Games, Games, and Wargames (and Books and Movies) Oh my!

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to participate in what may be the first ever virtual gaming convention. While there may be groups or conventions that play games online, they are not usually miniature games. From what I understand, this was originally the weekend for the Huzzah! Convention that would have been held in Portland Maine.  Due to the worldwide crisis, they canceled the convention but then changed directions and it became a virtual convention. I heard about the game late in the scheme of things, from a post that Dave Phipps of Pulp Alley had put on Facebook.  To participate in the convention you had to register (it was free), and once registered you could get tickets (also free) to play in the games.  The GMs had the ability to choose what format they wanted to use to run their game.  I saw various sessions using Roll20, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, and other video chat systems.  It was tough to know what to play, since all of t...

A few photos of the Wyndham Lancaster (formally the ever popular Lancaster Host).  Still some obvious work, but getting there. 

Recently I watched the Blu-ray of the movie, Biggles: Adventures in Time.  The movie does not resemble anything that Biggles of the books, written by W.E. Johns, experienced, at least in those I have read. Based on comments some people have made, the movie was nothing like any of the books. While the movie certainly takes liberties with the character of Biggles, and adds a science fiction element to it, I do find it a fun, enjoyable movie to watch. It reminded me of some of the old pulp stories. I am certainly no expert on the original pulp magazines.  I began reading some of them when Bantam was doing the Doc Savage reprints.  I frequented a lot of used book stores in those days (notice I say used, not rare) and was able to pick up a lot of Doc Savage books very cheaply.  More recently several companies have put out reprints of pulps in various forms. Some are facsimile editions, that look just like the originals, including advertisements, and others are rep...

Spent a few days; Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the Historicon game convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Historicon is one of the three conventions per year that the Historical Miniature Gaming Society, East holds.  The other two, Cold Wars and Fall-In, are held in March and November (usually) each year. This convention marked the first convention at the Lancaster County Convention Center in downtown Lancaster.  The previous year it was held at what was once the Lancaster Host and is now the Wyndham Lancaster Resort and Conference Center.  Prior to that, it was in Fredericksburg, Virginia for several years. My wife and I arrived on Thursday afternoon in a downpour.  We were able to get one of the last spots in the attached garage, on the open parking deck.  It wasn't a big deal for us though.  We were staying at The Country Inn and Suites near the Wyndham, due to not being guaranteed a parking spot at the attached garage, if staying at the M...

This past weekend my wife and I attended the HMGS convention, Fall In.  The convention was held in Lancaster, PA at the Lancaster Host.  Much has been written over the years about the site and I am not going to rehash all of that. We arrived on Friday afternoon and very easily registered.  She attends more for shopping, though I keep trying to get her to game.  HMGS provided a drawstring "swag bag" and a pen with laser pointer.  I saw someone online that wasn't impressed, they wanted custom miniature figures, but my thought is that they don't have to give us anything at all and he only custom figures I ever received were from Historicon.  To me the items were nice, and appreciated. Thank you. On Friday I played in the Raid on U-201 game.  It was a magnificent game board. It even had working lights!  After all, it was a night raid... The GM, John Emmett, said that the buildings were Grand Manner and the street lights were a K...