Saturday began with the North Market waffles that my friend Cory and I had been craving all week. Strawberries and cream topped waffled cosumed, I headed to my Spirit of the Century game.

The game was run by David Moore (@vandermore) of the Gamemasters Show and included Mur Lafferty, Chris 
Miller of The Secret Lair podcast, and a host of friends from Twitter and Balticon. We spent the last few weeks creating our characters online - which was one of the best character creation sessions I've been in - and it was a blast to finally get to see them in action.

We each created 1920s, pulp versions of ourselves, recast as fictional characters. Drawing on my time as a newpaper reporter, I created Clayton Berkshire aka Clayton Jones aka The Constant Sentinel. He was a world famous reporter for the London Times who covered the Great War as a stri ger and was so horrified by what he saw that he created the secret identity of the Sentinel. 

My day started wirh the uneven Star Wars event, Betrayal of Darth Revan. Uneven partly because of poor dice rolls and incompetence on our part, and poor adventure design on the part of it's RPGA authors. It has too many encounters, and they didn't obey Order 66's The List, specifically the Rule of Six, which advocates making sure you have good terrain, and diverse opponents spread out to take advatage of said terrain. Perhaps the Order 66 community could take on rebuilding the problem encounters. 

After stopping by the exhibit hall to pick up Six-siders and Spaceships, and taking some time to drool over starship minis,  I headed to my second Star Wars game of the day: The Death of the Star of Agnor. In this New Republic era game I played a force wizard Jedi named Kava Starshade on a diplomatic mission. 

The Star Wars game was sponsored by d20 Radio, the folks behind the Order 66 podcast. It was a good game, involving a pirate attack on a star cruiser. I played the Jedi as a diplomatic, somewhat pacifistic character, using his powers to nullify theeats rather than kill them.

I ended the day hanging out with friends David Moore (@vandermore) and half the crew from our Saturday morning Spirit of the Century game). We put the finish touches on our characters and broke out a new game: Traitor.

The big difference between going to a big con before and after  having kids is that before your sleep deprived when leaving the con, after kids, your sleep deprived from day one.

I woke up Thursday looking forward to gaming, but nursing a headache from too little sleep and too much beer. Nothing alot of coffee couldn't fix though. We headed north for coffee and free wifi at Cup o'Joe. Great coffee but unfortunately the wireless network wouldn't work with our iPod touches.

Coffee in hand and headache tamed, three of the Blackrazors headed to Hackmaster Basic tutorial session.

The first stop on Day 2 was the convention hall and customer service to get a refund on one of my Thursday events, which freed up my afternoon to wander the exhibit  hall.

My first event was Hackmaster Basic, which was an introductory event. It got off to a slow start - our table leader was still learning the rules himself, and we had several false starts. That said, character creation was a fun mix of random rolls and point building, and once we were done we got to run thriuh a scenario with one of the games designers. It's very crunchy, but I'm looking forward to my own group's playtest.

Origins 2009 is off to a good start. After navigating some flight snufus, we checked into the Hyatt Regency withoutp any problems and snagged a late lunch at Barley's Brew Pub.

Then we headed over to the convention center proper, wandered around a bit looking for the pre-reg counter, found it and managed to get our badges and events in under 5 minutes. That alone was a huge improvement over GenCon.

We've sneaked peaks at some of the gaming areas, which are downright cavernous. It's cool to see all the tables consolidated in one place, unlike GenCon's scattered approuch. I'm curious to see how it plays out noise-wise tomorrow.

After registering we chatted with David Moore, his wife Erin and various members of the Gamemasters Show while we waited for the rest of our group to arrive. 

When we go to GenCon, we usually spend Wednesday night eating good food, drinking good beer and playing old favorites like Illuminati or Munchkin.

Except this time we forgot the games.

Fortunately Game Base 7 was around to save our Wednesdau They run a boards game library: give them your driver's license, they go give you a game.

Confident we had a game solution, we hesded out to Elevator, a brewpub on High Street, where we drove the bartenders slightly crazy by ordering four 12 beer samplers. The best one? Three Frog.

