Tabletop Day with the Game Knights

 



 

 

Still Recovering

 

I don't know about all of you, but our family is still recovering from a very busy International Tabletop Day weekend!  Preparations for the Norwin Game Knights event were weeks in the making, from coordinating tasks to promoting the special day.  We even got our event featured in the local newspaper!  Our amazing club member were on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and out in the community spreading the word and looking for gamers.  Thank you to everyone who brought games, snacks, and great attitudes!  I have to thank Andy, Jeremy, and the entire Schock family for helping with decorations on Friday night.  Cheryl also organized the food and helped find people games to play during the event.  I certainly have to thank my determined wife Jennifer, who coordinated most the logistics for the event. 

 

All I really did was show up and play!

 

 

Thanks Jennifer!

 

Tales from the Table

 

 

We had board games, card games, and other tabletop favorites on Saturday, but most of  my time was spent at an RPG table.  I ran a pair of events, and I thought I'd share a few of the high points from those sessions:

 

 

 

 

The Strange:  My first role-playing event for International Tabletop Day was a slightly altered version of "The Curious Case of Tom Mallard" featured in the back of The Strange corebook.  Since we had a short two-hour limit for the session, I turned the adventure into a chase, with Tom Mallard still in the home when the players arrived for the stakeout.  The player characters then had to follow Tom through a translation gate and into Ardeyn, experiencing an exciting foot-chase through the busy streets of Shalmarn.  My favorite scene from the event was when Steve, playing Arlo a Sharp-Eyed Vector who Carries a Quiver, wanted to snipe Tom Mallard from nearly a quarter-mile away.  Using a cypher that supernaturally extended his range, and a can of Red Bull that I allowed to translate without alteration, Arlo managed to seriously wound his target. 

 

As an added bonus, we played this game to raise money for Genre's Kids with Cancer Fund, and collected $60 for charity!  My players rock!

 

 

 

 

Dungeon Crawl Classics - Stormtroopers:  The second RPG that I ran was a wicked romp through the abandoned Mos Espa Podrace course, with a platoon of twenty-four stormtroopers, played by eight young gamers.  We used the occupation list that I compiled last week to come up with some fun backgrounds, from Death Star HR Admin to Tauntaun Tamer.  A bantha was captured, there was some player versus player conflict, and everything came to an exciting conclusion when the fourteen remaining stormtroopers confronted their target: an exiled Jedi.  Only half of the remaining stormtroopers survived an encounter where every missed blast was redirected back towards the armored soldiers.  Two players even had their stormtroopers flee, just so that they could say their characters lived! 

 

 

The Next Generation

 

What made this year's International Tabletop Day more special was that my son Cooper was finally able to participate in an event with us!   We've had him at our home game table, and he's visited the Norwin Game Knights before, but never had the chance to sit down and play.  Here's hoping he'll behave at next year's event! 

 

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How did you celebrate International Tabletop Day?  Did you go to a local game store or club, or did you stay at home and hang with friends and family?  We'd love to hear your stories and see your pictures!