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TridentCon 2016

Last weekend, I went to TridentCon and had a blast. +Erik Jensen really knows how to put on a great local con. This was my second year attending and I can't wait for next year's con.

I started my Saturday by running Savage Rifts. I was a bit nervous about this game as I have never run it before (it just came out). I have run Savage Worlds (although it has been several years) and I have run Rifts (at least twice as long ago for this one) but never the new version. It turns out that I had no reason to be concerned. I stuck with Savage Rifts standard conceit, the players are members of the tomorrow legion. I brought the pre-gens that came with the Kickstarter and the players picked the glitter boy, the cyber knight, and the burster. The combination worked well.

The setup of my adventure was that the Tomorrow Legion has detected that a rift has pulled a chunk of pre-Rifts earth into the world and sends the party, the closest unit, to investigate and help any people that may have been drawn through. The party arrived to find a valley filled with rapidly draining water, with a cruise ship and a private island in the center. They immediately assessed that the biggest danger was the cruise ship, which was filled with people and in danger of tipping as the valley drained.

The cyber knight and the burster rushed to help the crew evacuate the ship, while the glitter boy waded through the rushing water to the side of the cruise ship. Once there he placed his back firmly against the hull and began firing his rail gun to keep the ship upright. He continued to move to undamaged hull sections as the others improvised a bridge out of the life rafts. Before they could complete the evacuation, two coalition fighter jets streaked by, drawn by the islands tsunami warning system radios. As the jets circled back to engage, they transformed into giant robots.

The battle that followed heavily featured the glitter boy, as expected. It worked well. It moved fast and was a close call. If I run this again, I will add some smaller, fast moving, enemies for the other characters. They just couldn't dent the robots.

After the encounter, they got all of the radios turned off and the boat evacuated. The glitter boy had detected a large cylindrical object under the water while rescuing the cruise ship, as the water drained they could see it was a submarine. They decided to investigate the submarine. Everyone aboard seemed to be dead and the ship was filled with poisonous, radioactive, gas. As they were investigating the alarm system went off again, and a wizard riding a dragon attacked.

This encounter also went well and allowed for much broader involvement. The glitter boy focused on the dragon while the others went after the wizard.

After that threat was dealt with, they discovered that the alarm had been set off by one of the "tourists". They interrogated him and learned that he was actually from Rifts earth and had been sent back to bring the submarine and its armaments forward in time. They learned he worked for some kind of advanced AI.

Sadly we had to call the game short before the final planned encounter with a bunch skelebots and SAMAS. When I designed the encounters it was with the idea that the final would have the broadest appeal, but we didn't get started till more than an hour late and had to skip it.

Overall, I am happy with how the game went, and it showed that the system does work well when one person is playing a glitter boy and the others are playing something less immediately powerful. I do need to be careful with the first encounter, if someone had not picked the glitter boy (unlikely) or the cyborg, it could have been a slaughter. Perhaps I will trade one robot for a softer target.

I also ran Stonehell, which I recapped earlier. I played in +Charley Phipps AD&D 1e game. He ran Dwellers in the Forbidden City, and out large table had a great time. Many of the folks from my Stonehell game were also in this game. I also met +Zach H at this game.

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