[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!

[Fate Core] Games at ECCC! UPDATED!

Where will the Fate Core and Atomic Robo gaming be at Emerald City Comic Con? And will it be raining in that room?

I can't answer the second question (yet), but as to the matter of location, it looks like we'll be we are on the lower level of The Conference Center. That's the building across the street from the convention center, apparently. That's where Story Games Seattle will be, so that seems like the most likely place for us to set up shop too. We have a dedicated table just for Atomic Robo games at a circular table in the Story Games Seattle area. Many thanks to Ed Healy and Ben Robbins for securing that for us.

That said, it's possible that there's a better place for us in the conference center proper, but I kinda doubt it. As I may have mentioned, I haven't been able to get anyone to give me a definitive answer on where, when, and how other tabletop gaming is happening at the con, but from the website it looks like it's all going to be in The Conference Center. The really good news is that it's open until midnight, so we can run games fairly late.

I'm planning on running at least two more games of ARRPG this weekend: Saturday afternoon at 1:00, and Sunday morning at 9:00. Morgan's also around to GM it and the Fate Core Tron game we will obviously force him to run. Sunday, a local playtester named John Powell will also be there to run a game. So yeah, Atomic Robo games are happening.

Regardless, sign up for games at Table G-4. That's where Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener will be flogging their wares. Here's a map:

You can also sign up for games in the Story Games Seattle area, by their big sign next to the Gamma Ray Games table.

[Fate Core] ECCC and Fate Con

So! Coupla things coming up for Fate Core fans on the West Coast and/or who enjoy travel.

Next weekend, March 1st through 3rd, Morgan Ellis and I will be up at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle running Fate stuff. Most notably, we'll both be running Atomic Robo, and probably something else using Fate Core too. (Put in your requests for Morgan's Tron game now.) And maybe something else entirely that's not even Fate. Hey, we like all kinds of games!

When will we be running them, and where in the convention center will those games be taking place? I wish I could tell you, but I have no idea! Every attempt I've made to even see something resembling a schedule of games, let alone put something on it, has met with utter failure at best and apparent apathy at worst.

So here's what we're gonna do. For the ARRPG games, we'll see about having a sign-up sheet on-site, hopefully at the Comixology booth, if we can swing that. One of those ARRPG games will be Sunday morning (sometime, somewhere) and Brian and Scott will both be players, so take note.

The other Fate Core games... I dunno. I'll post something here next Friday when I actually get there and see what we're working with. Follow me on Twitter for specifics. There will be tweets.

After that, on April 13th, at Endgame in Oakland, CA, the first-ever Fate Con will happen with a vengeance. Two time slots, 10 am to 2 pm and 3 pm to 7 pm, with as many as seven games per slot (man, I gotta get up to Endgame sometime). So maybe 14 Fate Core games in a single day! That's crazy. Go up there and make it happen. Me, I have a prior engagement, so sadly I won't be able to be there. But you -- you should totally go. It's not the sort of thing you want to miss, unless you've already told your wife that nothing's more important that weekend than going to see this play for her birthday, and even if there were a convention that weekend -- which there wasn't when you said that -- you'd bail on it without hesitation for her sake. That's just a f'rinstance.