Smell That?

Let your nostrils flare and take in the distinct aroma of "gamer stink".

Yes, that's right boys and girls, it's Convergence!

This year was so spectacular it was beyond words. There were more people dressed up than I've ever seen. This despite the soaring temperatures and 90th percentile humidity the first two days of Con.

It's a lot to take in and digest. The first night my costume wasn't done and I was almost grateful in a way, because my makeup would have melted for sure if I had done my full rig. Much more comfortable to walk around in a cotton dress. Some enterprising and hardcore souls were done to the nines regardless, not allowing the muggy and cloying heat of the day and thousands of bodies crammed into one hotel to rain on their parade.

 I asked if he was a drow. He told me for copyright purposes

he was a "dark elf". Damn you Wizards of the Coast!

 Not the last time I came across some X-men!

 Ran into Beast & Wolverine again and had to take a shot.

This Wolverine is almost as yummy as Hugh Jackman!

 Sleek Mystique impressed

 Not a bad Logan!

 This Rocketeer was especially sweet & put

his helmet on in the heat just so I could take a picture

The eyes of this Phoenix were scarily scarlet

Taking pictures is all part of the experience. Every year the people who rent the rooms surrounding the atrium and pool area deck out their temporary pads with different themes. You can visit the House of Toast (and pick up mind-boggling weird combinations on wheat or white bread, like ketchup with coconut), stop by the Mos Icee Cantina (complete with it's very own dead Greedo), dance at Club Nerdtron, get a drink from the dead bar (and tip the nice lady in the coffin)

or take a seat in Captain Kirk's chair, get stuck in the agony booth and then get transported away.

 This post-apocalyptic car salesman roomie of mine

has quite the sense of humor

We were both screaming like little girls

but the operator told me Makai's was better

A dead-on Jonathan Frakes look-alike.

I had such a crush on Riker!

Each of the rooms surrounding the pool have little balcony areas on top of their regular room space, and many of the renters go all out in decorating the rooms for the weekend. Beds are removed entirely in most cases or cleverly disguised until the room shuts down (if it ever does).

The mayhem of Con!

Standing in the main floor atrium area you can take in a lot of Con all at once.

It was a great first day, and we were definitely coming back for more.

 Agent 47 and the post-apocalyptic used car salesman

 Some of my nerd herd



Don't cry, we're coming back!

 

Stay tuned for more pictures and a reveal of my most awesome cosplay for Con!

The Steel Hearts

Every other Wednesday, the Doll-house is filled up by the "nerd party", that group of individuals who come over bi-weekly to play a modular D&D game.

I was thinking back to how long we've been playing this module series and was shocked to realize it's been a few years.

It's a bit different from my once-a-month Kortoe group who is no more. Instead of the Dungeon Master (DM) creating their own story, plot, NPC's, bad guys, treasure, etc, we're playing pre-made adventures published by Wizards of the Coast (the company that owns the D&D brand).

Our typical night starts out with players arriving sporadically until everyone is finally there. I usually feed them as I know that D&D should not be done on an empty stomach. By the time we get to the business of playing, it's usually eight o'clock or even later, as with all D&D games in my experience, there's some settling down to do and some socializing to get out of the way first.

Luckily D&D players are typically night owls!

Because we play a pre-built game, there is typically a combat session every night. Combat means that we must bust out the combat grid, a flexible roll of plastic that is covered in 1-inch squares and allows you to draw on it with wet erase markers so you know where you can step and where you'll run into a wall.

To further facilitate the imagination, we use miniatures to plot out movements during combat. They help us to remember who is where and how far you can move during each round.

One member of our group is into minature painting, that art of taking the tiniest brushes you can find and painting one-inch tall pewter figurines with lifelike colors.

This member, who became nicknamed 1T for the insistent way he introduces himself ("My name is spelled with one T!") is as meticulously anal about his art as he is about playing D&D RAW (Rules As Written).

(We call those people "rules-lawyers" and while they have their place, they can also be supremely annoying.)

