CSGS Minicon . . .

The Free RPG Day mini-con at Crazy Squirrel was a blast. Jameece's boy decided not to go, which was disappointing . . . but I had a great time.

/rant

The first session featured a Pathfinder Society Organized Play session. Pathfinder is the true open successor to the best damn open edition of D&D ever: D&D 3.5. Sorry boys and girls, but D&D 4th Edition is now little more than a cash cow in the Hasbro farm alongside GI Joe and Strawberry Shortcake -- another brand to be milked, While every edition of a game changes a few things for the worse . . . . 4th Edition combined the elimination of some of the best races and classes in classic D&D with an insane number of basic rules changes and, in the change most galling to me, the licensing out of existence of any kind of 3rd party electronic tools. The D&D 4th edition system license basically forbids the creation of any sort of 3rd party character generation / maintenance software. Of course, Hasbro of the Coast just happens to have a licensed online tool that allows characters to be created for free but saving / maintaining the character data files requires a subscription to Dungeons and Dragons Insider at eight bucks or so a month. In another change, the core rulebooks are loaded with big type, huge illustrations, massive amounts of flavor text and a bare minimum of "crunchy" rules bits. This is a reversion to the classic RPG publishing paradigm TSR started in the 70s: put a bare minimum in the core books and sprinkle the crunch across dozens of supplements.

It's plain to me that the future of the hobby continues to lie in open gaming. At the mini con, there were exactly two D&D4e games -- and one specifically labeled as a "kid's game" at that . . . and counting my game, eight Pathfinder games. I checked the program of convention sponsored events (non OP) for this year's DunDraCon and there was more Pathfinder and D&D 3.x than 4.0 by a score of 21 to 12. In terms of organized play, the numbers at DDC were equal.

/end rant

Anyway, my PF OP game was a lot of fun. I went with a 1st level elven mage. I managed to expend my full spell load out (Thank Odinn for cantrips!), and avoid dying thanks to a great cleric.

For the second flight I ran an adventure in my own game world. One of the springtime traditions in one of my rural baronies is an annual paring back of the monster population to keep the baddies off the local farmers and blood the youth of the countryside. There were, of course, complications, like insane nihilistic druids, cute bunny rabbits the size Dobermans with an attitude to match, playful grenadier squirrels the size of gnomes and viscous weasels the size of couches . . . . fun times.

The third session was Traveller. I have not played or ran Trav is roughly forever. This was old-school Traveller, set in the Imperial Golden Age right after the Fifth Frontier War and before the Rebellion / Virus / TNE. Our ship mis-jumped in the aftermath of an assassination attempt with damaged drives and our only hope was another derelict vessel in a decaying orbit around a gas giant. Of course, between a stealth predator beast loose on the ship and a mad brain-in-a-jar mind-controlling some of us at bad times . . . it was a hoot. There was some good mature role playing all around in this one, and made the perfect end of the three course meal that was the games at this con.

The con was free of drama, personal issues, cheating and the other things that make gaming sometimes not-fun.

Crazy Squirrel is a rocking place to play for a lot of reasons. The game room has enough room, and more importantly, enough exits. Being there does not trigger my anxiety disorders. While they do charge to use the game room, they did not charge for Free RPG Day, you can pay or with canned goods when you do. Or, you can do as I did and buy a tee-shirt and not pay when wearing it. They have games to try out, wi-fi and snacks / drinks at reasonable prices.

I am looking forward to gaming there!