Ziggurat Con: War can't keep a good geek down

[Faight]

So I was dicking around at work the other day when a friend of mine sent me an email informing me of the geek event of the century: Ziggurat Con. I was astounded at first. A quick google search turned up quite a bit of information on it in the form of blog posts. An example below:

http://www.gamegrene.com/node/790

Now, I'm a geek myself and I was amazingly excited at this idea. A D&D/Anime convention in Iraq on a military base? Granted it's just one day, but still, this is astounding. Then I looked at the location. I gasped.

That's where I work now!

Eventually I saw a flyer in the PX/BX on base and emailed the gentleman in charge. I informed him of my experience in video games and asked if he needed any help, and if he would like me to set up some video games. I have my PS2, Wii, and Gamecube over here and have a few games that could work for the "anime" theme going here (Naruto: GNT4 for the GC, etc). His only response thus far has been asking me if I could run a Halo tournament, but I think if I set up some free play on the side using my own TV I could get some interest and possibly see if any one else here likes to play Street Fighter as I do (I have two sticks for my PS2 with me, and such games as CvS2, 3S, Alpha Anthology, and ST on the CCC2 discs).

I'm planning on dropping in on one of the D&D sessions to talk further with SPC Anderson about this, and I will be taking pictures. I'm not sure how many I'll be able to post, but I'll clear them all with the proper authorities before putting them online.

I guess this just proves that nerds will be nerds no matter where they are or what they're doing.

Edit: Just found out a D&D mag called "Dragon Magazine" did an interview with this guy. Oddly enough, we actually get that in our PX. He said he'll let me know what issue it's in soon.

Edit 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat_Con they have a wiki page now.
Also the fact that they will be raffling off signed books by creators at Wizards of the Coast and Palladium makes me more interested. It's possible I can set up a SF tournament given the large number of TVs supposedly on hand, but I will definitely be running Halo or Gears of War for them. Any idea where I can get official rules for tournaments in these games?

[AdverseSolutions]

i would play 3s up in that bitch in solidarity with the iraqi people

[The_Dragon]

Make sure to create a banner of that Sagat/Mohammed w/bomb avatar over the tournament area.

[Faight]

So far I have not received confirmation as to whether I will be able to set up my own station with a console for people to stop by and play. Hopefully he will allow me and I don't have to sit for hours and watch people who suck at halo shoot each other with guns and pretend to be Master Chief. I'd rather watch people who suck at SF shoot each other with fireballs and pretend to be Ryu.

I'll keep you guys informed of anything that happens, though it seems interest is very low. I guess you kind of have to be here.

[Logos]

Huh, definitely some interesting stuff. Push for those fighters! It's not really a true gaming convention without them! :wink:

[Faight]

I went to the first (I guess first) open planning meeting for Ziggurat Con last night. It was a small gathering and I was the only civilian present. I met the gentleman in charge, as well as pretty much every one else. They had asked me to run a console tournament for them, probably Halo2 or Gears of War. Having not played either I'll have to look up tournament rules for them. Halo I'm sure I can find easily but GoW I'm not sure about. I'm going to see about setting up my Wii at the convention and put on GNT EX and possibly my PS2 with a Street Fighter game and my Arcade sticks. As there are no 360's at the MWR currently I also volunteered my 360 for use.

From what I understand rear support has been amazing. Wizards of the Coast has sent over $15,000 in goods and prizes, ranging from books to dice to miniatures to a decorative short sword and shield which will be raffled off. Palladium games has sent about $7000 so far in goods, and the creator and founder of the game company recently sent an email to SPC Amberson (the guy running the con) telling him that anything he wants that Palladium makes is his, he simply has to ask. Operation: Dice Drop is a civilian run movement to get dice and other playing books to troops over here, and numerous other smaller companies have sent over boxes. So far they've filled up several humvees with just D&D related paraphernalia (I include all pencil and paper RPGs in there as well, stuff like White Wolf and Mechwarrior and Babylon5 and Starship Troopers, running the whole gambit here) that was donated for this event.

