ReaperCon, Part 4

Sandra Garrity again, demonstrating the uses of the Dremel. I felt redeemed for years of being looked down on by people who use pin vices... So... where'd the copy of "Dungeons and Dragons, Original Basic" come from? And how much did it go for at auction?

"My preciousssss......" Michael contemplates his Boneyard treasures Saturday night at the hotel...

ReaperBryan meets two other ReaperBryans.

Bryan probably thought I was kidding when I said I wanted to buy some of the ReaperBryan miniatures. I wasn't. "Generic twentieth century guy without a gun" miniatures are actually kind of hard to come by, and one of my votes for "Chronoscope Figures I'd Like To See" was for "generic gamer dude." Admittedly, Bryan ain't bald or fat enough to make a good Dr. Bedlam conversion, but with time and effort... (and hey, I DID learn some neat tricks from Sandra Garrity...)

ReaperCon Part 3

Sandra Garrity at a conversion class. She made manhandling the Green Stuff look so easy, I wanted to cry. Since I did not, I learned a thing or two... Upstairs in the Artists Room. Beautiful work and use of color and light. Things like this make me despair that I didn't think of 'em... and inspire me to do better.

I have no idea what kind of game this was, but I kind of wished I'd stopped to play it.

Does EVERY hotel in the DFW area have Texas-shaped waffle makers? Someone's making a mint, selling these waffle makers.

Open painting, again. Man, I could just LIVE here...

ReaperCon '10 Part Two

And so, we arrived at ReaperCon.

This is my second year to attend ReaperCon, and I think it's a fine con for a guy my age. It's about the minis and the games, not so much about "how much money can we extract from the paying public?"


The speed crawl. The object: To hunt and kill a dragon in the surroundings shown, using 4E rules. They were paying bounties in ReaperBucks, usable in the auction at the end of the con. I would have loved to play, but I was afraid I'd infect the other players with whatever variety of creeping crud I seem to have this year...

The Zombie Crawl: where one must deal with the Zombie Apocalypse in a scale model of the Reaper facility, complete with models representative of the Reaper employees. I can't help but think Reaper must be a hell of a place to work, where they have to deal with things like this. Where's OSHA when you need it?

Now, THAT's a dungeon crawl!

Other cons have "open gaming." Reaper has "open painting..."

ReaperCon '10 Part One

Part One: The Trip Getting to ReaperCon this year took the usual four and a half hours. We passed the time in conversation and stopping to observe the usual bizarre things we found along the way...

Near Waxahachie, as many Texans know, are a variety of odd structures visible from the road. This was the first time I'd noticed the starship, though...
Standard Starfleet design, although I notice it lacks a registration number. What the hell?

Plainly visible from the highway, the signs below the nacelles promise food, fun and games... so we stopped to check it out! Regrettably, whatever business was there had closed quite some time ago; there's a tiny flea market going on in their parking lot on weekends, now. So we said the heck with it and went to one of the few remaining Stuckey's in Texas. While they no longer carry the ancient and beloved rubber doggy doodle, giant plastic houseflies, and so forth, they do still have their excellent pecan candy and fondant. Even if they have to share a building with a McDonald's, a Grandy's, and the only hotel in Italy, Texas...
To Be Continued....

A Candle In The Wind

Frank Frazetta died today.

I tell you, I feel old today. In the last couple of years, we lost Gary Gygax, we lost Dave Arneson. I just found out yesterday that Dr. J. Eric Holmes, the man who brought D&D to the mass market and wrote the first Basic version of the game, is no longer with us... and today, one of the great artists of the 20th century... the guy who brought Conan back from obscurity, the guy who did things for Edgar Rice Burroughs that the man himself would never have dreamed.

Rest in peace, Frank. At least you're with Ellie, now.