Well maybe just Scots, more so than phoenixes, as we traveled to Scottsdale not actually Phoenix for the Flying Buffalo and Tunnels and Trolls convention this last weekend.
It took a bit to get there. We had bought our tickets sometime in February or March, I'm not sure, after booking flights out of Columbus. And then getting the rooms reserved seemed a bit of a struggle from April until May. And the convention info was being posted lackadaisically at the FBI site for the most part. It really wasn't until a week before the Convention was supposed to take place that we attendees heard anything as to what was expected to happen. And when the information came there was a sudden need for 15 GM'ed adventures, not the originally posted five. And the guy who was supposed to fill three of the original slots opted out of showing up for whatever reason. That is on top of mandatory overtime at work at the Indian games and my own writing.
Luckily the night before we left Ohio, Flavia and I spent the night at Mandy-B's and Steppenwulf's house. Helping Mandy-B make a great vegetarian dinner and listening to her enthusiasm got me pumped up for the up-coming convention. And since we were flying out of town with them, it made getting there a bit of a festive pilgrimage. Though when we arrived in Arizona, we only had energy fro a dip in the pool and some late night pizza.
Friday morning rolled around, and I made myself stay in bed until 6am local time before jumping up to prepare the day's adventure offering of "Crossing Guard." At breakfast, Monk called and told me he was about halfway between Flagstaff and Scottsdale. Even Flavia found herself able to wake up before 9:30 local time as it was after noon back at home. We met Brian Penn, or Skulltosser, a long time editor of mine, and one of the better ones, over at Outlaw Press. With him was Bart and Byron, the men of mystery from the great northwest. And luckily Khayd', of Mike Eidson, was already chatting everyone up.
Before the games started, Rick Loomis's littlest sister, Nancy, told us about a great Mexican food restaurant just up the road. Two people we'd met Doug, Nodin, and Mark S., Spencer, offered to drive us, but then I decided that we'd, Monk, Flavia, and I, meet them there because I wanted to walk. Of course, I got lost and we found someplace else, a Cien Agave, where we got six dollar tacos and did much goofing off.
We were only 5 minutes late for the "Crossing Guard" session. Where I met Martin L., Dwarflander, as he and Nodin showed me some player tricks that I hadn't seen before as a GM. Afterwards, hearing of Flavia and my misadventure, Rick insisted on taking us to the correct restaurant. He also brought Steve S. Cromptom of Grimtooth's Traps illustration fame. After dinner, Ken showed up, and everyone retired to individual suites for the evening game sessions.
I played in Byron's and his brother Bart's room, 'A Role of the Dice" was Byron's adventure and I was awed as a GM watching him. Now when I do characters, I do voices. But this guy did at least six different characters with different voices AND at no time did one of the characters get mixed up with the others that the GM was doing from before. Now that was talent. Byron has been nice enough to email me a copy of the scenario, so I can finally figure out what we the players were doing.
Back in the room, Monk was crashed, I think he had around 6pm, as he worked the night before driving in. It was after midnight, or 3am my time, I got to bed quickly.
Saturday morning, Monk and I were sitting by the pool at 7am, as I put final touches on the characters for my spaghetti western WHAP! session. By 830 am, I saw that there were more than enough GM's to make the morning a success. Mac McMahon, Mak, was recruiting as many people as he could for his old school T&T/Call of Cthulhu game, but as I had five players, if including Flavia, for the "Hey Amigo It's Sabbatoe!" I had to decline. Khayd', as well as Landdwarf and Nodin, helped Monk, Flavia, and myself enjoy a good old fashioned Saturday Morning cowboy play-pretend. We did lunch, Khayd', Monk, Flavia, and I, at a Indian restaurant afterwards. When I thought Flavia might be catching the bill, I discovered that she had found some jewelry to purchase instead.
The afternoon session was going to be a wash for getting all but more than two people at any table that was not Bear Petersen and Larry Detillio(sp?) GM'ing an adventure. I scrapped my Spacers' episode for the afternoon, hopefully giving some players to Bart or Mak or whomever was still running. I sat in lobby with Jim Walker, one of the world's foremost experts on Monsters! Monsters!, and a whole slough of cool kids came over and hung with us after a few minutes. I slipped away when Flavia informed me that Liz Danforth was in the building. And I FINALLY met her, the woman who made FRPG come alive for me. This little "fanboy" session for me was almost as much fun as when I met Ken St. Andre for the first time.
Oddly enough, while I was talking to Mz. Danforth, a woman came up and waited patiently for me to finish my conversation with Liz. I figured she knew Liz, but I was determined to hog just a bit of her time. Well her name was Teri and she was waiting to ask me to run a "Classical T&T" adventure on Sunday. She wouldn't take my WHAP! powder punk event, so what else could I do. Frankly, I have to thank her and her husband for asking. I love doing "quick writes" for special audiences. More on that later.
Around dinner time, Bear Petersen wrapped up his game, and a horde of people discovered they were hungry. I think the other bigwig's game was still going on or took a break or something, but it was clear that time constraints were not relevant to that one session-- so much for anyone else wanting to play in his game, I suppose. But in anycase, we all plodded over to Red Lobster and had a dinner. I missed the awarding of Rick Loomis with the special T&T hat as I had to run back and get our camera. But I had fun none the less (see the pic's above).
