Fandemonium 2005 Convention Report
This last weekend, the 6th and 7th of August, the Fandemonium Convention was held at the Nampa Civic center, Nampa Idaho. Three tournaments, two local and a regional, were hosted by The “Boise Incident” Instigators and The Gemstate Gazebo Hunters. Attendance was better than expected due to most of the local home groups’ members having inconvenient family issues pop-up just before the con. Fortunately some other non-HMA local players and a couple groups from Salt Lake City came to the event. We were able to field two tables and 10-12 players per event. Preparations had been made for three tables to be run, but that proved unnecessary.
For those unfamiliar with Fandemonium, this convention is very heavy into video games, anime, and cosplay. I’d guess the average age of participants hovered around 17. Lots of young girls running around in scanty dress, big foam swords and fox ears. The cosplay got to be a bit much when some tried to interfere with a tournament in progress. Unfortunately tabletop gaming was rather limited and we had a HUGE room…..which was right next door to a big costume ball. The music from that event started up halfway through the second game and called for a time-out while we dealt with the situation. Overall, the gaming situation was much improved from last year’s con, but it seemed that the loud and cramped quarters from last year hampered gaming this year.
Speaking of cramped quarters, we had 5 players from the SLC area staying at my home fro the convention. The original plan was to put up as many in the house as possible and lets some camp out in the yard, but the change in weather from hot to damn hot brought everyone inside. Really wasn’t an issue except for getting into the bathroom in the morning, although at least one cat would beg to differ.
The first Tournament started 11:30ish on Saturday. It was the level 2-4 adventure Clockwork Grunge by Davis S. York. Table GMs were Chris and Carolyn Stogdill. HMA members in attendance were: Joe Tolman #439, Bethany Tolman #494, John Rollins #1804, Tommy Harper #1841, Ruby Harper #2159, Dusty Emmen #2157, Chris Bethel #2126, Darren Rich #2160, and Wil Maurice #2161 [Darren and Will joined the HMA at the con with the help of Joe and his laptop!]
Highlights of the adventure (both tables): One PC would’ve died just after the flavor text starting the adventure if not for the benevolence of her “enemy” (enmity to race quirk). Evil Dioramas were violently dispatched in the honored tradition of the Gazebo Hunters. One baddie had insult added to injury when Commanded to disrobe after having its eye put out by a called shot.
One table suffered a TPK while the other scraped by with but one loss. MVP was Wil Maurice, whose PreGen Cleric seemed divinely destined to miss most incoming blows.
After a two hour break the second Tournament got underway. This level 2-4 adventure, Little Outhouse on the Prairie, Episode 2 “Teacher’s Pets” by Carolyn Stogdill was GMed by Chris and Carolyn Stogdill. All the same players, save Tommy, returned for this game. Three choose to play home PCs (many were lost in the previous tournament) while the rest played PreGens.
Highlights of this adventure: One player was noted for his patience and good sportsmanship in the face of a table with……issues. The other table had some issues with “undead” that weren’t in the adventure. Seeing some “ghosts”, one PC bravely faced them only to be shrouded in darkness as the light source gave out. Since that spooked a couple of PCs, they pulled back for a few rounds, grabbed the cleric, and shoved him inside and shut the door. Never mind the fact that the real baddies had worked their way over to the door while they were manhandling the cleric. This group, managed to throttle the boss in the final encounter through a generous helping of luck and bad GM dice rolls. Their tactics were sound though and they deserved to win.
There were no PC kills in the second adventure.
Sunday morning we ran the final adventure as level 3-5 Regional Tournament: Little Outhouse on the Prairie, Episode 4 “The Final Farewell” by (yours truly) Chris Stogdill. Chris and Carolyn Stogdill GMed again, switching up some players so that everybody played at both GMs tables at least once. As there was a SNI up for grabs, we were a bit more strict about timing issues and how long players had to review pre-gens.
Highlights of that game: One table had 10 crits (against them), four fumbles, and four PC deaths before wisely deciding to run for the hills. The other table refused payment of any kind and even returned found money! One PC lost all of her equipment when deciding to take up another PC’s offer to “toss her across the river”. Guess she didn’t catch enough air. There was some confusion as to who was claiming all of the kills because the swashbuckler was carving his initial upside down on the corpses. One PF Thief managed to rack up three kills by nickel-and-diming some baddies with his Xbow.
Joe Tolman was the Tournament MVP and gets to take home “Goblin Cutter” a Longsword +1/+3 vs Goblins that had some other abilities. The losing table’s MVP was “Goblin #3” who was a very helpful NPC in one encounter because he kept firing into melee and hitting his own guys. The adventure will be edited to award him a name……we’ve decided on “Terrence”.
All in all we had a good time. Exhausting, but a good time nonetheless. Carolyn and I enjoyed our company and are looking forward to the next time we get to game with our new (and old) friends. For those of you who couldn’t show, you missed out. Of course a special shout-out goes to Jake……you can’t get MVP if you don’t play.
Another kill sheet that I can link to for the kenzerco forums....
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