ArcaneCon and the Joy of Community

I happily spent the past two days at Arcane Con hosted by Arcane Sword Press. It’s a small show local to me that focuses on the OSR side of tabletop gaming. I’ve played a few OSR games and enjoyed them immensely, but that’s not why I was there.

Tucked into the back of the venue, down a hallway and a flight of stairs, was the War Room. The venue for the show is a large church in Northampton, MA, but the War Room was far from large. About forty of us miniature gaming nerds were sequestered here from the larger convention in a small chapel, bumping elbows as we worshiped our tiny icons.

The War Room was loosely administered by the Hive Scum crew (mostly Steve and Tyler) and within two days it hosted about sixteen scheduled multi-hour games and many more unscheduled ones. The miniatures and terrain built and painted in advance of the convention amounted to hundreds and hundreds of hours of work. I should know, because many of those hours were my own!

Heretik

I was lucky enough to run my game Heretik in the first block at the first day on Table 1 (wild!). This event was the perfect motivator for me to finish building and painting miniatures for myself. My large set of terrain nicknamed “Sector 32” and fourteen heavily kitbashed miniatures were fully finished using ArcaneCon as a deadline. On the day before the event after rushing to finish for months I was still painting tiny crates, gluing sand and miniature plants to terrain, and assembling the art supplies for my players to create their tiny posters.

I’ve talked about my Heretik miniatures before, but as a special treat to myself and insurance in case I needed a few extra figures I commissioned the great and talented Matt Ross ( Totally_Not_Panicking) to make me a spare team before the event.

There was little time for hellos on Friday as I loaded in and set up the two desert boards to represent the dismal and arid Graveslums of Sector 32. I got to chat with Andrew (AKA Master Blaster) from the IRWT community while I set up; he’s an excellent human being and his praise for the terrain was very appreciated after all of the work I put in. More on his own work later!

I ended up running two games of Heretik for four players each (with a few extra players taking over others’ teams here and there). Every one of them was a lovely person who warmed my heart with their compliments about the game, the miniatures, and the terrain. Thank you all! In particular I had a woman play who had gotten into RPGs with her husband and teenage kid(s) in recent years, but had never played a miniature game before and was very nervous. It brought me real joy to see her shouting and cheering as she rolled dice and moved her team around the table. Her happiness during and after the game will stick with me for a long time.

Response to the game by both the players and folks walking by was very positive. There’s no amount of work that would have been too much to make those lovely people smile.

Getting Hyped

Across Friday evening and Saturday I got to see so many amazing miniature games in the War Room and even balancing precariously on the tiny table outside the door.

Blerzcraft ran a game of Necromunda on a massive table he’s been working on for months, burning with countless light sources to make it truly feel like a dystopian underhive. I’d been looking forward to seeing that table for some time now, and it blew my expectations out of the water!

Zar ran his own game: Bleeding Sin! This small skirmish game is dripping (hah!) with bloody flavor and beautifully dark imagery inspired by games and comics in the vein of Bloodborne and Castlevania. The board, miniatures, and Zar’s incredible outfit all created the perfect scene for high gothic gameplay. I’m amazed at how polished and well put together it all is for a one-person project.

Tyler hosted a session of Inhumane Harvest, his zombie survival game that recalls Left 4 Dead. All of his terrain, miniatures, and the extra lighting effects provided by Mr. Halation at the last minute had the game surrounded by spectators for its entire run. I heard nothing but glowing reviews about the gameplay and the narrative of the game.

One of the marquee events this year for me was Big Battletech, a session of the classic ‘mech combat game scaled up to use hulking eight inch action figures instead of the usual 6mm scale figures (roughly four times the size!). Two teams of four players each controlled one of these enormous battlemechs on a hex map spanning four 2×6 folding tables!

There were games of Necropolis 28, Space Weirdos, Turnip 28, Space Gitz, W!R:CC10K, Gaslands (with custom port-a-potty rules), OPR Firefight, 3rd Edition 40k, and of course: Flames of Orion!

The Emperor of Sands

Andrew AKA Master Blaster brought an incredible narrative event for Flames of Orion with him all the way from North Carolina. Using a modified ‘choose your own adventure’ system he created a rich narrative for his players across three separate games. His kitbashed and scratch-built terrain literally assembled together in the final mission for a battle against a skyscraper-sized dreadnought, bristling with cannons and encrusted with decades or even centuries of makeshift scrap-metal repair.

I’m in awe of the efficiency with which Andrew used the terrain and packets he brought to create a compelling and detailed experience for his players and even me, a humble observer. I know Steve (the game’s author) has been excited about this campaign for ages, and was still surprised by how much quality and care Andrew brought.

Talking terrain with this guy was such a high point for me for the whole weekend. Andrew’s a stellar guy and his gaming community down in Raleigh is lucky to have him!

Saturday Night

I finished out the convention with the only game I played that was actually on the schedule: Sun Rot. Joey Royale hosted a phenomenal run through of this weird narrative game from Matt Ross. Awaking to find a world gripped by a rotting armageddon, we sought the power and wisdom of a limbless oracle to escape the world of our birth. Demons and fate conspired against us, but through grit and fury we managed to hurl ourselves through a portal just as the world decayed to nothingness!

Sun Rot is a really beautiful game that doesn’t concern itself with the minutiae of rules or measuring. Anything that progresses the story is in the spirit of the game, and Joey and the players found ourselves asking out loud “what would be cool?” whenever a point of uncertainty came up. I couldn’t have been happier with the miniature work, the GMing, or my excellent fellow players.

I tried to pick a little something up from as many vendors as I could, and I came away with a pile of artwork and prose. The amount of local authors and artists making games in our little valley always astounds me, and some had traveled from several states away.

Every time I meet up with folks from the 28 community I come away stronger as an artist, sharper as a gamer, and happier as a human being. In dark times like these we can fight hopelessness by celebrating each other. That’s all these people did for forty-eight hours in Northampton.

I don’t have any huge group photos of the folks I spent this special time with, but you all know who you are and I love you. Be kind to yourselves in all the ways you’ve been kind to each other.

Until we meet again,

-JPF