ACUS 2007 in review
I had a great time at the con. My games all went well, even if none of them were home runs. I enjoyed great company all weekend. Certainly, my favorite part of the cons these days is catching up with friends.


Tuesday Night- After picking up NB at the airport and taking a trip to Trader Joe's, SF came over and ran one of his swashbuckling games. Coming up with a character on short notice, I went with my own Zorro clone, the Vigilant, who leaves the sign of the V. It was a very short but fun scenario.

Wednesday Night- Getting together at J&P's for dinner with a bunch of Amberconners was a perfect way to start the weekend. I tried mead for the first time and was very happy with it. Good times....

Thursday Night- "The Summer Queen" did not run as smoothly as I would have liked, but it was a success, I believe. Everyone seemed to have fun. Jen Z, my co-GM, and I both went in to this knowing it was an experiment and are now planning to run it again at ACNW, as there is more than enough interest for another run-through and I think it will probably go smoother the second time. For me, the best part of running this game was breaking out of the usual action-adventure style of games that I normally run.

Friday- "Brave New Arkham" started a trend that lasted through all of the rest of the games I ran through the weekend of games being a lot sillier than I had originally planned. What was planned to be a creepy, Lovecraftian feel was quickly dropped as there was way too much silliness with the characters to capture that. Instead, the game morphed into a Kirby-esque game, so I changed the ending from dealing with Lovecraftian horrors to the Celestials from Kirby's Eternals....and of course Doom!

"Warriors and Wizards of the Dreaming City" captured a little of the vibe I was going for and the players did seem to really enjoy it. The increasing problem of gangs in the Dreaming City was threatening to become much worse when a charismatic gang leader named Caesar almost united the gangs. "Together, we are an army! Can you dig it!?" However, it was all a trick of a powerful demonic force trying to sneak its way through the walls of the city by using the gangs of the city. The game ended with the heroes of the tale protecting the gang called the Warriors against all of the other gangs in the city while trying to find a way to remove the demon-parasites from the Warriors.

Saturday - Sparklypoo Day began with me getting to play Elric of Melnibone in "League of Quantum Gentlemen." This was quite a bit of fun and turned out to be quite challenging as my Elric managed to leave behind the most classic schtick of the character. That's right. He left Stormbringer at home. Of course, when he knew that he would need to slay a god with it, he went to retrieve it, only to find that he was betrayed by the only PC he trusted. Yes, he got to angst.

"The Dread Tower" had me worried near the beginning that it was going to fail, but I think it all pulled together near the end. When a 12th level D&D Monk, a Jedi, a Euthanatos Mage, a Vampire and Starbuck worked together to save the multiverse, body-swapping craziness ensued. Jeremy Z's version of a Jedi in the body of the Vampire, Radu, was one of the funniest things all weekend and had us both cracking up for the rest of the evening. The Jenga mechanic which I adapted from the idea in the indie horror roleplaying game Dread worked really well for this scenario.

Sunday - "Demon Castle of the Dreaming City" was very, very silly. I had two versions of the scenario in mind going in to the game and went with the lighter version because of my mood. With Jeremy Z's Radu in mind, the game became much sillier than I had even planned as the heroes fought almost every movie monster imaginable ....and Death!

Taking slot eight off, I enjoyed the pool for the first time in all the years of going to the con and enjoyed some more mead and company in the evening.

Monday Tired from the long weekend, the original plans of giving Jen and Jeremy Z the tour of Ann Arbor changed to hanging out at my place and watching videos until it was time to take them at the airport, which was a great way to end the weekend.

overall - Best ACUS ever. I wish I could attend more Ambercons, but this one gave me enough of a fix to get me through to Ambercon Northwest....I think.