PaizoCon2 and the weekend

This weekend was a blast.  I would not have traded it anything for the world because of how much fun I had.

Friday: After the two and a half hour ride on a bus, I arrived at the Coast Hotel in Bellevue, the location of Paizo’s convention.  I had no clue what it would be like and I was an hour early, so I registered and received my bag of goodies.  Within this large purple bag, there was a game I’ve never heard of before named Key Largo and the game that was gaining a little buzz, Yetisburg.  There was a fanzine that was nicely put together, a map pack which contained a dozen or so tiles of elven style, and two booster packs of item cards.  The cards I found to be most amazing and decided to pick up the starter deck.

Then one o’clock arrived and I came to the location of my game, The Marco Volo series, to find that many all 8 of my players had arrived and were no ready to play.  Now I had thought ahead so I allowed them to build there characters.  It took an hour before they had finished their characters and we were underway.  The conversion was smooth and the players had a blast.  They weren’t used to fighting such large encounters, i.e. 12 or more monsters at a time, but they handled it in stride and exceeding my initial expectations.

The game lasted until 5pm. but this wasn’t the only event that I had planned for the day.  My next event was Painting Miniatures with Sean K. Reynolds.  Sean Reynolds!  It was awesome and I received two minis for attending. (though I didn’t attain that second mini until the next day)

At this point, I was hungry and I had run into two people I have known for some time so we went to dinner instead of joining in the fun of the Interactive.  This decision was also made because we hadn’t made characters of the Pathfinder Society.

Saturday: The bus ride was a little longer because I had to take 4 of them, and it didn’t help that I had to wake up at 4am to get out the door by 5am.

Anyways, I got to the hotel in time to find out that I wasn’t running the adventure that I had volunteer to run.  SO I played instead.  The adventure was difficult and rather unfair.  But we were persistent and we finished the quest.  I provided one of the lighthearted, memorable moments of the game.  We had a few rounds to remove this object from a central obelisk which was made a alter because  it didn’t make sense, but anyways, I had received a bag of tricks earlier in the adventure.  I had decided that on my first round of combat would be to retrieve with whatever critter I pulled out.  I was hoping it would be the bat but I didn’t care.  So I reached in and pulled out a bat and I was excited.  I stood up and let out my excitement.  The players looked at me puzzled a moment until they realized my plan.  Then we were all up from our seats and really into the game.  We ended shortly afterwards but I think they would remember that for some time to come.

I had a short break afterword before my Marco Volo game.  So I ended up in a few conversations about various things in gaming.  Well the game started up with one player not showing up.  I don’t know if he was not able to or he dropped out, whatever the case, we didn’t let it stop the game.  They did exceptionally well.

After the game, came to panels about getting into the fantasy industry, and then came the big event of the night.  The Banquet.  It was so fun because of the trivia game and I got to see some previews of the upcoming Pathfinder Role-playing game.  Going home, I felt rather high.  Thanks to my two friends, I had been getting enough sleep to function for the whole convention.

Sunday: The last day of the convention and it begins with another bus trip.  I sense a trend here though I enjoy riding the bus. ;)

So the day started of rather interesting, a little disheartening to be exact.  My adventure was made an example of as bad, down right appalling to be exact.  But I learned more from my mistake than I think a lot of the others had.  Take your time and think of your audience.  Next time I make an adventure, I’ll keep those things in mind.

And then there was the final day for my Marco Volo series.  This was the big climax of the game.  There were smaller ones but no where near enough to touch this one with a 20 foot pole.  Only one character died but the rest were able to still finish without him.  And the players loved the game.  They had a good time for all three days and that was what I was after.

Then came the real fun of the trip…I had to walk around Bellevue for an hour trying to find a bus that would take me home.  Yeah, never want to do that again.  And the trip was longer than the one up.  How was that possible?

So that was my weekend.