I had a great time this year at NTX! Here's my report.
Our flight went way better than last year as Joshua and I landed in Dallas instead of Houston. Last year, we completely missed Wednesday night arriving after 1:00
PM. So, we arrived on time this year and were able to help set up all the maps, game sheets, and pick up game board display. Everyone was more prepared this year than last, and we needed to be due to the significantly larger attendance numbers. If I remember correctly, we had over 500 people at the con!
I believe last year we had closer to 400, maybe a little over that.
I bought some merch. The white map booklet was free.
My first game was with Steve Robertson,
Tomb of the Barbarian King, where I played at 7th level MU. It was a fun dungeon crawl with lots of undead. We ended up accomplishing our goal, and everybody in our group had a good time.
My son Joshua led a game and had an interesting group of players, but one of them came up to me unsolicited and said he had a great time. I was pleased to see him enjoying himself and helping out the con.
My Thursday morning game was
The Slime Lords of Ykk DM'd by Steve Winter. I played a 6th level MU (I think), and we had to solve a mystery where lots of people were turning to slime, including the king's son. We had to explore the sewers and dungeons of the city to find the culprits. We had an average crew of players, but we solved the mystery. I always enjoy Steve's games.
Thursday night was a real highlight as it was the K&KA Social!! Our room was packed with about fifteen players plus a couple of observers. We played in an adventure called
The Opposing Orb of Otagh. I think I played a MU again, around 6th level. This orb was a space ship that had crash landed on Planet Eris. Elf-like humanoids inside were apparently dealing with a slime problem. We entered a room of some kind with four large control crystals around a glass half-dome of some kind so I volunteered to tryout the device and ended up summoning a vampire of some kind. I then proceed to try another crystal which summoned another monster, so we decided that was the end of that. Jimm Johnson, and another guy whose name I can't remember, did a great job of leading the game and they gave us a beautiful hard copy of the digest-sized adventure, which is sure to be an immediate collectible. Here's a photo from that night.
On Friday at noon, I played in Allan Hammack's Boot Hill game,
The Magnificent Seven...at Tombstone! It was basically a shootout at the OK Corral scenario. Allen took our six players and made three factions of two players each. Each pair of players controlled about 7-9 cowboys. One faction was the law, one was the bad guys and the third was the hired guns to rescue a lady from the bad guys. Below is the map early on in the game. We were the hired guns using the green based minis. The law used red-based minis and the bad guys used orange based minis. The photo below makes it difficult to see the difference between the red based and the orange based minis.
There was a huge gun fight between the law and the bad guys and we ignored that, found out where the damsel in distress was, and tried to rescue her first. The bad guys shot her dead right before we killed her captors.
Friday night I played in tacojohn's game,
THE HIDDEN SHRINE OF TAMOACHAN. I played in this about forty years ago, and had forgotten almost everything, so it was a lot of fun. We explored most of the rooms and were able to escape to the surface before midnight. Another group took five and a half hours to basically explore five rooms!
Our group was mission-focused and we had a good time.
Saturday was my super busy day. It started in the morning with Talanian's
HYPERBOREA: The Auroral Odyssey. Every player was a barbarian, and we had to escape from or kill our Roman legion captors after there was a huge blast from the sky. We quickly succeeded only to witness a WWII fighter plane fall out of the sky. We went exploring, had to kill the pilot, only to witness some fellow barbarians in chains by some beast captors. Our adventure morphed into a rescue mission. We barely succeed in that endeavor with three people in our party reduced to zero hp, two dead and two barely having enough luck and hp to accomplish the rescue. I was able to make the killing, final blow. Jeffrey is a talented
DM and runs a great game.
I immediately had to go to Raggi's game,
The Ice Castle of Fire, at 1
PM. I wasn't sure what to expect. I have read some of his adventures, and he is very creative and edgy from mainstream D&D fantasy. Turned out he was an excellent
DM with just as much bizarre attitude as there was content. He managed the game well, even though we had one guy in particular who was very talkative and unfiltered. I had a great time and hope I play in more of his games.
Saturday night I played in grodog's game,
LEGIO V—Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk, and I always love playing in his games. That being said, I played a high-level MU and was killed early in the game by a Nycademon (I think). However, I got to watch other players struggle and die for most of the remaining game. We didn't come anywhere close to accomplishing our mission. In fact, we couldn't get past our first locked door thinking it was a puzzle just because it had an image of a chessboard. I didn't have
Knock in my spell book, so it wasn't completely my fault. Lot's of fun!
Sunday morning I played in Steve Winter's
Dag-nabbit, Big Rabbit, a Gamma World game. I played a mutant turtle creature. We had to steal a part from a huge cannon that was mounted on a skyscraper. We were betrayed and failed miserably. But we had a great time.
The best part of the con is meeting and working with all the people. NTX has a great group of staffers I love working with.
I was able to meet some new and interesting people including Kelsey Dionne, James Raggi and Matt Farniok, a football player with the Dallas Cowboys.
I especially love that my son is able to serve on staff with me. He was able to meet with several writers and publishers because that's a strong interest of his. It's a real bonding experience to share this con together. I think we played in about three games together. We can't wait to return next year!
Truth is worth finding and life is too short to work for money.
