This past weekend Mary and I attended HBG-Con. “Con” may be a little ambitious a word for it, but it’s always a good time. HBG-Con happens three times a year. Local Connecticut game store House of Books and Games books the tables local Connecticut brewery Luppoleto for a Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoon for multiple tables of RPG (and beverage) fun. Here are some thoughts about what Mary and I got to play:
Saturday morning: Star Trek Adventures
Star Trek Adventures is a fine game. I’m only a casual Star Trek fan, and I often find RPGs based on strongly developed IPs leave me feeling a little limited (which I understand is not logical, but it is what it is). That said, this was not our first time playing and I find its mix-and-match d20 system fun.
Our adventure was a nifty little murder mystery at an archaeological dig site on a remote planet in the Cardassian Neutral Zone. As transporter chief, I willingly stayed behind on the ship while Mary, the Vulcan Medical Officer got to lead the investigation team, which (surprise!) led to Cardassian and Ferengi involvement. In the latter half of the adventure, having the highest-ranking character of the party, I found myself in command of the ship (a questionable decision!) and we located and disabled the Cardassian Black Ops ship operating illegally in the area - although that meant letting their Ferengi accomplices escape.
As we used our tractor beam to pull the offending ship in, a much larger Cardassian warship exited a nearby nebula. Shortly after, our sensors indicated the smaller ship we were pulling in initiated a warp core breach. We quickly maneuvered our ship in a tight, fast loop then released the tractor beam with the intent of flinging the doomed ship at the Cardassian war vessel. Our Helmsman rolled beautifully, and our opponents rolled poorly. We were just able to get a subspace message in that we were returning their missing property before both ships blew into just so much space debris.
I’m certain in an ongoing game our actions would have had terrible ramifications but hey … we had fun!
Saturday afternoon: The One Ring
This is the Free League version, which I was excited to try despite another game tied to a strong IP. This was a first-time play for both Mary and I. I played a Man of Bree, and Mary a Hobbit of the Shire. We and the rest of our fellowship were tasked by Gandalf to investigate some missing travelers, and investigate a tower that would glow with a strange witchlight.
While the missing travelers would eventually be chalked up to some bandits operating in the area, the light was a different thing altogether. Reaching the tower proved to be quite a challenge, and my Messenger from Bree very nearly did not make it. I rushed forward alongside my Dwarf friend to give others a chance at fighting from the rear while battling some undead, despite perhaps not being best suited for aggressive combat. None-the-less, my compatriots rewarded my sacrifice by preventing me from dying, although the GM informed me that the shoulder injury I sustained would continue to haunt me for the rest of my days.
This game was a ton of fun and we had an outstanding GM! Given the whole “ties to established IP” thing, I don’t know that it’s something I’d ever look to run on a regular basis. Especially with Mythic Bastionland having just been released and filling a similarly heroic, low-fantasy niche, but that didn’t stop Mary and I from dropping our door-prize vouchers in the bowl for a copy of the starter set (spoiler alert - we didn’t win).
Sunday Morning: Heroes of Ribhus Burn 2d6
Sunday morning’s planned game - Heroes of Ribhus - was a popular D&D Organized Play campaign sponsored and run by a local game store during the 3.x edition days. That store is no longer around, and the game had taken a long hiatus, but was now back for 5e. I had only ever dabbled, but still Mary and I were looking forward to the nostalgia, and connecting with some people we hadn’t gamed with in decades.
Unfortunately the game fell victim to the Sunday Morning Curse that plagues many conventions, and is only exacerbated at a small event like HBG. Mary and I and the GM were the only ones who showed. No worries, however! We merged with a Burn 2d6 table that also had some no shows for a particularly good time.
Burn 2d6 is a rules-lite, setting agnostic system. You have stats in Move, Heart, Eyes, and Soul. When you need to overcome a challenge, the GM directs you to roll under a DC using 2 (or more) d6. If the roll is particularly challenging, or the outcome extremely important you can choose to add “burn” to the relevant stat to reduce the number of dice rolled. This does not lower your stat, but damage would and if your stat is ever equal to or less than the amount of Burn you’ve taken on, bad things happen (i.e. death, etc).
Our adventure was modern horror themed, but we’ve played with this GM before and know to expect more wacky hijinks than creepy vibes. I picked the “circus strongman” character and decided to model him after “Artie - the Strongest Man in the World” from the old Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
This led to some great scenes including leaping from a nearby seawall to bash a small deep-sea horror with the “Live, Laugh, Love” garden decoration I had managed to pick up somewhere. And then delivering the final blow to the greater horror by ripping the deep-fryer out of a nearby empanada food truck to douse it into an oversized fried calamari.
Sunday afternoon - Numenera
Our final game was the Monte Cook designed science fantasy RPG Numenera. That sentence 100% reflects everything I knew about the game going in.
I’m going to be honest, I went in with curiosity but low expectations. And while I’d say nothing about the game stood out to me mechanically, I was more than a bit smitten with the game world. I could see myself picking up a copy and incorporating some of the lore into a setting I’d run with a more rules-lite system like Troika!
Our mission involved investigating some statues that were speaking in some undecipherable language, and although we succeeded, by the end we were left with as many new questions as we had answers. I would have been happy to continue the story. It helped that we had an excellent GM, I’m sure (the same gentleman who ran us through Star Trek the day before).
The next HBG-Con is scheduled for October 18 & 19 and is going to fit right into a short run of excellent fall conventions in our area, including ShireCon September 26-27, Dire Consequences November 1-2, and perhaps the one I’m most looking forward to; ArcaneCon November 7-8.
