Flying Buffalo at DunDraCon 37

I went to DunDraCon 37 with my wife and oldest daughter on Saturday, and we had a great time. This is the first DunDraCon I've been to for a very long time. My first DunDraCon was #4, and unless I'm mistaken the last one I went to before this was #5!

Since then the con has moved to San Ramon, CA. I've been seriously thinking of going for many years since moving back to where it's within reach. But each year I was either already committed to something else on President's Day weekend, or didn't go because I was under the impression that it was a longer and more arduous trip than it turned out to be.

But it was just over 2 hours drive, and not so bad a drive at that, at least not when we went.

Flying Buffalo
Rick Loomis, of Flying Buffalo, has mentioned in several places online that he'd be going to DunDraCon this year. Since I'd been involved in both the Ace of Aces Kickstarter and the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls Kickstarter as a backer, and he'd promised a free die for stopping by the booth and saying, "hi", that was more or less my first stop once we got registered for the con.

I was surprised as how small the dealer's room was, but the vendors that were there all had plenty to show. So it was sort of a small but high quality set-up. The main thing I missed was the wide variety of small startups that I used to see at cons years ago. I guess they all live on the internet now.

At any rate, Rick Loomis was there with a Flying Buffalo display. I didn't get a picture because I was too distracted at that point, and by the time I thought of it, the time had gotten late enough that the poor people manning booths had been set loose by the closing of the room.

However, I did get my free die (I picked out a black and red one with a skull), and I bought a copy of Nuclear War and a copy of Monsters! Monsters!

Nuclear War
Nuclear War was one of the first "unconventional" games I ever played. I have a copy of Nuclear Escalation, which can be played stand-alone but it works better, IMO, as an expansion to Nuclear War. Now I have my own copy of Nuclear War. When I was much, much younger than I am today, I recall that I always wanted to get the Saturn booster rocket for my warheads. Because having the biggest booster is just, well, cool.

Monsters! Monsters!
Monsters! Monsters! is the original "reverse dungeon" RPG. I had a copy years ago, along with my copies of the older versions of the Tunnels and Trolls rules. Unfortunately, MM has failed to turn up in my searches through my stuff over the past couple of years, even though everything else did turn up. So I decided to buy another copy.

Now that I have, I expect my original will turn up.

I have hopes that the success of the dT&T Kickstarter might lead to a MM Kickstarter. I'd like to see the information in MM reorganized so that all the info on a given monster is in one place, a bit more detail on some of the monster abilities, and, of course, more monsters and more art.

Truthfully, it's not hard to just play a game of MM with just the T&T rules. But it's fun and a bit easier to sell a group on an MM campaign if you've got a dedicated book for the purpose.

Nuclear War Extras
My wife wanted an "I Love Nuclear War" bumper sticker for her car (Rick threw that in for free), and my wife was extremely pleased to discover that there's a Nuclear War spinner app featuring Claudia Christian. She's a big fan of Claudia's, so she's looking forward to putting that on her new Android phone when it arrives.

DunDraCon in General
That was just the start for us. We had a great time at the con, which I'll be going into in further posts. Back home today, I'm reading my way through Monsters! Monsters! again, and looking forward to breaking out Nuclear War on our holiday day tomorrow.