Reviews of Open House-09

[Reagren Wright]

I can honestly say this was the best time at a convention I ever had. Not only did I play in
some great games (Julius Rosenstein is a fantastic GM) but this was the first time I really got
to met with the rest of the freelancers (writers and artists). I got all the writers of the Tales
of Chi-Town Burbs to sign my book. Jeff Hansan, Wayne Smith (the real Wayne Smith), The
Manning brothers, the two guys from German (can't remember their names), and I went to
Outback Steakhouse on Saturday had a lot of laughs. I filmed the costume contest for Matt
(Prince Artermis) while he particiapted as a BodyFixer, had a great talk with Kevin about my
own writing, Mark (Warwolf) discussed his Nightbane Book, and all the people I chatted or
spoke with. Even signed copies of Rifter #42 for a few people. All in all it was a blast. If things
get better economically for everyone next year, you have to come, and hopefully NMI will be
among them.

[Jeffrey W.]

I'm glad you enjoyed it Reagren, because I (like many of us), couldn't make it to the POH-09 this year; my move to Germany happened just in time to prevent me from participating at Palladium's Open House this year.--(Now I know how others would feel when they commented that their final exams would fall on that weekend.)

Maybe you or somebody else could answer these questions about the review on this thread:

How did POH-09 compare to either of the previous events at the former warehouse location?

Was attendance down this year, or did it compare to POH-07?

Details, please.

Jeffrey W.
(always wishing Palladium success)

[Levi]

It was a great time! I couldn’t really tell if attendance was up or down this year though.

I spent a good amount of time talking with other freelancers and fans. I ran 3 games and played in two. My voice survived, just barely, and I didn’t get sick from being around so many people all weekend. It was a great weekend.

[Reagren Wright]

I would say attendance was about the same as 07. The new warehouse is a smaller then
the previous one, but this required them to really get organized in how they arranged
things. The offices are closer together but it works well for them. They have a blue tarp
that run down the center of the warehouse. Some of us called it a ley line wall. This year
they had plenty of costumes for the contest. Matt should have images posted up on You
Tube I believe. The guy who dressed up like Wayne Smith was great. There were two guys
from Germany (I can't remember their names) and a guy name Pablo from Spain who all
showed this incredible enthusiasm for everything Palladium does. Lots of copies of the new
Dead Reign source book and Shemarrian Nation. Poor Jason Marker has everyone trying
to get their book on the to do list, the Nightbane Survival Guide (saw Mark's copy-awesome),
Warpath (saw some on Jeff's ideas), a spaceship book for Robotech, Mysteries
of Magic, and all the new Rifts books. Lots of great stuff coming guys.


There were more than enough games for everyone, and if they did fill up the GMs tried
to make room, especially Julius and always Kevin. Sometimes not everyone whould show up
to games, especially the 10:00 a.m games because people would play in this conferance
room the the hotel let us use until 4:30 in the morning, accept I don't think
Lonnie ever went to sleep. It was a little difficult finding the hotel and it was on this street
that wouldn't let you take a left turn to get back on the main road so you had to take a
back way. I was also one of the early arrivers about 1:30-2:00 on Thursday and they didn't
have any rooms ready. We also had about 70-80% of all the rooms in the hotel, so we got
to scare and freak out all the normal people (always a plus). So that's about it from my
angle hope others can fill in the rest.

[Grand Paladin]

I agree with you Reagren, I thought the attendance was the same/similar to '07

Oh, and as Lonnie and I were sharing a room together, yes he did sleep. No, it wasn't much at all - he'd typically get in anywhere from 4:30 - 6:00 am, then it was up again around 10 am-ish to do it all over again.

Oh and for the record- Subbie crashed in our room for the weekend, so he didn't have to sleep in his car.

That reminds me - Dennis: I was looking for you on Sunday afternoon to say goodbye, but I swear it looked like you disappeared.

Grand Paladin

[rat_bastard]

rat_bastard was awesome!

[Tiree]

Out of the games everyone played, any memorable highlights? Anything that stuck out as being da bomb?

[Augur]

As a player:
I learned that Julius was simply too quiet to be an effective GM in the format provided, what little I could hear sounded cool though.
I just couldn't stand the wet-dog smell present at Roger Cartier's game despite the very-cool mini-maze/set-up on the table. Also, he was slow to organize and didn't BROADCAST his voice as was needed for the setting.

All-in-all, I wish I'd been able to get in on Marker's "Adrift" Robotech game or one of Brown's games...or really, any of the others. Not to worry though, I had a blast as a GM!

As to Games I GM'd:
Dead Reign: Escape from College (Friday afternoon)
An athlete survivor got his arm chewed off by a bunch of Flesh-Eating zombies and feinted while trying to buy time for some others to open up a barricade so the group could escape.
The latino thug in the survivor group got a fire axe planted in his gut by a Thinker just as the rest of the group was boarding the medivac helo on the roof of the 28-story residence hall--the ROTC soldier turning to save the day was freaking cool as hell!

Heroes Unlimited: The Halcyon Effect (Friday night)
A psychic heroine's (played by Brandon Aten) psychic tug of war with The Mega-Villain "The Creator" over a vat of neuro-toxin large enough to kill the population of Century Station created massive tension and urgency!
A Physical Training heroine (played by Mrs. Marker) wall-walked her way over/past a group of thugs to directly engage the Creator in hand-to-hand battle!
A psychicly-possessed Heavyweight (villain) punches a hole THROUGH the chest of Killswitch (another villain) who is mind-controlling the physical training hero!

