Tuesday, July 16, 2013

[Atomic Robo] Action. Science. San Diego Comic-Con. UPDATED!

>UPDATE: SCHEDULING CHANGE. SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS. <

Hey, it's Comic-Con week! San Diego Comic-Con, to be precise. I know there are a lot of other comic-cons out there, but as everyone knows, this one's the biggest and the worst!

At Emerald City Comic-Con back in March, I got to see what a real, honest-to-goodness, comics-only comic convention looks like, without the Hollywood invasion that plagues San Diego these days, and y'know what? It was pretty great. (The fact that it's in Seattle, a city I like an awful lot, doesn't hurt.) But SDCC has one big advantage over ECCC: It doesn't require airfare and a hotel. It's local. So while I'll hold out hope of going back to ECCC ASAP, I'll continue to attend SDCC, BBQWTF.

Anyway, I'm running a couple sessions of ARRPG at SDCC this year, so I thought I'd tell you about 'em in a bit more detail than I did before.

The first will be Thursday at 2:00 pm. I'm not sure what this one will be. If I can get this Tesla's Seven scenario ironed out before then -- it seems pretty cool, but it requires game prep in the form of creating four new PCs -- I'll run that. It's 1893 at the Chicago World's Columbia Fair, and the assassination of Mayor Carter Harrison is only the tip of a conspiratorial iceberg that, as it turns out, is pretty science-oriented. The PCs are Nikola Tesla, expert escapist Harry Houdini, secret agent Winfield Scott Lovecraft, martial-arts master Wong Kei-Ying, and, of course, celebrity sharpshooter Annie Oakley. If you try real hard, you can fit this into the continuity of the second volume of Real Science Adventures, but if not, enh, whatever.

If that one doesn't come together, though, I'll run, I dunno, something else.

The second will be Thursday at 8:00 pm SUNDAY AT 10:00 AM. This one, I'm running for the Thursday Knights, who'll be... podcasting it? Livestreaming it? Either way. They livestreamed a playtest of ARRPG back in March, right before I finished writing it and before it went through the editing wringer. It was a big success at the table (whew), and when they contacted me to ask if it'd be okay if they ran it again at SDCC, I was like, how about I just run it for you? So that's what's going on. That means that the five player-spots here will likely be taken up by the Thursday Knights crew, but maybe not, and I don't know the specifics anyway, so if you want to play come on out and maybe you'll get to do just that.

The scenario for this evening SUNDAY MORNING game will probably be Atomic Robo and the Invaders from Mars. I've run this one a few times (including one session at ECCC with Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener as players), and it's always been fun. AND IT WILL HAPPEN ON SUNDAY MORNING AT 10:00 AM.

Which reminds me, one of the issues in the next volume of Real Science Adventures may or may not be inspired by this very scenario, so just in case, play it now before Brian and Scott spoil it for everybody. In fact, was that spoiling something just by mentioning the possibility of it? Whatever -- it centers around one of my favorite Atomic Robo characters, so I'll be psyched for it either way.

Both of these games will take place in the open gaming area, which is in Mezzanine 15A. You can't miss it! It's right next to 15B!

"What about Gam3rcon?" Uh... I dunno. Maybe Saturday THURSDAY night? I'm playing this one by ear right now, which probably isn't very smart, but look man, I've got a lot of stuff going on.

Now if you'll excuse me, Harry Houdini isn't going to stat himself. See you at the thing!

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