In case anyone might be interested, on Saturday August 14th there is going to be an informal day-long "Mini-Con" in Anaheim focusing on 1970s (and 70s-style) roleplaying games, including original "Whitebox" D&D (1974). Some of the DMs have 30+ years of experience, playtested with Gary Gygax, and will be aiming to emulate his style for this occasion.

I will be running a 2pm session of first-edition Gamma World (1978) where players are a band of mutated heavy metal musicians touring across the post-apocalyptic wasteland, fighting rival metal bands and aliens.

Whether you are interested in some gaming cultural archaeology, or just want to poke around an old school dungeon with a 10-foot pole, 4 hit points, and a sheet of graph paper, this should be a lot of fun! Newbies and experienced players welcome!

Details and session sign-ups are here (more sessions will be added if there's a lot of interest):

http://cyclopeatron.b...

This sounds great, I'm in.

Heck yeah, count me in.

Grand!

It's kind of surprising, but some of the sessions are actually starting to fill up even though the event's a month and a half away. If there are specific games you want to get in on you might consider RSVP'ing soon!

Oh, right. Can you pencil me in for the morning Labyrinth Lord session? I'd also love to be an alternate for your afternoon game. I play a mean electric jug, y'know. :D

Gotcha down!

This is going to be such a great event! I'm running the morning Labyrinth Lord session and look forward to meeting everyone.

Peace,
Christian
http://unknownzine.bl...

I attended the event, playing in the DCC Roleplaying Game at the 2pm-6pm slot run none other than Joseph Goodman, president of Goodman Games, himself.

Overall, I had a good time. Note that with the exception of the Basic Roleplaying System by Chaosium (found in such games as Runequest and Call of Cthulhu), I dislike so-called "retro-clones". I wasn't a fan of AD&D when it first came out and still am not. But DCC RPG brought back some of the advantages of that system, namely GM control (I HATE rule discussion) and fast combat. Thus my PC was able to throw an chicken at the onrushing foe to distract him, shatter mosaics to prevent a golem from "healing" itself, and other outrageous maneuvers without having to worry if I had the appropriate feat, skill, ability, or level to do so. Also, I also felt the rules supported the flamboyant sword & sorcery era of the source material (Appendix N) than today's more rule intensive, miniatures wargame rpgs.

The mini-con was totally fun! 6 games, 30+ turnout. I played in a morning "whitebox" c.1974 D&D game with Tavis Allison. Tavis is a respected DM from the New York City Redbox group who has published a lot of articles on RPG history. The game was really fun and fast moving. I then ran an afternoon Gamma World (first edition, c. 1978) game where the PCs were post apocalyptic heavy metal musicians. Great players showed up making the session a blast.

It was too bad about the scheduling conflict with London Fog this year... Y'all should consider checking out the mini-con next time around. I'll post a note here just in case any of you might be interested. It will probably be a fairly larger event next year.

Click here for Mini-Con Pictures

This was a fun event. I played in Joe Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics playtest with Joel (and a couple of others) and I enjoyed what Goodman Games is cooking up.

Yes, next year we'll keep the date for Mini Con IV open. RPG's are alive and well, I was at the beginning of London Fog which had nearly 20 players and then zipped to Mini Con which had even more players. Good to see.

The DGS would be happy to assist in any way to make the next Mini Con a great event.