Prepared

The 2025 Busan Tabletop Gaming Con is in a few days (Sunday). I'm ready for the game. I'm running D&D in the morning, playing Cyberpunk RED in the afternoon, then running Gamma World in the evening. It's gonna be a full day. Luckily, my Monday schedule will be light on Dec. 1st. 

We're ready for the event. The cafe is prepared for us. I've got all the schedules and games sorted. Justin bought some supplies (name tags, extra pencils/paper/etc.).  I guess I could make a sign-in sheet to make things feel more official. But with fewer than 25 people involved, I don't think that's completely necessary. 

I ordered dice sets online, planning to give a set to each GM as a thank you gift or as a reward to their MVP player, whichever they chose. The listing said it was seven sets (49 pieces) and we originally had 14 games people were prepared to run, so I ordered two. They arrived yesterday and to my happy surprise, there were ten sets of dice in each pack. And we're down to only 9 game sessions, two of which I'm running. So enough for me to give each GM a thank you set and an MVP player prize set. And I'll have some sets left over to keep for another time. 

For my games, I've got a dry erase mat, some board markers, minis for the creatures in both my D&D and Gamma World games (close enough on the GW side) organized, adventures and pre-gen PCs printed. I tried to write up the adventures so I'd have minimal book references during the games, but I'll bring the rulebooks anyway. 

I'm ready for the first (hopefully annual) BTGC!  

On Track

 After a frustrating at times past 24 hours, we have our table rosters set for the 2025 Busan Tabletop Game Con. Nine tables open, and around 23 total participants. Small, but close to what we were shooting for. We had hoped for around 30 people to participate. Close. [I need to update the webpage game rosters, we had a few changes/additions during the day.]

Next Sunday, we'll be gaming it up. I'm running Classic D&D and Gamma World (4th). I was going to play in the Mothership game in the afternoon, but John M. didn't get anyone signing up for his evening board game, and we got a request from John D. to also join that game. I was gonna hop over into Cyberpunk Red, but then the last guy to sign up on the official form before I closed it wanted that spot, so I'll be free in the middle of the con. That's actually alright with me. I can troubleshoot any problems, take pictures to document the event (I'll probably do a write-up for the local expat scene mag Busan HAPS), and just get a bit of rest between my games. 

We're using the Discord server used for last summer's Daegu One-shot Extravaganza and also for the Online Summer Con. That ended up being a bit of a headache, because Rowan, who owns the server, and Scott, who is an admin, both know Discord functions way more than Justin and I. So they kept hinting at things we needed to do, saying it was simple - just watch/read a tutorial, and then letting us fumble through things until they had to step in and fix our mess. [Hence the past 24 hours' frustrations.] But we've got it done. We've got players all sorted with their GMs, and everyone has both a Discord channel on the server and a KakaoTalk (Korean version of What'sApp) group chat for their games. 

All my pre-gens for both Classic D&D and Gamma World are on my work computer, so I'll be posting them for players to look over and discuss over the next week. I also (on Friday) sorted through minis to get some suitable ones ready for Gamma World. Not all of them are the right fit, but close enough. Various D&D minis, cheap-o toys from Japan and the U.S., old MUSCLE wrestlers and Battle Beast toys... I think I will sort out minis for the D&D game as well. 

After all the organizing was done (and a few family errands), I sat down to consider my OSR Modern game design. I'm still tinkering with the Starting Occupations and class Talents, but I think I'm getting closer. I also made a list of things that probably need rules for resolution in the game (and could potentially be used to earn XP). Here's the list so far: 

What do people do in this game that require mechanics (and might earn XP)?

Movement (jump, run, swim, drive, climb)

Investigate/Gather information

Socialize/Intimidate/Bluff

Get permission/authorization/shopping

Sneak/infiltrate/avoid ambush

Drive/Travel

Hack Computers

Fist Fight/Sword Fight

Gun Fight

Car Fight

Chase/Escape

Sabotage/Destroy

Repair/Build

Heal/Treat Illness

 I plan to implement a set of Challenge Awards in addition to XP for combat. Since it's a modern setting, I want it to be able to implement genres where fist fights or car chases are more prominent than gun fights just as easily as those that do feature prominent gun fights/explosions. For Challenge Awards, I'm thinking 5% or 10% of the amount needed to gain a level for small goals, and 25% for large goals. 

