I thought a short report on Gorilla Con would be in order since I had a roll call thread earlier.
The drive to Pittsburg (KS) and the drive back from Pittsburg were both uneventful. Traveling alone, I had many hours to ponder gaming and how much enjoyment it has brought me over the years. In particular, the last couple of years (since my self imposed hiatus from D&D) have been extremely rewarding to me. I want to thank you all here at Goodman Games for your part in the good times I’ve had together with my local gaming group, and I look forward with great anticipation to the exciting times yet to come.
So, as I said, the driving portion of the trip was uneventful, which in my book is a good thing. Nothing like having trouble on the road to ruin an otherwise scenic three hour drive through Southeast Kansas.
And, but for a few shining moments on Saturday, the entirety of Gorilla Con would have been even more uneventful than the drive to the con.
I was planning on running a Goodman Games adventure at the con. I had settled on Vault of the Thief Lord (another great adventure by my friend Harley Stroh) since I’m going to run that one at Gen Con in August. I arrived at the con just as my event was to begin, only to find that there were two, yes two, players signed up for my AD&D event. Well, I thought I could maybe drum up another player or two and we could give it a go, but before I could work on that, the con admin dude informs me that my two players had decided to play in a Magic: the Gathering game instead. So as of 2:10 on Saturday afternoon, I had zero players for my session. (Keep in mind that I had just driven 3 hours and risked citations for excessive speed in a half dozen counties to get there by 2:00.) Arg!!!
Being the convention going veteran that I am
I had a back-up plan. “Plan B” was going to save me from the same fate we suffered at Troll Con the weekend before. I just needed to initiate Plan B. Plan B consisted of getting myself into a new RPG game that is put out by a company called Tabletop Games, and for which there were some nice people from Lincoln, NE running a couple of sessions. The game is called Against the Darkness, and is a horror-based RPG with heavy Vatican (i.e. the Catholic Church) themes running through the game. The substance of the game was the usual horror flavor – demons, demonic possessions, long lost religious and historic artifacts, shady NPC’s and the like. The game mechanics were very easy to learn (only uses d4, d6 & d8), and the game is much more story-driven than what I’m used to. But, in spite of the emphasis on story, I had a good time with it and met some gamer guys from Hutchinson. They were much more comfortable with the story-driven RPG and so we had a good gaming session together.
I ended up taking my evening meal with the nice folks from Tabletop Games. We chatted up a storm, talking through all the latest happenings in the RPG industry, what is going to be fun at this year’s Gen Con and their impressions of Gorilla Con. The charity auction lasted about an hour, even though it didn’t seem like they had nearly as much stuff as they had last year. I didn’t buy anything at the auction, but I bought a few things from Tabletop Games and a few minis and some dice from another vendor. I said my goodbye’s to the Tabletop Games folks and headed home.
All in all, the last couple of weekends have been disappointing. Troll Con was a bust, and Gorilla Con was a near miss. Thanks to Tabletop Games for making Gorilla Con worthwhile for this gamer!
I think what this all means is that I miss my regular gaming group a lot and I’m really looking forward to our next Caverns of Thracia session. And that I'm looking forward to Gen Con!
Have a great week.
tacojohn4547
