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arenson9:

I'm a little new around here, so I hope no one minds if I start a post in order to gush ...

AOL!  (Sorry, Me Too!  (New, that is (Well, to these boards, and to NASCRAG, but not to gaming (Also, I'm not new to the parenthetical aside (although I only rarely nest them quite so deep)))))

Sorry, I'll stop channeling my LISP programming days now...

... NASCRAG was awesome! I had a really fabulous time. And gave birth. Being male, I'd never imagined that would be in my future. Little did I know what I was getting into when I sat down to a NASCRAG table for the first time three years ago and said, "I don't mind playing cross and I like singing. Sure, give me the bard ..."

Agreed like whoa.  This was my first NASCRAG ever - and we had an absolute blast.

(Warning - gushing ahead...) 

We've heard a lot about NASCRAG, because one of our friends has been playing since ZEF days, but this was our first run.  This was also my first GenCon since 1994, and our team consisted of two RL friends who are veteran 'craggers, my wife, and the two people that caused us to stop coming to GenCon for 13 years - woohoo!

What? 

Oh - no, not like that - they're our kids, and are now 14 and 17.  Hard to do the 'con Thang with toddlers, alas.

At any rate - I was looking to have a good time in Round 1 and introduce the kids to what tournament roleplaying is like - it's a very different beast from what our family D&D group does.  And so we played, and Ray did a great job, and we solved all the puzzles, and much fun was had by all, and some of us struggled to find reasonable accents.  We decided that The Boy's "Jules" was an EU character, because he hit accents from so many different countries - eep. But Connor and Innis had a 45-min run of puns, and there was Bad Singing, Worse Jokes, and Connor's "1 Real Ball and 17 INVISIBLE ones!" act, and Lo the Prophesies were Nailed and the Dran-O Drunk, and we slid down the tubes amidst laughing like loons.

And we made Round 2!  That was a rush.  I didn't feel like we did as well there (stupid chess puzzle), but Jules' accent settled down and I found one that didn't destroy my vocal chords, and I think we had the judge (David?) speechless at least once, if not twice.  And when I saw we'd made "alternate", I counted it a great time and a good family experience, and was content.  But, you never know - so we showed up for Round 3.

Aaaand there were extra judges!  And we were first alternate!  And we got to play Round 3!  Woohoo!

Did we place?  Oh, hell no - there were so many outstanding, experienced roleplayers there, the competition was fierce.  But we had a blast, and my voice is shot today even though our Gracious and Benevolent GM Team found us a table outside the ballroom, and there was singing and dancing and even more bad puns and Connor's "Shorty the Foot, Long Island Waste Management" spy accent and Daphne's 20's-flapper high-roller's floozy accent, and a noble death and Finnegan getting to punch out The Bad Guy at the end.

Damn, I had a good time.

I do have a question about Tacoma's prophecy. It said she would commit a great crime. What crime?!

Oh thank goodness - I was worried we'd missed that one.  Cool, then we nailed all the prophecies.

At any rate - thanks, NASCRAGgers, for building some really fun family-memories of GenCon.  If we make it back next year, we'll definitely be there, in the front rank again, eagerly awaiting a chance to provoke that moment of stunned disbelief on your faces on occasion.  I live for that :).

Primate Defense League forever - "DON'T SPANK THAT MONKEY!"

(PS - what was up with people advancing and not showing up for Round 2?  Seemed like a LOT of teams were either missing entirely or only had 1 or 2 folk show.  Oh well) 

[edited for bekoz Eye kant spel gud]