The Origins Game Fair 2009 is here. Since my non-gamer friends and family (as well as folks on Twitter) are probably wondering what the heck that is, so I thought I'd explain.

Origins is a game convention held in Columbus, Ohio. It's an event where geeks and gamers (often, but not always, the same) converge to play a wide variety of games. It has nothing to do with gambling (a common misconception) rather, it's about board games, role-playing games, war games, card games (though of a non-gambling nature, think Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon), miniatures games and just about every other kind of game that you can play on a table top that doesn't involve wagering cash.

After years of talking about it, I'm finally going to the Origins Game Fair. The reason is two fold: 1) I've never been to the convention, having always chosen to go to GenCon instead and 2) I have a bunch of friends who will be a Origins whom I've never had a chance to game with.

As with GenCon in 2007, I'm not playing any Dungeons & Dragons. At GenCon it was because I wanted to try out some non-D&D events, since I could always get my sword-and-sorcery fix through my weekly game. This time around, my gaming group has switched from D&D to Star Wars, and I'm curious about how others run Saga Edition. Even better it's being run by members of the Order 66 community, so there's a chance I might run into some folks I've heard on the show or seen in the forums. There's a remote chance I'll pick up a session of D&D 4E, just to see how it plays with people outside of my campaign, but honestly there are plenty of other games I'm more interested in playing.

Here's my "Follow Friday" list for 5/15. I didn't get any education-centric folks on my list this week, but I'll try and make up for that next week.

• #followfriday @Crafty_Games (publisher of Spycraft, Mastercraft) @RPGObjects (Darwin's World, Blood & Space) @SJGames (GURPS, geek culture)
• #followfriday @fredhicks (Spirt of the Century, groks the hobby game industry) @pandora_radio (internet radio station)
• #followfriday @musikfest (Lehigh Valley music festival) @whedonesque (all Joss Whedon, all the time) @IronPigs (LV's AAA baseball team)

The Lehigh Valley IronPigs -- the AAA affiliate of the Philadelpha Phillies -- is hosting a Star Wars night. That's right: Star Wars. And baseball. On the same night!

The event is being held Thursday, June 11, 2009 from 5:45pm - 10:45pm at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, Pa. According to the team's Facebook page, fans are invited to dress up in Star Wars costumes for the event, but that level of geekery is not needed. There will also be Star Wars triva and movie clips between settings and a "Pig Wars" commemorative cup.

While I'd love to go, I'm already going to a game two days later, on Saturday. I don't know that I can justify two games in one week ... but I'm sorely tempted.

Saint, our 13-year-old German Shepherd Dog, was a huge, friendly dog who spent his days guarding his pack, watching out for the ever-present feline menace, and keeping a mindful eye on the two-legged pups running amok in our house.

We adopted him at age 3 as a "brother" for Madison, our yellow Labrador. We quickly learned his quirks: he'd go bonkers whenever it was time to go for a walk, and he had a passion for herding cats (though it took us about a year to figure out he was trying to herd them instead of, say, eating them). When we had kids, the big brown dog took it in stride, incorporating them into his pack without without a moment's pause. He and Mad Dog spent many a long summer day watching the kids, barking at neighbors, and insuring that we always knew when the mailman had arrived.

He was smarter than your average pooch -- you could ask him questions, and he'd bark his answer, letting us know when he was hungry, needed a walk, or just wanted a snack ... at least until he went deaf and could no longer hear the questions.

The 16th annual Pinball Wizards convention is being held May 1-3, 2009 at Allentown Fairgrounds AgriPlex. How I managed to miss this for the first 15 years it was held, I have no idea, but I've got to figure out a way to go this year. They've got game tournaments for adults and kids, a pinball-related flea market, vendors, machines for sale and a whiole slew of pinball machines (about half of Ag Hall, from what I hear) that you can play as part of the admission price.

Admission for adults is $15.00 per day while children (6-12) get in for $6.00 per da. Learn more about it at www.pinballwizardsconv.com.