Friday Rucht Hour: The View from RuchtCon

Usually, around St. Patrick's Day, I run a gaming convention from my house. This year, I went big. As big as I could get. I had some folks flying into my tiny convention. There were the locals and there were folks from Georgia and North Carolina. Baltimore was as furthest distance traveled. Check out the dragon cake!

Anyhow, the weekend started with a round of roleplaying games. There was Gothic Earth Eternal, a Pathfinder-based horror game that I wrote. There was also Deadlands and Inspectres. Inspectres was interesting - basically it's a game where you form a Ghostbusters franchise of your own and go around bustin' ghosts!

Saturday morning was cartoons, sugar cereal and boardgames. We played more than one rousing game of Zombicide, which was great fun. Nick drove a car around the board, running over hordes of undead while the rest of us scrambled for resources.

While zombie killin' was going on, elsewhere people were playing Elder Sign, which is a dice-centric game which is the nephew of Arkham Horror. 

While some zombies were bashed and Elder Gods were battled, other folks adjourned upstairs for a game of Arabian Nights! 

After that, we adjourned back to role-playing games. I had tremendous fun playing the Trail of Cthulhu, which uses the Gumshoe system. In the Gumshoe system, you are allowed to "spend" skill points in order to gain or ensure success, which is great for investigative scenarios. It's not a question of if you find a clue, but how good the clue is that you receive. Meanwhile, other folks had fun with Mouseguard and Shadowrun. 

In the evening, for me it was another round of Gothic Earth Eternal, while Fantasy Flight's Only War got off of the ground. In the kitchen, people battled martians in a 50's sci-fi mash up using the Savage Worlds rules. 

Finally, on Sunday morning, we got together one last time to do that old favorite - Fiasco. However, I was lucky enough to play Jason Morningstar's newer game - Durance. I'll just say this. Mik, Durance is right up your alley. 

All right, that's all for now. Happy Friday everyone!

Thor's Day Hero: Ron Swanson

"You may have thought you heard me say I wanted a lot of bacon and eggs, but what I said was: Give me all the bacon and eggs you have." -Ron Swanson

When looking at civilians to answer the call to the ranks of the Thor's Day Heroes one has to use a very stringent set of parameters. Fortunately Ron Swanson wrote the book on having just such a stringent set of parameters. When looking at the cast of Parks and Recreation, honestly, most of them are "favorite" chaaracters. You can only pick one however, err, not you per se but me, since I'm the commander supreme of the Thor's Day Heroes. Even then, I am both in awe, and intimidated by this guy. He knows how to use a gun, he loves steak, and his woodworking skills are without parallel, just don't ask him about his ex-wives. How can we afford to not have him on the team?

My Maple Tree

It has been some time since I posted non-gaming content, so why not a tree?

My tree, the maple you see here, had about the most humble beginnings ever. It started as a little "helicopter" seed, stuck in a crack in my driveway. From this was a tiny sprout, about knee high to a Space Marine. 

I removed this tiny sprout and put it in a small, clay pot I had for an herb garden project that never got off the ground. For the rest of that summer I just watered it and left it outside. 

Three more summer cycles of that; inside for the winter, back out for spring and summer and it was eventually a thin stick about half a tall as I was, with three leaves; but it had a great root structure. I planted it in the ground that summer and just kept it watered. It weathered the following winter and it was starting to look like a real tree. Flash forward. 

Now I can put my son in it, who wasn't even born when this tree started. With spring in full bloom it is doing fantastic as we speak. With the way mine and both neighbors' property boundaries lie it is also coincidentally the only tree we've got, so at least it's a good one!