I'll echo that. The tent worked really well, though it wouldn't without JP & wife's willingness to let all of us squat in their back yard for three days.
And the food worked out better than I could have hoped.
And lets not forget all of the effort Vardaen put in getting things set up.
Kudos to all of the people involved in making sure that the whole weekend went off without a hitch.
BrenCon 2008: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
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Trogdor
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Connie_the_Fire_Element
- Level 14 Elite
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Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
Actually- thought about the food thing a bit..
So the budgeted amount was 22.50$ per person. This was a cold estimate based on the numbers estimated for food to feed all of us. Unfortunately- i didn't add in ANY extra should something change in the actual implementation of the "food plan".
The budget was thus-
22.50$ x 14= 315$
+ 3 partial= 21$
Total- 336$
Total food bill= 402.23$
For a deficit of 66.23$= This was because of a change in pricing, but could have been avoided if extra had been added into the food plan. Next year- we should add about 2$ to the amount- so taht we have room for price influx.
So the budgeted amount was 22.50$ per person. This was a cold estimate based on the numbers estimated for food to feed all of us. Unfortunately- i didn't add in ANY extra should something change in the actual implementation of the "food plan".
The budget was thus-
22.50$ x 14= 315$
+ 3 partial= 21$
Total- 336$
Total food bill= 402.23$
For a deficit of 66.23$= This was because of a change in pricing, but could have been avoided if extra had been added into the food plan. Next year- we should add about 2$ to the amount- so taht we have room for price influx.
We will find this f-ing troll, and kill it's f-ing ass.
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Vardaen
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Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
So a recap for those of you that didn't make it to BrenCon this year.
Friday night Wayloss and micro arrived at Brennor's the first out of towners to show. Then Bitom at Brennor's house and then Trogdor arrived at Vardaen & Amaris' house. After dinner at the relative locations there was a meeting at Brennor's where we just sort of hung out and chit chatted. Team Bren then spent until 3am working out characters and tactics.
BrenCon kicked off at 8am, with Connie showing up early with a great breakfast spread and much needed coffee! By 9 everyone was there and things were being set up, Skynet went online, and we had 3 computers running on wireless network. Team Bren was true to form and had running speadsheets and the SRD up and in use the whole time. Some chatting did happen with Tet and Bave during the fun as well. By 10 the game actually started with the two groups at seperate tables. Team Bren had to deal with Vardaen and Team Chicago lucked out with jigglypuff as their DJ.
We were able to play through 4 rooms for each team:
First off the teams:
Team "The Knight Chicago Died"
Team Captain: Connie - Boss, Human Female Wizard/Chaos Witch w/ Draggone Familiar
JohnnyWierd - Frank the Tank, Human Male Bastion "Southern Good'ol boy" (MVP!)
MadVlat (and later Wayloss) - Sterno, Human Male Pistoleer
Kiernan_Knuckleave - Father Fyer, Human Male Actual Monk "The Iron Chef" (Co-MVP)
The Buldge - Snakeoil_Sean, Halfling Male Swashbuckler
Joni - Knife, Female Elf Knight of Frost
Team Brennor "Virtual Home Team"
Team Captain Brennor - Che'na'na, Zebra Centaur Male Rogue
Bitom - Tik-along K'cdee, Thri-kreen Male Ranger "Cowboy Gunslinger"
Trogdor - Necro Felicia, Human Female Warlock (MVP)
DoomulusPrime - Moonspring Rainbowbeam, Human Male Druid, "Blink Dog Hippy"
Pygmalion (Wayloss to start) - Swank the Half Ogre, Half Ogre Male Monk/Hulking Hurler "The Caber Tosser"
micro - Firestarter, Human Female Fireknight
Day One
Team Bren did Chen Honeybrew's Sake/Sushi house and faced the Undead (without a cleric) right off the bat. While Team Chicago tackled the Goblin Streetfight first off. The teams spent about 11 rounds each battling in these rooms and dealing with the aftermath later on. Team Chicago hit a snag when Frank the Tank failed what should have been an easy Fort save vs Sterno's rage gas and turned on the party in a blind rage. A altered reality Hold Person saved the day over there. Team Bren was in fear of the Undead and wasted several thousand gold on items that in the end did the little good.
The next room Team Bren tackled was the wilderness room and raised from the dead the Wyvern and both Hill Giants as their minions afterwards. Vardaen goofed a bit and didn't let the Invisible seeing Necro see the invisible Cheerleader with a Chainsaw however. While Team Chicago took on the Warforged Titan room and we saw our first character go in the negatives as Father Fryer was trampled pretty brutally. A melt metal and a use of the room's magical adamantine bolt shooting ballsista saved the day in that room.