My evening session was in Khayd's room, where we played two new friends Dave and Tracy, Minodave and Tracitroll, as well all of the Peryton clique, well almost because Monk was busy in the other room writing "Sock Hop of Terror." And lest I forget we met Tmuwo, one of the many Pauls of Trollhalla. But the game was "A Chance Encounter Meeting of Paragons," as usual as well written and pieced as anything Mike Eidson puts his mind to. It was a blast, I was reminded of StarGate for some reason, but this was as my Dark Elf jumped out the window for his life as the rest of the party went to slice out my heart. At midnight though, I felt like it was 3am and more than ready for bed.
"The Fire Monkey's Treasure" was written between 7:30am and 10:25am, just after breakfast. I was happy that I scheduled my game session from 11am until 2pm, because though I didn't sleep in, I needed the time. By 11am everyone signed up was there, including Landdwarf, Spencer, and Nodin, as well the Oleg and Teri, the requesters. Teri's mother Ann asked if she could watch. Mak came by just too late and too crowded-out to be accommodated with a player slot-- luckily I don't think he hates me, just yet, because he is a charismatic and funny guy. Well, the game went okay, it was a true "tunnel crawl," which as some of you might know, is not my norm, so I was a bit apprehensive. We even went 40 minutes over, which made Skulltosser late for his co-GM'ing with Mak at the next table. But at the end of the final conflict, where the characters have saved some pilgrims and are being chased by mounted bandits of human and Yyena (gnolls/hyena-kin), everyone, including me applauded. A whole new experience for me, and this crowd of players were some pretty amazing role-players, so I felt that the pacing was just right at least. Teri's mother Ann admitted that she was a T&T player for a long time, and she wasn't frowning so maybe things weren't as rough else where as I thought.
The dinner at the steakhouse was pretty good. Steppenwulf won Player's Most-Valuable Player. Spencer won GM's Most-Valuable Player. And best of all Byron won Best GM. Ken, Dan Lambert, Rrramberrt, and his friend Tony, Mr.T, Khayd', Flavia, and I mostly talked about Trollworld possible critters for Shippy's upcoming magazines.
I ran an adventure in my room,but first Rrramberrt and Mr. T- showed us the upcoming board-game Big Dragon, Little Knight. let's call it the "Afterglow Game." Khayd', Landdwarf, Spencer, and Skulltosser made my job as the GM that of the audience. They were so annoyed when I interrupted them with the plot that they killed the antagonist in about two turns. I didn't mind in the least.
Monday was spent not hiking the Camelback Mountain. But Monk, Flavia, and I did get to know the Heroic Fantasy guys, Doug, Frank, and Chris in the morning, and we walked the right way to the Mexican restaurant for lunch this time. Monk at dinner talked me into a fun little bachelor party idea, which I can't talk about here, maybe next time though.
On the way back home, I sat next to Jack Russel of the band Great White. I am not making that up.
Quick thoughts:
o...When Landdwarf and Nodin left, I really felt a "ping," those two guys had really made the convention for me.
o...Rick and Ken attrack the brightest, best, and most beautiful gamers in the world. Say what you will about how things fell together, we all made it work.
It has been a rough couple of months. At work, there has not only been the Day-to-Day grind of having to be someplace to get money for so many hours (plus), but pissing against other healthcare sorts, including other paramedics, as well as nurses and a doctor here and there, who seem to think that I am inclined to listening to what would make their jobs easier as opposed to doing my job correctly. On top of that, there has been an inordinate amount of heart attacks cropping up here and there of guys in their 40's and 50's, both at work as well as in the media. Besides my good imp whispering in my ear, "Thou art mortal, oh Caesar." it's been a bit wearing on the soul. Breaks have been needed.
So to break my morass, I "escaped." Flavia and I found a new Hike-and-Bike trail where we could walk from our neighborhood to the suburban cinema mega-plex to have dinner and watch the Hulk. Found quite a few hidden gardens along the polluted Cuyahoga River worthy of repeat visits. I started playtesting my RuinCrawl and WHAP! game systems once again in chatrooms whenever possible. A large amount of fantasy literature has been being deposited in our mail box as well. Finally, this last weekend was the first of the Summer conventions that we'd take, Origins in Columbus.
The last time I attended Origins, it was in the 80's just north of Detroit. For some reason, mostly because of emails between me and the organizers, I have been reluctant to attend since my departure from the Army and the granting of enough freetime to start my adventure gaming exploits in earnest. Even when Ken St. Andre asked me to come, I'd only mumble something about clipboards and over-zealous event directors. But this year we took a chance. Luckily, it was just what the doctor, the figurative one, ordered.
The two robins, Flavia and Caed, and I, showed up to the convention center around 4:30pm, Friday. We meet Mandy-B and her husband Steppenwulf while I was buying a new shirt-- I've noticed I am wearing two shirts in the blogs here over the past year. From there we found a delightful pub called Barleys. Ken St. Andre and his son, Corencio, met us there for dinner. Ken charmed us all with tales of his exploits at the convention so far, and I prompted a somewhat shy Corencio into telling the rest of us about himself. Mandy-B and I mockingly argued the benefits of a History degree. Caed and Flavia made sub-audible comments which had everyone at the table except me laughing. For some reason, I suspect I was the butt of these jokes. Oddly enough I was very comfortable and relaxed.
