So, DieCon 18 - my second DieCon to date - went great. My brother and I hit the road around 8:30 or so Thursday morning and, even with making a couple of stops to hit up a game shop, use the bathroom, and eat, we arrived in Collinsville, IL just after 4:00 pm. We met up with friends Chris (who lives a couple hours north) and Becca (who flew in from Las Vegas and was crashing at Chris' place), got checked in to the Super 8, and then loaded up and headed into downtown St. Louis, MO to have dinner at
Blueberry Hill. While there we also met up with another guy that Becca & Chris know from their time in World of Warcraft. This was the second year I've met him and he's a rather odd duck, but nice enough. After dinner we went down the street to the
Snow Factory for some Thai-style ice cream. While good and also a rather novel experience, I'm not sure it was worth $8. I'd have been just as happy to go across the street to
Fitz's for shakes. After all this the hour was getting late so we headed back to the Super 8 to get some sleep.
Friday morning, we got up and headed to the nearby Denny's for breakfast before going over to the Gateway Convention Center to get ready to sign up for games! Normally registration and sign-ups open at noon but for some reason they started about a half-hour early. Since I'd already preregistered I was able to get my t-shirt and convention booklet and hop right into the registration line.
Event signups for DieCon are interesting in that, with the exception of Organized Play programs like PFS or DnD AL, you sign up in-person and the events tend to be something of a first-come, first-serve basis. You have a card and you write down three sessions that you really want to get in to (first choice) and then write down two alternates (second choice) and then go through the line. The people at the desk then look at your paper and go to see how many slots are still open for the events you want. They then give you stickers to place in your booklet for the events you're able to get into. One limitation they *do* impose for Saturday and Sunday events is that they only give out maybe half of the tickets for those on Friday and hold the rest in reserve for folks who can't get there to sign up until Saturday or Sunday. Luckily for me I was able to get into all of my first choices right away and for the PFS/SFS I'd signed up for, my tickets were held in reserve and waiting for me since I'd done my signing up via Warhorn.
After a quick walk over to the nearby Mexican place for a drink (no lunch since several of us had just eaten) we then filtered back over to the convention center for Session #1, which started at 2pm. My event for this was a board game called 'Mansions of Madness' - gameplay seemed somewhat similar to 'Betrayal at House on the Hill' except with a heckuva lot more Cthulhu creep factor. The rules were a little complex and took some getting used to but the game itself was quite enjoyable and it came right down to the wire on whether we, the players, would win or the GM! I enjoyed it enough that I would've shelled out money for my own copy but none of the vendors seemed to have one. Sadness :(
Each session has an hour-long break before the next session starts so those are good times to hit the restroom, grab a bite to eat, go smoke, wander around the convention hall, etc. I brought some of my own snacks and flavor packs for my bottled water (which I just kept refilling using the canteens placed around the hall) because the snack bar is crazy expensive.
Session #2 was my first foray into playing Savage Worlds. What I didn't know, because the blurb for it didn't mention this part, is that we were going to be using the 'Pirates of the Spanish Main' setting for the game. So when I sat down and ended up being the only one at the table who hadn't played before, the GM grinned at me and said, 'Okay then, you're the captain' and tossed said character sheet my direction. Pretty sure I had an 'Oh god' look on my face but hey, it's good to try new things right? And actually, it turned out pretty good! I mean yeah, we narrowly escaped being executed only to have a rival run off with our ship (after having 'repaid' me by helping to bust us free) and had no navigator and like 5 NPC crew and no money or supplies but we did manage to take a merchant ship (using our persuasive smooth-talk and the one sword we had between 6 characters) and made it to what amounted to Tortuga. The session ended right as we'd finished negotiating a deal for our cargo and making some preparations to buy supplies and start tracking down leads on where to find some cannons...but the rest will be detailed further down for I'd also signed up to play the second part of this little adventure during the middle Saturday session! I also received a copy of the Deluxe Explorer's Edition of Savage Worlds - hooray for free swag!
After a decent night's sleep, we all got up early Saturday morning and trooped back over to the convention center for moar gaming! Session #3 was a game of 'Call of Scooby Doo' using a game system called 'FAST' that was developed by brothers Larry and Woody Babb. Larry himself ran our game and the best way to describe the experience is like a standard Scooby Doo mystery (including special guest stars as playable characters) mixed with puzzle solving and some Cthulhu-style horror. I played this last year, where the scenario was called 'Wednesday Mourning' and featured Wednesday Addams as the special guest star. This year's scenario was called 'Cereal Killer' and featured Count Chocula (or his daughter, the Countess Chocula) as the special guest star. I played Velma, same as last year, while my brother and another con-friend reprised their usual roles as Scooby and Shaggy. The player of Shaggy even brings Scooby Snacks to the game each year! Much fun was had by all and we solved the mystery and defeated the crazed Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, who was the villain for this year's scenario.
