MEPACON Fall 2007 After Action Report

Having now been to my first Council, I can see a lot of similarities between these two conventions. There's a room for the vendors. There's rooms and tables for the board games, the strategy games, the marathon roleplay game sessions. There's an auction. There's people that I see there that I've now seen at Council (Besides Jon and Tersha Choy there was a group of gamers from the Connecticut area who I've seen everywhere).

There's also a number of differences between the two conventions.

Part of it is because this was in a hotel- so there was a pool that I didn't get a chance to use, a bar that I did use, and a bed a few hundred feet from where I was playing. But there are other events as well that set this convention apart.

First of all, one of these MEPACONs I'm going to get to the Paint-n-Take. I'm not exactly sure how it's set up (because I'm usually running mods at the same time), but they have tables set aside where you pick a mini and start painting, then you take the mini home. This is a deal that they've worked out with one of the vendors- they provide the mini and the paint. They also have a miniature painting contest. A friend of mine at the con usually does really well at it, particularly in a new category for Warhammer Squads (which I think he won, but I'd have to check).

Besides the auction (where the money from a good portion of the items is donated to a charity), they also have a raffle and a Dice Guess. For the raffle, they have a table of prizes and as each number is called the winner gets to pick from the remaining prizes. The Dice Guess is a big jar of dice and other pieces (like pencil sharpeners) and whoever buys a ticket and is closest to the number of *dice* in the jar wins the jar and it's contents. In the raffle I won once and chose a book of Cuthulu mythos short stories (the D&D stuff had already been picked over by the time my ticket was drawn).

MEPACon also has other random giveaways during the weekend. Usually once a slot someone will win a pack of random rpg books (usually including some d20 printed mods booklets, a hardcover random game book, and a pack of a card based game). The RPGA room had it's own raffle for "Greyhawk Pride Day" (which was set up as a show of solidarity since WOTC is ending the Greyhawk Campaign on us), which I ended up winning. I know I got the new (and so soon to be out of date with D&D 4.0 release) Exemplars of Evil supplement, a copy of Geek Wars: Battle for the Con- Deck 1 RPG Gamer, the Book of Templates: Deluxe Edition (not so be confused with the one by Silverthorne Games supplement with the same name) and a few other random module booklets.

I also know that there were a couple of LARPS going on. I didn't get a chance to check them out because I spent most of my con in the RPGA room. Which shouldn't be a shock- most of my rpg playing since January 2006 has been based in the Living Greyhawk campaign, especially since the home Ars Magica game went on prolonged hiatus.

I ran a few mods and played a few. I actually played more than I had expected to because I had signed up to judge all but one slot. I ended up playing 4 games, three of which were LG games. I managed to get COR7-08: Sins of the Father, KEO6-04: Old Sins Cast Long Shadows, and KEO7-06: A Bright Scaled Horror under my various

characters' belts.

The one non-LG game I played was on Saturday morning with a completely different system. The game is called Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, and they have their own version of a living campaign with Witch Hunter: Dark Providence. Witch Hunter is from Paradigm Concepts which has supported the Living Arcanis campagin since it split from the RPGA back in March 2007. The people running the game were also at Council, so I was glad that I actually got a chance to check them out.

Witch Hunter is a good game, and I enjoyed myself immensely, but like any new game it has some kinks to work out (like there's equipment listed like a medical kit that has no stats listed anywhere so we can tell what effect it has on a person's healing attempt roll). This looks like it is their first game from scratch (Living Arcanis is based on the d20 Open Gaming License), and while everyone was learning rules the person running the game was making notes to go back to the publisher with (he knows them).

Lastly, while not gaming news, I got a chance to get a new batch of books with CJ Henderson stories- I've gotten to be something of a fan. If you like reading pulp fiction, Cuthulu mythos stories, and the like he's a good author to check out.