Gencon 2023 After Action Report Part 2

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Wednesday

Finally, it was time for the con. I had a crazy week as I wanted to leave my coworkers in the best situation possible as I told them I would not answer my phone for the next few days. The understood I was going to GM through the day and would not have my phone handy. Love these guys!

I got up, got everything packed in the minivan (those things are great for a Gencon event coordinator!) and headed to pick Thor and then Will.

The best part of the drive was... that there isn't anything to report about the drive. We stopped at Denny's and learned some of the WTF history of Indiana on the way.

Quick stop at the ICC. Checked out our game room. Got GM badges. Found and set up a fridge.

Hotel room for an early night.

Well... at least Will had an early night. I was gripped by insomnia again. On the plus side, I got to write 2,500 words on my Olympia novel. Great for work. Sucks for sleep.

It was time to game!

Thursday

My first slot was Thursday at 8am, running the Ozaka adventure Lady Mijiko's Journey. This would be the only Ozaka adventure offered at the con. So how it played really had me nervous. Add to it that following the playtest, the adventure saw significant re-writes. How would it work?

Well I left the adventure with blood on my hands. A lot of blood. Two party members died at the first battle (both roll natural '1s' after failing a death saving throw). I had to pull out the sidekicks in the first slot.

Then the very next encounter, another PC got killed, again with a natural '1' on a death saving throw...

Oh my! This promised to be a difficult weekend.

Only a few no-shows even at this early hour. I felt pretty positive about the attendance.

The afternoon was pretty full. My second table of Lady Mijiko ran without a hitch. I was ready to scale back and alter the adventure, but there was no problem there. Better tactics, better luck led to a more positive outcome.

Then it was time for our first Special... And the fun really began.

Oh not just because I had to change the order of the specials from the Gencon program. I had to swap them because while in the process of writing, the new order just made more sense.

The short of the story: PCs go investigating a local tower in ruin occupied by local monsters. When they get there, they find an open portal to a strange land... Ozaka! Traveling there, they meet locals who agree to help them. To find the missing portal piece, they have to brave the creature known as Chuwatori... a large reptilian creature that cannot be killed...

Screeeeech!

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