And speaking of genres, I've got a list of adventure/encounter types that I want to give examples of in the book: 

Encounter/Adventure Types

Wandering Do-Gooders

Cops & Robbers

Special Forces

Hot Rodders

The Big Heist

Investigators

Explorers

On the Run

Home for Christmas

X-Treme Action

From Sea to Shining Sea

Out for Vengeance

The Conspiracy

All in “The Family”

 And while I mainly plan to keep things mundane (well, Action Movie heightened reality), I will have some notes on adding some fantasy/sci-fi to the game: 

Mundane, Paranormal, Supernatural, Sci-Fi

Setting the campaign tone. PCs are all normal (heightened reality) characters, but the world also contains: 

Mundane: heightened realism, but otherwise normal (Die Hard, Rambo, Dirty Harry, A-Team, MacGuyver, Cannonball Run, Murder She Wrote, Goodfellas, The Goonies)

Paranormal: cryptids, psychics, ghosts, aliens (X-Files, Lost, The Shining, Scanners, E.T.)

Supernatural: magic, monsters, demons, other realms (Interview with the Vampire, Stranger Things, Indiana Jones, Nightmare on Elm Street)

Sci-Fi: clones, aliens, high tech, superscience (Knight Rider, Blade Runner, Predator, V, Terminator, The Island, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure)

 This should give everyone an idea of where I'm going with this idea. 

 

 

 

 

Arrangements

It's happening. After years of me considering whether to do something like this or not, Justin and I, with help from Scott and Rowan, are finally hosting the first (hopefully annual) Busan Tabletop Gaming Convention. 

The date is Sunday, Nov. 30, at Cafe With, a privately owned cafe with a really cool owner.  It's not a big event, but in just one day we have a bunch of games planned. 

In the morning (10am to 1pm), we have six games, including Call of Cthulhu (Richard), Tales of the Arabian Nights (board game, run by Justin), Black Sword Hack (Peter), Perils & Princesses (Jenifer), Despair (Shane - read about my playtest experience here), and Classic D&D (me). 

In the afternoon (2:30 to 5:30), we have five games (plus Shane's Despair game is expected to go long): Dread (Justin), Cyberpunk Red (Keith), D&D 5E 2024 (Scott), Pathfinder 2E (Elyse -- maybe, she's been ignoring my request to detail her game), and Mothership (Jonathan). 

Finally, in the evening (7 to 10), we have three games: Gamma World (me), Whitehall Mystery/1775  (board games run by Justin), and Clank! Catacombs (board game run by John). Scott's 5E game may also go long into this time slot. 

Unfortunately, the cafe couldn't fit us in on a Saturday, because they have other events planned. And the later Sunday games may not get many players because some people are coming in from out of town, and even people in the city taking public transportation may take a while to get home. And most of us have to work the next day. 

Still, I'm excited to see how many players we recruit. I'll be sending out that pitch this weekend. Hopefully Elyse gets her info to me on time.  

TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon is Finished

 So, the Online Summer Con is over. I think the game I was in Sunday evening closed out the event, since we went about 30 minutes over the end time (and the new semester started yesterday so I was introducing my courses on not enough sleep). I wasn't involved in the start, though, since I didn't play anything Friday evening. 

The games I was in were all really fun, although the three I was a player in all had different styles. 

Saturday morning, my friend Justin ran a Monster of the Week/Jinkies! mix game (both are PbtA games, so he used MotW on his side, but we used Jinkies! playbooks for our PCs). It was called The Coffin Nails, and was a mystery game. 

I played Jimmy Switzer, a college dropout and loner (The Tough One playbook). A player with the online nickname Mildew played Cal Whitmore, the local newspaper editor (The Leader playbook). A third player named Kojak played Antoine Pier, the university librarian (The Smart One playbook). We made our PCs before the game.

The mystery involved a pair of researchers at the local university trying to cover up a failed insomnia experiment that led to people acting violently. There was also a ghost involved. We managed to solve the mystery, but unfortunately, not in time to stop the researchers from getting away and getting a lucrative contract with a defense contractor. 

It was a fun, goofy game, with us mostly laughing our way through the tense moments our PCs found themselves in. 

___________________

Saturday afternoon, I was in a Mothership game run by Michael (first time meeting him). He ran a module called Gradient Descent that Justin told me was pretty good. And it was. It was also a mystery game, but with more action and also very much a Philip K. Dick style mindfuck. Sorry, some spoilers in this game description follow.

