Both were awesome. It was my second LCA (last year I went to the one in Hobart), and it was my first KapCon.

The one thing I noticed at LCA, or rather noticed the lack of, was attendance by Linus. He was at last year’s LCA, and he says he tries to make it out to all of them, but unfortunately he didn’t make it out this year (or stayed hidden, which isn’t likely).

This year’s LCA was very well organised, and the loot was really cool. One awesome man-bag, a super-sized coffee thermal mug thing, a cool t-shirt, and a few other random items — one of which amused me no end: a hand cleanser spray. Oh, and I won a VOIP phone in one of the morning prize draws — a snom 300. I have to go pick it up from Andrew Ruthven some time next week as he’s on holiday relaxing this week. They used those phones during the conference and gave four of them away as prizes. Guess it’ll motivate me to use the phone more often, or at least give me something safe to play with in front of others.

There’s not a lot I can say about the LCA, because it’s mostly high level (or I guess low-level in programming language terms using the closeness to the machine as lower levels), but one interesting talk was Rusty Russell’s talk on how to use a wii-mote to train your child hand-eye coordination. It was pretty hilarious, and included videos of his daughter with her modified scrunchie that packed a wii-mote sensor in it. When she moved her hands, stuff would happen on screen. Rusty had programmed some basic stuff in Python that moved eyes around the screen, and in one experiment designed a paint smearing program, but it turns out she might have been a bit too young. When she put the scrunchie on, she ended up waving the opposite hand. But she did notice that something she was doing was affecting something happening on the screen; she just wasn’t coordinated enough (or didn’t have the attention span) to focus on it. Most of the time, she’d notice that something was happening on-screen, then daddy would encourage her, and she’d turn to look at him rather than the screen. It was pretty hilarious, and not just because he wasted so much time coding just to be thwarted by by a user…

The other con I attended was KapCon — the first time for me ever. Even though this was the 19th KapCon, and I’ve been roleplaying for over 20 years, I just never went before. I think it’s because they started out in Kapiti, and I didn’t know they had moved to town. I wouldn’t have liked to drive for an hour each way before and after the con, especially with those early starts. But they’re hosting it now at Wellington High School, which is a good venue from the point of view that there are all separate rooms in which to game in. Having them all in one hall wouldn’t have worked very well because most gamers are quite loud.

I played in two RPGs and a few board and card games throughout the weekend. The RPGs were Paul Wilson’s game of Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies — a sci-fi pirate swashbuckling game — and an RPGA game which was pretty much old school D&D dungeon hack — and unfortunately running 4th edition D&D. It was actually a bit of fun (except for the munchkin who was trying to play everyone’s characters and who took loot without asking the party). I’m playing in a 4th ed game at the moment, but had to jump in at 7th level to fit alongside the other characters. D&D isn’t the sort of game that’s conducive to jumping in so late and having to learn so much about your character’s abilities.

So I thought starting at 1st level might provide a different experience. And it actually did. I decided to jump in the deep end and try out a wizard, which would normally have worked out well… except I kept rolling fours. Yes, The Fours was with me that day. I ended up naming my character Fumbledore, because quite frankly he had trouble hitting the broad side of a tower while standing directly in front of it. Needless to say, hitting the skeletons, the wight, and the liche were quite beyond his capacity for quite a while.

That aside, it actually worked semi reasonably. Yes it’s a stupidly complex system, but if you start at level one, it’s probably a game you can grow into. Of course, I wouldn’t run a game of D&D because I’m not insane, so I’m writing my own system, but that’s another story.

Speaking to the RPGA rep, she told me that the number of people playing RPGA games fell through the floor upon the introduction of 4th edition. And I think that she only ended up running two or three games over the whole weekend. Apparently with 3rd edition, there would be two reps running a game apiece for all six rounds. Actually I think there was another guy running RPGA games in another room, but whatever they were playing, the games were designed for 4-hour sessions, so were mis-timed for KapCon’s 3 hour sessions. I don’t know what they were doing though, as I never went into that room.

The upside of joining in an RPGA game is that you get a character that you can keep for use in other RPGA sanctioned games, and you get loot. Each player also received a free D&D miniature, on top of the free D&D miniature given to every con attendee.

Now the downside to playing board games and card games is that now I have stuff I am going to spend money on. I played a board game called Agricola, which seemed daunting at first but is actually very easy once you get started. It was described as “Pimp My Farm” — a game in which you have to build up a farm, plow some fields, and raise children to do more work. It’s a very good game, and can apparently be played single player, so that might be something to keep me warm on cold lonely nights.

Another game that I will definitely be getting is Munchkin. The Steve Jackson Games rep (who was also one of the RPGA reps) ran a game of the wild west Munchkin game which was a blast. I’ll probably end up buying either the space version, or the original dungeon hack version, both of which look very appealing. Oh, it was funny to see Eric S. Raymond‘s name on the credits for the western Munchkin as having contributed or suggested some of the nasty card ideas.