But I'm getting off track. 1T had purchased miniatures matching as closely as he was able to our self-described characters, and then took it upon himself to paint them so that we would have faithful representations of ourselves whenever the combat board was pulled out.

Behold below, the fearsome figures of the Steel Hearts, adventurers and treasure-seekers extraordinare.


These are pictures of Xander, our faithful fighter (played by 1T himself). All of the figures below are roughly 1.5-1 inch tall, so keep this mind when looking at the exterme detail he put into painting these figurines. I guess being OCD can come in handy...

This shield is truly a work of art. Too bad Xander constantly throws it

and bashes enemies with it in combat. If we wanted to be "real" we'd have to

scuff this miniature up to reflect the battles it's been in.

Yours Truly, aka Aoiki, the fearsome wu-jen wielding elemental spells of fiery death. Or most often, casting haste on her fellow Steel Hearts so that they can more easily battle the foes.

Note the very faint gray scribbles on the back of my miniature. It's supposed to be a tattoo since my character has them all over. Oh! and notice my winged-cat familiar, called a tressym, who is painted to look like my very own furry "child" Gizmo.

Okay, so may it's not exactly like Gizmo, but close enough! (Yes, even my kitteh's do cosplay).

Then of course to my intrepid husband, playing a monk named Ryukin who wields soulfire and fists with equally devastating consequences.

The braided hair is not something the Big B would ever do IRL (In Real Life), no matter how I beg him to grow out his hair.

This is the infamous gnome Wigglethorp, who briefly joined the game while my roommate Corry still lived with us. Alas, he had to move out due to the imminent birth of his first child and so Wigglethorp was retired.

Instead, his awesomely neato name was perserved forever when Corry adopted a furry black kitten and promptly named him Wigglethorp.

I suspect that he named him so just to piss off 1T, who HATED his gnomish monniker.

Here is our faithful cleric, healer of the party and always last to act because of his shitty iniative. Kendrick has a lot of neat stuff happening on his miniature as well.

A cleric just isn't a cleric without his holy books, his shield, scalemail, or a badass mace to bludgeon his enemies to death.

And of course, every good D&D group needs it's rogue! Relegated to NPC status while his player DM's, Tomah is our intrepid trap-finder and sneak-attack killer. Those daggers may look small, especially when wielded by a halfling, but trust me, you don't want to let this bugger sneak up behind you.

Ah, the whole group lined up and ready to go. Surely the Steel Hearts can take on any foe!



Sadly, the last time we played Xander had an unfortunate accident. He got severely bumped around and his sword-arm suffered the brunt of the fall, causing his arm to fall right off.

We're pretty sure it couldn't have been gangrene, considering we do have a cleric in the group, after all.

And So We Say Goodbye

If I'm sniffling a bit today, you must forgive me. It was an excitement filled weekend, full of nerdly delights.

Sunday we watched the premier of A Game of Thrones on HBO and we were happily transported to the mythic land of Westeros and the lands across the Narrow Sea.

But Saturday! We were saying goodbye to our own mythical land, the land of Kortoe. The D&D game that I and various friends have been participating in since 2005 is done, over, finished, complete.

This was the first RPG game I ever played in where we stuck with our characters from lowly first level (where your character can be killed by an over-eager kitten) to epic 20th level where your group can literally challenge the gods themselves, if they so choose.

The group playing the game has changed a bit since we first started. The Core Four (myself, the Big B, Mikey, and Travis) are the only ones who were with it from beginning to end. Over the years, we had over 15 different people playing in the game at one point or another.

Kortoe was something dreamed up at Travis' house after I had introduced the Big B to the joys of role playing (and he actually liked it!) and we all decided we wanted to play a truly epic game. The Big B's main complaint with RPG'g before this was that we always did short game sessions, one-nighters, and were constantly creating new characters for each game.

"I want to have a character stay constant from the beginning to end," he says to me. "I want to keep my character."

And so Kortoe was born.