I played Mifune, a Marine. Michelle played Blaise, a Scientist (botany specialty). LP played Emmanuel, a Teamster (pilot). Carly played Bianca, a Scientist (surgeon). Kinsella played Amirah "CIB", also a marine. CIB stood for "Cast Iron Bitch" and she really played that up! We also made these PCs before the game started.

The jumping off point was that we were going to an abandoned space station to loot it, but just as we board, we get knocked out and wake up in a trash heap deep in the station. We've got some good loot, and need to get to the top of the station where our hired ship is waiting for us, but the station AI thinks we're all androids and its property so we can't leave. 

We managed to get to our ship in time, without loss of PC life (we lost an android friend we picked up along the way), but one PC was suspected to be an android replicant and our crazy Russian pilot wouldn't let her board. So that PC volunteered to stay and the rest of us got away...but with lingering doubts about whether or not we had also been replaced and didn't know it, or if the one we left behind was actually human or not (there was evidence that she WAS human, but also evidence that she'd been replaced). 

This game was fast paced, tense at times, very funny at times, and required some lateral thinking along with some gung-ho bravado. 

_______________________

Sunday afternoon was the game I ran, Into the Dragon's Den. I had revamped an old dungeon from 20 years ago, and used my TS&R rules but with BECMI style race-as-class demi-humans. This was a fairly straight dungeon crawl, with a variety of challenges to exploration, combat, and puzzles but the party bypassed quite a few of the puzzle type encounters (which is totally fine, I made quite a few paths through the dungeon). 

Richard (my CoC Keeper friend) played Grimsteel the Dwarf. Ian (who plays in Richard's CoC game and I met IRL in Seoul last week in the Perils and Princesses game) played Peralay the Elf. Kinsella (CIB in the Mothership game) played Aleena the Cleric. Zen played Morgan Ironwolf the Fighter. Ren played Ismene the Thief. Yes, these were pre-gens I made, and yes, I stole names and art from the BX, BECMI, and other TSR books for the pre-gens. The players had selected their PCs before the game started.

I gave each PC a different set of rumors, including rumors about the various ways into the dungeon. The town wanted them to either slay Kelek the Wizard or Grimflame the Dragon (or maybe both). They decided to try the wizard, and started exploring the most difficult way in first, but then decided to move to the easiest way in. They found a hidden passage in the first room which led them to Warduke (Kelek's captain) who they defeated, then up to find Kelek who they also just managed to defeat without losing any lives. They also found Kelek's stash of anti-dragon magic items along the way, so maybe I'll see if these players want to have a second go at it and try their luck with the dragon some day.

We went over time, because no one wanted to stop until Kelek was dead. I think everyone had fun. I definitely had a great time running it. 

____________________

Sunday evening, I was again a player in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game, run by Marley. This was the first time I've had a chance to play DCC, and it did not disappoint. Marley's DMing style was a bit different, though. She had us pick pre-gens at the start of the game, asking us each to run two or maybe three. We all picked two, then she asked if anyone wanted to run three. I said why not, and picked a third. Then two other players picked third PCs...so we kinda had too many PCs in the game. Should have kept my mouth shut, maybe. 

I played a Thief named Jinx, a Magic-User named Alexy, and a Fighter named Torgo. I didn't write down all the other PCs names/classes, but Dee played a Dwarf and a Thief. Zen (Morgan Ironwolf in my game) played a Cleric, Magic-User, and Thief. Gheist played a Dwarf, a Cleric, and an Elf. Marley had a bit of characterization to each PC for us to use, but we got to pick names for ourselves. 

The adventure we were sent on was that a bunch of low-level losers were sent to stop a world-ending bad guy from destroying the world by solving the mystery of the dungeon. The dungeon itself was a big puzzle, and we spent way too much time in the second room with the primary puzzle, trying to figure it out, before Marley clued us in that the rest of the dungeon had clues to solve the primary puzzle. Of course, we failed to stop the demon thing from emerging, and almost all of the PCs died in one hilarious way or another. 

Marley's DMing style was interesting. After a very exposition heavy start, she just sat back and waited for us players to do something once we got plopped into the dungeon. And she had an assumption of incompetence for our PCs. For example, if we wanted to light a torch, we had to roll to see if our PC knew how to do that. It was interesting. Very different from the assumption of competence I give PCs in games I run. It did suit the game style, though, were we were supposed to be in over our heads, and likely going to fail anyway. 

