NTRPGCon Sked

I wasn't sure my schedule was going to allow it this year, but I'm happy to say I'll be attending this year's North Texas RPG Con. However, I am upset that I'll be missing Saturday evening (that's the one part of the schedule I just couldn't work out; my brother would have never let me live down missing my oldest niece's recital with the Dallas Ballet Center). Ironically, it would have been super-tough for me to choose which Saturday night game I would want to join. I'll still probably make it out that Saturday night, just not early enough to join any pre-scheduled sessions.

I hope Jim Ward won't think I'm stalking him...
...but I'm signed up for his Eldritch RPG sci-fi game on Friday morning and his Metamorphosis Alpha session on Saturday morning. The only other thing I'm registered for right now is a playtest session of Michael Curtis's Shiverwhen RPG on Friday evening.

Any attendees up for Citadel of Blood?
Something else I was thinking about doing on either Thursday night or Friday afternoon (between the Eldritch and Shiverwhen sessions) was getting up a game of Citadel of Blood, but going ahead and "pre-designing" the dungeon and then GM'ing it (as opposed to developing it on the fly w/out a GM, the way the game was designed), and throw in some additional traps, spells, monsters, and what not, that aren't already in the existing rules. If you read my blog post about it, this is something I've been wanting to do for a while. If any of you are going, let me know if you're up for this. BTW, if I do this, the characters will probably be pre-gens (either from the existing game, or some I've created based on my "expansion" ideas for the game).

Citadel of Blood: An RPG Disguised as a Wargame?

Among the motherload of Ares and Space Gamer magazines I bought back in December (you know... the ones that belonged to Roger E. Moore), was the magazine pictured on the right of the image at the left. Ares magazine no. 5, with the game Citadel of Blood tucked in the middle of its pages.

Well, I seem to hit another motherload last weekend in the backroom at HPB... 40 cardboard boxes, each containing an average of 10 boxed wargames.

Yes! I searched through about 400 different wargames, most of which were historical in nature (not my cup of grog.) When it comes to these types of games, I'm strictly a fantasy/sci-fi guy. So in addition to picking up the boxed version of Citadel of Blood (on left in picture), I picked up Worldkiller and Rescue from the Hive.

Citadel of Blood is pretty cool, and I'd be hard-pressed to do a better job of describing the game than this overview at gamersalliance.com. The real potential for Citadel of Blood, though, is that on some level it can operate at a skeletal RPG system that supports solitaire play.

Look for an update on this baby once I've had a chance to run it through a few times, including group and solitaire play.