LEGO Somara & Steve all ready to play! Hanging at this year’s cool Savage Worlds: Battle of the LEGO Bands game.
The Austin area’s primary gaming convention coincides at a bad time but I always go with it first because we don’t have anything better nor closer (allegedly HavenCon is trying to turn that around). GenCon is in Indiacrapolis (pass), DragonCon is in Atlanta and PaizoCon is in Seattle around Memorial Day weekend. However, I think ChupacabraCon has potential and I want to see what I can do to get it to grow further. The only serious competition it may have are those franchise conventions run by Hasbro and their San Antonio-based offering is at a bad time of the year, January. Plus, I don’t believe Hasbro has a good grip on D&D.
As for the “bad time”…well, it happens during May the Fourth be with You weekend and there’s an incredible fan expo in Dallas; this year they had three of the five voices from Teen Titans Go! and the principle cast of Back to the Future. There’s next year.
Back to ChupacabraCon!
I scored an early weekend pass to save $10 but more importantly, I secured spots to play Call of Cthulhu and Flash Gordon (Savage Worlds rules). Didn’t bother with any D&D/PF, the lion’s share of those games are “organized play” scenarios which are boring. Ran into friends/former players Mark and John. No luck getting to play alongside them in anything. The lady who ran a Simpsons game (Savage Worlds rules too) did something equally impressive, a battle of the bands adventure using LEGO minifigs with the Friends line of accessories. I do want to get back to the Flash Gordon fun. I was in two different games. I was a lion man and a sarcastic maintenance robot.
A talented young artist dressed up as Link.
I definitely need to get off my ass for ChupacabraCon VII. Savage Worlds is flexible enough to do my long overdue Futurama idea but now I have King of the Hill action figures and Super 7 has a ton to work with. LEGO and Playmobil are filled with possibilities too. Send me your suggestions!
The photo above is a very cool, sweet artist named Erika. Check out her Instagram stuff via owlette23. I bought a couple customized notebooks from her, one is the spell book for my second campaign’s wizard. The must-have items I did get were these miniature books which were the perfect scale to give my Playmobil Fantasy figures.
The short wish list I have for next year’s convention is easy. A bigger venue that still has free WiFi yet more power outlets and sound-dampening curtains to put around the tables; it can be really annoying when you can’t hear the other players or you have a soft-spoken GM. Lastly, getting my gaming sensei Lester to be a key guest in which he can run events based upon his d6xd6 system.