Perhaps my favorite part of being a DM is drawing maps. In my 3-ring binders of D&D love at home, you can find maps to all kinds of places that never existed anywhere outside of my mind and the tabletop where the dice roll. My buddy Travis (my very first DM, sniff sniff!) also likes maps and had one drawn in topographical-style but nothing was named yet. I had a map with names already and was sort of attached to my naming scheme, so we stole my names and put them on his map.

Then the fun of world-building got started.

Because I'm obsessed with the Disney TV show Gargoyles, I insisted we create a new race that would be closely in line with the Disney mythos. I think we did a pretty good job--the race is fairly balanced and has its very own mountain to live in. Although no one really ended up actually playing one as a PC for any length of time, they were used as plot devices and NPC's by a couple DM's.

We wrote brief descriptions of each major city on the map, described the different regions, political powers, peoples, and religions. It was a dynamic thing, constantly subject to change as each player got a chance at DM'ing an adventure with the same PC's.

We decided on a rotating DM scheme since before that, Travis had always been our de facto Dungeon Master and the poor man was tired of running and arguing with us. I don't blame him! We're a difficult bunch at best to DM for.

We all pledged to respect what the other DM's had built, and stay away from the areas on the map "claimed" by a certain DM. Travis wanted to describe a city in the north that had been pounded by successive meteors due to the wrath of the gods against another of their member, I wanted to have a political-intrigue inspired game in the south where a nation had two cities on a river and was full of backstabbing and palace intrigues. Mikey wanted to be in charge of the undead city of Riazi, where a mysterious undead Emperor may or may not be running the show behind the scenes.

As the group morphed, new DM's were added. Cory joined during my game and helped teach us how to play RAW versus how we had done things before (sort of loosey-goosey). It's ironic that I credit Cory with this as he's very much a mind's eye kind of DM and plays fast & loose with the rules himself, but as we were all learning & eager to play "correctly" he indulged our questions & rules-lawyering with his unshakeably good-natured self.

By the end, our group had grown to the insanely large number of 7 PC's. My one complaint about D&D would be that it's so much harder to play with more than 4-5 people, even though you may want to include all of your gaming circle. But once we worked the kinks out and got a group together that really wanted to play, you hardly noticed the large number of PC's. Well, except when combat took hours and hours, that is! Or if you were the DM, tasked with keeping everyone involved and on track *whew*

We met monthly, often taking breaks over the summer months (it's hard for us Minnesotans to be inside when it's nice out, even for serious gamers like ourselves) and sometimes taking breaks due to schedule conflicts. Slowly and steadily, the world was fleshed out as our group of adventuring PC's, naturally named the Champions of Kortoe, journeyed around the world solving riddles, saving kingdoms, and picking up all kinds of goodies along the way.

We got to meet the gods (and mouth off to them), journey across planes besides our material one (the Astral is my favorite!), become undead and battle the loss of our inner selves, and finally face off with an elder evil that we made short work of.

It was a journey in many ways and we've all come so far since the beginning days. The characters morphed and changed as we morphed and changed, and overall the experience was a blast.

My buddy Corry is a fledgling photographer and he brought his camera & tripod to document our last night. We just had to take a shot of all of us in front of our awesome map (made extra large thanks to Kinkos!).

Back Row: The Big B (Keldon), Mikey (Daedralich), Tim (Stellan), Travis (Kevel)

Front Row: Cory (Stone), Me (Raena), Corry (Agbe)

What a good-looking group!

We're all sad to say goodbye to this fun game. But this isn't a true ending.

After all, our Champions learned that there were more continents than just the small one of Kortoe, which opens up whole new avenues for us to explore.

Kortoe ain't going anywhere just yet, even if the Champions will be retired. The hardcore group of gamers will continue the legacy started by Agbe, Daedralich, Keldon, Kevel, Raena, Stellan, and Stone.

