My Fall-In! 2007 Vacation!

(Belated, I know.. and as always, all commentary is my own)


(crack Events staff Pat Shields, Cleo Hanlon, and a somewhat blase Mike Hillsgrove)

I had a pretty good convention overall. I showed up a little early to work the con, and I schlepped a few things here and there, and fetched wood and carried water Thursday.


(Convention Director McWee and Gruppenfuhrer Mattes)

Friday, my friend Ed came down from central PA and we did a battlefield walk and had lunch, then I did the staff thing on the afternoon shift. I worked the Flea Market, briefly, and also spelling the guys at the front desk of the Vendor Area. More work than I thought it would be!




(Dan Muraski, the only flea market guy in HMGS history who got a VENDOR table to sell on)

There were tons of games put on at this convention and lots of activity, to judge by the impossibility of getting a parking spot in the lot. That's a GOOD thing.. I was struck by the influx of boardgaming in various nooks and crannies of the con, here and there, and sometimes right out on the main tables as bona fide events!



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(Hal Dyson, running perennial favorite AERODROME)


(DBA competitors in the New Ballroom, Friday)


(that Featherstone Cup you've heard about...)


(.. and some folks who japed that it was rightfully theirs..)


(and MORE games)


(and even MORE...)


(son of MORE games..)

I did very little shopping, but got a pretty nifty game of Pulp Adventures! in late in the evening, run by Chris Vaughn.

F-174 On The Shoulders Of Giants
Pulp; 7 PM;
Length: 4;
Hosted by: Chris Vaughn;
Scale: 25mm;
Sponsored by: Rattrap Productions;
Rules: .45
Adventure/Super Science Tales;
No. of Players: 4.
A dense, low-lying fog blankets The City, reducing familiar objects to menacing shadows, when you feel a low rumbling in the pit of your stomach. It gradually becomes an earth-shaking tremble as out of the swirling mists appear monstrous mechanical creations - robots taller than many of the surrounding buildings! The diabolical Dr. Kroon is at it again and it's up to you and your fellow pulp heroes to stop him on the rooftops high above the city! Rules taught. Beginners welcome.

Alas, no pictures of this game were taken, but it was a hoot. Chris, who has a great sense of humor and creativity, was running a sort of micro-scenario of giant robots invading New York City. We only got to see the tops of them, see, as the rest of the robots are hidden below fleecy white clouds. The idea was to leap from robot to rooftop as the robots march by, searching for the mcguffins that would turn off the robots. Of course, it's never quite that easy. There were different groups in New York together, trying to turn off giant robots, and some of them were bad and some of them were good. I played a baddie.. the Purple hood, an overarrogant intellectual genius with followers that looked like klansmen in red robes. I played the guy with a Boston Brahmin accent, looking down my nose at my evil minions. Unfortunately the clean cut hero of the story had homicidal followers that decided it was best to shoot first, ask questions later-- so instead of working for the common good, they attacked my poor minions (and myself), changing what could have been a historic alliance of major proportions into bloody internicine warfare. Typical goody two shoes stuff. and they'll blame it on ME in the papers. Sniff! It was a fun little game, very well done visually. I particularly liked the robot heads, which were simple plastic bowls balanced on white plastic powdered laxitive jars. I was concerned.. not only was there enought to balance a robot head on, but enough to run SEVERAL robots on.. I mentioned the benefits of more salad to Mr. Vaughn but he didn't see the humor in it. Seriously, great game, sir! (Update: Chris has since contacted me and provided details of how to view pictures of this game. His Fall In! 2007 album is viewable HERE).

People, places and games...


Saturday I worked the Flea Market thing and did some front desk work for the vendor hall. Then I ran my own game, Return to Lilliput, from 2-6, when we got kicked out. I'm going to take another pass at the mechanics. I got a complaint that they were too fiddly and slow to look up everything. (if anyone wants to take a look at them, let me know, I'd be happy to have a second opinion).



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I opted to eat in.. not great... chicken and mashed potatoes. At least it wasn't incredibly greasy. Then I played in Ed Watts' Pulp Action game Saturday night, as Professor Rick Ruthless and his fleet of giant walking metal men. Pretty danged funny game. A tad chaotic.. Ed probably could have used some assistance.

S-182 Sand Seared Rugged Adventures, North Africa, 1930s.
Inter-War;
8 PM;
Length: 4;
Hosted by: Edward Watts;
Scale: 25mm;
Sponsored by: Monday Night Adventurers;
Rules: Rugged Adventures;
No. of Players: 8.
Enigmatic characters, steel visaged Nazis, square jawed heroes and plucky heroines in pursuit of McGuffins mysterious and arcane midst dune and palm tree.
Teens and adults preferred.



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There were some great games run Saturday night. HMGS President Panzeri was running a multi-table, Lewis and Clark thing that I personally found very intriguing. The design was run off a series of random event tables. Here you see some of them being set up.



Some other games being held Saturday:







I then went to the MST3K event hidden in one of the far rooms. I missed the first movie but caught the second.. "Crippled Masters". Hilarious! A guy with no arms joins up with a guy with no legs to become kung fu masters! And they used two memorable actors-- one who was a thalyidomide baby and one who had withered legs as a result of birth defects. They started the movie with prop (real) arms and had the props "chopped off" or "burned away with acid" during the course of the movie. It was pretty over the top funny and perfect faire for MST3K. COuldn't stay awake for anything more, so hit the hay.

Sunday, I was up early and attended the TriaDCon planning meeting. Not much was accomplished, as we only had Mike, Otto and myself attending. One thing we seemed to agree on was that we wouldn't be eager to put on another con without more volunteers stepping forward. The same six guys have done most of the work for the last two, and that is getting old.

So, with that inconclusive note, I nosed my car into traffic heading south, and fall in! was done for another year.

Thrilling Tales of Adventure!

As I've often said, I have a 'feel' for the pulp noir, pulp serial and adventure series set in the thirties or forties. I guess I was just born out of time. So when my pal Todd Goff sent me this information, I was pretty impressed..

The game is "Thrilling Tales of Adventure!, set in the milieu of pulp serials and adventure novels. There's a nice long thread on it at Boardgamegeek.


Map


Character Card


Action Cards

The design seems.. laborious at first glance, but heck, it might work. The only other game I know of even remotely close to a setting like this is Arkham Horror, and that's a whole other kettle of fish.

To quote Wayne Campbell, "It will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine."

With Sam Raimi at the helm!

Good news in the pulp fiction front. Sam Raimi, the highly capable director of the new Spiderman movie franchise and the older Darkman films, along with, oh, a little film project called THE EVIL DEAD TRILOGY! (Duh) is signed to direct the next incarnation of a movie adaption of the old SHADOW story. As in Lamont Cranston, and the power to cloud men's minds, and Margo Lane, and "Who Knows the Evil that Lurks in the Hearts of Men?", and all that.

FULL STORY HERE



Sam has been hit and miss over the years, obviously hitting quite solidly with Spiderman 1&2 (and by all predictions, 3). And the Evil Dead series, particularly Army of Darkness, well, that's just great fun to watch. Of course, he also was involved in some turkeys, like THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. Frankly I don't care. The source material is well documented and he will have a wealth of good stories to work with. My only concern is that they might try another stupid maneuver like brining the Shadow into a modern setting. Say what you like about the 1994 Alec Baldwin Shadow movie (and much there is to say!) it LOOKED right. The setting, costumes, etc. were just right. The Shadow doesn't work in a modern continuum. Keep him in the 1930s!