End of An Era

4 years ago, I picked up the Mirrors book for World Of Darkness, a collection of alternative rules that let you run “outside the box” games in the WoD setting. That led to a one shot that centered around 7 characters reprsenting the 7 deadly sins being trapped in a mirror maze by a fae and forced to find their way out while also in a “last man standing” situation because the fae wanted to know which sin was the deadliest. Much fun was had and I decided to rework the idea into an ongoing campaign, wherein players would be allowed to bring in characters from any of the WoD arenas (except Mage, for reasons too long to get into here).

Over the next 4 years we managed to stay more or less in the same timeline, despite major changes to the players at the table, venue, and changes in the base of operations. This past Sunday I ran the last game. Of the “first season cast” I had 2 players still at my table, plus 4 more we had picked up along the way (Mirrors has always had a full table). When we started we were at Dice House, moved to the International Coffee House, and eventually wrapped up at the new home of one of my long term players. The first three “seasons” the characters were in Seattle, this last season we explored Las Vegas, then a post-apoc Mohave Desert.

My original story arc, involving pitting the players against a fae determined to bring about a neverending winter, a powerful Changeling determined to stop her, and the vampires who were caught in the crossfire was really completed at the end of the second season. Everything else has been about consequences of that explosive and emotional season finale. Last Sunday, things finished much like they began, with a bloody fight with some vampires after an escape from a manipulative fae. It seems befitting, but also confirms to me that I made the right decision to finally bring things to a close.

It’s time for new adventures. In January, I will finally commit myself fully to running Changeling, instead of just borrowing from it on a regular basis, and we will be turning back the clock to Victorian timess. Things should be interesting.

November has been a busy month, so here’s a brief overview of things since my last post:

We visited Comikaze, had a great time, spend too much money, and wrote a whole article about it for Topless Robot, which you can read here.

Speaking of Topless Robot articles, we also posted a gift guide for that RPG geek in your life. Or you. Whichever. Check that out here.

We attended the very geeky wedding of some friends of ours, which involved custom dice as keepsakes, fandom themed tables for the rehersal dinner (we were at the Doctor Who table), and a Portal themed wedding cake. We wrapped up the wedding weekend with a screening of Big Hero Six. Super fun and highly appropriate to the bride and groom.

As previously mentioned, we attended the Nerds Like Us screening of The Crow. Bai Ling did a Q&A at the event, which was much fun. There was a cosplay contest, which was also much fun. But the most important thing is our daughter LOVED the movie and is now going to read the original comic it was based on. Geek parent win on that one.

Thing I’m geeking out on this week: 90s era trade paperbacks.

Alright, if you’ve been paying attention, I’ve been geeking out on those since I started rebuilding my Transmetropolitan collection a few months back. But picking up The Crow TPB for the Boo reminded me how much good obscure stuff is out there some of you might not even remember or never got to experience the first time. So, I’m working on a list for you. I think I have a venue for it and I will drop the linkage on you when that’s posted. In the meantime, go pick up The Crow, some black eyeliner, and a copy of The Cure’s greatest hits. You can thank me later.

Back to School

As you may have noticed I missed last week, but to be fair, it was con prep week. I am going to try to get on the weekly update train from now on. Some day we may even get around to doing weekly podcasts! SHOCKING! In the meantime, the haps:

Post Con Wrap Up

Strategicon seemed more quiet than usual this year. Rumor on the street is that attendence was good, but for me personally, I noticed more than a few con regulars missing. It could be attendence was down for pen and paper RPGs and up for other areas, I suppose.

Nonetheless, all our games went well. We had the privilege of running the GURPS Final this con, which is always fun since the goal is to create a one-shot that challenges players, plus you are running for people that have been voted the best players by all the GURPs GMs, so you get to plan a more “advanced” type of game. We continued our tradition of doing genre mashup by running a spy vs. spy themed Sci Fi game with many many hand outs. We are actually so happy with the setting itself that we are thinking of launching a regular con game around it. So, you’ve got that to look forward to next May.

This is important because for the last 4 years we’ve run GURPS: Gaslamp more or less exclusively at the conventions, and I thnk it’s losing steam. (Pun totally intended.) It’s been requested that we not retire the setting entirely, but I think it’s time for us to mix it up a bit. We tried just adding in an Old West variant at the May 2014 con, but I think a full 180 might not be a bad idea. (See notes above.)

We also ran some Munchkin sessions up in the board game room and those were fun as always, although I still hate losing an RPG slot to run them.  So many games, so little time. It’s a good problem to have, I suppose.

We will not be in attendance at Strategicon in February due to scoring Gallifrey 1 tickets, so we have some time to think on all these things.

Dead Gamers University

This week I am doing lecture prep for the 2014 edition of Dead Gamers University, a 1 day workshop for Game Master/Storytellers hosted by our favorite World of Darkness themed RPG club, The Dead Gamers Society. DGU will be this Saturday (9/6) in Fullerton. I’ll be doing a section on NPCs covering everything from planning to management (or at least that’s what’s on my possibly overly ambitious class outline). Other fine DGS storytellers will be covering other aspects of running a good game such as World Building and Player Management. If you are considering running a game or looking to pick up some tips and tricks from other GMs, this might be a good workshop day for you. It’s free and sign ups are here.

That’s all the news for this week. Next week I hit the ground running on finishing my prep for the 2014-2015 season of the Vampire Conclave for DGS, plus Halloween prep.