Actual Play - Extra Life at Gamehole Con

I had a fantastic experience this weekend at GameHole Con. It's become one of my favorite conventions throughout the year.

On Friday night, I took a rare opportunity to sit on the player's side of things for a chance to play D&D 5th. I raised over $1000 bucks for Extra Life by drinking and playing an RPG.

I was a last minute add, so I had to improvise ways to get people to give money. I figured hey, I'll do a shot at $250 a pop because I'm playing a drunken master monk. Nobody would be crazy enough to do that!

I raised over $1000 that way. I remember we all went up to Mearls' room after the game, talked gaming and ate pizza, but that could just be the caramel vodka talking.

If you want to see the whole thing, the archived Twitch link is here.

Appearance - Extra Life

I know I've already talked about Gamehole Con here, but something happened today that is worthy of its own blog entry.

I will be part of the Wizards of the Coast live stream on Friday night playing D&D with Mike Mearls!

The other folks at my table include:

• Chris Lindsay
• Satine Phoenix
• Pat Kilbane
• David Ewalt
• Ruty Rutenberg

I think I'm going to play a monk? 

Anyway, tickets are available here if you are going to the show.

If you want to donate money to encourage me, go to Mike's page and tell 'em I sent you.

The livestream should be here if you want to watch on Twitch

Convention - Gamehole Con

Gamehole Con returns to Madison from November 2nd through November 5th this year. I'll be a special guest again, but there are plenty of other reasons to check out this growing convention.

Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition

If you really want to see how popular the current edition is, this show has a lot of things going on. There are Epic level con games with massive amounts of players, a variety of Adventurer's League storylines (including one I had a hand in), and guests like Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford.

Xanathar's Guide For Charity

Gamehole has hooked up with Extra Life to provide a couple of  'celebrity D&D' games to raise money for charity in the style of Acquisitions Incorporated. They are also offering early copies of the highly anticipated Xanathar's Guide to Everything, proceeds of which will go to charity.

True Dungeon

Last year was the first year True Dungeon appeared outside of Gen Con. It's back at Gamehole Con this year, set in the universe of Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller books.

Milwaukee Company of Gamers

The always impressive board game library of MilCog will be on the road. It's an excellent place to try board games before you buy.

Come play games with me

I'll be running Firefly and Chill this year as part of my Guest of Honor duties. All my games are currently sold out, but the vagaries of con attendance usually mean I have one or two open seats when the time comes for game. Will I run two full boat sessions for Firefly with 9 players each? Only time will tell.

Star Wars Adventure Review - The Game Chambers of Questal

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: The Game Chambers of Questal

Author(s): Richard Kern 

Published: June 1990

The Pitch: The Rebels come looking for an old friend on a planet run by a Moff who loves to play games with his adversaries.

Summary: An adventure that's part James Bond, part "A Most Dangerous Game", part dungeon crawl and, on the whole, less than the sum of its meager parts.

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!

Star Wars Adventure Review - Otherspace

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Otherspace

Author(s): Bill Slavicsek 

Published: 1989

The Pitch: The Rebels must journey into another dimension to locate a lost Rebel prison transport and come across the death-obsessed aliens who live there.

Summary: An adventure that attempts to bring the claustrophobic terror of the Alien franchise to the Star Wars universe. Instead, it shows that two great tastes don't always go together.

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!

Kickstarter - CHILL Undead

It's Friday the 13th, so it's time to remind everyone that the latest book for Chill, Undead, is on Kickstarter.

Why is this book cool?

1) +Matthew McFarland  and +Michelle Lyons-McFarland  are good people.

2) The Chill monster books are set up epistolary style, which deliver information but not truth. Even if your players read the entry on a specific type of monster, they won't know its secrets chapter and verse.

3) My entry focuses on the Unknown possessing dead envoys and using them to sow discord within SAVE.

4) The company has a dozen free cases available on its website (mine is here). That's a whole campaign right there, for free, which they add to every time they do a Kickstarter. They've already unlocked two more cases through this campaign and are aiming for three more by the number of backers. That doesn't include the cases in the book or that every monster entry has hooks at the end for using it in your game.