My biggest fear is that people won't show up for this. I personally will probably not be playing as I don't really do pencil and paper RPGs anymore. I might play if I'm the mood, but probably not. I think that advertising a console tournament will draw a lot more people who wouldn't normally show up to come, as well as the prizes, but how many will stay for D&D? Hopefully a lot, otherwise this will be sort of a flop and the thousands of dollars donated in goods will be wasted. At least we can donate this stuff to the MWR programs here and soldiers at other sites can use the books and dice to play their own games should they be inclined.

[Faight]

Things as they stand now, for the 4 people who've read this thread:

I get 8 TVs to run games on
I have and will run:
2 XBox360's: Gears of War and Halo 2
1 PS2: ST (CCC2 most likely)
1 Wii (japanese): Naruto Shippuden: Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX
1 Gamecube: Smash or Naruto: GNT4

This leaves me with 3 TVs left. I'm sure other people will bring in a few systems to run. So far all we're doing is tournaments in Halo 2 or Gears of War, they have yet to decide. I do have a request: Does any one know any thing about running tournaments in these games? I've been googling to find rules but I can't find anything concrete.

As far as the PS2, I'm still not sure what game to run. As a fall back I'll stick in ST, but I also have CvS2, 3rd Strike, SFA anthology, and some DBZ fighter. I'm not really sure what will go over best. Any thoughts? I only have two arcade sticks. If my copy of Big Bang Beat gets here before then I think I'll move the sticks over to my computer and let people try that out.

If any one can recommend anything they think would be worthwhile for this event please let me know. Also remember that this game room is a side thing, not a main attraction. I would love to do tournaments over here but I don't see that happening.

[Faight]

Tomorrow we rock. I'll post up pictures afterwards. Wish us luck.

[Infernoman]

wow...haha well good luck to you on this! and yes take many pics! :tup:

[Faight]

The con was pretty successful. The game room, not so much. I got there at about 10am, about two hours before things started. I had to get bags in, and getting bags in to any building over here is a trial. I borrowed one of the trucks we share at work and left all my stuff in it (Gear: 2 Xbox360s (no games), 1 Jap Wii (Naruto S:GNT EX), 1 GameCube (SSBM, Naruto GNT4), a bunch of PS2 fighters, 2 Arcade sticks (sanwa), laptop with emulators, ps2 -> usb converters). The game room they have already has TVs in it, 8 flat screens to be exact. I sighed, this being the second time I had seen the game room. HD flat screens meant lag for games like CvS2, ST, etc. After dealing with force protection and getting myself cleared to bring bags in I went to lunch (yes, it took almost two hours to get my stuff in. During my wait there I did help set up as much as possible).

After coming back from lunch I started setting up. Someone was supposed to be bringing copies of either Gears of War or Halo2 and they wanted to run a tournament in it. That never happened. I set up the Wii, Gamecube, and put my sticks on a PS2 with SF2:Turbo (on the CCC2 disc). I don't think any one realized it was all freeplay. Normally how the game room there works is you check out a game and controller from the front counter, and then you go to the playstation with the station number you were specified. As such people tended to not come in the room. A few congoers came in. A few people played Smash brothers, a few tried the Naruto Wii game. Two guys played SF2. By the time dinner rolled around I was ready to pack up. A grand total of maybe 6 or 7 people had played the games I brought in. A few soldiers came up talking about how good they were in smash brothers and played, asking me about the convention. I explained what it was and that I had supplied all the games. They challenged me to smash and I pretty much demolished them, which I found funny because I don't play smash competitively. I just sort of hop around like an idiot with Falco doing short hop neutral A and randomly trying to shffl laser. They left after losing, claiming they would return with a friend who was really good with Shiek. I never got to play this guy because I packed up the game room and took it all home.

I returned after packing up all my stuff and ended up playing GURPS. GURPS stands for "Generic Universal Role Playing System". Basically, it's a framework for characters and you can apply them to any universe you want. You could make it fantasy, futuristic, or even superheroes. The system itself focuses more on the characters, and you can apply advantages (double jointed, danger sense, magery, etc) and disadvantages (physical disabilities (blind, really old, really young, one eye, one leg, etc), mental disabilities (retarded, schizo, etc), or an addiction (cigarettes, drugs, etc)), and pick skills (weapons, spells, etc). It's a pretty unique system, and I think it's more intriguing than D&D in that you really get to personalize your character. There were 5 people playing and a GM/DM, and since every one had picked fighting type classes I went with a healer. I picked Charisma and Magery as my advantages, and picked Lecherousness and Laziness and my disadvantages. There was one girl playing and my character basically spent the whole time trying to get with any girl who came near us ("Oh you're hurt? Let me heal that. Yes, I know where I'm touching, I need to touch you there to heal you.")

