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| 4 Amigos, taken by Kim George |
Rocky here. I want to tell you about my experience at Gamehole Con. This was my fourth trip into the Gamehole, and it doesn't disappoint. My buddy Jake and I left the West Michigan area on Wednesday morning, and made the 5-6 hour drive to Madison. We had clear skies and good traffic. We picked up Ian at the Madison airport around 5. From there, we met up with the Frogs and a few other friends at a Brazillian restaurant. Many meats were consumed. Not much else other than settling into our hotel room happened. We popped into the GHC "Welcome Party" for a bit, but not long.
Thursday we were cajoled into putting together the Rapppan Athuk 3-D map (goddamn it, Zach.) With the help of Johnny Webb, Skeeter Green, Jacob McEwen, Edwin Nagy (and a few others?) we actually assembled it in record time. Mostly. We couldn't find some key pieces, so we edited the map. Here's an image, taken from Frog God's Facebook page.I love the 3-D terrain, and hope everyone who had a chance to play on it had a blast!
My only events on Thursday were seminars. The first was "Designing Adventures and Player Choices" with Matt Finch and Bill Webb. It was a fun seminar, but mostly information that I know now. Reading the room, a lot of 5E players were there. Bill is a 100% Old School guy, which created a generational gap between speakers and audience. But, I think they all will take something back to their home games and be better for it.
Next was the Gygax documentary footage seminar. I wasn't sure how long I would be in the room, so I sat in the back. It got really interesting when Ernie Gygax sat across the aisle from me. I didn't learn anything new, but I did see a couple of snippets from the early days, including about a minute from an early GenCon (at Horticultural Hall.) Ernie made some color commentary, telling us which monsters were represented by minis in the film, and putting names to faces in the footage.
Friday was Call of Cthulhu, with Skeeter Green (of Skeeter Green Productions.) It was a fun game, full of inside jokes and some very creepy ambiance. A bit more combat than I am used to in CoC, but a blast to play. I wish Skeeter didn't have to fly in, so he could bring more than just paper props.
After dinner, Matt Finch decided to run an off-the-books Jordoba game. We did a bit of dungeon crawling and ran into an inter-dimensional plant-god-creature. Splat, my character in the FGG con games happened to have a potion of plant control, which netted us 100k in diamonds from the thing. Then I told it to go to the bottom level of Mythrus Tower.
We found a Portable Hole and a gem that granted a wish. Ian's character X+1 made the mistake of using the words "I wish" where the gem could here. So, he was betrothed to be married. To an ugly minor noble of the Jordoba area. (This set the tone for the rest of the games run by Matt.) The rest of us were knighted.
Saturday, we had Matt's game (on the books) at 1. We were hired to stop an attempt to halt the wedding. As Splat was helping with the wedding, his brother Sludge (a m-u) had to adventure instead. We did the investigation, found some vampire frogs and tracked down a splinter cult of Set.
Jake's character turned the stone around a grate into flesh to get us access (gross, right?) From there we fought our way around the compound, setting up an attack pattern. Archers in the high rooms, looking on the courtyard. Then we hear "This is the bottom level of Mythrus Tower."
Well, shit...
The plant guy shows up and all hell breaks loose. We all escape, and thwarted the attack on the wedding. But, the plant guy is still around.
Saturday night was Bill's game. He always has some excellent puzzles. I tried to steal a lich-king's crown as a wedding present for X+1, but the GM had other plans... We survived and got a bunch of loot. I don't want to give anything away, because I know that Bill plays the scenarios over again. X+1 did get away with an evil sword, though.
Sunday was another off-the-books Matt game. The plant-thing showed up again, and we deliberated for about an hour on how to kill it. It was decided that taking it to the positive energy plane would sate it, so we headed to a "moderately sunny spot on the elemental plane of earth."
We found a broken Aqueaus rune which we fixed, and that triggered an attack by demons. No Ian McGarty One Round Plan (tm) this time. We set to hacking apart demons. Splat helped kill the leader demon, but lost X's sword in the process. A bunch of loot was given out in this game. Splat took a Helm of Telepathy.
The plant-thing is still alive, btw. It's name is Gphillip (the G is silent.) I'm sure that it will show up again.
That's my gaming at GHC 2018. I hope everyone there had as much fun as I did!
