NTRPGCon 2025 Recap
Game time and hang time
NTRPGCon was a great time! No surprise there as I always have a great time gaming and seeing friends that I rarely get to see outside of the convention scene. I was only able to attend Friday and Saturday this year, but so it goes. Anyway, I'll run down a quick recap so folks get a feel for how it was.
Friday
I got to the convention and ended up talking to Doug for like 30 minutes. He’s an awesome guy, amazing artist, and won’t tell you nothing but his truth. I got to hang with Jeff Jones and Luau Lou, who had booths right next to each other. I picked up my contributor copy of Journey to the Madlands from Jeff, plus I bought Dark Visions cause it looked so cool! Then did a little product swap with Lou so we can offer each other’s products on our crowdfunding campaigns in the future. But it was mostly chatting with folks for a while, which is honestly better than gaming at times.
But then it was game time! I played in Cocaine Owlbear, a hack of Honey Heist. It was run by Janelle Brauncowski, aka Jason Brauncowski’s wife. Check out his art! I bought an amazing framed print of Randy Savage from his last year. He sells very affordable prints at his con booth so definitely check it out if you see him at a con. The game was an absolute blast. We played woodland animals who found a dead drug mule and got into the magical cocaine with gave us human level sentience (drugs are bad, mkay). In the end, we traded Smurf meth (they crystalize into that when they die) to a witch for human hands. We also had to slay the local forest queen as part of the deal, but she also was a drug queen so our woodland creatures were into that too.
An hour after that game, it was time for me to run some level 10 DCC! I ran The 10th Doomstar (working title has been The 10th Comet of Chaos). Four out my six players didn’t show up! But I managed to wrangle a folks from the hallway and we were back up to six soon enough! The game went great. Very solid, but a couple revisions are being made that will really make it shine. One of the players stuck around a while to give me some really great feedback (thanks Stoerm!) In the end, Chaos won because of a bit of PvP that was very much welcomed by the players.
Saturday
The day started with some level 5 Shadowdark. I’ve only played the game a couple of times and not at that high of a level so I wanted to see what it was like. Definitely had a fun time, but I was missing DCC’s Might Deeds (I played a dwarf) and wished that our wizard had the ability to spellburn to get his lost spells back.
After that game, I had 4 hours before my next game. Just about every moment was spent hanging out with folks like Skeeter Green, Ian McGarty (check out his current Shardowdark adventure kickstarter: Temple of The Sheep God), the Long Con gang, and a ton of other folks. Later, I was running my “zombie funnel”. I start this DCC funnel by killing every single PC and killing them again and again. The zombie PCs have some special powers, but will all become the mindless undead if they don’t stop the lich-king from resurrecting. A great playtest, especially for a first playtest. But some revisions will be made to make it shine even brighter. The working title of this one is Rise, Gongfarmer, Rise!
After that, it was time to hang out again. I basically chatted with folks like Dave Baity and Julian Bernick until I needed to drive home before I started falling asleep. There was talk of writing adventures for other folks, artists that we like using, and brainstorming future adventures for Dungeon Dwelling Creatures and WHPA. Plus, I was able to show off some of the Lulu PoD copies of The Conquest of Chaos (bought just so I could double-check my own layout work before the print run) to folks, including some playtesters! I was stoked to hear how the art pieces matched so many of the memorable moments that occurred during our adventures together.
And so it goes! I wish I could have more to report but life cut my time a little short this year. I might pop up at Reaper Con, but my next one is probably Long Con. I'm already having fun imagining what I'm gonna run there!
If you were at NTRPGCon, tell me about your best game!
What Else’s Going On?
Dinosaur Timeslip 1988
A 0-level dinosaur-apocalypse adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics tabletop RPG set in New Jersey in the 1980s
Port Mirror
A 0-Level gauntlet/funnel adventure for Shadowdark and the DCC RPG
Saturday morning, I played in a great Hyperborea session run by Chainsaw at NTRPGCon.
Yes, it was a dungeon crawl, and we had an abundance of PCs (nine of us), but by the final fight, only five players faced off against a massive demon and his horde of undead soldiers (40 of them).
Our berserker bailed, having called us all fools while taking a good chunk of the found treasure. Two more disappeared (via potions of Invisibility), & we have no clue what happened to the cryomancer.
In any case, a wall of force split the minion horde. A flamethrower (that none of us knew the fighter possessed) trimmed 20 to 10. My hasted paladin charged & smote 2. The hunter got another. And our cleric turned what remained of the half-horde. The demon was none too happy, so much so that he summoned a cousin of a similar ilk.
So happy that my paladin still had a few rounds of haste left from a potion he'd consumed earlier.
The ranger, the fighter, the scout, the cleric, and the paladin waded in against the duo, and things were touch and go until the first demon fell. Cheers rose from the heroes. Then the last demon summoned another cousin. Sighs rose from our side, though my paladin cried, "Stand Fast! - We'll persevere." Heavy blows rained down upon the heroes, and our cleric kept the wounded in the fight with his healing spells. A second demon fell & then finally the last one did as well.
The remaining half-a-horde tried to flee, but were cut down once their master(s) had fallen.
It was a great game.
Great to see you up there Stephan. Sorry we didn't get to hang as much.