"Oof magoof," as my man, Chris Crawford would say. It's nuts around here.
This will be a short one: I've got my "nephew" Spencer coming over this afternoon, which means (in addition to having the house cleaned and straightened), I've got to do a little D&D prep work. Pulled out my ancient copy of C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamaochan yesterday, and printed up the pre-gens. For an adventure I bought new in the early 80s (and saw considerable use), the module's held up remarkably well. 30 years of being stacked in a cupboard tucked in a closet (away from natural light), I suppose. Not that I am TRYING to preserve these things like National Treasures...my wife doesn't like me leaving my toys scattered all over the place.
One of the pre-gens got lost years ago, however...had to buy a PDF on DTRPG to have the full roster. Just looking over the thing now (something I haven't done in 20+ years, probably) it seems a little long for tournament play...55 encounter areas in two hours?...but then, the adventure is designed such that players are NOT supposed to screw around, and there are hefty (scoring) penalties for groups that deviate or wander off the preferred track. That being said, it is rather UNlike the tourney section of Dwellers of the Forbidden City, in that there are plenty of ways to get distracted. Eh, we'll see how it goes. Philipp ran this at Cauldron 2025 in a four hour time slot, which seems a LOT more doable (maybe), but I'm probably not going to have more than two hours tonight. Kids like to eat dinner and do homework, after all.
And SPEAKING of the "OSR Euro Con," Cauldron 2026 opened for registration at 9am PST last Saturday...and filled up in roughly 22 minutes. I had all-but-forgotten about it (I've been pretty swamped lately, as said), but I happened to be up (as usual, drinking coffee while the rest of the fam slept in), and was able to grab a roster spot when I saw the note on the Cauldron discord. Not that I had decided to go back to Germany in '26...in fact, I was about 90% sure I was NOT going to be attending.
However: after mentioning it to my family Saturday evening (after a loooong day of basketball, soccer, volleyball, and Christmas shopping)...I found them all enthused about the prospect, none more so than my wife! Like myself, she's a big fan of Germany, and while she has ZERO interest in gaming, she loves the idea of getting back to Europe and tooling around with Sofia while Diego and I are off at the Con.
Yes, I've got my son signed up, too.
The whole thing seems, objectively, like madness...just the cost of plane tickets alone! But...hell. It's only money which (IIRC) you still can't take with you. Spending a few shekels for a four day AD&D tournament in Deutschland with my boy? Isn't that one of those experiences/fond memory things parents are always trying to create?
Hopefully, the memories won't be of his father slurring his way through a game after too many shots of palinka.
Anyhoo, talked to D about it and he is "cautiously" enthused, once I assured him he does not HAVE to game, but can mingle and observe and such. He doesn't plan on running anything himself, and he thinks he'd only be comfortable playing if he did it alongside me (as a fellow player) or if I was the Dungeon Master. I assured him that this could be arranged.
I'm going to guess he'll warm up once he's there. My kids, for whatever reason, are like this. Yesterday, my daughter had an audition for Blanchet High School's production of The Music Man (they need a handful of smaller kids for the show) and her nervous "yeah" had turned into second-guessing and outright "I don't want to go to this thing" right up until the day before. After spending the two hours doing the singing, dancing, and side-reading she told me the experience was so awesome she wanted "to do it again!" Diego was like that when I took him to his volleyball try-outs...I almost literally had to force him out of the car to go to the thing (that he had asked to sign up for). Once he got on the court, however...different story.
[chalk it up to parenting: my wife and I aren't hugely demonstrative of "bold" action in the world. We prefer to stay home, snug and comfy with our kids. But that's because we already did most of our "bold" and "daring" stuff in the decades BEFORE we had kids. A double-edged sword, that]
So, yeah...I've gone from 90% not likely to go to 90% that I'll be on-board an IcelandAir with my whole family come next October. Jeez, what a world....
Tomorrow afternoon, I'll be heading to Los Angeles with Diego for a 4-day volleyball tournament. We get home Sunday night and then leave the following Saturday evening (after Sofia's guitar recital) for Mexico. My shopping is done, but the wrapping and the packing and planning and...
[*deep breath*]
It's busy. The book is coming along. I hope to work on that in between matches at the tourney. I'm thinking of junking the first couple chapters and starting from scratch...I'm not sure about the original approach I was taking. I'll let you know once I've made some real progress.
That's all the gaming-related news (I won't bore you with the other hassles in my life). Later, gators!
; )
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