TotalCon 35 Report
It makes sense that this is my first post to Medium, and that it is related to another yearly event that has moved online. I just finished up the weekend of TotalCon 35, which is usually a yearly con held in Southeastern Massachusetts. My wife and I go every year, and love the board games and other offerings that this convention provides. This year, the con was entirely online, run through Discord and other venues. Though it was different, it was still enjoyable. We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t play any board games (none of our computers can run Tabletop Simulator), I was able to get into some very solid RPGs.
The first of these was on Friday, entitled “It Came From Beneath the Apartment,” an adventure written for the Cyberpunk RED RPG by RTalsorian Games. This was an absolute blast of a game to play. It was run by J Gray from the RTalsorian company, and centered around an apartment near the Combat Zone that was recovering from some trouble and strife in recent history where a corporate entity known as WorldSat was trying to take over the apartment to construct (what else?) a giant satellite. That attack was fended off, but the story opened with something else — an entity — invading from the ventilation ducts. I won’t spoil the adventure but needless to say it was very exciting.
I played a character named Grease, a Fixer, which is really outside my comfort zone. I usually play deckers/netrunner types in any game that opens itself up to that, but this time I was the “face” — the guy who knows a guy. I also happened to be the one who owned the apartment building where the rest of the crew lived, so we had a vested interest in figuring out what these things that were invading were all about! We were accompanied by a Netrunner, a Tech, and a Rockerboy named Skull who was a riot to play with. The game was incredibly paced, and gave me a huge amount of appreciation for the Cyberpunk RED system. This was my first time playing it.
The next game I played has an even more storied history. I jumped into a Pathfinder Society game. Now, my history with Society has been a little tense due to the fact that I always felt overwhelmed by the other Society players. My general way of describing how I felt when I used to play Society games was essentially this: I sat down at a table with a character I was really excited to play, and then when I started doing so I found out in rapid succession that I didn’t have the right feats, the right skills, the right extra books, the right boons, the right adventures, the right…you get the idea. It affected me to the degree that I gave it up, for a significant amount of time. This year, I tried it out again because I do love Golarion.
Honestly, I had another great game. Do I still feel overwhelmed? Yes. But it was less. And no one commented on how I built my character “wrong” or played them wrong. This could have been because I didn’t build my character, of course, but still. I ended up playing Fumbus, the (amazing) goblin alchemist. It was actually rather funny because the adventure had us fighting a bunch of fire-based creatures. What weapons does Fumbus have most of? Alchemical bombs…which are fire based. I was able to brew up a few frost potions, though, so we could put the hurt on some of the creatures.
It was another great party and a wonderful GM (Half-the-Sky gets a special shout-out). The GM answered my questions fully, put up with the possibly dumb questions, and kept the game moving at a decent pace. I also have to give a shoutout to regional Venture Captains Eric and Kevin who were helping me to immerse even a little bit more in the Pathfinder Society “world” of online play. I think for me at least, Online Play is going to be where it’s at even after the pandemic ends. I’ll never give up fully the in-person gaming with my personal group, but I still do love the option of signing on and gaming.
I wrapped up the week with a late game (9PM-1AM) for which I actually had made my own character. The game was Shadowrun 6th Edition. I’ve played a *lot* of Shadowrun in its 4th, 20th Anniversary, and 5th Edition varieties, but I’d never played 6th Edition before. The character I’d created was Mobii, an albino troll decker who was a musician and scholar of literature in addition to being a hot drek decker in Seattle. We had another great party for this game — another troll street samurai, an ork street samurai, a shaman, and yet another decker! — and it was really fun. Combat did move a little slowly, but that was because I think we had so many people learning the system. I’ll admit I felt a little bad in this game, because I did know the system a little and I think I was making people feel on edge (pardon the Shadowrun pun) because I had a bunch of extra gear and whatnot.
Every year when I wrap up a convention, I want to go to another one immediately. There’s only a few I’m able to get to in the course of a year — PAX East and TotalCon usually being the two — so it’s hard in between. In the near future, I’m working on getting involved in some online conventions for Pathfinder because…why not? Thank you to the entire staff of Totalcon, and I hope the Discord remains active until the next year!
