RinCon 2019

[Paxx]

Convention in Tucson I attended on October 4th thru 6th 2019.
Took place at the Sheraton near TMC.
A very local event with lots of role playing and lots of board games.
All in all I had a very fun time.

Played:
Mutant crawl classics: Cats Attack… basically a level 0 funnel adventure. Really fun.

Savage worlds: girl genius, GMed by one of the artists of both the graphic novel and Savage World. (This was a walk on game, after my original scheduled game mustered and left prior to game time, mostly my fault but I was there 5 minutes prior to game time).
Needless to say this was the highlight, unexpected game session. All the players except for myself where experienced with the system and very versed with the game world, and they knew each other. But they where all really inclusive, and helpful. I played the ornery airship engineer.

Then played a group Star Trek like simulator called Artemis, fun, but when navigation and engineer are played by 1st graders, things can go unexpectedly.

I then played Gas Lands…guns, cars, races…need I say more.

Then I played Captain Sonar…
Great Independent game, that I wanted to purchase immediately!!! But it requires 8 players. And that’s unusual for me. But games range from 20 to 40 minutes once everyone knows what they are doing. We ended up tied. But it had great mechanics and was very intense and fun.

After that it was a western murder mystery LARP that was great fun, but the timeline of the murder was confusing.
Still great design to have many people interacting as best possible.

Then a dramatic reading of Eric and the Gazebo, in a gazebo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_and_the_Dread_Gazebo?wprov=sfti1

Great peace of gaming lore, that I learned about as I was coming up. Now my girlfriend got a great telling of it as her first real exposure.

I’m skipping day 3 to visit the reptile expo…compromises, compromises!!!

I will note, I did not see a single game of D&D 5E being played and only a small number of Pathfinder games…so if independent is your flavor, it is a nice place.
Ages where pretty mixed. From 7~70s+ With the majority in the 25~45 demo. But not vastly.

[Shadymutha]

Sounds awesome. Glad the walk-on game was such a highlight. I had a similar experience at a Con recently where I was able to join a game I hadn’t planned on - best game session I’ve had in a long while.

Wonderful pics!

[Paxx]

Now, I have to admit the downside of a bit over a year of immersing myself in ICRPG/Runehammer/drunken& dragons.

I am analytical by personality. Previously, when playing a game with an inovative mechanic, I’d imagine what type of adventure I could run with it. Now, it’s how do I incorporate this into ICRPG, and why is there so much Bloat???
I’d have to thank/curse @Runehammer for this. It’s like the 30 years of accumulated game system have been for nothing and misspent. Studying multiple editions of Champions, GURPs, and perusing every other generic game system, and playing so many set systems have been a waste.

It hasn’t been, it just adds to the appreciation I have for ICRPG. The ability to see the bizarre genius @Runehammer displayed in the inspired creation of ICRPG.
With its modularity, you can incorporate almost anything, creativity is almost the only blocking concept.

[skippy]

If ICRPG were the first system you’d learned, you’d like look at all the other systems with a sense of wonder, or at least positive curiosity, trying to figure out how they were “better” than that to which you had grown accustomed.

It’s because you’ve played all those other systems, and have a rich history of trying to figure out what parts of role playing and collaborative narrative and world-building really drive you, that you can dig so deep into ICRPG. You know what you like, and you have the chops to know how to make it happen.

ICRPG gives you just enough mechanics to keep things moving, and then gets out of the way so you and the table can dig in.