Co-operative Conan with 'Sellswords & Spellslingers'

 

In a year and half filled with dispiriting news and developments, sometimes the world whispers in your ear that not all is destined for despair.

Some of you may recall a post about my miniatures gaming guru Mar Rosquites from April 2020. It was a tribute to a friend out in San Francisco that I thought I had in all likelihood lost forever. As I recounted in that post, communications with Mar had ended abruptly, with the months of silence eventually broken by a cousin who contacted me to say that Mar had had a "stroke" and had lost much of his vision. 

I came to learn later the reality was even worse. He had suffered from an undiagnosed heart condition that led to an aortic dissection, better described as a simultaneous stroke and heart attack in terms of how deadly and ravaging to the body it is. Most people die from the rapid internal bleeding from this literal tear that spontaneously occurs in the heart, as was the case with John Ritter back in 2003 at age 54. 

It's hard to overstate my surprise when this past June, more than a year after hearing from Mar's cousin and at least two years since my last correspondence with Mar himself, that I received an email from him from a new Gmail account. He caught me up on his recent health saga, explaining how he had not only lost much of his vision, but also much of his motor coordination, some speech, and some cognitive sharpness. He had spent more than a year in rehabilitation and therapy, slowly building back his ability to walk unassisted (albeit still slowly), and with time a fair amount of his sight began to return and the brain "fog" started to slowly dissipate.

He had recently relocated to Miami, but was looking for someplace else to settle for the next stretch of his journey. I was delighted when he chose the Washington, D.C. metro area, moving here in June. Until now, my friendship with Mar had been a long-distance one, but now we'd have a chance to actually meet in person and even game together. I always loved reading about Mar's games on his blog over the years, and knew he was a kindred spirit in this regard.

When I invited him over to the house a couple of Saturday's back for our first-ever game together, I wanted to get something on the table that I felt we could pick up quickly and was confident would be fun. I settled on my thoroughly playtested adaptation of the Conan yarn "Beyond the Black River" using my modified version of the Sellswords & Spellslingers rules. This was the first convention game I had ever run, and I've now game mastered it at several more such events. This time, though, with a smaller group of players than usual--Peter M. and Steve B. joined us for the afternoon--I ended up participating as a player, running it as a cooperative game (as the SS&SS rules are actually designed to be played).

It was the first time I got to play this game on the player side, and I had a lot of fun. The game proved just as deadly as usual (maybe even a bit more so!), with lots of casualties on the players' side. We did, however, succeed in freeing one of the two captives and getting him off to safety.

It was tremendous finally sitting at a table with my friend Mar after all of these years. He seemed to really enjoy the game and the fellowship of likeminded gamers. I'm looking forward to lots of future games with him now that he has fought his way back from the brink and lives in the area. 

I've been learning from Mar since the day I met him, and that hasn't stopped. One day on the phone recently I asked him how he was doing. "Okay," he said without much inflection. "Just 'okay'?" I gently pressed. "Given where I was 18 months ago, 'Okay' is great," he responded. That's a perspective I know I could benefit from reminding myself of.

---------------------

And now for my semi-boilerplate disclaimer: The below photos are not a recreation of the unfolding action in the game but rather a smattering of shots at various points to provide a flavor of the proceedings. These photos are mixture of ones taken by me and my wife Ellen; the inferior ones are undoubtedly by my hand. (Click any photos to enlarge.)

Beyond the Black River

Getting the table set up before the fellas come over...

Steve B. and Peter M.

Some of our characters skulking through the jungle toward the Pict's village.

The 'ghost' snake being summoned to the sacrifice...

I made a lot of custom cards and tokens for this game to help it run smoothly and be more immersive at conventions.

The man of the hour, Mar R. (left), with Peter (right).

One of my figures contending with the Swamp Devil and a horde of approaching Picts outside the village walls.

Yes, snacks must be no further away than three paces from the game table at all times.

The sabretooth has almost made it inside the village to eat one of our captive comrades in a grizzly sacrifice.

"Food for wolves."
Subotai doing his best to hold off a pack of angry wolves. 

A lot of foes spawned in rapid succession in this corner of the battlefield...fortunately the Giant Drake would set upon the monstrous Ape-Man, keeping both of them preoccupied for a while.

The next round Subotai was able to dispatch all three wolves in rapid succession.

Peter (left) and Mar (right)
Both of these gentlemen had very significant health challenges in the past year, and it was a special pleasure for me to have them both in much better health and sitting around my table for a game.

Valeria squaring off against the sabretooth tiger. She succeeded in distracting him from devouring the second captive, but she paid the ultimate price herself, alas.

"Brute" Picts (bigger and badder) I repurposed from the Conan board game.

"...then to hell with you!"

The cheetah from my gladiator game (hence the sandy base).

Attack of the Big Cats!

But of course because Mar and I went out for Mexican at Mi Rancho without me picking everything up first, Cha-Cha and Gigi took it as tacit permission to prowl the table and wreck the jungle and Pictish village. Luckily, Ellen stopped them...well, only after snapping about 30 photos of them in action. After cleaning up, I'm still missing a Pict brute. I expect to find it under a couch in the year 2025.

Finis

=======================================
====================