After coffee we went over to see Mandy-B and Steppenwulf play Cthulhu Smurf. I had barely located the two when Ken got me drawn into Cthulhu over Sesame Street. The designer of Stormbringer the RPG fame, played Grover, AKA SUPER-Grover; his son played Count Von Count; while I played Herry, one of the original Sesame Street 'Blues Brothers.' A guy wanting to be called "Joe" played Ernie, and a woman named Angie, played Prairie Dawn. Another fellow played Cookie Monster of course, what Sesame Street scenario would be complete without this old sock. Oh yeah the Blues Brothers of Sesame Street consisted of Grover, Cookie Monster, and Herry. Angie did the best work, as she brought Prairie Dawn alive, despite the character's rather limited role. The GM, Earl, did a great Lovecraftian-yarn as well as "re-envisioned" Sesame Street. I had a good time and co-won "role-player" of the game, along with Joe's Ernie. Really we both had it easy. Corencio came up with the best one-liner of the game, "Mister Elmo, you haff some ecksschplaining to do..." It was a hoot. The Cthulhu-variants were offered up by Amorphous Blob Games. Pretty decent outfit, they run a good gathering. The crowds were not as massive as at GenCon , but the convention is right up there in standards and quality.
After midnight, the two robins and I ran into Rook, who we met at Con on the Cob last November, and have since played at his house on various occasions. After a couple of drinks, Caed made me take us all back to our parked cars, where she slipped off, as she always does, to attend to the demands of her family. Flavia and I read a bit and went to bed fairly happy.
On Staurday, Flavia and I had a fairly early start. We played Lost Worlds with Ken and his hat. I even got a chance to run his Lost Worlds show table for a family for all of 10 minutes. We then lost Ken to a Shadow Fists tournament, so we strolled the Dealers' Room. After buying too many great items we had dinner with Rook. Ken, it seems found Col. Zocchi to have dinner with and would spurn us, his faithful fans, for the rest of the night. Sawright though, we played 
Rook's introductory adventure for 4th ed. D&D. Steppanwulf helped us finish up the scenario, while Mandy-B was off hooting with the Amorphous Blob guys again. Ended the night with a rendition of Duran Duran's "Rio" at the Hyatt's (I think) bar, with Rook and two new friends, which he introduced us to. For lack of better names, let's call them B-Singer and Mister M-. .
Maybe because I was participating more so than running events, but while I noticed that there isn't as many bells and whistles as GenCon, the various gamer organizations are very welcoming. I've had about 200 conversations just by standing next to this or that clump of people. That said we're going to run adventures next year at Origins. It's a great event and less than a quarter tank of gas away.
The height of Summer is finding me more than fulfilled. The UEFA Cup dazzled me. The walking is helping me get a bit healthier (read skinnier). And the various conventions lighten up my soul to face the future with calm as well as bravery. Life is good, perhaps I can get out some decent fiction here and there on top of everything. And I still need to find me one of them hats.
Just finished up my contributions to Peryton Publishing's Troll Tunnels short story collection. Nice to know that I can finish narrative fiction still, after so many RPG pieces. Flavia, one of many Perytons it would seem, is working with a rather difficult and frustrating Ken St. Andre trying to get the introduction to the collection finished. He didn't have the time to read the stories I sent him months ago, and then suddenly decided that a table of contents just wasn't enough information to say anything productive. So the lady is stepping in to capsulize the pieces contained in our collection. And I have been receiving emails from the original Peryton pop-star and our friend, Georg Hemprich, about us helping distribute his latest CD here in the States. All the while he gets to tease me about my ever-worsening German and I get a free CD out of the deal. How many other RPG's get their own rockstars? Of course I think it'd be better phrased, how many rockstars have their own RPG? As it happens that Georg came first.
Speaking of Ken St. Andre, still one of my favorite writers even if he is giving me grief and headaches of recent, I just read in an article that he wrote circa 1977, available in the Outlaw Press A History Guide to Tunnels and Trolls, that he finds it easy to write female protagonists in his works of fiction. Which is an odd thing because my two most re-occurring characters, so naturally the two that will be appearing in the Troll Tunnel, of the last two decades, Rjinn, the Swords-Arm, and Sash, the Green, are both female. I really did not notice the tendency in Ken's writing until just two days ago when I read the article. And though I have met with the esteemed author, we never have spoke about writing beyond what was next in plans for T&T game stuff. What can I say, talented and creative minds think a like. That said, I think it's time to work on my other characters Krassus Rustysword and Pot-Belly the Barbarian for a couple tales, just to keep from becoming a one-trick pony so to speak.
So what's next for me? I've got to get the TAG POW! product out and about. Thanks to all the GM's who have been helping my play-test and play around with the character generation. And we're planning on doing a collection of short stories set in the Superhero/ Super-Villain fantastic genre. And Monk and I are still crafting along WHAP!. Mind you, POW! and WHAP! will probably be the last games where I use onomatopoeia as the titles, but I think the titles work nicely, don't you? But for the rest of the month, I think I'll lounge around working on Krassus Rustysword a bit here and there, play some City of Heroes and/or Civilization, and work with the artists helping POW!'s Tripod City come to life.
Monk from Arizona arrived in town via the airport on Wednesday, April 2nd, at about 230pm. Having worked the night before, I had only about three hours of sleep but was surprised at how much I perked up when I saw him. And for the rest of the afternoon, we made our way to Peryton's and my humble abode via train and bus, as the wife had the car for work. The man was carrying baggage that was half my height, which made the rush-hour packed public conveyance all the more fun. Luckily Monk's extreme height, the guy makes me look like a hobbit, charmed all the females on the small bus which we took into not being overly upset with us taking up a whole seat with a single piece of baggage. At about 4pm, we got off the bus and walked the remaining couple of hundred yards to the 116 story building that is the Peryton Publishing International Headquarters, just north of the zoo. Our guest was quite impressed at the array of international flags that flapped outside our building's lobby and visitor sign in area, then we stopped hallucinating long enough to get the baggage into our "park around the back" townhouse. 
