JP On Gaming

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

JP at PaizoCon, Day 3: 4e bigwigs beat up JP

Saturday morning brought another early morning. Bah... Nothing enthusiasm and coffee would not fix. Okay, maybe a lot of coffee. So, breakfast with Auke as we chatted with a number of others.

I was on-time for my morning slot (Heresy of Man pt 2) and waited and waited and waited "Tampa" Mike and I talked as we waited on our table. Finally Hyrum walks in with a surprised look You don’t have a table [of players]? We both say no. So he asks me to run one of the Shadow’s Last Stand (which I had not played). So I quickly with an offer for the Midnight Mauler, an offer he quickly accepted.

So I get the paperwork, set up, start looking at my minis. Four players show up and sit at my table. I give them a cursory glance (as I praktiss my aksent under my brett). They look somehow familiar. Someone asks me Is that Chris Tulach? to which I respond No, Chris Tulach is a short fat guy!

Well, it turns out my observant player was right! Chris lost a lot of weight. My table consisted of Chris Tulach, Mike Mearls, Rob Watkins and Chris Perkins. All the big-wigs of 4e! Pressure to give them a good game experience was on! After running my mouth about 3.5 > 4 all this time, now I had to bring my A-1 SUPER AWESOME TOP-LEVEL GAME. Lucky for me, I had a good module. Midnight Mauler is my favorite (no surprise I ran it about 15 times).

The game went very well, lots of role-play, jib-jab between them, but from my perspective and from their feedback to me and to my bosses (Hyrum and Mark) they also had a blast. I now have that anecdote for my memoirs… I would not have believed it.

Nice.

Okay… now to complain… I can now say that I got my butt kicked by the big names of 4e, as they all jumped me together!

The afternoon saw me running Shades of Ice III. Fun times. Love the story but the final battle is a tad weak.

Then came the banquet. I sat at Stephen Radney-McFarland’s table (aka SRM) and enjoyed some very fun conversation with a table of nice guys. Learned more about SRM and his story with Wizards, his time Paizo, work environments, changes over time, the TSR/Wizard takeover, in short a lot of fun things I didn’t know. Some I heard from other sources but none from SRM’s own perspective. Very informative.

The Previews were very nice. I am particularly interested in the Ultimates Races scheduled for the late spring of 2012. The Beginner box is not targeted at me (a veteran Pathfinder player), but it is a very nice product with a lightened version of the rules, about 80 cardboard tokens. In short all you need in a box. And the price tag is nice: 35$. Good stuff. I think this will sell VERY well.

The Wizkids prepainted minis really surprised me. I knew they would be nice, but they poses are very dynamic. I was blown away… now to buy and repaint.

Now come on.

You didn’t expect me to use or show up with the same mini as everyone else, did you???

Those are very nice, the Valeros especially. Valeros is the two-weapon fighter and all the minis I seen of him so far did not seem as nice. That one really got me excited. Really cool. Another product I am sure will do well. Very very nice minis.

Came the Quiz, my table disappeared on me as I was fetching a coffee to remain active. So I sat at another table and served as a Paizo employee for the quiz. My table scored 30/50 and came up in the top 5. Nice.

Sleep was good.

JP

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