GenCon Day One

I had three events on my agenda today, and all of them were fun, even if the middle one didn't really go as I might've hoped.

08:00 - If You Lived In Freeport, You'd Be Home By Now! - The basic premise was fairly simple. There were eight players. All of us were "prospective real estate agents" trying to sell suckers, I mean clients, parcels of jungle. Everyone's character was a caricature of some sort - the drunken elf, the dwarven con-man, etc. I drew a character who was, essentially, modeled after the Emperor Of San Francisco, who is basically a raving loon who thinks he runs the city, and everyone around him just plays along. I ended up winning the game, even though I blew my chance with "my assigned mark", because I was able to think on my feet, stage an impromptu wedding among two of the non-player characters, and convince them in the moment of marital bliss to sign on the dotted line for a place to build a family estate. :-)

12:30 - Annual Diplomacy Tournament - I drew Italy. Which is, almost always, the kiss of death. Surviving as Italy is damned near impossible in Diplomacy. Interestingly enough, the judges were surprised as in the first season it was clear that England, Germany and Italy were all teaming up on France. Had Germany actually followed through with the plan, France would have been dead by Spring of 1902, which is only three turns. Instead, Germany managed to avoid committing to anyone (and that's not a slight on the player who played Germany... half the "art" of Diplomacy is weaseling out on your fellow players without them somehow blaming you for it). France even managed to survive to the end. I didn't... well, I did, sort of. I lost my last supply center in the last year of the qualifier round, so if it had gone to the winter "build/disband" phase, my last army would have had to go as well.

19:00 - A Snowball's Chance In Hades - This was, so far, the most fun moment of the night. The basic plot was "your group got killed by a servant of Pan and went to Hades. Hades (the god) is actually quarrelling with Pan right now and is letting you try to escape Hades' realm to go mess with Pan." There was the elf sniper who was dealing 95hp of damage, per arrow, at times with all the bonuses, enchantments, etc., that people were casting on him. But what was truly classic was, at the end of the game, there was a statue of Pan that our group had basically destroyed. The DM pointed out "the head's still intact". So, of course, the half-orc barbarian couldn't let THAT continue to be true. He smashes it. Pan shows up, and you could tell the DM was just completely ad-libbing at this point, to mess with the character. He has the god point at the barbarian and say "Die!" (using a Power Word, Kill spell). We all jokingly admit the barbarian is now toast. He rolls his save ... a natural 20. He then turns to Pan, flips him a double-salute with one finger per hand, and tells him what particular biological act he should go do with himself. Pan decides that anyone who can survive a Kill should get a little respect, and he left.

It's not every night you get to see someone flip off a deity and survive.