After this Jp had to leave, and Vardaen took over running one team alternating between the two.
Team Bren then tackled the Warforge room and beat the Thri-kreen up pretty good and kept the Warlock on her heels most of the fight. It was the wilderness room that Team Chicago then faced. The Chainsaw Cheerleader managed to use one of her Pom Pom's of Fireballs this time, but the Giants were entangled or immobile most of that fight.
Then Team Bren was put into the Streetfight room, and this is where in the end Swank the Half Ogre "three pointed" the last remaining goblin from one roof top into the No Go Skylight across the street on top of the other building netting +1 mojo point. Team Chicago faced Chen's Sake House and we had a battle of the chefs with the Panderan Brewmaster coming out on top as he scored an insanely lucky 3 Critical Flurry of Blows putting Father Fryer down into the negatives again. Boss also dropped to the negatives from a flaming breath from the drunk panda man, and Buldge was paralyzed for a round by the Gravetouched Ghouls who had started as samurai but ate some bad blowfish and were now undead. It should be noted the Cleric didn't realize these were undead (dispite many comments and mentions stating so) until atleast round 4!
That took us late into the night on Saturday and we called it there and hung out a while chatting. At dinner we Knighted Trogdor as the newest Admin of the site!!!! Woohooo, and I have a video of this I will get posted shortly.
We scattered before midnight and all eneded up home to rest up for the next day.
(Day Two Next)
Friday night Wayloss and micro arrived at Brennor's the first out of towners to show. Then Bitom at Brennor's house and then Trogdor arrived at Vardaen & Amaris' house. After dinner at the relative locations there was a meeting at Brennor's where we just sort of hung out and chit chatted. Team Bren then spent until 3am working out characters and tactics.
BrenCon kicked off at 8am, with Connie showing up early with a great breakfast spread and much needed coffee! By 9 everyone was there and things were being set up, Skynet went online, and we had 3 computers running on wireless network. Team Bren was true to form and had running speadsheets and the SRD up and in use the whole time. Some chatting did happen with Tet and Bave during the fun as well. By 10 the game actually started with the two groups at seperate tables. Team Bren had to deal with Vardaen and Team Chicago lucked out with jigglypuff as their DJ.
We were able to play through 4 rooms for each team:
First off the teams:
Team "The Knight Chicago Died"
Team Captain: Connie - Boss, Human Female Wizard/Chaos Witch w/ Draggone Familiar
JohnnyWierd - Frank the Tank, Human Male Bastion "Southern Good'ol boy" (MVP!)
MadVlat (and later Wayloss) - Sterno, Human Male Pistoleer
Kiernan_Knuckleave - Father Fyer, Human Male Actual Monk "The Iron Chef" (Co-MVP)
The Buldge - Snakeoil_Sean, Halfling Male Swashbuckler
Joni - Knife, Female Elf Knight of Frost
Team Brennor "Virtual Home Team"
Team Captain Brennor - Che'na'na, Zebra Centaur Male Rogue
Bitom - Tik-along K'cdee, Thri-kreen Male Ranger "Cowboy Gunslinger"
Trogdor - Necro Felicia, Human Female Warlock (MVP)
DoomulusPrime - Moonspring Rainbowbeam, Human Male Druid, "Blink Dog Hippy"
Pygmalion (Wayloss to start) - Swank the Half Ogre, Half Ogre Male Monk/Hulking Hurler "The Caber Tosser"
micro - Firestarter, Human Female Fireknight
Day One
Team Bren did Chen Honeybrew's Sake/Sushi house and faced the Undead (without a cleric) right off the bat. While Team Chicago tackled the Goblin Streetfight first off. The teams spent about 11 rounds each battling in these rooms and dealing with the aftermath later on. Team Chicago hit a snag when Frank the Tank failed what should have been an easy Fort save vs Sterno's rage gas and turned on the party in a blind rage. A altered reality Hold Person saved the day over there. Team Bren was in fear of the Undead and wasted several thousand gold on items that in the end did the little good.
The next room Team Bren tackled was the wilderness room and raised from the dead the Wyvern and both Hill Giants as their minions afterwards. Vardaen goofed a bit and didn't let the Invisible seeing Necro see the invisible Cheerleader with a Chainsaw however. While Team Chicago took on the Warforged Titan room and we saw our first character go in the negatives as Father Fryer was trampled pretty brutally. A melt metal and a use of the room's magical adamantine bolt shooting ballsista saved the day in that room.
After this Jp had to leave, and Vardaen took over running one team alternating between the two.
