Although once again my AD&D 1^st edition game was delayed, last weekend turned out to be full of game. My wife was out of town Saturday, so my daughter Elizabeth and I hung out with my cohort Pat. After picking up Pat as his place we headed over to the Friendly Local Game Store, the Dragon’s Table. As usual the owner, John Wrightson, was kind enough to hold Elizabeth part of the time so I could check out the merchandise a little closer. Pat picked up a d20 supplement all about orcs and half-orcs. After deciding against buying the Hamlet roleplaying game (I shit you not) I found a new or like-new copy of the old Street Fighter Story Telling Game from White Wolf. John only wanted ten bucks for this beauty, so I picked it up.

Anyway, Street Fighter looks like it could be a lot of fun. It’s full of fairly cartoony violence and appropriate backstory to justify its use. I may end up trying to pick up the rest of the line. I’m not real familiar with the games, having played the original Street Fighter stand-up a fair bit but that’s about it. If I ran a campaign I imagine my campaign would end up looking like the Pokemon cartoon (wander the world trying to become the best, a new adventure in each town) crossed with Dragonball/Dragonball Z. Now that I think about it, Ash and his friends could be adapted into Street Fighter characters. And Team Rocket, too.

The Dragon’s Table shares space with a comic shop called G-Mart.  We checked the place out after paying Mr. Wrightson for our game stuff.  I didn’t buy any comics, but I did get a copy of a cool flyer announcing that April ’03 was going to be Superfriends month.  Kickass!  Apparently the folks at DC Direct are releasing a bunch of Superfriends premium action figures and statuettes, a poster, and another trade paperback compilation of old Superfriends comics.  The statuettes and figures look a bit pricey for my blood, but I think I’ll get the poster and book.  The poster I might get framed a put up in my game room.  Right now I got no wall decorations in it.

After we left the Dragon’s Table/G-Mart we headed back to my house, where I sprung a little surprise on Pat. Earlier in the week I had downloaded Bad Attitudes a little action-movie indie game from Uncle Bear. The night before I had whipped up some characters and rolled on the adventure generation tables. We had a pretty good time playing through our own silly action movie: Terminal Blitz. Tough-as-nails LA detective Rock Hardslab and Biff Accomplice, his chipper partner, took on the crime empire of the mysterious Mr. W. The session went well. We had an opening action sequence in which our heroes foiled a robbery at a convenience store, a Mexican stand-off in a hospital, a car chase, kung-fu honkies and a kooky homeless informant named Slimy Joe.

 It turned out that Mr. W was none other than Christopher FREAKIN’ Walken!  No, the villain wasn’t being played by Christopher Walken.  The actor himself was LA’s crime lord.

 After the game we went over to my masonic lodge, old Western Star #240. The lodge was having a fish fry and damn was it good stuff. The guys really outdid themselves this time. Last fish fry was really good but this time they used an even better recipe for the fish batter and baked beans. And it was all you can eat for six bucks apiece!

After we gorged ourselves on fish and beans it was time to take Pat to work.  No more games today.

 For Sunday my wife Amy and I had agreed to watch our nephews, Ian and Alex. Their dad (Amy’s brother Jim) is a wargamer/boardgamer type, so the boys have been raised with dice in their hands. We started out the morning with Tom Wham’s masterpiece Mertwig’s Maze. If you have any love for silly dungeon crawlery, don’t pass up an opportunity to play this one! Unfortunately, the cards dealt resulted in a short game. Alex’s character (Arnie Swartz, I believe) managed to find a Royal birthmark in Wood’s Whole and then located the Onyx Ox in the Mystic Vale. That’s probably one of the quickest ways to win the game. It may have been a short game, but we had a good time.

Possession of the Onyx Ox allows you to bypass the feared Mystic Musk Ox.

After chowing down on some McDonald’s, we decided to play Star Frontiers Knight Hawks, an old sci-fi game from TSR.  I was totally stoked when Ian inquired about playing this game.  I’ve owned SFKH since it came out in the early eighties and have never been able to play it often enough for my tastes.  The Knight Hawks ship-to-ship combat rules are easy and fun.  I rank them right up there with Full Thrust in terms of playability.  I’ve tried a lot of spaceship games over the years and this is the one I’ve longed to use for a full-scale interstellar war.  (In particular, the Knight Hawks boxed set comes with a great little strategic scale scenario called the Second Sathar War.)