Camp Nerdly always holds a special place in my heart. The scenery is great. There are plenty of people I only get to see there. It has more opportunity for me to display my pitiful Frisbee skills than all other game conventions put together.
This was our fourth Nerdly, and certainly the best one yet. We stayed in a nearby hotel, because after being in the hospital last year, I was not about to risk my old man back on a camp cot. Kat had the brilliant idea to go down Thursday night after work and avoid all that wretched Friday traffic. And we did exactly that and it worked out great. I got to learn how to play the card game slash with a host of people, like Keith, Bill, Tim, Josh, Whitney, and Sean. I scored points for introducing She-Hulk to her prefect press secretary, CJ Cregg from the West Wing.
Friday evening, I got to play Brendan’s latest iteration of Masks, his game of the angst-filled lives of teenage superheroes. We had a great table of Rebecca, Jared, Kat, and Frank and really sunk our teeth into the tribulations of Zap and the Young Heroez: Quarry, the genetically engineered escapee from a evil corporation; Pandora, possessor of an ancient Greek magical box that could produce all manner of horrors; Xyrax, the most attractive insectoid alien from a parallel dimension; Shatter Dancer, hacker and stone shaker; and, of course, Zap, the electric-powered protege of the world-famous hero The Shield. We faced down a bizarrely amped-up version of The Kelpinator, and found ourselves embroiled in the machinations of the evil Friendly Chemical company. The game was so enjoyable that we continued it on Saturday night.
Saturday morning, I ran the latest version of With Great Power for Kat, Joe, Brendan, Rich, and Matt. They created a slew of really cool characters. Kat portrayed an adult version her Pandora hero from the Masks game. Brendan created an heir to the muse of memory who could revise peoples’ memories at the risk of losing her own. Rich played a speedster who was paraplegic when he wasn’t using his powers, and knew his time with them was limited. Matt played Professor Rewind, who could speed and slow the passage fo time, but was trapped in a time loop himself. And Joe played Cataclysm, imbued with so much cosmic power over the elements that he could scarcely contain the power in his wake. They faced off against the schemes of Ianus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings who wanted to put an end to technological progress, and also the rage of Heraklea, an ancient foe of Pandora. A very fun session.
Saturday afternoon, Kat ran a FATE game she had picked up a few cons ago: The Secret of Cats. The PCs are cats who can see the true magic of the world and must protect their Burdens—y’know, their people. We had a great table of Scott, Andy, Jule and me who played as the cats of the Buffy, Giles, Willow and Xander. We unraveled the mystery of a cat who had gone mad when its burden had been turned into a vampire. It was a fun game featuring a dog pack called the West Side Wags, dreams of human sacrifice, and an animated zombie mouse!
After washing a few dishes on Saturday night, Brendan, Kat, Rebecca and I continued our game of Masks from Friday. It was my first LongCon! We got deeper into the group relationships and questioned what it meant to be a hero. The game—like many PbtA games—is definitely written with long-term play in mind, so it really shone in the second session. I loved Pandora posing as Shatter Dance’s little sister for a meetup with a mysterious hacker, various team members telling off Nimue the Sorceress Supreme, and Zap nearly drowning saving the world but being rescued by Pandora. A really great game that we could have easily continued.
Sunday morning we got there plenty early and squeezed in a quick board game of Lost Cities with Sam and Kat. Then I ran a rushed session of With Great Power. This time, Ira, Ben, Noah, E.T. and Kat created: a berserker with a tortured past; The Creep, who could trap people in their own nightmares; the Insomniac, who could put people to sleep even though he never could; Thunderclap who had the power of a thunderstorm bursting inside him; and the Puppeteer who had been raised to secretly rule the world, but was rebelling by turning those resources to good ends. Opposing them was Update, a woman who had been empowered by aliens to enhance the human race and bring it up to galactic minimum standards by any means necessary. The session was truncated by the need for chores, but it was still quite a fun time.
This was definitely my best Camp Nerdly experience. Thanks to all the Owlbears who made it possible.