5) CHILL's design hits a sweet spot for me. The percentile system is easy to explain and the light and dark tokens invoke genre while making monster power management a breeze. I like that, when the tokens are all dark, everyone leans forward a bit, waiting for the shoe to drop. It creates a Dread-like tension at the table.

The Kickstarter runs until October 31st, but backing it on a day known for hockey-masked killers and black cats seems like a good call.

Star Wars Adventure Review - Tatooine Manhunt

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Tatooine Manhunt

Author(s): Bill Slavicsek and Daniel Greenberg

Published: June 1988

The Pitch: The Rebels must find an Old Republic officer before bounty hunters collect a huge bounty to bring him in dead or alive.

Summary: An influential adventure on not just the RPG but Star Wars canon. It lives up to the hype and offers a fun adventure on the planet that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, yet everything happens there!

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!

Star Wars Adventure Review - Crisis on Cloud City

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Crisis on Cloud City

Author(s): Christopher Kubasik

Published: November 1989

The Pitch: The Rebels are framed for murder on Bespin and have 24 hours to clear their names before being arrested by Lando Calrissian and turned over to the Imperials.

Summary: Many of the adventures of this era steer clear of anything directly related to the movies. This one heads right for Bespin, wrapping up the players in a mystery that they need to solve to avoid Imperial justice. Also, the only appearance of a full deck of Sabacc cards, with rules to play!

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!

Star Wars Adventure Review - Battle For The Golden Sun

Cover photo courtesy Wookieepedia 

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Battle For The Golden Sun

Author(s): Doug Kaufman

Published: June 1988

The Pitch: The Rebels crash-land on a waterworld in search of a Rebel ambassador. Instead they find seatroopers, warring natives and a giant piece of Force-sensitive coral.

Summary: A decent adventure that throws the PCs in the battle between two factions of natives that, despite showing off an Imperial garrison poster and a seatrooper on the cover, puts the Galactic Civil War in the background for a session or two.

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!

Star Wars Adventure Review - Scavenger Hunt

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Scavenger Hunt

Author(s): Brad Freeman

Published: January 1989

The Pitch: The Rebels have to deal with the annoying Squib to set-up an ambush on an Imperial transport containing sensitive information that could seriously damage Rebel operations. The Rebels needs to visit an iconic location from the films and do the Sqiubs dirty work to get their cooperation.

Summary: This adventure has a lot of harsh design decisions through out as well as weird encounters with Star Wars elements and new elements that don't quite gel. There's some stuff in here that might be useful, but much like the setting, you've got to sort through a lot of trash to get there.

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!

Star Wars Adventure Review - Riders of the Maelstrom

Cover courtesy of Wookieepedia

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Riders of the Maelstrom

Author(s): Ray Winninger

Published: July 1989

The Pitch: Another big ship based adventure, this one based on a Mon Calamari luxury cruiser. The Rebels stumble across a plot that involves pirates, other pirates that are also Rebels, and rival Moffs looking to put everyone out of business.

Summary: There's a lot going on in this adventure which depends a bit too much on coincidence  and has problems projecting a straight plotline. But there's a lot of neat NPCs, factions vying with each other and a big location that's dying to be explored.

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!

Star Wars Adventure Review - Starfall

Cover courtesy of Wookieepedia

This is an ongoing series of reviews of classic West End Games Star Wars RPG adventures. I've run a few, read a few more and not touched a few since I bought them over the past 30 years. I'll look at them for a few different angles, including what I would change to bring the adventure to my table.

Adventure title: Starfall

Author(s): Rob Jenkins and Michael Stern

Published: May 1989

The Pitch: Depending on how old you are, this is either Die Hard on a Star Destroyer or The Poseidon Adventure on a Star Destroyer. The Rebels are trapped inside a Victory-class Star Destroyer that's been wrecked by a surprise Rebel ambush. While they make their way through collapsing corridors, they also find out the captain of the Star Destroyer plans to take the Rebel fleet with him when the ship explodes. Can the Rebels save themselves AND the Rebel fleet?

Summary: This is my favorite Star Wars RPG adventure of all time. It still holds up after all these years, even if, as written, it's pretty linear. I've run it with every official Star Wars system and it's been a ton of fun every time.

In-depth review with SPOILERS after the jump!