Hello.  Another busy week as GenCon nears.  This weekend I ran the 5th to last session of my Iron Heroes campaign.  The session contained a big reveal for the players, and set them up for their final 4 sessions of the campaign.  This campaign has reach the Epic status, as the heroes are on a direct course to save the world from a DemiGod.

The game turned out to be shorter than I had expected, with my combat encounter, much lighter than I had planned.  In a way it was good.  In most of my recent high level (16th) sessions, the combats are taking 3 out of the 4 hours.  My fear was that if the combat went too long, that I would have to rush through the reveal, and thus diminish the dramatic effect of the reveal.  So the session was shorter than longer, and I am fine with that.

In addition the adventure is also linked to the Iron Heroes session I am going to run at GenCon.  It’s not an event, but rather, starting last year, I ran an IH session for some of my friends who are not in my group.  The session was directly linked to my campaign, and had some profound effects on my main campaign.  I am doing it again this year, and the adventure I am going to run on Sunday will tie right into the session I ran last night, and with all my main IH players at GenCon, they are going to sit in as NPC’s for the game.  Should be a lot of fun.

Once again there will not be any posts this week, I am just about ready to leave for GenCon.  I may try to post while I am down there, but no promises.  GenCon gets to be pretty intense, and writing may be the last thing I have time to do.

For those of you going to GenCon, look for me.  There are a few pictures of me on my About page, including the bottom one, with my in my GreenShirt.  Also a sure fire way to find me is to go to the Starbucks on the first floor of the Westin, from 7am to 9am.  I will be there with an iced coffee playing Lunch Money, Ninja Burger, or Let’s Kill.

If you are not going to GenCon, I will post some of my experiences when I get back home, as well as plenty of pictures.

In any case I will talk to you next week.

I am back from my family vacation, and just 8 days from GenCon.  It has been really crazy around here, with all the vacation logistics and then having to come back to work for one week, and then start my GenCon prep.  On top of that, I am running Iron Heroes this week, and am in the middle of writing my session notes.

I was able to get some gaming done during my vacation, despite the very poor internet connection i was connected to, via a neighbors house.  The first week of my vacation was spent getting the GenCon workbook sections finished, which I did.  I spent the second week answering questions from Vicki, who was editing the whole workbook, and doing our layout.

I was able to write all the notes for my Iron Heroes game that I am running at GenCon.  This is a private game, for some friends, and is a part of my ongoing campaign.  Last year I wrote the notes in Confluence, but this year, I did them in MS One Note.  I will in a future post rave about all the things I love about One Note, but time is quite limited.  The only thing I have left to do for this game, is print some map tiles and counters, but I will do that over the weekend.

I also got to run a few encounters of 4e for my two Brother’s In Law, as well as my 9yr Nephew.  All had a good time, and I have to say that my Nephew had no problem understanding the power system, and loved the flavor text for the various moves.  He was able to use the flavor text in his descriptions of his strikes, which was great.  I am sure the 4e haters will consider that another feather in their cap, about how 4e is too watered down, but as I remember it, I was about 9yr old when I learned D&D, and the game was not that easy to learn.  So any game that is enjoyable to experienced players (like myself) and easy to get into for younger players, is a good system for me.

That is about it for me.  I don’t think there will be any posts this week, as I am swamped with IH writing and GenCon prep.