Basically it was a nerd fest.

Oh free stuff. I came away with a bunch of D&D books, a crapton of dice, a really nice dice bag, a t-shirt, and some magic cards. I'm teaching one of my coworkers magic, which is funny because he was a marine. Something about a big hulking muscle guy who works out every day and could probably tear my head off if I got him mad enough playing Magic: The Gathering just makes me laugh. I plan on playing it more, and maybe joining some D&D groups. I was surprised at how much fun I had playing a pencil and paper RPG, something I haven't done in forever. Also I got free pizza since I was on staff.

As things wrapped up we helped clean up. Despite the fact that a room was opened up and people were basically told "Take what you want, it's all being given away" we didn't even get rid of a quarter of the stuff that was donated. I saw the storage room where excess good were kept and there was at least twice as much stuff there as there was in the "free shit" room. The rest of the books, dice, miniatures, games, etc will be sent to MWRs all around Iraq for soldiers there. All free, take as they please.

At the end of the night we loaded the back of our pickup truck (fucking huge, I think it's like an F150 or something, I don't know. Wait that can't be right, it's a GMC. Whatever, it's fucking huge) with books, dice, etc for three soldiers who will be deploying to another part of the country. They plan on setting up a gaming group up there and have enough supplies to set up three or four. I wish them the best of luck, both in their deployment and in their gaming. We wrapped up the night close to midnight, after cleaning up and helping soldiers get back to the rooms. My coworker helped me out with that, and for someone who seemed to think this was a very nerdy occasion he was very open minded about the whole thing, even saying he'd try out D&D if we could get a group together.

All in all I'd say it was pretty successful, barring the game room. I think the failure of the game room stemmed from the fact that it wasn't advertised at all and the MWR kept up it's normal activity and we ended up with only 3 of 8 TVs towards the mid-afternoon.

I have a few pictures of the game room, but none of the rest of the convention. I'm sure a few will turn up after we've checked them to make sure they're okay to post online. Operational Security and all that.

[AdverseSolutions]

looking forward to pix of hundreds of marines hunched over calculating thac0s lalwz

[Faight]

looking forward to pix of hundreds of marines hunched over calculating thac0s lalwz

THAC0 is a D&D 2.0 edition creation. We played 3.5, which has a simpler "Armor Class" system. Basically, with the THAC0 system you wanted to have as close an armor rating to zero as possible, whereas with the system in 3.5 you want to have a higher rating, 20-30. Higher is better, but much harder to get.

What. I'm not a nerd. Fuck you. I'm going back to look at my magic cards.

[Manx]

THAC0 > BAB. :tup:

[Faight]

THAC0 > BAB. :tup:

OH NO YOU DIDN'T.

I'm sort of neutral on THAC0 vs BAB. I've only played once or twice with 3.5 edition rules, whereas I played a lot with the old 2.0 edition rules. I understand how the system works, but I have yet to see it in pencil and paper action (NWN doesn't count because it's a video game and while it does adhere to basic D&D rules a lot of shit is changed to make it easier to adapt to being a computer game).

That is why I will join a D&D session, though I'll probably end up playing a Cleric. I like Clerics in D&D because you get to heal, and also with war domain spells you can fight like an equal level fighter a few times a day. They're just broken.

[Manx]

I just find 2.0 to be better than 3.0 for some reason, even though I've only played two sessions and the math in 3.0 is so much easier. My math is so bad there's no telling how many times I've given 3.0 players advantages without realizing it. And yes, Clerics do rock. I played a Rogue/Cleric of Death domain and it was fun. At one point I was only using weapons that I made out of my enemies. And sneak death-touch attack is too good. :tup:

[Irennicus]

I just find 2.0 to be better than 3.0 for some reason, even though I've only played two sessions and the math in 3.0 is so much easier. My math is so bad there's no telling how many times I've given 3.0 players advantages without realizing it. And yes, Clerics do rock. I played a Rogue/Cleric of Death domain and it was fun. At one point I was only using weapons that I made out of my enemies. And sneak death-touch attack is too good. :tup:


I don't think you can make a sneak death-touch attack. I wouldn't rule it that way, at least. I mean, come on, you're just touching the fucker, there's no reason that you should get +4d6 dmg just because they passed their save.