So yeah, pretty interesting week. This week I’m hoping to get to AC/DC — one of the girls at my dad’s work has apparently got me a couple of free tickets, but my parents were away last week and she didn’t call me. Hopefully, with the concert being this Thursday, I’ll see her Wednesday..

This week is the NZNOG conference up in Hamilton, but because of my going to LCA, I’m skipping the NOG. Next year LCA is in Brisbane, and while it’d be nice to go there to see my cousin, the reality is that it’s fucking hot over there and I’d die. I’m not really enamoured by the idea of dying, so I’m going to have to at least give it some thought. The organisers, in their wisdom, decided to make it early February, which apparently maxes at 29ºC with humidity in the region of 69%. But from actual accounts, it hits the 30′s regularly. BBC reckon that’s medium discomfort due to heat; I’d hate to see a high discomfort area. :/

Could be interesting. Maybe I’ll pass up LCA next year and go to the NOG instead. If I go to Brisneyland, I’ll have to make a holiday of it and that’ll get expensive.

Things certainly have changed, as in the old days, I could rock into somewhere like Mind Games or Pendragon, and pick up any assortment of miniatures designed for RPGs — Ral Partha, Grenadier, and Marauder were available, although from memory Marauder were producing more LotR targeted figures. Now nothing. There are a few random figures available, but they mostly seem to be aimed at a specific game.

So I thought that my options might be to get some D&D ones made by WotC. The only options available were a starter set of what appears to be a collectible figure series — why the fuck they’d do that for an RPG is beyond my comprehension, but so are most things that Wizards do — and a couple of “boosters.” The starter was $40 and had 3 heroes, 1 baddie, and one dragon. So 3 figures I might reasonably expect to find useful. The boosters were $28, of which 2 figures in one of them might have been useful. And they were the worst quality figures I’d ever seen. Very very shoddy crap. There are rumours (that I’ve seen but not read in depth) that Wizards are canning their figures. Part of me thinks it’s a bloody good idea, but there’s a niggling part of me that wonders what (or who) will fill the gap.

Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on eBay, but I like to be able to walk into a shop and have something to play with by the time I walk out.

OK, so the WotC figures weren’t an option as they’d work out to be about $15 a figure, and I’m not prepared to pay that for such low quality mass produced junk. So what are my options?

I had almost given up when I spotted a huge, and I mean fucking ginormous, box set of a board game called Descent: Journeys in the Dark for $157.. A bit pricey I thought, but I’ll have a look. Lifting it off the shelf almost gave me a hernia. Its contents included 20 hero miniatures, and 60 plastic monsters. Eighty furgin’ figures for under $160! That’s less than $2 a figure. Alright, so I have to paint them, but a) they look to be much better quality than the WotC figures, and b) they’re two fuggin’  dollars each. And I get a board game for free.

Yep, I’ll take it. I got me a wheelbarrow and I took it home (after paying for it of course).

The gist of it is that you each play mobsters that have to get truck-loads of money onto a Money Train so it can be taken to the launderers. The first person to hit $10 million wins the game.

You will be able to attack other players by stealing their loot, causing their trucks to get lost via “detours”, dob them in to the cops, put out a hit on them, and more. Of course, there will be cards to block these actions too, such as “donut shops” to throw the cops off your trail, corrupt lawyers, and more mobsters.

Currently the deck size is probably suited to 2-4 players, but I’d like to get this to a max of 6 players without making the deck too unwieldy.

I’ll be playtesting it starting this week and over the xmas holidays, so send me an email, post on my BBS, or contact me on Facebook.

I’ve been avoiding 4th edition D&D because, well, quite frankly it’s gone down a path that has changed it a lot. Everyone has said it — including the famous Kurt Wiegel — it’s just not recognisable as the D&D brand. The first set of rule books just don’t have the standard tropes we expect in D&D, and in fact, all Tolkienesque fantasy. More has been said about the changes being made to suit computer games.

A lot has been said, and I won’t rehash it, partly because I don’t remember what I hated about it when reading the rulebooks upon their release.

But now the game has changed.

Wizards have announced the next forthcoming campaign setting: Dark Sun.

Perhaps they know how fickle we old coots are, waving our walking sticks at every young slacker that walks across our lawn, but perhaps they also know that we geeks are suckers and will fall for anything if it’s shiny enough or reminds us of our youth. Games Workshop certainly know this better than most. And if Wizards didn’t know it before, this may certainly increase the chance of their enlightenment.

Dark Sun is not being advanced in time like Forgotten Realms. It’s not being reimagined like every show on television. It’s being left intact, released with its original intent. In fact, Wizards are re-releasing Denning’s Prism Pentad series and fully expect players to fully expect the setting to be instantly recognisable.

This is utterly terrible news for those of us who have been avoiding 4th ed as if it were a soggy, leaking rubbish bag.

But it’s also great news for those of us who have really missed playing Dark Sun.