Team Bren then tackled the Warforge room and beat the Thri-kreen up pretty good and kept the Warlock on her heels most of the fight. It was the wilderness room that Team Chicago then faced. The Chainsaw Cheerleader managed to use one of her Pom Pom's of Fireballs this time, but the Giants were entangled or immobile most of that fight.
Then Team Bren was put into the Streetfight room, and this is where in the end Swank the Half Ogre "three pointed" the last remaining goblin from one roof top into the No Go Skylight across the street on top of the other building netting +1 mojo point. Team Chicago faced Chen's Sake House and we had a battle of the chefs with the Panderan Brewmaster coming out on top as he scored an insanely lucky 3 Critical Flurry of Blows putting Father Fryer down into the negatives again. Boss also dropped to the negatives from a flaming breath from the drunk panda man, and Buldge was paralyzed for a round by the Gravetouched Ghouls who had started as samurai but ate some bad blowfish and were now undead. It should be noted the Cleric didn't realize these were undead (dispite many comments and mentions stating so) until atleast round 4!
That took us late into the night on Saturday and we called it there and hung out a while chatting. At dinner we Knighted Trogdor as the newest Admin of the site!!!! Woohooo, and I have a video of this I will get posted shortly.
We scattered before midnight and all eneded up home to rest up for the next day.
(Day Two Next)
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
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Vardaen
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Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
It should be noted that Team Chicago was on fire with Ciritcal hits while Team Brennor was rolling more Fumble checks than you would think possible.
Moonbow was playing with the Vow of Poverty feat and so had no gear and was donating all his winngings to the "Save the Treant Fund". He had some words with the organizer after the Crawl when one of the prizes in the wilderness room was a Dining Room table set and hutch made from the finest and rarest Amazon Treants!
Moonbow was playing with the Vow of Poverty feat and so had no gear and was donating all his winngings to the "Save the Treant Fund". He had some words with the organizer after the Crawl when one of the prizes in the wilderness room was a Dining Room table set and hutch made from the finest and rarest Amazon Treants!
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
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Vardaen
- Admin
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- Location: Miskatonic University
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Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
Day Two
Day two started just as early but without nearly as much set up required we started gaming just after 9am. Both rooms then took on the Yuan-ti, Giant Squid water room. The room was designed to get people in the water and Team Bren was in the water, most of their summoned creatures fell in or went in, Swank kept falling off the narrow walkways, and Tik-along critical fumbled off the back of his flying Wyvern Zombie mount and fell right in! With JP back to run for Team Chicago I don't really know what happened over there in this room so someone else should comment that knows. I do know that MadVlat had to leave and so Wayloss took over Sterno at this point.
It became clear however that Team Bren not only finished the rooms in a faster Combat Round count, they also finished the crawl at a faster time as Team Chicago spent many many rounds buffing up for the final challange once they knew they had lost the Combat Round clock.
Then the final PVP arena room started. Team Bren had a 3 round head start, which in hindsight was just too much. Also the room should have had a safezone that the other team couldn't go into or target with opening spells. That was a mistake on my part not realizing what kind of trouble that would cause.
Team Bren summoned some elementals and had some (a complete set of 1 Earth, Air, Fire and Water!) and still had crispy the brunt zombie hill giant with them. Some invisible tactics, and some Black Tentacles prevented Team Chicago from having an easy start, but they put on as good a show as they could.
By round two however a pair of spells "Wail of Banshee" had gone off killing Father Fryer, Boss and Sterno. A few more rounds of combat eventually saw Frank the Tank (inside a whirlwind Air Elemental), the Buldge in a Gas Rage, and the Knife doing her best to fight off the summoned monsters call a Surrender. Team Bren accepted graciously and the crawl was called.
Looking back the Player vs Player wasn't the best idea, as no one likes to loose, and no one wants to have their guys die, even if you know going into it that there is s 50% chance that is just what will happen. There were some hurt feelings and bruised egos but since everyone is a friend I think that didn't last too long and looking back there are no hard feeling. The point was after all to kill each other. However we are already planning some interesting climax rooms without a PvP event involved.
After the crawl eneded, we ate and then broke into smaller groups to play various card/board games.
Werewolf was played, a set of cards was mailed to use by Melvyst (Thanks Man!!!!) and they were put to good use as we played about 6 games of this (Vardaen, Amaris, Doom, Bitom, Bren, micro, Pyg)
Trogdor and Joni played some Phoenix boardgame neither a fan of Werewolf at this time, and then Trog napped not feeling that well.
We then broke out the card game Fluxx which was a ton of fun even if Doom did win like 3 times!
