Gencon Countdown

               About a year ago, my darling wife was in Indianapolis for non-Gencon related reasons during the convention, and went to dinner with some of my friends form Nebraska. We used to go all the time, but budgets had prevented it from being a possibility in more recent years. Meanwhile, I was at home watching the BoardGameGeek livestream showing stuff that was premiering at the show with the sad Incredible Hulk music playing in the background. I was fine with this. I wanted to go to Gencon, but as a younger professional with a family sometimes sacrifices have to be made. However, my wife decided while she was in Indy that next year I was going, no matter what. And, as it is now the week of Gencon, I am excited and incredibly grateful that its almost time to make it happen.

                Part of why I can do this is because I volunteer with Wyrd whenever I’m there. I recommend doing this for people that want to attend but can’t afford it, as they cover the cost of my badge and let you work for booth credit and goodies as part of helping. In previous years, I had run demos of Malifaux in the event hall and the exhibit hall as well as working on the floor of the Wyrd booth, but this year I’m in for something quite a bit cooler: running a Through the Breach Penny Dreadful for convention-goers! I’m very excited, as GMing for RPGs is probably my favorite form of gaming and I've never gotten a chance to run at a convention before. I’ve even been fortunate enough to be able to help design the pre-generated characters that I’m then going to do my damndest to kill horribly.

Try to read the title and not start a CCR song in your head. I dare you.

                The module I’m running is called Bad Moon Rising. It was written in response to some feedback that combat wasn’t dangerous enough in the game, and as such this is a module designed to be quite deadly. I thought that it was a fine choice for a convention game in that the original convention games of Dungeons and Dragons were designed by E. Gary Gygax for tournaments and were intentionally designed to be treacherous, deadly, and sometimes borderline unfair (I’m looking at you, Tomb of Horrors.)

Pictured: Just a door. Probably.

                If any of my readers happen to be players in my games, I look forward to meeting you and then trying to murder you. Please be sure to introduce yourself as a Malifaux Musings follower, and maybe you might get a little boon in exchange. I want this to be a no-holds barred, Fatemaster versus the Fated throwdown. If you survive to escape, I want you to feel like you've really done something. So bring your A-game kids, because I'll have mine.

               The characters I’ve built are a mercenary company from a contract town who are responding to a call from the Guild to disrupt a Neverborn invasion of one of the Quarantine Zones in Malifaux. Their leader is an overseer of a failed contract town, trying to rebuild his fortune and make remake his name. His long-time companion is an old campaigner, son of a Texas Ranger, and adventurer with arthritic hands who is looking for one more big score before he retires. One is a convict laborer with a power for channeling sorcerous fire. One is a deadly lady bandit and gunslinger with an old connection to a member of the party. And the last is a gravedigger who occasionally speaks with his very special shovel.  This group of misfits, plus a handful of other nameless mercs (the redshirt company) will venture into what they think is a simple sweep and clear operation, and will rapidly find themselves in over their heads trying to save their skins and protect Malifaux from an ancient evil. I've been painting frantically to get the crew (and one of their antagonists)  ready as well as a few Malifaux models to play with Titania. Right now all of the slots in my games are full, but its always possible that people will drop or fail to show up so feel free to check in with me at the Marriott Utah room to see if a slot opens up or, if I got a group of five people, I could possibly be convinced to run it for you off the clock (bribes are always appreciated.) I’ll be keeping tabs on the blog of various statistics from the game (number of people killed in a particular encounter, number of times I’m cursed out by my players, number of times I make someone cry, etc.) So, look forward to that. Or, you know, look forward to posts about what’s in Ripples of Fate.

*walks away*

                What was that? Oh, yeah, the other Malifaux Musings news from Gencon. You might not have seen my various posts on the topic, but there’s this new Malifaux book coming out. Ripples of Fate? You may have heard of it. Anyways, we know who the new masters are and what they can do, but we only know the names of what comes in their crew box, and we know nothing of the rest of the new models in RoF. I’m going to do my best to change that (and, perhaps, drive a few online book sales for Wyrd in the process) by going through the factions individually (ok, probably in pairs) and discussing the models. I’m not going to tell you everything about them (because otherwise why would you buy the book) but I’ll give you the general idea of what’s coming and my quick (probably inaccurate) take on what they’ll do on the tabletop. And the best part is: YOU GET TO DECIDE THE ORDER! Just go here and vote in this poll. The leaders at the times when I’m writing the post get spoiled first, the rest have to wait for the next day (I do occasionally want to go do things at the convention, guys. Games won’t play themselves.)

                Finally, the contest. Who knows if anyone remembers, but I mentioned in my last post that I was going to give people the chance to win some prizes from Malifaux Musings! To do it, all you have to do is find one of the writers from the blog (myself, Mr. Adam Rogers, or the roving reporter Jon Goulbourne) and play us in a game of Malifaux or Through the Breach. If you mention that you’re a blog reader and we write down your name and email address, congratulations! You’re in the drawing! You have a shot to win…something that we get from the con. I don’t know for sure what it’ll be yet, and it’ll probably depend on how many entries I receive, but I have a strong inclination to include this year’s Miss Model since I don’t play Arcanists. We’ll see, but it doesn’t cost you anything to enter and you get a game out of it, so come and find us!

                Until later this week, happy playing and rejoice! For the Queen is risen!

She is risen indeed!