BAB is better than THAC0 in my opinion. It's much easier to compute AC. However, the thing I do hate about 3.0/3.5 is how retarded some of the classes are. I'm sorry, Clerics need more of a drawback than a 3/4 BAB for full divine spell-casting and having the class ability to wield whatever armor and weaponry they want. They have a d8 hit die, right? That needs to be downgraded. On top of that they have a good Fort and Will save.

I hate Clerics.

[Manx]

Na, you don't get the damage because it's just a touch attack, but they do loose their Dex to AC bonus in the case of non-rogues/barbarians and even better, they get to die instantly if they fail their save. :tup:

And yes, I've always thought that Clerics should be d6 HD instead of d8. They even have the same BAB as Rogues/Monks! I always thought that the only drawback was their spell selection sucking at lower/mid levels except for inflict (evil only)/heal and protection/restoration spells. And their spells are save-based. They don't have a equalivilant to Magic Missile that just straight up causes unavoidable damage. That would break them beyond the brokenness of being broken.

Also, this got me thinking of my Sorcerer/Rogue using Spectral Hand while hiding. It lasts for a minute, so I should be able to cast it and with the right cover hide within sight and let the hand deliver a touch attack for me. Of course, as soon as it's done my hiding spot will be discovered, but still...

And also... A damage-based touch spell like Shocking Grasp should be able to work with Sneak Attack damage as well. Any attack for which an attack roll of any sort is made can result in a Sneak Attack if it's done against a target that would loose their dex to AC bonus (flat-footed) sooo... spells touch-based like Ray of Frost or Shocking Grasp should deliver the attack to a vital spot (and therefore sneak attack) as long as the rogue is targeting the spot, which the attack roll is meant to signify. But you're right, Iren, death touches and other non-damage based spells wouldn't work with a sneak attack because there is no actual physical damaging component accompanying them. I gotta try this in conjunction with some spells that do small damage in addition to a status-impairing effect like Chill Touch or Vampiric Touch. Hmm...

[NG1313]

You should've advertised with DOAX2 banners. And charged people for entrance.

[Windlord0]

None of the base playable classes are broken. In comparison to the crazy shit found in the various handbooks they are nothing. There is so much stuff in the complete warrior, complete arcane and complete divine (along with other side books) that should just be banned. Warmage + dusk blade is just stupid, just like anything feral is just stupid.

I like 2.0 only because I can use almost all the rule sets (minus skills and powers) and not have 14th level characters that are able to kill gods. 3.5 is a better rule system, but the freedom of creating books has gone too far. Also ebberon is a stupid fucking world. I miss worlds like birthright and darksun, they had so much more personality to them.

On topic, it is cool as hell that they held a con there for you guys. You really deserve it.

[AdverseSolutions]

darksun fkin rocked

[Manx]

I haven't even touched Eberron once it became clear to me that they only want to make a bunch of the same old books to make money off. I do buy the occasional FR book if a good one comes out because FR is the Marvel of D&D (I can't believe I just said that). And splat books are banned in my campaigns until 10'th level. Sometimes I award prestige class levels as a reward for amazing role play or strategy on the part of a player, but it's always one of the more toned down classes, more likely one that I know is going to help the party later on in the campaign.

[Faight]

We're still trying to get all the pictures together so we can figure out what's allowed to be put online and not. I'll link them here after that's settled.

As far as D&D goes, I haven't really played a true game of 3.5 yet. I've been wanting to but it hasn't panned out. All of our games here are either full or have no where near enough players yet.

Also, they didn't hold a con for us. We held the con. This was soldier planned and executed, with donations coming in from around the US. Granted, I'm not a soldier, but I did my part to help out where I could. My buddy and I are still playing Magic:TG with the cards we got and he's actually getting pretty proficient at it, to the point that he's beaten me a few times. Granted, he's using a premade sliver deck and slivers are probably the most retarded thing in the game, but he's getting to understand strategy.

[Green]

Hey, it was on my birthday. Pretty cool.