Saturday
Saturday was breakfast with Mike Stackpole and David Honigsberg: Mike and I have been trying to make a habit of dining together at least once, and this was my first chance to meet David. David and I would have dinner that night, too. Fun people, both of them. That evening David got me in to the Wizards of the Coast party, where I got to see guests Larry Niven and James Doohan, plus meet author Jane Linskold, who was Roger Zelazny’s companion at his death.
Saturday afternoon was my Vampire game, with one pre-registered player and three generics. I was able to pare down the character list to the bare minimum necessary to complete the game. It ran a little over the scheduled four hours, but no one had anything later, and was very well received. It was difficult selecting a winner, but I managed.
The scenario involved a group of vampires being sent from Chicago to investigate a city that has had little communication with other vampires: Fort Wayne, Indiana.
This game resulted in the two best bits from any of my games at GenCon:
The first was when one of the vampire player characters stepped on a place the player was repeatedly warned about, a city block with a (red herring) arcanely-protected cathedral in the center. *sizzle* In order to heal the would the character had taken, they needed a fair amount of blood. The answer was to order out. I had given the players a stack of material about the area, and one of them found a coupon for 24 hour pizza delivery. So they called and ordered, and 30 minutes later they heard a knock at their hotel room door. The pizza delivery guy stepped in, and was met by another of the vampires (who not only has the traditional vampiric hypnotic stare but is an expert in mundane hypnosis as well) looking him in the eyes and saying “You are very sleepy … very sleepy.” It was fairly easy to entrance the guy, and the wounded vampire took enough blood to partially replace what she had spent in healing herself. After several minutes, they woke the guy up, gave him a $20, and sent him on his way. Two minutes later he was back at the door: he had forgotten to leave the pizza.
The second was when the guy playing the Malkavian (a vampiric clan known for their insanity) got into his numbers mania right at the start, and would have been my choice for the $5 gift certificate, except he refused it. At one point he was bemoaning the lack of knowing the number of dimples on a golf ball, that being the last number he needed to complete his equation. When he was given a Nixon mask to wear for a costume ball, he declared “I can mathematically prove that I am innocent.”
Saturday night I spent watching too many Japanese animae programs, mostly the series Ranma 1⁄2. Ranma is a young guy cursed with turning into a (cute red-haired) girl whenever he gets wet: hot water will restore his normal form. He’s also one of the five best martial artists in the world: his father, who is similarly cursed, but turns into a giant panda, is another. Of course the series goes to great lengths finding ways to get him wet. He’s also been promised in an arranged marriage to the daughter of another martial artist; she thinks Ranma is “weird”. Martial arts mayhem, mistaken identities, running gags, bad jokes and puns: this series has it all.
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