Barton's Origins Report and photos

[Barton]

Barton's Origins was fun but as usual exhausting, many games, too little sleep.

Gave a ride down to Columbus to my friends Joe L. and Rick Lacy on Wednesday. On Wednesday night got to be a player in a GM only game with Dave Mattingly as GM. It was fun and we beat the bad guy in the end.

Teen Champions - Meyerson Academy was up first at 8am on Thursday. I gamemastered the Teen Champions event. I had three players. {All Meyerson Academy games are designed for children and/or teach players the system, but adults like the lighter take on superheroes}.
Rick Lacy is a good friend of mine but he had NEVER played in this game and played the female teenager who has luck based energy projector powers; "Hapenstance". Rick had fun causing the Danger Room robots to malfunciton. Morgan Hazel played Bug Boy and Iron Mike. He had a good time playing Bug Boy the metamorph who likes bugs more than people and can turn into giant insects. The third player was Alyssa Hazel who played ShadowSword, a teenage martial artist who does not get along with authority figures. She liked to taunt the AI who controls the Danger Room (she came up with some great taunts to Doris; yes Doris the Danger Room). The winner of the Hero Games discount coupon was Alyssa.

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Alyssa Hazel and Morgan Hazel

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Rick Lacy

[Barton]

Thursday afternoon was shopping, purchased a cool mini (I will post a photo when it arrives) and purchased ETI - Estimated Time to Invasion a board game by Eye-Level Entertainment. Stopped by the Hero booth and saw HeroTina and her better half. Talked with Darren; said hello to Steve Long and purchased PS238.

Thursday at 5pm was my Foxbat the Wildcard game! I GM'ed two players for my Foxbat fun. They used one of the NPC's to distract a combatant (I can not give details for I am running this also at GenCon in a few weeks; but let me say the distraction was effective and very funny). Rick Lacy and Ed Farnbuch had a good time investigating Foxbat's Casino scheme. Sorry, I have no pictures of that game.

Friday at 10am I attended a Intro to Classic BattleTech RPG. Then I shopped a little more.

[Barton]

Friday at 1PM I GM'ed the Teen Champions - Meyerson Academy After School Special. In this game they go to the mall.
This game was a HOOT!!!
I had nine players (the game has seven slots but in all of my Meyerson Academy games I have more characters than slots so overflow of players is rarely a problem).
I then had a player show up that was PERFECT for my game. This "made" my convention.

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Kristi Neale - Jesterette 2007 and Casey Ballenger - Jesterette 2008

Jesterette is the teen speedster character in my Meyerson Academy games. I use the HARLEY QUINN HeroClick mini for the character. Casey's costume was TOO perfect. She was Jesterette for this game!

Kristi played Jesterette in 2007 and now Casey was the "new" Jesterette. Kristi played the character Stretch, a rubberman type teen and she played him very well including his shyness! Well played.

Eric Gerlach played Iron Mike and did considerable property damage to the mall, but he did well versus the demonic opponents!
Carey Coombs played Hapentance, a luck power based character, I think she had fun playing the rich teen and taunting the cheerleaders.

Breanna Piorkowski played ShadowSword, and the little girl liked chopping blood demons to pieces. Her little brother Quinn (the winner of the game) played BugBoy he liked changing into huge insects and had a great time. Sheryl played Energetta and her children saw her behave badly, a big kick to her children. Brian Piorkowski played Cpl. Chicago; he played it up; Chicago is his kind of town!

My friend Rick Lacy helped by playing the bad guys! Thanks Rick!!!

Kristi is a groupie of my Meyerson games she recruited the Piorkowski family to this game, thanks Kristi!!!

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Left to Right; Sheryl and Breanna Piorkowski, Kristi Neale, Brian Piorkowski and Quinn, Carey Coombs, and Casey Ballenger

HeroClick is a trademark of WizKids. HARLEY QUINN is trademarked character of DC.

[Barton]