Dinner and the Raffle was had. Everyone won something and we raised a tidy some of money from the raffle that went toward covering additonal food costs and to the UPS for the site. We also awarded the Aart Contest award to DoomulusPrime and gave out the Team MVP awards.
We then continued to play other stuff. Vardaen, Trogdor, Pyg and Doom did the Learn L5R CCG. Doom and Pyg leaving with several free decks of cards.
Bitom, Bren, Wayloss and mirco played soem new game called Elixyr (I only saw a few seconds of this so you guys can comment on it).
And Connie, Isabell, Amaris, JP, and others played some Apples to Apples and maybe something else (I was busy with L5R so I didn't see).
We then lit up the campfire, and by 10:30 we were all sitting around the fire laughing and joking and having a good time. After a bit we broke out the Werewolf cards and Trogdor ran us through two rounds of Werewolf the villagers lost the first game and won the second game.
We packed it up and headed home.
Monday morning we met for breakfast and said our good byes. Everyone should attempt to get driving directions on Google Maps from New York to London! Bren, Vman and JP packed up the site and broke down things and it was all over.
Everyone did a great job, thanks to everyone for their work.
I hope people will post their thoughts and funny stuff that happened, as well as their images!
Day two started just as early but without nearly as much set up required we started gaming just after 9am. Both rooms then took on the Yuan-ti, Giant Squid water room. The room was designed to get people in the water and Team Bren was in the water, most of their summoned creatures fell in or went in, Swank kept falling off the narrow walkways, and Tik-along critical fumbled off the back of his flying Wyvern Zombie mount and fell right in! With JP back to run for Team Chicago I don't really know what happened over there in this room so someone else should comment that knows. I do know that MadVlat had to leave and so Wayloss took over Sterno at this point.
It became clear however that Team Bren not only finished the rooms in a faster Combat Round count, they also finished the crawl at a faster time as Team Chicago spent many many rounds buffing up for the final challange once they knew they had lost the Combat Round clock.
Then the final PVP arena room started. Team Bren had a 3 round head start, which in hindsight was just too much. Also the room should have had a safezone that the other team couldn't go into or target with opening spells. That was a mistake on my part not realizing what kind of trouble that would cause.
Team Bren summoned some elementals and had some (a complete set of 1 Earth, Air, Fire and Water!) and still had crispy the brunt zombie hill giant with them. Some invisible tactics, and some Black Tentacles prevented Team Chicago from having an easy start, but they put on as good a show as they could.
By round two however a pair of spells "Wail of Banshee" had gone off killing Father Fryer, Boss and Sterno. A few more rounds of combat eventually saw Frank the Tank (inside a whirlwind Air Elemental), the Buldge in a Gas Rage, and the Knife doing her best to fight off the summoned monsters call a Surrender. Team Bren accepted graciously and the crawl was called.
Looking back the Player vs Player wasn't the best idea, as no one likes to loose, and no one wants to have their guys die, even if you know going into it that there is s 50% chance that is just what will happen. There were some hurt feelings and bruised egos but since everyone is a friend I think that didn't last too long and looking back there are no hard feeling. The point was after all to kill each other. However we are already planning some interesting climax rooms without a PvP event involved.
After the crawl eneded, we ate and then broke into smaller groups to play various card/board games.
Werewolf was played, a set of cards was mailed to use by Melvyst (Thanks Man!!!!) and they were put to good use as we played about 6 games of this (Vardaen, Amaris, Doom, Bitom, Bren, micro, Pyg)
Trogdor and Joni played some Phoenix boardgame neither a fan of Werewolf at this time, and then Trog napped not feeling that well.
We then broke out the card game Fluxx which was a ton of fun even if Doom did win like 3 times!
Dinner and the Raffle was had. Everyone won something and we raised a tidy some of money from the raffle that went toward covering additonal food costs and to the UPS for the site. We also awarded the Aart Contest award to DoomulusPrime and gave out the Team MVP awards.
We then continued to play other stuff. Vardaen, Trogdor, Pyg and Doom did the Learn L5R CCG. Doom and Pyg leaving with several free decks of cards.
Bitom, Bren, Wayloss and mirco played soem new game called Elixyr (I only saw a few seconds of this so you guys can comment on it).
And Connie, Isabell, Amaris, JP, and others played some Apples to Apples and maybe something else (I was busy with L5R so I didn't see).
We then lit up the campfire, and by 10:30 we were all sitting around the fire laughing and joking and having a good time. After a bit we broke out the Werewolf cards and Trogdor ran us through two rounds of Werewolf the villagers lost the first game and won the second game.