He fortunately didn't mind cats, especially since we had a box of kittens and nursing mother quarantined off from the rest of our household's growing pride residing in our guest bedroom. Peryton showed up from work and was happy for the diversion from the daily humdrum and her job's need for equation formatting. Though I had to still work another shift, smiles were coming easier to me than they had been the last couple of weeks-- definitely time for road trip.
The next day and half was spent with Pertyon and I showing Monk around northeast Ohio, namely all of my watering holes with a monument thrown in every so often. On Thursday night we made some 
friends for life when I asked the staff to turn off a talk show blathering about the Cavaliers and Indians on Sports Time Ohio and put on GOL TV, which is all in Spanish, but shows some decent soccer at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Loraine, Ohio. Finally at about 1pm Friday afternoon, Peryton finished her day job and the three of us loaded up the car and headed in directions south and southwest trying to get to someplace nearby Dayton.
Friday PM, after three traffic jams, our carload turned off of I-70 and decided to follow the State routes and other back roads. One by one, all of the other attendees called us on the cell phone to announce their own delays in arrival due to the same traffic jams. We would have gotten there first but I missed an important turn and had to circumnavigate Dayton Ohio to get to our hotel, so we were the last to arrive. Of course both Monk and Peryton shared in my angst at being late, because if they didn't already I made sure they shared it with me. And then there was Caed, Aarra', and Steppenwulf all awaiting us as we checked in, and smiles were coming easy again. Dinner ended later than expected, we not only started 90 minutes later, but the jokes and catching up was just too much fun than to hurry through the meal.
Back in our room, a very large room with two beds, a fold-out couch, a living room of sorts, and a kitchenette, everyone decided to wait until GenCon to play Peryton's Star Wars game. The trials of day were wearing on us, and Mandy was feverish at being so close to my beauty. Steppenwulf absconded with Aarra' to prevent an awkward scene, I just don't do autographs folks, leaving the rest of us, Monk, Peryton, Caed, and I, to continue talking a bit into the morning hours of Saturday.
Saturday AM, of course I was awake before everyone else, but at least the sun was up already. After an hour of working out and primping myself, Monk drug himself from his bed and decided to come to breakfast. Peryton, always the princess rolled over and proclaimed that the sun was up to early and should be severely punished for such audacity. At breakfast we ran into Aara' and Steppenwulf, who announced that they were good to hoof it through the long day ahead.
At 9am promptly, we were off. Big Wind, named for a Apache spirit, was my contribution to this year. A T&T scenario highlighting a whole batch of Air Peoples, including the angel-like Ethereal, gremlins, harpies, eagles, and condors, and lest I forget the gods of Valiant Halls. Actually I did forget the godlings, so we can say that their sky-boat was circling the two sky cities and the floating island of fairies known as High Spire. But despite my oversight, the adventure went off well, and I got to spoof the team of Stargate, SG-1, as leprechauns of the Sky-Gate Won team.
Next came lunch, of course Peryton showed up right around this time, her stomach was growling after all. Aara' lead us to a nearby Mexican cantina where I had the best "wet burrito" that I have had in twenty years. No exaggeration, it was really great.
Next Monk ran his T&T scenario Fairies Go Down the Hole, inspired by a Tiny Toons episode. Here a group of leprechauns and fairies came together in a Fantasy-Realm-Meets-Spaghetti-Western setting where the many with the last spell got the fist full of gold pieces. Monk smiled at how well the assembled player-characters were not easily duped, right before transporting us en mass to the Dread Plane of Heck (the next adventure).
Steppenwulf ran Shades of Hades for the Rifts system. All the players, except for maybe Aara', was surprised at how much fun the game with, its mega-damage armor and over tactical analysis, was. I playing a Juicer decided the best strategy was to shoot the hostages and anybody else not shooting at you and was only half wrong as it turned out. And though we destroyed over half the map we had come to save, yet another area was saved by the Coalition to put it into Rifts' terms.
Though everyone was tired, the evening game commenced only 15 mintues later then when posted. Monk took the harness of Peryton Publishing's TAG (my game matrix) "Wildly Heroic Pulp Adventure's," or WHAP!'s for short, first play-test The Black Lotus Affair. Here the amazing Bram Stoker, the ardent Beatrice Potter, the intrepid Mary Loomis Todd, and ever-heroic Ken St. Andre accompanied the Society of Extra-Weird Affairs' Professor Happenstance into the wildness not far from Russia's Ural Mountains in search of a flower said to grant immortal life. Though Monk is a fairly new GM, when he did the NPC's you felt like you were looking at the character that he was speaking for.
At nearly midnight, we wrapped up the Hoot. As there was not a lounge attached to our hotel, nor one in the strip mall around us, alas there was no carousing this year. That's okay, everyone fell asleep almost as soon as our teeth were brushed in my room at least.
The next day we missed Aara' and Steppenwulf slipping off, but Peryton did show up for the breakfast. On the way home, our adventurous trio decided that we wanted a bit more exploration so we stopped at the Williamson Mounds just outside of Xenia, Ohio where we cavorted as we hiked. The exercise did me some good and motivated me to drive mostly back roads back to Cleveland.
