TotalCon Report, App Updates, GenCon 2025!
Where do I begin…
TotalCon 39
TotalCon 39 was last month, and I ran three events:
The Business Trip (Rifts)
The Haunted House (Beyond the Supernatural)
Break Out/Escape from Gramercy Island (Heroes Unlimited)
The con was fun and my events were ‘okay.’ Overall, I give the weekend a 7 out of 10. The problem is I get big time Imposter Syndrome when I run a game. I always feel like I’m in over my head, I’m doing a lousy job, etc. It’s a huge insecurity of mine, and it can really have a negative impact. \But people seem to enjoy themselves.
I’ve had a handful of dud events over the years. I wouldn’t say I had any duds this time, though one was close: The Haunted House. The premise is catchy: the players are all celebrity YouTubers spending a night investigating a supposedly haunted house. During the adventure, they would be live streaming their experiences, following a comment stream, etc. To complicate matters, the players shift through different eras (decades) of the haunted house. So I have to keep track of the descriptions and clues of three different decades (original writing had five!) and produce a comment stream.
My vision was that the players would receive comments with donations saying something like, “Here’s $10. Now go open that scary looking closet door.” The players would have the goal of raising a certain amount of money. As a twist, and unbeknownst to the players, one of the commenters is actually the evil spirit possessing the house, trying to lead the players into traps.
Okay, sounds great on paper, but problems immediately appeared in the play test. First, five decades was way too many, so I reduced it to three. Next, producing a comment stream without using an app of some sort quickly became unwieldy. I found myself handing out many sheets of paper with comments on them. Lastly, the story just became confusing.
It didn’t help that the people at my table were older and didn’t understand what a celebrity YouTuber is. I think the players knew I was struggling a bit, but they had a sense of humor and some laughs and provided me good feedback at the end. It also helped that a couple of them were very good role players.
That said, I don’t see myself running this adventure again. Not unless I write some sort of app to produce a comment stream, but I don’t think I have the energy to do that. I was really hoping to provide the Palladium Books community wth a great Beyond the Supernatural adventure. Maybe someday, but this one isn’t it.
GenCon 2025
I will be there! I have submitted my events to NMI and Glen. I am running three:
The Great Ice Cream Caper (Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles and Other Strangeness)
City Under Siege (Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles and Other Strangeness)
Zombies 201 (Dead Reign)
I haven’t fleshed these out yet, but I provided plot summaries. In honor of the reprint of TMNT, I am running two TMNT events at GenCon. One of them is light-hearted, the other not so much. You can probably guess from the titles which one is which.
“Zombies 201" is a continuation of my successful “Zombies 101” event I’ve run in previous years. I think I’ve run Zombies 101 five times now, and it never disappoints. I hope I can reproduce that fun with Zombies 201. I was on the fence between Zombies 201 or a new Rifts adventure… but Dead Reign doesn’t get enough love, so Zombies 201 it is!
Rifts Index
My Rifts index is live! It’s a very simple app. You want to find the book and page number of something from Rifts? This will do that for you. I have cataloged every weapon, armor, vehicle, occ, race, psionic, spell (still working through a few lingering non-invocation spells), and T-W device. I’m to be as thorough as possible, but it seems like every time I turn over a stone (or open a book), I need to include a whole bunch of new spells or gear. One note: other than Races and OCCs, I have not cataloged the Dimension Books yet.
As I said, it’s simple: you enter a search term and it will return all incidents of that item. It’s a fuzzy search, so it will find similarly spelled items. Once found, it will provide the book, the page number, and a link to buy the PDF or the physical book.
Here’s a screenshot:
Give it a try! https://rifts-index.dpenwood.com/
As I continue to index data, what do you think my priorites should be? I have a few things in mind: finish the Dimension Books, NPCs, Skills, Rune weapon/artifacts. Which of these should take priority? Or is there something I haven’t thought of yet?
Rifts Character Builder Update!
I haven’t forgotten about my Rifts Character Builder! It took a back seat while I worked on the Rifts Index and prepped for TotalCon. But I’m back at it! I just made some fixes to the Black Market section, and improved the Cybernetic presentation on the downloadable PDF.
I’m still interested in folks who want to give it a spin and provide feedback!
One request: if you want to test it, please provide actual feedback. I’ve let many people in then never hear from them again. That is not helpful. But if you are serious about testing it, please send me a message using the Contact form.
I will be uploading another demonstration video soon.
Summary
That’s about it for this update, thank you for reading!