GameStorm 16

What a Great GameStorm16!
 (Except I suck because I didn't take a single friggin' picture all weekend long.)
 
Last year I took on a volunteer role at the yearly convention as the Assistant to the RPG coordinator. Which means I do some grunt work for my RPG Coordinator, Ron. I got this role because last year I wanted to organize a Savage Saturday Night.

This year was the 2nd Annual Savage Saturday Night and a new event was added: Fateful Friday Night. Both of these events were successful.  Savage Saturday Night was a full house with 7 games and at least 5 players at each table. Local game store, Guardian Games gave us Dice to hand out! We also had some gift certificates from Pinnacle as prizes. With the dice and certificates, each table had 4 things to give out.

Fateful Friday Night had 4 games with 5-6+ players per game, and the Dresden Files game had over a dozen people signed up for it. Next year we hope to have more Fate GMs for the event in order to accommodate the demand. Local game store, Guardian Games gave us gift certificates to hand out! We also had some gift certificates from Evil Hat as prizes, too.

Bellum
It's hard to say what my number one highlight of GS16 was, but I must say that it was having a game that I am co-developing in the GameLab. This game has been around for a few decades; it's a card game with a WWII army man theme. It was developed by myself and my friend Ash when we were teens.

We had quite a few play testers from ages 8 to 68 and we got some really good feedback. Now we need to come up with a solid card design and find an artist who wants to draw army men and toy images, so we can publish this bad boy. 

Ash did a great job getting interest in the game and running the demo events. His idea of surrounding the signup sheet with army men got us 10 play tester signups in 5 minutes!

I am going to start a new page and more postings about this in the future, so stay tuned if you're interested.

Shane Hensley and John Goff
This was going to be my highlight until I decided to put Bellum in the Game Lab. 

I was looking forward to this event for over 6 months, ever since I heard that Shane Hensley was going to be our RPG Guest of Honor. And a month or two before this year's GameStorm, we were able to add John Goff to the Con. 

Shane and John both ran several games throughout the weekend and I was privileged to play in a John Goff Deadlands Noir game. I also got to play in two games with Shane as a player, but not in a game where he GMd - I had some time conflicts and choices had to be made. For some photo documentation, here is Shane's Photo record of his trip to the Con. Needless to say, I got Shane to sign my Savage Worlds Deluxe hardback and John Goff to sign my Deadlands Noir hardback.

Then John did something pretty cool. There were a few of us who were part of the Deadlands Noir Kickstarter, and John had all of us sign his copy of the book.

One more item of interest, shortly after GameStorm was over, I received a Private Message on the Pinnacle forums from a guy who was introduced to Savage Worlds at GameStorm. And his first ever game was with Shane as the GM. I thought that that was pretty cool.

Thanks Shane and John for making my GameStorm awesome!
 
Masters Game
This was a brain child of Ron, the RPG coordinator. Since we all run games on Savage Saturday Night, the idea was to get all the GMs in a game together. This was an off-the-books-by-invite-only secret game. John Goff hadn't arrived yet, but we did have everyone else. Ron ran the game for us. It was a sci-fi themed game that turned a little silly, but was enjoyable.

Low Life
I ran a one-shot of Andy Hopp's Low Life setting for Savage Worlds, twice, once on Friday and once on Sunday.

Both games went well with a lot of character calamity, disgusting references, and good times. This game is great fun to GM; I really have to flex my creative side.

Since the adventure takes place in a six-story building called the "Museum of Random Stuff", I had to come up with exhibits on the fly. I should have had a list of them prepared. My favorites were the Poo Room, the Hall of Smelves, and the Stretchy Pants exhibit.

Agents of Oblivion
My Savage Saturday Night game, as per tradition, was an Agents of Oblivion game.

Each year I use the same agents, but increase their level. Next year they'll have achieved the rank of Seasoned.

This game was an adventure called 'Clear Water' written by Michael Ysker. The agents need to investigate a Mid-Western water bottling plant. The supposition is that an enemy agency, Pandora, is involved in something dastardly at the plant. I won't give away too much of the ending, but it does end up with some aquatic tentacled goodness at the end.