As I mentioned, this game also went about 30 minutes over the limit since we all wanted to see how the last few PCs would die or escape screaming from the dungeon. My PCs all died. 

____________________

Final thoughts? Next time, I will probably DM more and play less. And not the late night slot on a night before I need to go to work the next day. It was fun to try one game I had never tried before (DCC), and to get to play a few games I had played before but in different styles. And Justin, Scott and I will probably be meeting soon to plan a face to face Busan game convention. Since I'll be one of the organizers, I'll also probably run a game or two but likely not play in anything, so I can be available to manage things at times when Scott and Justin run or play something. 

TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon has Begun

 The TTRPG in Korea SummerCon has begun already. I'm obviously not playing in any games right now (Friday night) but I've got a weekend chock full of gaming coming up. 

 Tomorrow morning is Justin's Monster of the Week/Jinkies (PbtA mashup) game.  I'm playing Jimmy Switzer, an outcast and college drop-out. A little bit punk/metalhead, a little bit incel, and a little bit weirdo.

Tomorrow afternoon is a game of Mothership where I'll be playing a space marine named Mifune. He's probably gonna die. We'll see if it's in a blaze of glory, or cowering in fear. 

 On Sunday afternoon, I run my TS&R game, Into the Dragon's Den. 

And Sunday evening, I'm playing in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game. I've never played DCC, so I'm really looking forward to this game. But it's 8pm to midnight, so we'll see if I'm able to stay awake after all the gaming before it. Not sure who/what my character(s) will be in this game. 

I'm off to bed a bit early tonight. Gotta get rested up for the all-weekend gaming.  

Gaming in Seoul: Perils and Princesses

I was up in Seoul most of this weekend (Sunday evening as I type this) for an academic conference. But I was free Friday evening, so stopped by Dice and Comics Cafe (formerly known as Dice Latte, which a lot of people still refer to it by). 

There was some sort of Western RPG in progress when I got there, but the owner told me that most pick up games start around 7pm. So I ordered some food and listened in on the Western game while I ate. I didn't interrupt to ask what game system it was, but it was definitely not Boot Hill. It had a mundane setting (no magic, undead, or steampunk from what I could tell), or at least the encounters I overhead didn't include anything like that. 

When other people started arriving, I joined them. There were two games brewing, a Call of Cthulhu game set in space, and a Perils and Princesses pirate adventure. I joined the Perils and Princesses game. Ian, who plays in Richard's online Call of Cthulhu games, was also in this game but all the other players were people I had just met. 

Perils and Princesses is an NSR type game, similar to Black Hack, Into the Odd, Mothership, PbtA games, etc. You play a princess with certain magical gifts, and need to survive adventures by wits, resolve, and sometimes swinging swords. 

Morgan was our GM. 

My princess was a knight/healer named Valerian.  

Ian played an alchemist/water mage princess named Talia.

Margot played a wild card/con man princess with a pet parrot named Whistle (the parrot was named Polly).

Oliver played a scholar/thief princess named Clara.

Riley played a barbarian/beastmaster princess named Fern. 

The adventure we went on was basically The Blues Brothers. The orphanage we were raised in (yes, we're princesses, but also orphans. Stop over-thinking) was in danger of being bought and torn down by an evil merchant. Luckily, we heard of these pirate ghosts with treasure in a sea cave south of town, and an old matron in town gave us a map if we promised to recover her family heirloom cursed dagger.

Well, after romping through town for a bit, we set sail for the caves, and avoided, fought and befriended various monsters. We recovered the dagger and other treasure to save the orphanage just in time. We literally played until the shop was closing, so had to wrap up the game in a hurry. 

It was fun, and like a lot of NSR games, it was easy to pick a character and just start playing. I'm not sure it would have a lot of long-term campaign value, though, as there only appear to be four levels to the characters (we were playing at level 2). 

_________________________________

In other news, I've almost completed my revisions to Flying Swordsmen 2E. I need to read through the monster section very carefully one more time. I've also been pondering ideas for a short campaign to play test the game with my local group. People in one of the RPOL games I play in have been asking when it will be available, so I should get to work polishing up and testing the rules.