Friday at 5pm I GM'ed Teen Champions - Meyerson Academy Class Trip. This is where the teenagers go to Mexico and meet Mexican wrestlers to rid a small village of werewolves. It was the fun, crossover of Teen Champions with Lucha Libre Hero. I wish to thank Darren Watts for helping me with NPC's and villains for this game.
The three players liked the idea of hidden war of Mexican wrestlers vs. dark forces. Dan Gerald played the teen cowboy Cody Harlan (thanks for playing Cody, he is a favorite of mine), Cassidy Daugherty played speedster Jesterette PERFECTLY. Logan Daugherty played the player favorite Bug Boy.
After the characters arrived in Mexico City they are introduced to The Spectre; a masked wrestler. He had a training session that was well played by the players. Jesterette used her speed powers to go the bathroom and generally trying to avoid wrestling training. Bug Boy was supposed to master a escape move, he could not do it. So Logan just had Bug Boy metamorph into a giant dragonfly and the growth allowed escape. The players were given wrestling names of Bug Boy = El Scropio, Jesterette = La Jesteretta, and Cody was renamed El Texo.
They then heard of a rural village plagued by werewolves. The players roleplayed this well. They did not believe in werewolves until they were shown that south of the border they are quite real.
Upon arriving at the village the players got to meet the local priest Father Tom Grabowski, a Chicago priest assigned here to learn Spainish the immersion way. He met the players and blessed them. At this point I as a GM asked the players if I was playing the priest correctly (I am not Roman Catholic) and I was told that I was doing it well, which made me very happy.
They then did some investigation; Cody borrowed a horse and found how the werewolves were coming into the village, Bug Boy "talked" to his bugs and they gave him crucial info on strange events going on in the village. Jesterette expertly played by Cassidy, was more interested in her self and her costume jewelery. This attracted the poor local children and this led to great roleplaying as she made some new friends.
Then the group investigated the scene of the last attack and then a woman transformed into a werewolf and the fight was on. Finally they defeated several werewolves and the village was saved.
I as a GM was very happy at how it turned out and I am planning to run a game like this again in 2009. The winner was Logan Daugherty.

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Dan Gerald

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Cassidy Daugherty and Logan Daugherty
FYI: Cassidy played in my Meyerson Academy game - 2007 Origins another returning player!

[Barton]

Friday at 10PM went to a War College seminar Kim Jong-il and North Korea. The seminar was very interesting about the games North Korea likes to play with the west. Origins War College seminars are well done and the presenters are often have access to very secret info and their opinions are interesting.

Saturday I played in the Last Action Haymaker Brawl by Dave Mattingly. A very fun brawl game of SciFi characters vs. each other then survivors vs. fantasy characters. I played The Six Million Dollar Man. I lasted only a few seconds until the Terminator punched my guts out (messy and deadly). Then I played Ash from Army of Darkness. Fun to play; chainsaw arm and lots of funny lines (shop smart shop s-mart!). I was on the winning side then. Dave provided little color printouts of the movie poster or TV ads for each character; as you beat another character you "claimed" his poster. Nice touch.

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[Barton]

Saturday afternoon I played in the Dr. Destroyer slug fest. It was very fun.
I played Quasar.
See http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66538

Saturday night I played in the Hero Games All-Stars 2008 gamemastered by no less than the Darren Watts. Darren is a GREAT GM (he does not think so, but in his element and this game was in his element; he is top of the heap).
He mixed radio, movie, film, TV, and book characters from the late 1880's. I played the Lone Ranger and Tonto. My friend Rick Lacy had the perfect character for him, Caine from the TV series Kung Fu (he loved that series, seen every episode). I played the Lone Ranger to type except that he was more accepting of ideas if they were good ideas. Caine kept giving him good ideas that he would use. It was a blast to have the Lone Ranger attack dinos! Joe L. played Peter Pan, Joe played Peter perfectly and was fun to just watch him play him. The big battle was a mix of characters from at least 7 books/movies. Very fun, Darren is a good story teller and made the mixed up world come alive.

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Joe L., Darren Watts, and Rick Lacy

[Barton]

Sunday at 8am I gamemastered Teen Champions - Meyerson Academy The Mayor’s Task. This was a playtest for a module that I am very slowly writing . The players JJ Young and Scott Moellmer were a big help in the play test. Scott could only stay for 90 minutes but seemed to have fun. JJ was very helpful in finding a few minor bugs in my module. Thanks again for your playtesting comments and help JJ!!

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JJ Young

Later that day I played in Shane's into the Zone game. Very good concept (limited area that is effected by the weirdness; the government is keeping access very limted) and the world is well thought out and he brings it alive. I played a gun bunny who was "in charge", but not really. We had some good fights and some investigation. I hope he runs another installment next year. He used a flat screen monitor and a laptop for maps, a great idea and worked fairly well.

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Darren Watts (left), Shane is to the right. Bottom center is the flat screen monitor "map".

[TygerLily]

I played The Six Million Dollar Man. I lasted only a few seconds until the Terminator punched my guts out (messy and deadly). Then I played Ash from Army of Darkness. Fun to play; chainsaw arm and lots of funny lines (shop smart shop s-mart!).

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If it helps, the Terminator came back to the hotel still talking like the character and had nothing but good things to say about the person who played both The Six Dollar Man and Ash, as well as all the players in the game. *hehe* I think this was one of David's favorite games, as he is still talking about it! That's a really good picture of the two Dave's! I find it funny that apparently David was introduced as Mr. TygerLily.

[Barton]

It was funny in round two of the game the Terminator became T2 and protected Spock; it was funny.
The bad Austrian accent was a nice touch.

[CpSpalding]

Cool recap Barton. I'm way behind on my short little recap without pictures. I need to get to it ASAP.