We just put Monk back on the plane this afternoon, 7 April. Found a place that had a chili-dog buffet for lunch not too far from the airport, and had gangster pictures and artifacts from the American 1930's, not a bad wrap up to the weekend where we tested out TAG's WHAP! as our next planned play-test, this summer, is called Lies, Black-Eyes, and Spies.
As we turned off of the turnpike into the city of Breezewood, Pennsylvania and headed southeast I got a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's a mixture of thrill and little bit of anxiety. It's entering Terra Incognito, a place that I haven't been before. I was beginning to explore.
For more than five years, plans for a trip to Baltimore, the city of Edgar Allen Poe, has been discussed by my friends and I for sometime. This year for my "Birthday trip," I decided that we were heading there. Caed had been planning to come along with us, but she backed out a couple of weeks before. I think that she actually had been to the city before. So with no plans other than a road atlas of the 50 States and some cash in my wallet for the toll roads, I packed up Peryton, a Herculean task in and of itself, and drove out on Friday morning towards the great east of our nation.
We hit the city around 3:30pm and spent the next couple of hours alternating between navigating the expressway loop around the city and heading towards the harbor area. And using nearly illegible maps and Yahoo travel reviews, we made many friends with our Out-of-State license plates and seriously bad, as in dangerous, tourist driving and by 6pm we had found all but one points of interest on this trip, as well visited some very interesting neighborhoods. So then we found a gas mart, or whatever they are called, refueled the vehicle, and bought a serious road map of the city. Then came the task of finding a place to stay.
We headed back to the expressway and discovered that everyone on the eastern seaboard did not live in the city that they work in. Three miles later we were back in an inner city neighborhood moving from east to west, and just going with the flow. Peryton had some grand scheme, which I kind of foiled with a turn here and there, mostly avoiding too many other cars. When we passed the 
church and churchyard so well lit that it had to be where Poe had been buried, I decided it was time to stop driving and get serious about a hotel. We did a 180 turn, headed five blocks back, we found the Radison, I handed the keys to the valet guy, slipped him a fiver and asked him not to drive to Boston over the next couple of days. The rest of the night was spent getting comfortable and hanging in the lobby bar grabbing dinner, where Tabitha and Chad reminded me of Samuel Adams in their golden vests, but were hip and funny.
Saturday came and did not sneak up on me at all. Always awake too early when traveling, I spent the morning exploring the hotel, having breakfast, and of course waiting for Peryton to decide that she could venture forth into the bigger world beyond the bathroom mirror. Sometime after 11am, she decided we could leave the hotel room. But a hotel desk clerk had to hold us up a bit, by informing me, while I tried to get a not working "room key" fixed, that we were in another room than where we had slept and had our bags. I pointed out that that was not the case, and the clerk, being a bit insecure, I suppose, had to get security involved. The house detective showed up when called and helped get my room key fixed, adding the words, "What a silly situation. Some people need to find a new job."
So finally into my adventure! A sunny, cool day and I had a couple landmarks to get to Poe's grave. And sure enough, Peryton and I found it. Left a penny each and posed with our best morbid expressions and got the obligatory pictures at the grave. Okay, that was done. I suddenly felt I should've been wearing my Mickey Mouse hat and Hawaiian shirt. I am sure everyone reading this has done this. Okay now was time to get serious "traveler" not just tourist. So checking my Baltimore map, it was time for some hiking to Peryton's discovery the Annabel Lee Pub.
Heading west to east, Baltimore struck me as a town similar to Cleveland in a lot of ways, yet, to put it into expressionistic terms, "more so." The harbor of Baltimore has the USS Constitution, the smell of brine, and big ass gulls that would just eat our poser gulls hanging out by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Lake Erie. I was able to see Federal Hill with Fort Henry as well as the Domino Sugars sign, so idolized by the Wire on HBO. The people we ran into, once away from the tourist areas, just past Little Italy, were serious urban joggers and working guys and gals awakening from the partying of the night before with hang overs but clean clothes. And while Cleveland has hills, Baltimore hills last for about a mile and half making the walk worth one's while, so to speak.
We walked past an area called where Patterson Park is the prominent landmark. And just our feet were beginning to hurt, we came to the Annabel Lee Pub. But guess what. It was 1:30pm and the place didn't open until 4pm. So with our dogs howling we headed north to Eastern street and found the High Grounds book store and coffee shop. Where we passed the time having a cup of coffee and buying a "book bag," a plastic bag that can be filled to the rim for $2. Great, I came to Baltimore to buy more used books. Maybe this time I will finish James Clavell's Noble House. But I did find a collection of undiscovered, by me, three plays by Clive Barker, who happens to an absurdists in the tradition of Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, or Edward Albee, which I happen to be found of. Finally, half way through Barker's Crazyface, it was 4:15 and time to head to "lunch."
What an evening this lunch was going to be. The kitchen wouldn't open until 5pm, but Jocelyn and Kurt, the barkeeps maybe an owner thrown in, enticed us with Raven ale and the E.A. Poe action figures. In the background, for some reason, the 40's station from XM satellite radio played in the background, and the Redskins played muted on the TV. I actually chatted up the cook when he came, because I thought he liked soccer, wearing an England sweat suit and all. Apparently only his wife was the England fan. So next came the blackened shrimp, misnamed as they were huge, and beet stroganof(sp?), the best damned vegetarian dish I have had in at least in a year. Then we sampled the E.A. Poe pate, milk and dark chocolate, and, lest I forget, Resurrection Ale. Well, topped off at sometime 
after 8pm, we grabbed a taxi cab from the Raven cab company, and headed back to the hotel. Where I couldn't help but grab a couple more drinks, Chad was serving after all. There was some sort of discussion of who Hanna Montana and Dora Explorer was, and if one or other were real or not, but it's kind of hazy. Luckily Peryton got me back to the room before fisticuffs came about. Seriously though, we talked more about the Federal Hill neighborhood.