In other other news, next weekend is the TTRPG in Korea Online SummerCon. I'm in two games on Saturday as a player. Justin is running Monster of the Week in the morning, and in the afternoon I'm in a Mothership game. On Sunday afternoon, I will run a TS&R(ish)* game, then in the evening play in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game. And then classes start on Monday...

 *I'm using my TS&R rules to run the game, but I found an old set of BECMI pre-gen PCs that I wanted to reuse, so Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling are classes for this game, and all the Clerics, Fighters, Magic-Users, and Thieves are Human. No Druids, Rangers, or any of that AD&D add-on either.  

Gearing Up for the Online SummerCon

The TTRPG in Korea community is hosting their online SummerCon at the end of the month (Aug 29-31). I'm signed up to run a Classic D&D game during the con. Hopefully, I'll have time to play in a few other games as well. It's right before the start of the new semester (Sept 1), but I'm more or less ready for my classes. 

I posted about my idea for the con game a few weeks ago. And in the mean time, I've redrawn the maps, revised and switched around some of the encounters, and added a few puzzles/challenges for some of the extraneous monsters. I also updated the pre-gen characters that I posted about a few weeks ago. 

This weekend, I created a Roll20 game for the adventure. I also digitized the maps using Dungeon Scrawl (a crash course in that app, which I'd only noodled around on before). I've got the basics of that down now, and the maps in the R20 game look pretty good. Not professional level, but good enough. 

I spent a lot of time today creating custom character sheets for the pre-gen PCs. Roll20 has a BECMI (RC) sheet, and a BX sheet, but neither exactly fits my house ruled version of D&D. I'm not running full TS&R rules. I've still got Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling as classes for this game. But otherwise, I'm using my house rules. I've got all 14 pre-gen sheets done -- two for each class. I still need to make token images for them, and get the tokens set up. 

I've got the character sheets set up with macros to roll for attacks, saving throws, and things like Thief skills or Turn Undead. That way the players can just go to the sheet and press a button to roll, and all the math is done for them. It will save a lot of time dealing with new to old school players. Considering the types of games on offer (5E/Pathfinder games of course, some neoOSR games like Bastionland and BlackHack derivatives, Free League games, various story/indie games), I'm likely to get some newbies. 

 ________

In other news, I've been playing at the cafe I think would be good for our face-to-face Busan Tabletop Con, and it is a pretty good place to play. Scott and Justin have both visited, and they approve as well. Scott is pretty busy right now with the SummerCon, but after that's settled, I think we'll get to work organizing our local event. 

I plan to run this same adventure, and maybe either a Flying Swordsmen 2E adventure or a Chainmail-based tabletop skirmish/dungeon crawl game. AKA, reviving my idea from last year.  Probably more Chainmail than Gauntlet, but similar. I'd need to get off my ass to prepare for either of these two additional games, but that's a good thing. It will keep me engaged with the ideas. 

Some Updates to an old Dungeon

The Seoul-based TTRPG in Korea group is gearing up for their Online Summer Con. The days haven't been decided yet, but it will be a weekend in August. I'm hoping it will be either the 2nd or 4th weekends, because on the 3rd I'll be up in Seoul for an academic conference and won't have a lot of time to get online and play games. 

Of course, the 2nd week is the final week of English Camp, so I can't play in any Friday games, but Saturday afternoon/evening, or Sunday will work for me. 

The 4th week is best for me. Nothing much else going on that weekend. 

Assuming I have time to run something, I've been working on updating an old one-shot adventure I made during my time in Yamanashi. I ran it for them so they could experience a mid-level game, with more powerful characters and enough magic items. They ran through the adventure, but I don't remember exactly how it turned out. I have a few notes from those sessions (I think we spent two evenings on it), but they're incomplete. 

So I'm updating it for the Summer Con. And if it goes well, I'll also probably run it for the Busan Tabletop Gaming Con (that's not the official name yet, just the one I prefer) that Justin, Scott and I are organizing. 

The adventure as I wrote it back then (20ish years ago) had too many monster encounters and not enough interesting puzzles/situations. I redrew the maps, simplifying them a little but also making them less linear at the same time. I took out or changed some monster encounters, rearranging a few things. I added more exploration/navigation/spelunking challenges. I've upped the treasure a bit, but since this is a one-shot, that's probably not so important aside from magic items. After the Cons, I'll probably format this and sell it through Hidden Treasure Books, though, so the treasure content may matter to players in the future. 