Rifts: MercTown--Street Cred (Saturday afternoon)
The leader of the PC group's small-time gang getting bounced off the floor (by the Juicer/gang-banger Jace Everson) like a dribbled basketball was funny
The crazy-heroine-gang-banger getting drop-kicked off the roof of a three-story building by Bellaron the Blade was a notable highlight
The group/gang took a long time to get their clues together and figure out the middle-man culprit but once that happened the final conflict was resolved with incredible speed and player-wisdom! (half a dozen 3rd level gang-bangers facing down a 14th Level Assassin is always a bad idea)

[MADMANMIKE]

I only managed to run one of my games, but it was awesome; kamikazijoe and killercyborg were on the ball; A Simple Cargo Run was not simple at all, but when push came to shove, they clicked things into place at lightning speed.

Kamikazijoe set up a program for the ship they were on to do a quick burn in order to escape quickly from where ever they were being taken, and then leaped from their ship to the next to help it out of the same trap they were in. Meanwhile, killercyborg casually put on his light power armor and went out on the hull to wait for trouble. When the massive pirate ship arrived to attack, he worked his way over to the second ship and hid on the hull next to the airlock the pirates were lining up with; kamikazijoe caught a hail from the pirates, but didn't speak their language (KC did), so he said "I repeat back their last three syllables." I whisper to KC "The pirates call out in Silhouete "Why haven't you reported in?" to which kamikazijoe responds "reported in". The pirates say something else and kamikazijoe says "I repeat what they say but questioningly." To KC "Who is this?!" from the pirates and "Who is THIS?" from kamikazijoe.

The pirates dock with the airlock and as thirty of them in light armor come across the boom passage to the airlock, kamikazijoe seals the bulkheads and opens the airlock on the opposite side of the ship, venting the chamber they were about to enter. As KC looks on, the back end of the horde of pirates vanishes forward in the blink of an eye; as the rest of the party looks on from the bridge of their own ship, the airlock opens and a moment later several pirates are spaced, bouncing off their hull.

At the same moment they activated the airlock kamikazijoe sent the command causing the party's ship to jump to safety, saving them from whatever retribution might come from the boarding party's demise; KC flies around the ship and grabbing a few guns from the dead pirates charges straight through to the pirates airlock, the second ship's airlock closing behind him. When he opens the airlock to the pirate ship he catches the remaining three pirates off guard, and captures the ship. They started out as a hired on temp crew of a tramp freighter and ended up with that, a pirate battleship and a large cargo-colony ship with 150 colonists in stasis that had been bound for slavery.

-Mike <8]

[Reagren Wright]

Yeah it was hard to hear Julius, especially in the Fantasy game I played on Friday, but the
adventure was still great, but the Beyond the Supernatural we played based on historical real
and fictional characters of late 18th century was a riot. I played Sir Percy Blakeney (the
Scarlet Pimpernel), we also had Icabod Crane, Gulivar, Fanny Hill, a 18th century Buffy, and
others whose name I can't remember. It was fun. Not a lot of combat we sort of thought and
planned our way to victory. Its rare to play in those kind of games. Loved it. Kevin's Dead
Reign adventure was awesome. You simply have to play in a Kevin Dead Reign adventure at
least once. And as an observer, I'd bewary of being in any game with Carmen Belliare, you
character is likely to die from friendly fire, in this case, he blew up a house with a few
characters inside. Matt (Prince Artermis) taped one of Kevin's fantasy game so you can see
the master at work in his original enviornment, priceless. GM watch and learn.

[Killer Cyborg]

1. I signed up for MadmanMike's Phase World game as a time-filler before the games I really wanted to be in. It ended up being more fun.
(In part due to #2 below, in part due to the fact that Mike is a solid GM who came up with a fun scenario)

2. Playing for Kev is, was, and always will be educational. He is indeed a game Master.
Unfortunately, he's also such a nice guy that he's always willing to squeeze more people into his games, so there's usually a dozen players there, and this lessens the actual gaming experience.
I was in his Dead Reign game, and his Palladium Fantasy game, and both were pretty damned fun, but even his phenomenal GMing skills couldn't keep things from being bogged down a bit under that many players.
Basically, playing in Kev's game = Awesome, but playing in a Kev game with 4-6 players would probably = Awesomex3 (or better).

3. I signed up for a BtS game run by Julius, but Kev's PFRPG game ran over and by the time I got over there the game was started and the table was FULL. I was tired of playing in games with that many people, so I just hung out and talked to people instead.
So it's nice to know that the volume was a problem- that helps me know that I made the right choice.
Background noise seemed to be more of a problem this year, possibly due to the smaller warehouse. During Phalanx's MiO game (really, Rifts Space), I mentioned to Mark Hall that they needed to rent some partitions or something next year to absorb/block the sound from overflowing one game area to another, or even just do some creative stacking of all the boxes of books they have around. Mark pointed out that even just blankets hanging from the ceiling would do a lot.

4. Overall, it was a blast. I had a great time, and the only problems were that that there were too many players per game in most cases, and not enough Kevins running around.
I always want a time to really just sit and talk with him, but naturally so does everybody else, so there's hardly ever any chance at one-on-one time.
So we really need to work on that cloning machine...

[Leonardo T Dragon]

Out of the games everyone played, any memorable highlights? Anything that stuck out as being da bomb?

I've got to say that both of the games that I played under Carl - the Minion Wars Phase World game and the Mechanoids preview - were fantastically fun. (Even if I did have to speak like Shatner the entire time we played on Phase World.) Also, Braden's Wormwood "Seven" campaign was some good over-the-top epic fun. (I actually hated for this one to end-- who knew you could do aerial combat on Skelter Bats?)

I don't think I played in a bad game there but these were the real stand-outs for me. Now I can't wait for the final installment of the expanded Wormwood to hit the Rifter and for both of Carl's projects to see print!