This Is What Makes Me a Happy DM

I've been playing in the same D&D 3.5 edition RPG adventure since 2005.*

It's been a really great time. I've learned a lot since we started playing this game. My previous experiences with D&D was a much looser form of play, not nearly so much Rules As Written (RAW) like I play more often now.

Some of the players have joined & left since we started way back when, but a few core people remain and the last and current iteration of the group works really well together. We're a bit large for a normal D&D group. Like any team, the most effective size is 4-5 people. We have 7 currently, including myself as the DM. This game has been co-ran since it's inception, so although DM's typically don't get a PC to play, in this game they do because you will need your PC when someone else is taking their turn at being DM.

Did I mention that added to this large party size, we all had god-like ability stats to start with? That through one DM or another we've had access to just about every "goodie" a role-player could ask for? And that we have several NPC's that are badass all on their own?

For you non-role players out there, this would be like the equivalent of giving kids all the caffeine, sugar, ability and access to all kinds of mayhem they could ever desire, and then trying to get them to settle down and sit quietly.

All of these ingredients could very well turn our game sessions into one big disaster. Luckily for us, we are a group of people who really want to play and enjoy it. We've figured out a formula for our sessions:

1) Have a start time 1 hour earlier than you actually plan to play (this helps to ensure you get started within 2 hours of everyone's arrival, at least).
2) Potluck the food--no one person should have to pay for the Cheetos & Mountain Dew all the time.
3) Take mini-breaks to allow for socializing and off-track moments.
4) Have an awesome group of people who respect each other & just want to have fun.

Currently we're wrapping this game up. It's a bit scary--I'm the DM right now and there's a lot of pressure to end this game in spectacular fashion. We've had these characters for several years, watched them grow and change from 1st-20th level. Most likely we won't ever see these PC's again, unless a DM takes them out of retirement for future game use as NPC's.

But I must be doing something right...witness comments from our email chain after this Saturday's game:

That was just about one of my favorite games ever.  We got to crack Amanda and Sarah's secret language, we go to blow up a ziggaraut, and we got to do some awesome fighting.  It was like the perfect combination of puzzles for thinking, mindless destruction for fun, and combat for everything in between.  Keep it going Sarah!!!

Agree, kudos on the game! I was loathe to stop, it felt like one of those games I could play all night if it wasn't for stupid job... :P

Anyone call dibs on recap? Speak soon or I'll be starting it.

 Totally completely frickin awesome fun! Everything about it was great. I agree I would have kept playin if not for damn cheeldren! Playing as Kevel was a sweet bonus to go along with it!

This is completely validating for me as a DM. I've worked hard on the plot to keep everyone interested, to keep the sense of drama high, and to give our PC's a slam-bam exit and finish to this game.

We played for about 6 hours Saturday evening. The group got a chance to crack a code giving a clue for the next game session. No easy-out for these PC's by using the Skill Decipher Script here! (May my BFF forgive me for using our secret language developed in school to keep boys from reading our notes to each other).

Although I have to say, the boys who stole our notes in middle school either weren't very smart or very curious about their contents, even if they did steal the notes & complain about not being able to read it. My friends and hubby had that code cracked in less than an hour. (In my BFF & my defense, we were little when we created it and it was pure substitution, ie each letter had a corresponding symbol).

It makes me a happy geek girl. Especially since I once had someone give me the stinkeye when he heard I was going to DM. He actually had the nerve to say to me, "Oh, you're going to DM? I don't think girls can DM well. I haven't had good experiences in the past."

You can believe that I showed him the error of his beliefs that night.

*For those of you not "in the know" or who don't speak the geek dialect of role-playing, here's a glossary:
DM: Dungeon Master, the person who runs the game & is responsible for directing what happens and keeping everyone on track.
D&D: Dungeons & Dragons
RPG: Role-playing game
PC: Player-character, a character created and ran by someone playing the game
NPC: You guessed it, this is a non-player character. Could be a previously used & now retired character brought out by the DM, or someone the DM created for the game, or could be a PC's "follower" and is controlled by that player.