Sunday, I, of course, woke up too early. But I had breakfast with the staff of the downstairs restaurant, and was able to get packed real early. But amazingly, Peryton scrambled out of bed at 9am and we actually left the room by 1145 am. The drive home was so "been there, done that" now that it was Nostra Terra. I sampled my first Quiznos sub ever. And we surprised the house sitter as his phone was on vibrate that evening.
Okay, before I met Flavia I was not prone to talking like this, but...
I love this cat. I am going to get an oil painting of Panther Octavia, this year. Okay it's official - I am not only the old deaf guy, I am a crazy cat person.
November through January is "fiction writing time," plain and simple. Or so my schedule, done sometime in October, no less, says. But after writing game "stuff" for most of the last year, do you realize how hard it is to write fiction? All three of the projects I have set to complete before February have great starts, but after the initial detailed descriptions I just... well, just seem to not want to go further because of this or that detail or special dialog that I want to research "just a little further." Frankly, I keep wanting to develop player-character stats or commission an illustration after I get four type-written pages down. 
I am especially addicted to the super-hero, and villain, stuff I have been working on lately. I never knew how much actual writing, as in narrative and scripting fantasy and science fiction took, until I started getting Powers Out of this World, or POW! (excuse the exclamation mark), worked out for play-testing. Did you know that super-powered character stuff only really requires a scene description and some decent encounter/NPC stats for about 80% of the piece that you are pulling together? Wow. Will I ever want to write a full paragraph again?Ah but luckily, reading real writers is considered a productive pastime when one is in "creative mode." Been able to finish Ken St. Andre's latest novella, as well as some historical stuff on Philby and other spies of the 50's, and a great re-print of Marvel's "All-Winner Squad," from 1946, no less-- Oops, more superhero stuff. Gotta stop that. Well at least I am keeping up on my typing skills...
Peryton and I had no real drama getting everything ready for Con on the Cob. Peryton's game was already printed in the Peryton RPG Lite edition, though she was making some notes to spice up my quick intro adventure. My three projects, "What Price Liberty?" for POW!, my Super-Powered RPG stuff coming to form, "The Bubble Pits," for T&T, and "The Return to Sihlt-Awash," a Ruincrawl for TAG, were basically finished the weekend before because of a couple of slow work nights. In fact the biggest problem we had was that LostArt, Brian the Map-Guy, called a day before the start of the convention to let us know he wouldn't be attending because of relationship demands or dissolution or what have you. And since he was supposed to open the Peryton Publishing table on Thursday, we decided to save the gas and hassle and just show up on Friday, when our games were to start.
Friday went wonderful, though our first time selling our products to real life people was a little intimidating. The eponymous Andy Hopp stopped what he was doing when he saw us come in to get us registered and give us the tour of the event. After dropping off our bags in the room, we set up the table assigned to us, and both Peryton and I just sort of smiled at the irony of the situation. For all my ease with people, I really feel uncomfortable doing sales pitches. And Peryton for all of her love of seeing her stuff get sold, is rather shy and retiring. Still the neighbors two artists whom we met the year before, and the Wandering Men (www.wanderingmen.com) were hip and happening enough to keep us in good company. I ran my POW! event to what felt like a horde of 10 thru 12 year-old kids, though there were no more than four to six at any given time at the table. While the scenario fell to the way-side, there was a lot of rules testing, and a rather Socratic discussion as to what defines what a super-hero as compared to a super-villain. Tadpole and X-Man, would become my buddies throughout the next couple of days as they helped me grasp something about "lethal vs. non-lethal" combat that I think will help POW! out . AND the kids' parents would have been happy to see the math quizzes taking place. At about six PM, Peryton and I closed up the booth, leaving only flyers and jealous neighbors, to go play a beginning level D&D (3.5) scenario with a great guy who I'll call "Rook" from here on.
After the long day of gaming and hawking our items to the poor, unexpecting masses, we ended up having dinner with Rook at a chain Italian place, that really surprised me as to how great the food and atmosphere the food was. Walking back to the hotel, we discussed Monty Python and college age gaming habits, all while playing "avoid the drunk driver" on the very busy state route between the restaurants and hotel areas. Bidding Rook adieu until the morn, we returned to our room to see the phone flashing. And after ten minutes of pressing buttons and scratching our heads, we were unable to make it stop. Peryton deemed the flashing either a broken phone or a night light. I didn't buy either explanation, but I frankly had been awake over a couple of days and wasn't all that concerned. So I started napping as Peryton checked her email accounts. Mandy-B and Steppenwulf had shown up and shot us an email with the message announcing their arrival and shooting us a phone number. I was really too tired to do much more than grumble into Peryton's Phone to Mandy's voice mail that we got the email and give them our number.
