Hi!  Welcome to NASCRAG.

If you’re looking for some good D+D at Gen Con this year, you’ve come to the right place.

Who We Are:

NASCRAG is a national organization of gamers, headquartered in the Chicago area, that has been hosting D+D tournaments at Gen Con (and other conventions) since 1980 - 29 years!  At Gen Con, the only D+D event that has been around longer is the D+D Open.

All that experience means that we really know how to put together a game.  We have a system of editing, play-testing, and review that assures our players of a fun time, year after year.  That’s why so many of them come back again and again.

NASCRAG also features dozens of pieces of original artwork from renowned artist, Bill "Indy" Cavalier.  There is nothing that pulls you into a scene like actual drawing of what you see.  No other event at Gen Con is nearly as well illustrated as a NASCRAG event.

Link to examples of artwork: http://community.gencon.com/forums/thread/3535.aspx

What We Do:

NASCRAG tournaments focus on role-playing, puzzle solving, and humor rather than combat tactics and dice rolling.  Cheesy accents are not only allowed, they are encouraged!  If you’re looking for strategy, tactics, and lots of combat, you might want to try the D+D Open instead.

The 2008 NASCRAG event will be

NASCRAG Presents: The Pretanic Island Saga - "Into The Wind":

A three round, single elimination tournament, in which teams of six compete to advance.  Up to 25 of the best teams will go on to the second round, and as many as 15 will compete for Honor! Glory! And Prizes! in the third round.  Please Note: you do not have to have a team to play.  We will find you a team, or make up a new one!

All the power of Venezia poises to crush the Islands. What can six smelly humanoids do against that? Whatever you decide, it's sure to involve puzzles, role playing, and exotic locales. Characters include a Bugbear captain, a Gnollish old sea-dog, a Venezian emissary, a couple of Kobold dance hall girls, and a faithful (goblin) lackey. A 3 round team advancement tournament. Round 2: Sat 1 pm. Round 3: Sat. 7 pm. Awards party: Sat. 11 pm. Aloha!

The Pretanic Island Saga is a new series of Nascrag events written by the Filking Weiners, the authors of the Seconds series of adventures (Second Chances, Second Wave, Second Time).  

Forgot to pre-resgister?  No problem - just show up with some generic tickets!

Awesome.

Lotta hints there and CHARACTERS. wow, what a mix.

I'm in for the goblin lackey if any of the 2007 group, "Royce Warwicks Para-Legal Defense Team" comes back.

If anyone from the group is out there, drop me a line, thanks.

"Finnegan"

Male-female ratio?  4-2?  3-3?

Heavens,  have we ever had this much time to mull over characters and possible plots?

I am going to have to decide whether to stick with the declaration made after last year that I was tired of 'cross dressing' and actually want to play a female this year.  But there are so many good characters...  Arrghh, too much information.

Now back to standard obsessing about strategy and bribes.  August can't come fast enough.

"In a gaming group with a 3-3 split, it's always good to know who gets to gender bend."

It sounds to me like you're assuming that just one person would gender bend. A couple years ago our group of four men and two women and two people gender bend. Playing cross is inherently funny.

I've started a new thread showing Indy's art in the Art Show Forum.  I've got over 600 Billos on the web these days so I'm just going to jump around through 27 years of goodness to give people a taste.

http://community.gencon.com/forums/thread/167285.aspx

 Yay!!  I love the sentence with a little character info, that's plenty to get me geeked up about gencon :)

 So, I had a NASCRAG deam last night.

Somehow, NASCRAG this year was being run as a wide-area LARP, so our team was running around the convention center, trying to find the people we needed to interact with, who would give us puzzles to solve or problems they needed help with.  When we succeeded, they would give us clues to where the next "station" in the adventure was.

