Gaming at Nunchcon 4.0 a review

So, I gamed yesterday at Nunchcon 4.0 for the first time in 10 months. Here is how the games went.A quick preview? It was awesome.

Game 1. Dungeon World

Wow do I love this game. It is everything I wish Dugeons and Dragons was at this point. Easy to learn. Easy to play, and just fun. The best part is what happens when either you fail an roll, or succeed, but with a cost. This is golden. 

Our party consisted of a fighter (me), a druid, a mage, a ranger, and a cleric. We were asked by a lord in the area to find out why homesteads were being murdered by someone (or something!). The plot isn’t really important.

What is important is that it reinforced my annoyances with mages that I talked about earlier this week. Mages suck So, this is what the wizard did in his first three attacks rolls in combat.

1.       Tried to cast invisibility on himself. Failed. Cast it on the person attacking him.

2.       Cast magic missile on enemy. Failed. Cast it on himself for damage.

3.       Cast magic missile on enemy. Failed. Spell hit everyone else, which killed two party members (including the mage) and two enemies.

As someone that loves this game and how badly things can go, that is awesome. As someone that has issue mages, it was another example of why they always suck.

In the end, we won. Defeated a troll and a member of the Fae.

Game 2. Mythender

The idea of being sort of godly and taking on and killing gods isn’t a bad idea at all.

The god in this instance was Thor. We all had our reasons for killing him. Mine was cuz he murdered my wife and child, so revenge was possibly a factor. The game had a lot of narrative, so you have to describe how you were going to attack, as it was very important.

Now if I had one complaint about the game, it was that it was a bit confusing. Part of that is that isn’t the games fault as we were trying to learn a very rules intensive game in a con setting. So trying to process character creation, while learning how to play the game was not any easy thing to do.

Saying that, the game was fun. Beating the crap out of Thor’s minions (and then Thor) in a very narrative way became a lot of fun. Becoming god-like throughout the game was a lot of fun. Although, one of the characters  made their form a baby, which was very odd.

But in the end, we killed Thor and that is all that mattered.

Game 3. Dread.

I love games of horror and I have wanted to play this game for years.  The mechanics are genius as it is uses Jenga to determine the outcome of what you are trying to do. There is only one problem.

I suck at Jenga.

Mostly due to the fact that I get impatient and just eventually pull out a block and it comes a tumbling down.

So the story was a bunch of people are at a haunted house, trying to determine if it is in fact haunted. There was a scientist, his wife, an assistant, a psychic, an inheritance, and a skeptic (me).

Sadly, and not to my surprise, I was the first to die as my Jenga skills are not great. Now we did not start playing this game until midnight and  what made it awesome was how it ended.

By the end there was death, hauntings, evil spirits, etc. But the two last people left were the scientist and the psychic. What made it great as they were trying to kill each other and just kept pulling block after block after block, trying to force the other to make the mistake that would end the game. This went on for a good 25 minutes or so and the stress of it was awesome. Epic even.

Eventually, the psychic finally made that mistake and the game ended. I can see why people love the game, but I would rather watch than play, as I just don’t  do Jenga well.

But it was an amazing thing  to see how it ended.

Overall

I had a great time. It was the first time I gamed since last December. Three great games and got to hang out with some cool people. Including a friend I have not seen in quite some times. A great, but exhausting day,. 

It has got my blood pumping to do much more gaming in the future.