BashCon 2018 came and went this past weekend. It was pretty low on the BashCon organizational cycle (which exists because no one on staff ever has more than three years of experience). The facility is still wonderful in any case, and I usually spend my time hanging out with people I already knew, anyway. I managed to get in two RPG games (one of which ran two sessions) and two board games, which may be some kind of record for me.

Got in an hour later than planned on Thursday night, but I hadn’t been pushing since my primary Thursday plan (conversational meal with Toledo Denizen Jody D.) had already been cancelled, and the fog along the way was thick enough to be stressful. I had once again failed to acquire contact information for any of the other people I might see, so just checked in and drove off to IHOP for supper. Might have gotten in on a Crawlspace session that took place a hundred feet from my room, but then would have missed my best IHOP meal ever. Oh, well.

Friday I still had made no contact, so went to a movie (the most recent “Maze Runner”), and then rushed back to the room to complete the LAST installment of a Neopets thing that has been going on since September, wasn’t available until 3:00 PM, and had to be done THAT DAY to get full credit. Ten minute game took five tries and two hours to finish (It was NOT a game you could dive back into immediately; you needed to take time out to breathe.). Headed over to the University of Toledo, got checked in almost instantly, spent some time in conversation with Toledo Denizen Bryan S., and then made contact with what seems to be called “The Perytons” for an RPG session.

The game was a wild west variant of “Stay Alive”, which is itself a zombie focused contemporary variant of “Tunnels & Trolls”. Designer Jerry T. used an actual railroad to railroad his herd of cats to the main challenge site, and THEN the Powers That Be chased us out of the hall an hour before the scheduled end time. We decided to attempt to finish the game the following evening.

My evening ended with a great conversational meal with Robin (the original Peryton) and Tom (Robin’s husband and co-conspirator). We have known each other, on line at least, since I started hanging out on the Trollhalla board in mid-2008, and it is always good to spend time with them.

Saturday I made a half-hearted effort to get to Jerry’s 10:00 AM game of “Circus Imperium”, but fatigue and sanity won out. I staggered into the con noonish, got registered for the 2:00 PM “Circus”, hung out, and played two rounds of a very cool prototype game called, “Mental Blocks”, which was a lot of fun. I hope it comes out; I enjoyed it a great deal. “Circus Imperium” is a giant sized con presentation of an out of print chariot race board game that evolved from an attempt to game the pod races from “The Phantom Menace” that failed due to loss of rights. It was a pretty good game and a great presentation, though I had to wonder what it might have been like with “Formula De” style speed dice. (My brain never stops tampering with the rules.) Saturday evening saw the conclusion of the Jerry’s dimension hopping wild west game, and a room party back at the hotel that was kept small by surprisingly heavy snowfall.

Sunday morning brought a D&D 2e session, again under the indefatigable Jerry T. It was the first time I had played that particular flavor of D&D, and with the largest gaming group: 11 players. It makes me wonder how EGG used to do it, in the old days, with 15 to 20. Still, it was a good group, and a good game. Jerry did a great job of keeping everything moving, and making sure the Big Bad was in range to be killed just before the clock ran out. The gang then migrated to a local Mexican restaurant for food, conversation, and post mortem (and a fair amount of GenCon planning); Tom and Robin were the last to hit the road, after which I considered hitting another movie, and instead just blodged. Eventually I revisited IHOP for the worst IHOP meal I had ever had, and went to bed early. On Monday, the fog came back to escort me home.