Somehow, we must have interpreted a clue wrong.   Or perhaps the Nascrag GM at te next station was being distracted by a GM bribe (TM).  It doesn't really matter, we found people with puzzles and who needed help anyway.  I remember fixing an elevator using supplies found in an average cubefarm desk, repairing a doomsday clock for a bunch of Lovecraftian cultists in the basement (who for some odd reason had made their doomsday clock out of macrame), working in a choclatier's shop that used 4' long wooden spoons for both dishing mousse and fencing with the more unruly customers, and helping out a pretty young thing in a french maid outfit that was in no way made for housework.  (Also, I wish I could recall what we helped her with - something involving a feather duster, a kitten, and a batch of mousse from the previous "station.")

All this time we were getting farther and farther away from the convention center.  Just before I woke up (as I wake up, I tend to noice how odd my dreams are, and this tends to mess them up, but not in this case) one of our more logical team members (Chris) observed that since it was after midnight and we were in a seedy allyway in the bad part of town, perhaps we might have become derailed from the adventure.  We pondered this, and agreed he might be right.  Immediately, Karen turns to the scary looking guy in a trench coat we were talking to before Chris' brilliant deduction and asks "Domigo, have you ever heard of Tiki Toby and the Blue Enchanted Conch Shell?"  

 Domigo shakes his head negative.

She continues "OK, Domigo, it seems there's been a little misunderstanding, but a deal's a deal.  We'll still clear the Makinnon Brothers out of the lower West Side, but after that, we're through!"

 At this point, I woke up in a cold sweat.

 Oh, no, Dave still hasn't finished his adventure for next year. You and he must have been on the same dream wavelength. I know he had something like that in mind (french maid, dave? really...). But Dave don't forget you promised me that the SFR booth in the exhibit would be one of the stops. All they have to do is beat the defending World Champ in a game a Dragon Dice. 

Martin:  Wow, that's one heck of a dream.  I like the way you think.  I'm taking notes.

Actually, something like that was already part of a Nascrag adventure :-)  After 29 years, there's very little we haven't done.

I don't remember which adventure it was,  But I remember the characters running around the Mecca in Milwaukee.  Can anyone remember which one that was?  Probably Nexus or Conspiracy series.

By the way, no one noticed that Carole authorized me to say up to 25 teams get into round 2 and 15 teams get into Rounds 3 this year.

I thought that would be a biggy, but no one even noticed.

I guess 25 and 15 don't seem like a very large increase. I remember more than 20 teams generally making it to the 2nd round in the past few years and I specifically recall there being 13 teams in the third round a couple years ago. I've never been privvy to any of the discussion about how many teams would be in each round. Why would 25 and 15 be a big deal? 

Giving the GMs ideas .... will players never learn ? :) 

It's a 25% increase over the usually stated number of teams (20 and 12).  I suppose this is due in part to our growing number of attendees - 414 last year!

By the way, I've been told that a lot of the increase comes from you wonderful folks here on the GenCon forums.  Spread the word!  Bring friends!

We've got the times and registration numbers for Nascrag

Round 1  RPG00388  Thursday  2008-08-14   17:00
Round 1  RPG00389  Thursday  2008-08-14   21:00
Round 1  RPG00390  Friday      2008-08-15   13:00
Round 1  RPG00391  Friday      2008-08-15   21:00

Round 2  RPG00392  Saturday  2008-08-16   13:00  (up to 25 teams will advance to the semi-finals)

Round 3  RPG00393  Saturday  2008-08-16   19:00  (up to 15 teams will advance to the finals)

I have never played in a D&D tournament. Sounds great , I will have to try and fit you guys into my schedule.

Keep in mind, one&only... it is not a traditional D&D tournament. This is one that stresses RP over rules. If you are a rules lawyer, this is NOT the event for you. Expect a lot of teamwork, a lot of problem solving and out of the box thinking. If you can avoid combat by interesting or unexpected means, that is generally the road to take. Think of Killer Breakfast as a D&D tournament.

in response to your question, the last adventure in the Zef series featured the heroes involved in a long scavenger hunt through different dimensions.  One of which was Gencon at Mecca.  The item you sought was a "Al" (the marshalling host) button obtained from the Nascrag marshalling area.  We still own a button or two from that game.  

I'll  admit, it's pretty easy to remember that one since it was the first GenCon and Nascrag that we attended.  :)

 -dana, Plaid Chameleons/Touch of Class