Four Am came quickly, but I was feeling as "slept out" as I could. Unable to sleep, so I decided to print up characters for my TAG adventure and up-date the PC's for the T&T game coming up at 8:30 AM. I didn't know that I'd be distracted in these tasks. The late night crowd was still going strong. Some were drunk, and I was envious, as I was on the productive side of activity cycle, but a few were just like me, awake for the day. I even had to wait to get to the printer in the hotel's "business center." Quite alright though, I met Lo, Aym, and Josh playing Munchkin, which I discovered was indeed a game not a d20 supplement series. Josh had been running QAG's (Quick-Ass Game system) Space Jocks, so him and I had a lot to compare notes on. I also found out that he was one of my T&T players in the upcoming morning event. I smiling let him know it was okay if he didn't show up, for some obvious reasons, and we promised to run a pick-up game probably on Sunday. Lo was from southern England, we talked about the EU and German property laws before Aym finally declared we were being too boring for even her drunken state, which prompted the couple to retire for the evening..., err duration.
Mandy-B and Steppenwulf were earlier than I was for "the Bubble Pits" session. And Ziggy showed up about 20 minutes later, and refused to to take a nap, though he had worked last night, for a chance to get in some good, "serious" T&T. Then X-Man started popping his head in, which of course demanded that I let him the game, or be forever distracted by his questions. In any case, despite me being distracted by the energetic youth and math, the session was running pretty well. Mandy-B developed some keen in-sights into her character, Silva Slyslip, a hobb who was a kleptomaniac, working in the short man, as well as a Don Juan, complexes, while ironically enough Ziggy played the dainty elf maiden who was the target of all of the amorous advances of the short rogue. Peryton had apparently crawled out of bed sometime and announced her pressence to the world, at least our gaming table, and slinked off to peddle wares at our sales table. The game went over time, but no one was pressing for the table so we rolled on. Ziggy started helping me with the ever energetic X-Man so I was able to concentrate on the final few encounters, which I felt were handled a bit rushed, but the "visuals" were enough to satisfy my demand for high fantasy narrative.
After the game, we closed the sales table for lunch, gathering up Peryton in the process. Amazingly enough, we had sold some items. Ziggy refused to let us walk once again across the still busy state route, so the five of us piled into his medium-sized SUV. We spent the early afternoon catching up with each other and even talking about the Troll Hoot this year. Mandy-B refused to let me pick another location for this year, and I can't say I blame her either considering the "ambiance" of last year's event. Steppenwulf revealed that he had found a syringe in the parking lot the next day. "Funny I didn't know that the neighbors were diabetic, I thought they were drinking and partying...(grim smile)."
In the early evening, Peryton went to run the Peryton game, while I sat on the sales table. Sure enough, we sold even more stuff. I did a quick inventory and we had only about a third of stuff that we had come with. And that was with me checking out the scores for the Bundesliga, MLS, and English Premier soccer games of the day, as well as, catching up with CoC-Tony, from last year's CoCob, and while getting to know Jim from TC-GC game forums while sipping our dusk time beer. Tadpole from the POW! game the day before came over and helped me run the table even before he had to slip off to do his homework for next week's school. Peryton's game ran over into my TAG slot, and the same players of her game were signed up for mine, so I was more than happy to let Peryton shine through my session.
Closing up shop for the day, we, including Peryton, Mandy-B, Steppenwulf, and Rook, would try and get in on Tony's next CoC game, but of course it was already full. We blathered for a minute or ten looking around, Peryton wryly told me that I had spoiled Ziggy to D&D with that T&T stuff. Still in the mood for a game, we jumped in Pieramyd Games' Doom-Meets-Resident Evil prototype setting where we role-played out being doomed and a bit of fratricide with grenades (my bad, sorry). Ziggy popped in once in a while to let us know that he had found the Savage World's room meet and drink...err greet, and the Barfleet dance floor, and the "Mock Music" concert in the lounge, and the Guitar Hero buffet, and the..., I am sure you get the picture.
At midnight, the game wrapped up. And just in time to. Everyone was dead tired, as well as on our third beverage in as many hours. Ziggy decided he was going to drive home, so he started on water and dancing. Mandy-B and Steppenwulf, and Peryton and I bid adieu once again until the next occasion. Rook had taken his leave a couple of hours before. I made Peryton make a token effort to check out the room parties and the lounge as well, but even I was getting a little tired. We picked up our Barfleet cup though never actually partook in the endless beverage, while the "ship's captain" and I discussed his regulation Bar Fleet bathrobe, and he gave me some pointers for my own next year. We wandered around and were 'Huzzah'ed" when we entered the debauchery that is Savage Worlds' room party. I think I saw Larry Elmore giving pointers on drinking jello shots, completely sober and not drinking himself, but I might have been hallucinating. I closed our bar tab in the jam-packed lounge and listened to someone being lewd as well as discussing Enterprise's Dr. Phlox in his "rhapsodic" song, the bar-tender slipped a free pot of coffee on for us while tabbing. Even with the coffee, Peryton and were back in our room before half past one. Ziggy called and let us know that he was sober enough to head home, and was doing so. I settled in to hopefully sleep in.
Though the breakfast wasn't complimentary, there wasn't much else to do at six thirty in the AM, except eat and read the Sunday paper. Just before I went to wake up Peryton three hours later, I was in a conversation with Gary, the Pirate. Let me just say, that while a little bit of pirate goes a long way, the pirates of CoCob were in their element at this event. Gary himself had discarded his full uniform from the evening before, and was wearing his morning attire. I felt like I was speaking with Thomas Payne or Jean Lette' or some such. Both of us are "party late, wake up early" sorts so we had some stories to swap. Peryton packed the car after getting ready, unbeknowest to me as I was sitting at the table. No sales but we did find some items to buy ourselves. Josh from QAG came by and was really up for a T&T session, but his friends and I weren't really. So we swapped emails and phone numbers with promises of invites and road trips over the next year to have a few sessions.
