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| MarCon 2004 |
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| MarCon comes only once a year...and for the fourth time, I was down there in our state's capital, yo. This year, however, I was there pimping Dark Ages: Fae, hanging with Pammit and the Columbus crew, and generally keepin' it real. Part of "keepin' it real," of course, is taking lots of pictures. So, Heather lent me her camera and I trapped people's souls on film. Pammit and I left Cleveland on Friday, drove way the hell up into Mentor and picked up this dude named John who I found online, and then drove down to Columbus. We checked into our hotel room: |
| The hotel room on Friday. Note John on the right. |
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| Pammit in said hotel room, looking Pammish. |
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| John and Pammit hadn't pre-registered (they had their reasons/excuses), so I got my badge and wandered around for a while whilst they waited in line. |
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| Eventually, we made it down the gaming room, or as I like to call it, the "gaming room." Met up with the Columbus crew... |
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| ...played some Fluxxx.... |
| ...and generally hung out. |
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| Eventually 6PM rolled around, and my first Dark Ages: Fae game began. Now, running games at cons is tricky. You never know if you're going to get enough people to run a game. As it was, I have 6 slots for the game and something like 10 people signed up. I was really glad I brought extra copies of the book.... So folks grabbed characters (as you might know, I almost always make pre-gens), spent their freebies, and we got on down to it. The basic premise of the game was that a quite powerful fae who had heretofore never allied with any Court (making him Solstice fae) had finally decided to choose a side. The characters, for various reasons, were invited to his stronghold to help him figure out what to do, but there's other stuff going too (what's going on changes based on my whims when running the game, of course). The folks really dug the game. Largely Changeling fans, but they dug it just the same (I'm sure that some Changeling fans are going to be annoyed by Fae, and that's fine, because I can't please everyone). The game ended with them going to sea and sinking a ship containing inquisitors before said servants of God reached Ireland and made more trouble for the fae. Murdering bastards (at least the Spring Court fae cast an Unleashing to make it so the drowning people felt no pain and died peacefully). Group picture below, other relevant pics at right. Quotes here. |
| Above is a picture of Sierra, but if you look in the background, you'll see a filthy ninja, here to steal our women and eat our pomegranates. |
| This man is dressed as a vagina. I have nothing further to say on the matter. |
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| And then there was this guy in the cool mask tripping about. |
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| So after that, we went up my hotel room....and played Munchkin! And no, I didn't take any pictures. I went to bed pretty early, and consequently woke up at 8AM and left the room. At right is the view from the hallway of the 8th floor of the Hyatt Regency. At right is the coffee shop, where they sell coffee. That's important. |
| Branden and Robin. Her shirt says "Hentai." |
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| I had another Fae game to run at 10AM on Saturday. Morning games are chancy, because, well, people drink. In fact, one of the players in that game only got into the game because some other yo-yo was too hungover to attend, or overslept, or something. Anyway, there definitely were some strange and beautiful things floating around the gaming room during that Fae game. |
| Thad and Julia, nockers. |
| Branden, ROCKIN' OUT!!! |
| A stormtrooper. Duh. It's a con. |
| A furry. Definitely on the "strange" side of "strange and beautiful." |
| In this Fae game, they had more contact with the inquisitors, invading a monastery, seducing one, killing another, and taking evidence that the Inquisition knew damaging stuff about the fae to the local Winter Court ruler. Thad won the prize that game. |
| A group photo! |
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| OK, now, here the chronology gets a little screwed up. I know that after the Fae game, we went and played Demon in the hotel room, but there was a gap of a couple of hours downtime. So, in that downtime, I apparently went to the room and took this picture of Pammit: |
| ...And then went back downstairs in time to get this picture of Daphne: |
| And this picture of Branden on the floor. |
| And then it was back up to the room to play Demon. This is actually an ongoing chronicle, and I ain't gonna recount all of the weirdness they've been through. Suffice to say that they've had more contact with published NPCs in Dark Ages books than those in Demon books, just by dint of what they've been doing. Anywho, here are some pictures. |
| Branden has this predilection for wearing masks. I dunno. |
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| Laura and Brendan! |
| Pammit! |
| Laura again! In a mask! |
| Laura taking my picture as I take hers while she's taking mine...etc. Brendan looks on devilishly. |
| Branden in his "look how spangly!" outfit. |
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| The Demon game ended with them binding a very powerful Earthbound demon (Chelniel, if you must know) into a sword and chucking him into the Damburrow Pit. Next story, they're flying back to the States, specifically Los Angeles. Heh. After the game, I hit the proverbial hay, and suddenly it was Sunday morning! I have discovered, in my years of congoing, that playing RPGs on Sunday morning isn't a great idea. Players and GMs both tend to be pretty fried by that point, so it's a good time for minis, cards, and other non-role-playing games. Fortunately, we had all dat. My first stop was at a HeroClix tournament. It was a "big fish" game, 1000 points a team. Now, the website said Marvel, but it turned out to be open. That means (groan) Superman. Actually, only one guy played Supes, and I killed him first thing. That made me happy. One interesting thing about the tourney; one guy played a team with a bunch of Firelords. I actually ended up winning the game I played with him, largely because I didn't worry about his more powerful figs (Silver Surfer, Nova, etc.) but concentrated on the Firelords. They die easier and they're worth quite a few points. The third game, however, Captain Marvel stomped on my head for a while. I killed Magog, but in a 1000 point game, that ain't gonna make the difference. Two pics from the tourney at right. |
| So after that, we all got together and played some Zombies!!! Rule. There's a Zombie party at Origins; I'm totally there. Anyway, two pics below of that game, one of Pammit looking forlorn and the other of the whole zombie-dog-killin' crew. |
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| And, as a parting thought, Robin and Branden, complete with stripes. |