NTRPGCon 2024 Recap

Jun 13, 2024

So just came back from NTRPGCon! I had a blast hanging out and gaming with a lot of wonderful folks. I got to meet several people that I’d only interacted with online, primarily folks from the DungeonCrawlers Discord server but also Julian Bernick! Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to talk about what it was like so that people who weren’t there can get an idea of what the con is like.

Thursday

I got to play Shadowdark under Paul Wolfe! And I got him to sign my copy of The God Seed Awakens! Paul was kinda running the Deserts of Desolation, but it was a sandbox hexcrawl situation so we didn’t actually go in the direction of any of the old TSR material. We started by freeing our characters from some slavers, found the lost tomb of a barbarian king, and then found another slaver group that we killed. Though I’d read some of Shadowdark before, I’d never played so I signed up for this one partially just to try the system out. To me, it seems like a solid system but I don’t see it becoming my system of choice.

Next up with a game of Dare Luck Club under Paul Smith. I’d tried to get in Luau Lou’s game but I wasn’t quick enough with the sign ups! Still, this was a ton of fun to play. We were all junior high kids in the computer club and had to solve the mystery of why cryptids were appearing in our little town. The answer? A cursed Atari-800 game cartridge. Highly recommend playing a game of Dare Luck Club if you ever get the chance!

Later that day, I got a chance to play what is essentially the first scene of Meet Yer Maker! That a new DCC/MCC/Weird Frontiers adventure coming from Eddie Barlett. He’s previously done Carnage in the Casino and is one of the folks behind Long Con! By the way, ticket sales are open for LC! I’ll be there and hope to see a bunch of familiar faces! Anyway, Meet Yer Maker definitely has a cool twist in it. Lots of messing with the mechanics of the character sheet. To just offer a bit of a tease, about the first hour will be a funnel, then it’ll transition to a level-1 adventure! Or at least that’s my understanding of it.

Then I got to play Fie, I Say! for an hour or so with Johnathan Sullivan, Luau Lou, and another lovely person whose name I unfortunately forget. I was stoked to get to try out 3 new systems in just one day and had a blast doing this. It was a very simple system that was just enough to have lots of fun.

Friday

Friday was my playtesting day. I began by running a funnel I’m working on: Race Against Flame. The PCs begin as prisoners being taken to serve the Queen of Fire Giants upon the plane of fire. After a quick escape scene, they need to find a way to travel to a world that is at least a bit more hospitable. It went great and ran in about 2 hours! So everyone had time to go get a proper meal before their next game began.

A little later that day, I ran a level-4 adventure that I’m working on: Reforging the Stone King. I’d run this adventure once before with 4 players and now I was doing it again with 8 players. I’d also changed a pretty significant bit of it since the prior playtest. But all the changes worked! It was a really fun adventure with interesting choices to make and challenges to tackle. I took some solid playtest notes and already made some additional revisions to both these adventures too!

Thanks to a max level Ray of Enfeeblement, they did not allow the Stone King to be Reforged.

After that, I just hung around for a while, got some dinner, and chatted with folks. No impromptu game presented itself but that’s okay. I’ve overscheduled myself at plenty of conventions before and have learned that I need to take it a bit easier.

Saturday

I let myself sleep in a little late and didn’t scheduled a morning game. In the late morning, I once again just chatted and hung out with folks. Good, simple fun. But the afternoon was my playing in A Fairly Odd Tale! I always love getting to play adventures with the author of the adventure. This one is a rather silly one where you get a taste of many different fairy tales such as the billy goats gruff, three blind mice, hags who live in gingerbread houses, etc. It has a good mix of roleplay, puzzle solving, and combat. A solid choice if you want something a little lighter in nature! Gets a hearty recommendation from me!

After that, a couple folks who’d been in my level-4 game on Friday asked if I knew about any DCC games happening that night that had 2 open spots. I didn’t know of any, but I knew I could put one together. I started asking and quickly found someone who wanted an excuse to run a playtest and even had all the pre-gens ready. Now this was for Dungeon Dwelling Creatures, so all the players get to play the bad guys here! I was initially going to play, but game up my spot so another person could join in. Besides, I had a feeling that I could find myself another game.

And sure enough, I was right! A number of folks were just about to start a game of Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland. We were lucky enough have Ian McGarty run us through a few rooms of Shadow of the Brutacorn, which is now on Kickstarter! We had so much fun in every room. Plus, I got paid to play. Well kinda. About halfway through the game, I began received texts from someone who wasn’t at the game table or even at the convention. But this person had been sent a picture of me sitting next to Julian Bernick, and apparently there’s a bit of a rivalry between them. I was offered $20 to kill Julian’s character! After confirming that it was a serious offer, I waited until the last moment, when Julian’s Cyber Reagan could only take 6 more damage. That’s when I used my plasma whip to behead him and said, “Matt Robertson sends his regards.” Oh, what a glorious look of surprise on Julian’s face. Next time your in a game with one of those two guys, might be some money making opportunities for you…

Sunday

I didn’t actually go! I already had 3 full days of gaming so I stayed home and rested. I had some important things to take care of on Monday so I knew that I needed the day to recuperate. That was the convention for me. Certainly tiring, but I’m already looking forward to the next one!

What’s your favorite local convention? Ever been offered money to instigate PvP before?