Game Day: Prepping for Nuke(m)Con 2017

Covers for the D&D Player's Handbook, Dungeon World, Hollow Earth Expedition, and Tales from the Yawning Portal

Nuke(m)Con 2017 is a week away and I’m scrambling to pull together my events. My gaming group’s homegrown convention is being held September 27-30 at a friends house. We expect 10-12 people to attend over the course of the weekend, but any given slot will likely have 5-6. I’m running three games: Dungeons & Dragons, … Read more

Nuke(m)Con 2016

Plastic miniatures of the frog-like monsters known as slaadi stand on a battlemap. In the background can be seen several figures representing player characters.

Nuke(m)Con. It’s my gaming group’s homegrown convention which was first held in 2004 as an alternative to going to GenCon. It’s schedule was never formally defined, but for a while we had an every-other-year schedule going with conventions in 2006, 2008, and 2012. Then came the convention drought. It wasn’t for a lack of trying … Read more

Nuke(m)Con 2012: Lessons from a homegrown convention

The Blackrazor Guild held its semi-annual homegrown convention in late February 2012. About 18 people attended Nuke(m)Con 2012, some long-time members of the gaming group, others friends who join us from time to time. Nuke(m)Cons have become a standard part of our gaming group; we first started holding them because we missed our annual pilgrimages … Read more

Nuke(m)Con 2008: The Wild, Weird West

The cast of the movie Serenity stands in a desert, ready for battle.

Like a twister carving its way through a Midwestern cornfield, Nuke(m)Con has come and gone. My gaming group held its annual (well, almost annual) home-grown convention over the weekend. In a break from previous years, which typically saw a mix of Dungeons & Dragons and board games, this year’s Nuke(m)Con had a western theme. We … Read more

Game Day: Shoot’em, Nuke’em

Cowboys on horseback.

Nuke(m)Con is coming back with guns blazing. After a one-year hiatus, my gaming group’s homegrown convention returns September 19-21 with a slate of western-themed role-playing games. We’ll be playing Serenity, Dogs in the Vineyard, Aces & Eights and Deadlands: Reloaded. We’re also running two high level Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 adventures on Friday and Saturday. During … Read more

Radio Active #39: Nuke(m)Con 2012, Doom, Geeky Media

Soldiers prepare for the worst.

The gaming world has GenCon. My gaming group has Nuke(m)Con. Radio Active #39 starts with a look at our home grown convention and then takes a look at a couple of new geeky media outlets in the form of the Geek Gazette newsletter and Geek Label podcast as well as an exceedingly useful anti-repetitive stress … Read more

The Other NukeCon

Back in July, my gaming group held a private, at-home game day we called NukeCon. Well, it turns out there is another NukeCon, one that’s been running for 13-odd years in Nebraska, and they were none to thrilled about our version. So, in the interest of inter-gamer harmony, and in deference to an honest-to-gosh convention, … Read more

NukemCon: Afterthoughts

Grey and white robot-like figurines battle on a hexagonal map.

NukemCon has come and gone, and now that I’ve caught up on my sleep and my caffeine twitches have faded, it’s time to evaluate our first-ever home-grown convention. Overall, I think it went quite well. We got to play a heck of a lot games, although not nearly as many as I’d hoped. The final … Read more

NukemCon: Day 3

A close-up view of small fantasy figures on a gridded battle map.

The sun rose on NukemCon to find many a bleary-eyed gamer driving through Phillipsburg looking for breakfast. After snagging sustenance at McDonald’s and Manhattan Bagel, the stalwart dice-throwers returned to Easton and the first session of the day: Dungeons & Dragons. It was the third part of the D&D adventure we’d been playing all weekend, … Read more

NukemCon: Day 2

Gamers gathered around a table playing a card game.

The Blackrazor Motor Pool was forced into action on Day 2 of NukemCon, as car troubles harried our otherwise excellent day of gaming. It started with Bill’s car; when we went to get the third television out for our Xbox network, he caught a glimpse of something gleaming in his tire. Yes, in his tire. … Read more