With the Josh thread tied off, Peryton and I decided it was time to go. It took about ten minutes to repack my computer, fill up only one small bag of the unsold items, and gather our own purchases together and we slipped off. Didn't find Andy to say good-bye, but our neighboring tables gave us a pleasant round "see you next year" send-offs. Then we were on the road. On the road, coming home in less than an hour's drive from a weekend of serious gaming, a bit of selling, all hours socializing, and we didn't have to walk over a half mile the whole time, nor even step outside if we didn't want to. I feel a little lazy compared to the stamina and activity required to do GenCon, but I have to admit, but this con was just right to this bear.
Luckily the night before we left Ohio, Flavia and I spent the night at Mandy-B's and Steppenwulf's house. Helping Mandy-B make a great vegetarian dinner and listening to her enthusiasm got me pumped up for the up-coming convention. And since we were flying out of town with them, it made getting there a bit of a festive pilgrimage. Though when we arrived in Arizona, we only had energy fro a dip in the pool and some late night pizza.
Friday morning rolled around, and I made myself stay in bed until 6am local time before jumping up to prepare the day's adventure offering of "Crossing Guard." At breakfast, Monk called and told me he was about halfway between Flagstaff and Scottsdale. Even Flavia found herself able to wake up before 9:30 local time as it was after noon back at home. We met Brian Penn, or Skulltosser, a long time editor of mine, and one of the better ones, over at Outlaw Press. With him was Bart and Byron, the men of mystery from the great northwest. And luckily Khayd', of Mike Eidson, was already chatting everyone up.
Before the games started, Rick Loomis's littlest sister, Nancy, told us about a great Mexican food restaurant just up the road. Two people we'd met Doug, Nodin, and Mark S., Spencer, offered to drive us, but then I decided that we'd, Monk, Flavia, and I, meet them there because I wanted to walk. Of course, I got lost and we found someplace else, a Cien Agave, where we got six dollar tacos and did much goofing off.
We were only 5 minutes late for the "Crossing Guard" session. Where I met Martin L., Dwarflander, as he and Nodin showed me some player tricks that I hadn't seen before as a GM. Afterwards, hearing of Flavia and my misadventure, Rick insisted on taking us to the correct restaurant. He also brought Steve S. Cromptom of Grimtooth's Traps illustration fame. After dinner, Ken showed up, and everyone retired to individual suites for the evening game sessions.
I played in Byron's and his brother Bart's room, 'A Role of the Dice" was Byron's adventure and I was awed as a GM watching him. Now when I do characters, I do voices. But this guy did at least six different characters with different voices AND at no time did one of the characters get mixed up with the others that the GM was doing from before. Now that was talent. Byron has been nice enough to email me a copy of the scenario, so I can finally figure out what we the players were doing.
The afternoon session was going to be a wash for getting all but more than two people at any table that was not Bear Petersen and Larry Detillio(sp?) GM'ing an adventure. I scrapped my Spacers' episode for the afternoon, hopefully giving some players to Bart or Mak or whomever was still running. I sat in lobby with Jim Walker, one of the world's foremost experts on Monsters! Monsters!, and a whole slough of cool kids came over and hung with us after a few minutes. I slipped away when Flavia informed me that Liz Danforth was in the building. And I FINALLY met her, the woman who made FRPG come alive for me. This little "fanboy" session for me was almost as much fun as when I met Ken St. Andre for the first time.
Around dinner time, Bear Petersen wrapped up his game, and a horde of people discovered they were hungry. I think the other bigwig's game was still going on or took a break or something, but it was clear that time constraints were not relevant to that one session-- so much for anyone else wanting to play in his game, I suppose. But in anycase, we all plodded over to Red Lobster and had a dinner. I missed the awarding of Rick Loomis with the special T&T hat as I had to run back and get our camera. But I had fun none the less (see the pic's above).
My evening session was in Khayd's room, where we played two new friends Dave and Tracy, Minodave and Tracitroll, as well all of the Peryton clique, well almost because Monk was busy in the other room writing "Sock Hop of Terror." And lest I forget we met Tmuwo, one of the many Pauls of Trollhalla. But the game was "A Chance Encounter Meeting of Paragons," as usual as well written and pieced as anything Mike Eidson puts his mind to. It was a blast, I was reminded of StarGate for some reason, but this was as my Dark Elf jumped out the window for his life as the rest of the party went to slice out my heart. At midnight though, I felt like it was 3am and more than ready for bed.
I ran an adventure in my room,but first Rrramberrt and Mr. T- showed us the upcoming board-game Big Dragon, Little Knight. let's call it the "Afterglow Game." Khayd', Landdwarf, Spencer, and Skulltosser made my job as the GM that of the audience. They were so annoyed when I interrupted them with the plot that they killed the antagonist in about two turns. I didn't mind in the least.
Monday was spent not hiking the Camelback Mountain. But Monk, Flavia, and I did get to know the Heroic Fantasy guys, Doug, Frank, and Chris in the morning, and we walked the right way to the Mexican restaurant for lunch this time. Monk at dinner talked me into a fun little bachelor party idea, which I can't talk about here, maybe next time though.
