MCC-ified Benisons and Dooms (like Lankhmar), Mutation Duels, and a new PC class called the Jungle Juice Drinker. Plus, I got a full-side adventure called The Technomancer of Candy Mountain. It’s a big honking adventure that is 32-pages long in layout. I ran one last playtest at the con so I’ll talk more about it below.

Subscribe now

Anyway, let’s talk about games! On Thursday, I first ran The Sinister Secret of the Slugmen. It’s a Weird Frontiers adventure that I’ve been sitting on for over a year. Just polishing it and playtesting it a bit more every now and then. I recently got some feedback from Dave Baity that definitely improved the adventure so it ran better than ever. Not sure if my next KS will be a Weird Frontiers adventure double-feature, but it’s a distinct possibility.

After that, I played in The Stars at Night are Big and RIGHT, another Weird Frontiers adventure ran by Judge Paul. It was actually his very first playtest of the adventure so it was a little rough, but still a ton of fun. He got good feedback and ran an even better version the next morning.

Friday started with the podcaster breakfast, (thank you Lou!) before I ran Big Trouble for a Little Blood. It’s a very Big Trouble in Little China inspired adventure. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the 1870s, a girl with green eyes in kidnapped on Chinese New Year by a bunch of vampires! The people loved it. Got a few good notes on how to improve, but this adventure is pretty darn polished and ready to go.

After that, I had some time to bum around for a bit, but ended up skipping another game to play in a playtest of Hoard Crawl Classics. It’s DCC but you’re bad guys and the classes are different monsters. We sandboxed around Hommlet and caused a bunch of chaos. But the wizard Burne smoked us with a fireball in the end. After the game ended, there was a good conversation about how to tweak the rules, but still a great time. Then there was an informal DCC get together where a bunch of us just hung out.

Saturday began for me with Christopher Robin’s Nightmare, folks had an amazing time. However, I found something terrible. A poorly written sentence! It was in Piglet’s house. If there’s a 2nd print run, I promise to fix it. But that certainly didn’t stop folks from having an awesome time. Elves were beheaded and Christopher Robin was ultimately saved with the power of +5 hugs from all his friends. Literally.

That night, I didn’t have anything scheduled, but I managed to get into a Pacific Crawl Classics playtest. It’s alt-history, post-WWII where the US dropped a nuke on an atoll island instead of Japan, but woke up a bunch of monsters by doing so. Definitely inspired by 1950s sci-fi movies in a big way. We investigated a weird island, fought some mind-controlled dudes, and mostly survived.

Sunday was a short day, I ran The Technomancer of Candy Mountain. Found a few typos and reasons to tweak some enemy stat blocks, but nothing major. My players, despite this being a pretty open sandbox that does push the PCs towards a candy factory, once again became socialists and overthrew Wuza Wylder’s capitalist regime. The mutant with the illusion generation ability literally summoned Karl Marx to choke out Wuza Wylder as a part of the adventure finale. It was dicey at first, only 1 of my 7 players showed up to the 8am game, but I found a few wanderers and made it happen! So glad it did too.

So that’s it. If you are going to a con, I hope you have as many good games as I did! Stay safe and be kind to one another.