We packed it up and headed home.
Monday morning we met for breakfast and said our good byes. Everyone should attempt to get driving directions on Google Maps from New York to London! Bren, Vman and JP packed up the site and broke down things and it was all over.
Everyone did a great job, thanks to everyone for their work.
I hope people will post their thoughts and funny stuff that happened, as well as their images!
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
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Connie_the_Fire_Element
- Level 14 Elite
- Posts: 3026
Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
Team Chicago...- had a very lucky day as mentioned previously. We earned over 10 additional mojo points - on top of the 10 we started with. It was a bunch of impressive rolls and lots of crits!
There were a few highlights of the crawl. In the first room- we found goblins with guns and foul mouths. They taunted "Knife"- Joni- with their taunts, though she gave as good as she got shouting back at them, "My dead Grandma would kick your ass!" In answer to them threating to dig her up.
During that same fight, rage gas was thrown and "Tank" ran right into it- failing his save. The raging Bastien was later subdued by a hold person spell combined with a change outcome special ability. It was originally thought of, by MV, that we reduce the "Tank's" hps to 0. But that's just silly.
DJ VDB (Vardaen Dirty Bastard) stepped in and we did two more rooms. One which had a psycho cheerleader and a tree everyone fears was Redneck. The good news was the giants didn't get to throw anything in this room, it made a nice change after being bowled into by an adamantine titan warforge.
Room four saw our illustrious heros in the sake house with a bunch of ghouls. THis was when the Cleric's attention wavered and we got 3 rounds into combat before he got clued in that maybe a turn undead would be nice. "Wait- they're undead?" he says confused. And a mini- break is had to taunt him.
We were not online for the process, so no record exsists of our sweetness, but know that it was in- fact- sweetness.
We did not prevail in PVP.
There were a few highlights of the crawl. In the first room- we found goblins with guns and foul mouths. They taunted "Knife"- Joni- with their taunts, though she gave as good as she got shouting back at them, "My dead Grandma would kick your ass!" In answer to them threating to dig her up.
During that same fight, rage gas was thrown and "Tank" ran right into it- failing his save. The raging Bastien was later subdued by a hold person spell combined with a change outcome special ability. It was originally thought of, by MV, that we reduce the "Tank's" hps to 0. But that's just silly.
DJ VDB (Vardaen Dirty Bastard) stepped in and we did two more rooms. One which had a psycho cheerleader and a tree everyone fears was Redneck. The good news was the giants didn't get to throw anything in this room, it made a nice change after being bowled into by an adamantine titan warforge.
Room four saw our illustrious heros in the sake house with a bunch of ghouls. THis was when the Cleric's attention wavered and we got 3 rounds into combat before he got clued in that maybe a turn undead would be nice. "Wait- they're undead?" he says confused. And a mini- break is had to taunt him.
We were not online for the process, so no record exsists of our sweetness, but know that it was in- fact- sweetness.
We did not prevail in PVP.
We will find this f-ing troll, and kill it's f-ing ass.
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Vardaen
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Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
If anyone is interested in the adventure, I'm putting up a link to the folder with the Booklet and NPCs that were used. This lacks the goblins however as JP had those, not me.
http://www.dicefellowship.org/~vardaen/Downloads/Xcrawl
http://www.dicefellowship.org/~vardaen/Downloads/Xcrawl
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
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Vardaen
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Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
Connie posted images from her one camera here:
http://imagesofhappiness.shutterfly.com/brencon2008/4
And Amaris and I have updated our images with about 20 more!
http://imagesofhappiness.shutterfly.com/brencon2008/4
And Amaris and I have updated our images with about 20 more!
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - Gandalf
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien, Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring
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MadVlat
- Level 17 Elite
- Posts: 6867
Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
Hello my friendly friends,
As my doppleganger (thanks for filling in Wayloss) has not yet returned I must assume that his contract with me is void. Which means that team brennor was victorious. I have taken note of the opposing teams tactics and await their return next year.
Alexis "Sterno" Sternovich
As my doppleganger (thanks for filling in Wayloss) has not yet returned I must assume that his contract with me is void. Which means that team brennor was victorious. I have taken note of the opposing teams tactics and await their return next year.
Alexis "Sterno" Sternovich
...And the stone of the earth and the wind in the sky bowed before the wisdom of the Ancient One...
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Wayloss
- Level 15 Elite
- Posts: 4565
- Location: Rochester
- User Class: Outlaw Technician
Re: BrenCon 2008: Post-Mortem
Sterno's entire combat...walk in, roll crap on grapple, get held, roll crap on fort save, get killed.....