Session #4 saw the continuation of Friday's Savage Worlds game and most of the same players returned, including myself. For those of us who played both sessions, we actually got to 'level up' our characters before getting started, which was nice. More pirate hijinks were had wherein our fence wound up murdered and our money stolen...along with someone's daughter? I suspect that said daughter was originally supposed to be my character's daughter but see, I hadn't paid close attention to my character sheet during the earlier session and had given my captain a female name and gender...which in the real world setting and time period the game was set in, would've been really unusual. Oops. But it did lead to some amusing comments from the rest of my crew. At any rate, we raced off to Haiti to try and rescue our money (and the girl, I guess) from the clutches of Baron Samedi and encountered storms, hostile locals, and a bloodthirsty shark along the way. Unfortunately we kinda ran out of time after the shark encounter and the GM had to narrate the rest of the adventure and conclusion but I had a surprisingly good time with the whole thing and would definitely play with this GM again at future DieCons.
Session #5 is where I finally sat down and played my first ever game of Starfinder! Starting with the very first published scenario, Claim to Salvation, which is run using 4th level pregen iconics. Most of the other players had about as much experience as I did, which was none, so it was nice to be more or less on a level playing field with everyone else. I also saw a familiar face at this table, a kid (probably 14-15ish) who was at all of my PFS tables at last year's DieCon. He seemed to have grown up a little in that this time he didn't try to go all murderhobo right off the bat and also didn't keep interrupting the GM as they were trying to talk. All of the other players, as well as the GM, were super friendly and helpful and we all had a great time playing through the scenario. While I think Pathfinder will remain my main squeeze, I definitely enjoyed Starfinder enough that I plan to make my own character for SFS play.
Sunday morning rolls around after another night of adequate sleep and this is the day where my brother and I are in all of the same events together. Session #6, our first of the day, was a PFS game playing the scenario 'Scourge of the Farheavens'. We only had four people for this and had a really weird level split with one 5th level character and everyone else being 1st level because most of said players either only had those characters to play (the 5th level shaman and the 1st level fighter) or just really wanted to play a particular character (my brother and his 1st level druid). I can't say a lot about the particulars of the scenario itself as I want to avoid spoilers but it was highly amusing and surprisingly challenging in certain parts. It was also pretty straightforward and we finished with an hour to spare so it'd probably be an easy one to run for anyone contemplating GMing PFS scenarios.
Since we got done with plenty of time to spare, my brother and I actually hit up the nearby steakhouse for lunch and had the first proper meal we'd had since Friday morning. Afterwards, we went to Session #7 which was a homebrew game of Deadlands titled 'Large Trouble, Small China' wherein we had to solve some issues with gang violence occurring in San Francisco's Chinatown. Oh, did I mention we had to fight an evil wizard and his nigh-invincible henchmen? That was a thing. I've played Deadlands before and would actually like to play it more in the future, if our home group can ever finish some of our Pathfinder campaigns.
Last but not least, our last game of the convention was Session #8, where we played another PFS scenario titled 'Beyond the Halflight Path'. This one is a 3-7 evergreen with multiple story arcs that can be played and it was my first time playing it. The beginning has plenty of social stuff happening and then the latter part was more dungeon-crawl than anything, but that's okay. Once again, we just had 4 PCs but at least this time there wasn't quite as much of a level gap. We won and survived, but man we had one or two tough fights! Our ectoplasmist spiritualist was the MVP of the scenario and I'm positive that without his assistance we would've wiped on at least one of the encounters. On the other hand...what's up with characters not having any ranks in any knowledge skills? Some classes that are skill-starved I can understand but otherwise, I mean...really? Especially when you're 5th or 6th level? I've seen this several times now with live play but I don't know that I've ever seen it in a PbP game. I try not to tell people how to play but sometimes some decisions leave me shaking my head a bit. Ah well.
Anyhoo, that's pretty much the tale of my experiences at DieCon 18! Had lots of fun, picked up a little swag, and managed to survive through all of my games. I'm totally looking forward to next year :)