The basic premise is that there is a tower built by a wizard. A dragon destroyed the wizard long ago, and has laired in the caves beneath the tower ever since. A new wizard has shown up and taken over the tower, but stirred up the dragon. Both the wizard and dragon are problems for the local lord, so he's asking adventurers to deal with one or both problems for him. 

So players may decide just to deal with the dragon. Or just with the wizard. Or get ambitious (in a 3-4 hour time slot) and take on both. And of course I'm prepared with ideas for if they try to team up with one side to take out the other.  And the inevitable double crosses that may happen. 

I found a file with some pre-made BECMI characters that I used for another project. That means Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling are classes, so it doesn't completely follow my TS&R rules, but I'll use them anyway for simplicity. They were 1st level, so I updated them to be anywhere from 5th (the Elves) to 8th level (the Thieves). I had pre-made magic item packets from the time I ran this adventure in Yamanashi, so I added those magic items (with a few changes here and there) to the characters. And updated them with TS&R abilities (mostly for Fighter types, since I have rules for Sweep and the like). 

I need to finish up a few more encounter area descriptions (the wizard's lair). And for the Seoul Summer Con, scan the maps and prepare them for a VTT. I'm looking forward to running some old school D&D for hopefully some new blood.  

Daegu One-Shot TTRPG Extravaganza

As I start to type this, the Daegu One-Shot TTRPG Extravaganza is just wrapping up (according to the schedule). I wasn't there today, but yesterday Flynn and I woke up early and drove up to Daegu for some gaming. It started Friday night with one game session slot, then three on Saturday (we were there for two), and then two more game slots today (Sunday). 

We arrived at Cafe Panoplie in central Daegu at around 8:45am, and they let us in at around 8:50. The first game session was scheduled from 9am to 1pm, but of course people were gathering, buying their first drinks, saying hi to old friends, meeting new people, and all of that. We probably didn't actually start to game until after 9:30. 

My first game was my 2nd choice game for that time slot, a whimsical heist adventure (5E D&D). The DM, Tabi, let us roll up some slightly overpowered 3rd level PCs before the game started. I made a Dwarf Fighter (Noble) who was gruff and a bit pompous. Another player, Rachel, had rolled up a Fairy Barbarian (Gladiator), who acted all nice and sweet until she started to kick ass. The third player, Kimberlee, was new to RPGs, but had played in a 5E game on Friday night. So she used her 1st level Halfling Rogue (unknown background) from the night before, and bumped up to 3rd level. The 4th player didn't show up. 

The adventure was to steal a magical gauntlet from the Magistrate. Using our various skills and backgrounds, and coming up with an intricate plan that we botched the most important part (we paid for a counterfeit gauntlet to be made, but forgot to pick it up before infiltrating the Magistrate's mansion), we bumbled through the mission and succeeded, just at the last minute (real time).

Flynn played a Traveller game called Death Station in the morning slot run by a GM named Nicole who I don't know (this was both of our #1 pick for the slot). He said it was a mission to explore a ship that had been wiped out by a contaminant and they had to science their way through the adventure. He enjoyed it, and was wondering if there is a computerized version of Traveller for solo play. I'll have to look that up. [Or someone in the comments, please give us a link!]

We had found an American style Chinese restaurant on the map and wanted to go there for lunch, but it was closed. Korean style Chinese food is very disappointing compared to the American fare (or Japanese style Chinese). Since it took about 15 minutes to walk there, and there was only a 1 hour lunch break, we ended up going to Lotteria (Korean fast food). 

When we got back, I chatted with my friend Scott a little about the organization of the event (he was an organizer), and he said he's willing to pitch in to help Justin and I if we organize something like this in Busan later. Nice. Then we went to our game tables. We were both in our #1 picks for the afternoon slot (2pm to 6pm), thanks to Scott. 

My afternoon game was Dragonbane, run by the GM Amae. I knew Amae online because he's the admin of the TTRPG in Korea Discord group. He had five pregens  for us. I got the Human Magician. Lem was the Wolfkin Warrior. Lexi was an Elf Archer. Abi was a Halfling Thief. And the fifth player, whose name is escaping me at the moment, was a Mallard Knight that we nicknamed Duck Tank. I didn't know any of these players before the game started. 

