~ Reuniting with Troy Tucker, the guy responsible for "all this", and bringing my 1st printing #DCCRPG tome to its *6th* Free RPG Day event. I will eventually have to retire the poor thing, but yesterday was not that day.
~ Running Dieter Zimmerman's Not in Kansas Anymore for a group of not-quite beginners, including one of the FLGS owners, and player Riley stealing the show (he made the whole damn thing so enjoyable, I felt zero pressure - I officially want him in EVERY GAME I EVER RUN UNTIL THE END OF TIME... "Live your truth, man!").
~ Ran The Arwich Grinder for the first time ever. I unabashedly used different voices and inflections and made sound effects (which were probably as atrocious as my mapping skills) and a whole bunch of stuff that I usually shy away from, all because I could tell it was weirding out David and his kid (who were over from FLL). A+++, will run again, has potential to let me run something that might actually surprise/impress Bob!
~ Seeing familiar faces from folks who came out last year, and meeting new people who traveled from St. Pete, Tampa, Sarasota, and Ft. Lauderdale (2-3 hrs one way) just to come to Dungeon Games and play games.
~ After busting ass to coordinate GMs and sign-up sheets for scheduled games that some people poo-pooed, the FLGS had their highest sales day in the store's history. Yeah, I take a little pride in that. We do what we can to help those we love.
~ Handing out the first-ever print product from Sanctum Secorum...
~ Getting to surprise players with DCC RPG swag that rarely makes it into the wild! I'd been sitting on the stadium cup set from last year, so I brought one for each game and let them dice off for it. Some of the new players were as ravenous for "one of everything" as I've been in the past. Kindred spirits!
~ And, finally, the payoff that's stuck with me for the past 12 hours: My last table was a DCC Lankhmar demo, with players rolling up characters from scratch, which really helps immerse them into the literary material and showcases a few of the fundamental system changes from "regular" DCC. One of the players had been in last year's playtest campaign but the others were inexperienced and pretty rapt...until the characters continued to separate and go their own ways, despite leads and prompts to join up. At some point I stopped trying to fight it, and just gave them each 5-10 minutes of their own little "chapters", then they finally merged together for the primary story thread with about 90 minutes remaining. I embellished "Literary Lankhmar" and created a challenge with the promise of a tidy settling of debts...and the ending left me with the resolve that, while it's a great setting and I'm a little tied to both Leiber's and DCC Lankhmar, it really feels better in an ongoing capacity. (More on that pontification later.) One of the players who'd driven from Sarasota had been sitting with a nonplussed expression for the better part of 3 hours, but at the end he said, "I really wasn't sure. I was thrown off by the lack of 'party' activity...but now I realize, it's just like the books! Even Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser are rarely side-by-side for the whole thing! I'm really looking forward to this now!" Not only did I breathe a sigh of relief at not bogging things down for the player or diminishing his enjoyment of the past 4 hours...but apparently I succeeded in my translation of the material - and even better, I invoked the feel of Leiber!! I may do ya proud after all, Michael Curtis. :)
{more pics may come, just so I can keep them all in one place for archival purposes}
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