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Origins was different this year from past years. 1) We weren’t running 16 hours of games each, and 2) Alex, Mike’s son, joined us. Both of these things made Origins a lot of fun. We arrived and hung out with Norm after eating at Barley’s. We introduced Norm to Ra, the dice game. The first game you play of Ra is always a little different because it’s hard to tell just what you should be doing. Norm caught on fine though.

 

That night Norm ran us through a Savage Gladiators game. His arena was fantastic. We fought through several contests. Norm also added rules for “playing to the crowd” and “playing to the…” shoot, I can’t remember his name for it, but it’s the person that oversees the fights in the coliseum. He who has the power to say whether you live or die. My character learned that it’s not whether you actually kill the minotaur that’s important, it’s whether the crowd thinks you killed the minotaur that’s important. We lost a gladiator or two before the final contest in which we all fought to the death. Evil Mike and Evil Mark (Daymude) survived as the duel winners in the “There Can Only Be One Contest”. This shows just how corrupt the government was in the time of Savage Gladiators. Mike and Mark should have been put to death. Oh, and I shouldn’t have died, but that’s another story.

 

Thursday found two goblins raiding the dragon’s horde. Mike and I were the goblins. I’m not saying whose horde we plundered.

 

The first game on Thursday was mine. I ran a Deadlands game on a Geek Chic table. There’s nothing better than running games on a $2000+ table. As it turns out every game for the rest of the convention was run on one of their tables. In my game, the brave party was hired to guard one of Professor Vanderkook’s newest inventions—an improved version of the submersible boat. Unfortunately one of the warlord Kang’s lieutenants wanted the boat as well. There was lots of kung-fu fighting, an angry giant octopus, and even a compression explosion within one of the character’s diving suit. Just a normal day in the Maze in Deadlands.

 

We all got uncomfortably stuffed at Buca di Beppo’s and then returned to play in Norm’s Savage Conan game. This is a real favorite of mine for two reasons. One, Norm in the GM and two, Norm is the GM. And the third reason is that it’s Conan. (The One, Two, Three was all intentional and for no reason at all.) The adventure led us to the home of a large cave troll. Then we discovered it was really the home to a GIANT cave troll! Several of us went down, incapacitated, during the last scene with the mamma of all cave trolls. Al came to our rescue and was able to kill the creature with a fantastic damage roll.

 

Friday morning Mike got up early and went running with Dave. Dave tried to kill him by taking him over hither and yon. Most injuring was a hairpin curve where something in Mike’s knee went “snap”. That “snap” was nothing that kept Mike from finishing, but his days of running outside on the pavement were over for a few months while that “snap” healed.

 

Friday’s games stared with Dave’s Xcom game. I think everyone except Mike and I had played in one of these games before. Dave got some very cool terrain from Drop Zone Commander Cityscapes. The city layout was made even cooler by the Geek Chic table that enabled us to put the map under clear Plexiglas with the buildings on top. I got to play Deacon, the medic. Apparently the medic had died in all of the previous games. That, along with my history of playing medics, meant I was going to die. I amazed everyone, including myself, as I played the medic as he should be played…as a support team member. (I’ve learned that medics should not be the first into the fight.) Early in the game Gordon’s character jumped off a 10-story building. He thought his personal wingsuit would save him. It doesn’t when you roll a critical failure trying to deploy the wings. With the help of the medic (me), he survived to fight another day. Xcom is all about repelling an alien invasion. We did it with style and had a great time!

 

Friday night Mike and I got together with Bob Geiger and Phil to play some board games. But before that, I talked everyone into going to a pizza place for dinner. It was a big hit. Then Mike and I headed to Bob’s room for board games. First up was a game called Dungeon Fighters. What made this game unique was that combat involved you skipping a die unto a board painted like a target. If that wasn’t bad enough, many times you had special throw restrictions. These restrictions required you to throw the die between your legs, off your nose or elbow, or off your forehead. Dungeon Fighters is a cooperative game. We all died a long and painful death.

 

Next we played Clash of Cultures…until 3 a.m. Bob and Phil had never played before. I won, but only by a ½ point. Phil came in second.

 

Saturday Gordon ran us through a Savage Crackdown Supers game. (As you’ll see Saturday is a little fuzzy, so I may have this all wrong.) We played characters who were agents recruited for their various skills, some of these skills were induced by a drug. This drug has a name. It shall not be revealed here because I don’t remember its name. Anyway, it gave us all various super powers. It might have been called “Starbucks coffee”, but you didn’t hear that from me.

 

Our characters visited a super-secret, super secure containment area. Some would call this a jail. It was our bad timing that a jailbreak occurred while we were there. We fought tons of various villains; some with super powers, some not. All-in-all we had a rock ‘em sock ‘em good time.

 

The last game of the convention was Mike’s Savage IX Corp game. My character was a cybertech enhanced pilot. We were junior officers on a space ship.

 

That’s all I remember of the game. If Mike sends me more information, there may be more about it after this sentence. Let’s go see…

 

(I bribed a source who heard about the game from a friend who was sitting three tables away. This is what I got.) Our ship got sucked through a black hole. On the other side we discovered our ship had been badly damaged. Not only that, but a high percentage of the crew and passengers were dead or dying. Mike put us all in charge of our respective areas. This was a lot of fun roleplaying as we tried to get things done around the ship with a minimal staff. Once the ship was somewhat stabilized, we landed on a nearby planet and found a signal it was giving off. Following the signal, Gordon was killed by a viscous animal predator that he <intentionally> scared into attacking us. We discovered that the natives were enslaved by another race. We had a huge battle with them—the slavers, not the natives. Only the timely arrival of some reinforcements allowed us to survive the fight. Norm videoed that last part because Mike made noises for it. See it here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203238638820205

 

Saturday night we ate at the pizza place again. It was good.

 

Sunday Mike, Alex and I spent the day checking out of the hotel and running around the dealer area deciding what things to buy.

 

Thanks Origins for another great convention!

 

Chaos Steve

 

 

 

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