The adventure was called The Sinking Tower. We were after treasure, and the tower that rises out of the sea once every 20 years was slowly sinking back down. We managed to bumble our way through most of the puzzle/traps, and a couple of combats. We managed to loot a few small treasures and also got one of the great green emeralds from the top of the tower, with a tense last minute scramble by Lexi's archer. It was a blast, and I'd love to get a chance to play Dragonbane again. 

Flynn's afternoon game was Cyberpunk Red, run by a fellow Busan gamer named Keith. Flynn told me they were a low level street gang, running deliveries of drugs and bootleg chips for Razor, their boss. They got into a deal way over their heads, but somehow managed to charm one of the criminal syndicates, who helped them defeat the cyberninja that was pulling the rigged deals. Flynn's character was a street rapper, and Keith had him use ChatGPT to come up with lyrics for his rap songs during the game, which Flynn enjoyed. 

Keith running his game. Flynn is in the NASA shirt. I don't know the other players.

The Cyberpunk game went down to the wire (6pm). We went across the street to Shake Shack for dinner. Even though we had burgers for lunch, my Dragonbane group had gone there and invited me along. I waited for Flynn, so we showed up a little late and had to sit at another table because another gamer had joined them. 

After that, we headed back home. All in all, a really fun day. And we got to meet some cool new people, and play some games we probably never would have gotten a chance to play if we hadn't gone. I definitely want to run something like this here in Busan in the near future.  

Chintzy Magic Items (And a Game Con!)

 Tomorrow (Saturday, June 7th), Flynn and I are headed up to Daegu for their One-Shot Extravaganza TTRPG event. It actually starts this evening and goes through Sunday afternoon. But honestly, the games we wanted to get in the most were Saturday morning and afternoon. So we'll drive up tomorrow morning (about an hour's drive on the expressway) and come back tomorrow evening after the games. 

 Flynn prefers sci-fi to fantasy, so he's got a Traveller game in the morning (called "Death Station" and honestly, this was my first pick for this time slot as well), and in the afternoon will be playing Cyberpunk Red. He's been playing the Cyberpunk 2077 PC game, and loves it, so he's hyped for this game. 

In the morning, I'll be playing in what looks to be a sorta whimsical D&D 5E game. The DM seems much more focused on "telling a story" than running an adventure...but more on this in a bit. In the afternoon, I'll finally get a chance to try out Dragonbane (my first pick, Cyberpunk being my #2). I've been curious about it for a while now. The DM for this game sent a list of pre-gens, and I'm torn between the shifty human wizard and the wolf-man monster hunter. There's also a duck-man knight that could be interesting, but may be too similar to my morning character so I'll try to get one of the above two PCs. 

 For the 5E game, the DM has some pre-gens, but said we could also make characters and submit them for approval. I considered playing a Sorcerer, which along with the Warlock are the two classes in 5E that I've never tried to play. Or a Druid, which I did try once, and had fun with. But in the end, I went with a classic Dwarf Fighter, Level 3 (Battle Master archetype). Since it's a custom point-buy system, of course his physical abilities are really good (although I didn't go so far as to give myself a 20 in Strength...merely an 18). He's got the Noble background, and I had fun filling out a short list of titles he bears that would make Lwaxana Troi proud. And that's why I'll try to avoid the Sir Duck character in the Dragonbane game.

The DM said we each have 250gp to spend, so plenty of normal gear or a small magic item or two. But looking through 5E's selection, I was reminded of just how chintzy a lot of the magic is in 5E. Many of the cheap magic items listed online seem to be mostly cosmetic. And the few useful ones mostly refer to spells, which reminded me of just how unimpressive a lot of magic is in 5E. 

A potion of growth in old school D&D makes you giant and doubles your damage (I just checked 1E, though, and it only makes you big, no damage bonus...)! In 5E, it makes you giant and gives you +1d4 damage on your attacks. Helpful, but not impressive. 

A potion of climbing in old school D&D gives a 95% chance to climb sheer surfaces (99% in 1E!), but in 5E it only gives advantage on your climb checks and lets you move at full speed. 

And I'm sure I don't need to rehash how many magic effects that used to be instant effect (sleep), save-or-die, or at least save-or-be-out-of-combat in old school games are now make-a-save-each-round-until-you-escape-it. 

Old school magic users may not get as many spells, but it sure is a lot more fun to play one when the spells you do prepare pack a punch!  

Anyway, to end on a positive note: I'm looking forward to my first face-to-face game convention. And I'll be taking notes to see how easy it will be for me and a few friends to put on one here in Busan.