The USS Ticonderoga had a booth this year at Ogden-Con.
April 4th was the date for the 2026 Ogden-Con. I’ve blogged about this naturally growing convention for the past two years (here are my reports from 2024 and 2025). This year the convention was moved to the Ogden Union Station downtown. It was right next to the UTA Frontrunner stop and was a great place for a small convention. I hope that it can stay here for a few years as it continues to naturally grow. It also has several museums in it for trains, cars and guns (admission was extra for these items).
As you can see from the photo above, the USS Ticonderoga had a booth this year. On display was our Borg Alcove and TOS Transporter Console. This is the first time these items have been out in quite some time. It was good to see them back in action. Several attendees had their photos taken with them. The local Warhammer group was also in attendance as well as several local authors. Two of them that I knew personally.
A peak into the car museum at the Union Station.
The convention organizer was really pleased with the move. They had over 400 adults in attendance. They didn’t have a count on the kids as those 10 and under were free. They had also sold out all of the vendor tables. I know when I was talking with one friend at the con, she had found some toys that she hadn’t seen since she was very young. And they were still in the packages. We also had a chance to sample the food trucks that were in the parking lot. There were some growing pains with the new location, but I can see where this convention can only get better. It was more relaxed and more focused on comics.
My only purchases at Ogden-Con this year.
Because I was running a booth, I didn’t get a chance to go through too many $1 comic boxes. But I did find two Doctor Who comics. Just before I sat down to type up this report, I read both of these issues and enjoyed them.
So, many thanks to Rudy Entertainment and the volunteers at the event. I can only see better things for this convention in the future. It was also nice not to be packed into a mega-event when trying to geek out. I had a chance to talk with several possible Ticonderoga recruits including one who’s father grew up with Ray Bradbury. There were some interesting stories there. See you guys next year.
Have you recently attended a smaller convention? What is the best way to let you know of local events. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
Note: If you made it through 31 days of the challenge, read to the bottom of the post.
The 2026 #Character Creation Challenge has been completed. What a difference a year makes. 2025 sucked so bad that I didn’t complete my 31 characters until March. For 2026 I tried a different approach that was, somewhat, successful. I posted 31 characters in January and a bonus character on February 1st. Now I will admit, since I knew that I had some real-life responsibilities (a funeral and parental duties) in January, I did generate some characters in December. This gave me a little bit of a buffer at the start of the month. But in the latter half, I was making the character the day before it was scheduled to be posted. I think this helped my sanity (what little left there is) a lot.
Another thing I did differently this year was not scheduling out the whole month and printing up all the character sheets in advance. This gave me a little bit of flexibility, especially when one game I selected turned out to be a supplement and not a game. However by the middle of the month I had scheduled everything out. I’m not certain how I’m going to do this in the future. Another thing I did was combine some reviews with the character creation. This wasn’t too bad, but I think I’d like to keep these separate in the future.
I really didn’t have any games that disappointed me this year other than Rebel Scum. Sure there were some weird ones like Time Lord or slightly incomplete like the Trader Captain’s and Merchant Princes. But I think Rebel Scum was the disappointment of the 2026 challenge. It needed to really be more a rule book first.
Of the other entries that I read on various message boards, blogs and social media, I noticed a lot of Star Trek characters. One participant was making Star Trek characters with other RPG systems (like the D6 Star Wars game). There was also a participant who created the classic Masters of the Universe characters using the Advanced Fighting Fantasy system. I also loved the Alpha Squad (a 1930’s A-Team) using the Outgunned Adventure system. There were also a lot of other good themes and new system. I wish I had room to mention them all.
Past Character Creation Challenges After-Action Reports: 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021
And if you completed the 31 characters in 31 days, here is the badge that you can display on your blog posts or social media. I’ve already had this badge show up on Welcome to the Eyrie, Paratime, Three Kobolds with a Trench Gun and on BlueSky. If I missed any, please let me know. This graphic is in a large and small format. I commissioned it from AuroraStark.art if you are ever looking for some production art for a project. Additions:The Other Side, Flubs and Boons and Ravaged Renaissance. Let me know if there are more.
Also, if you purchased anything after clicking on the affiliate links to DriveThruRPG or Amazon, thank you. I’m not doing this blog to make money, but the kickback helps when making game purchases for future challenges.
Get ready for the 2027 #CharacterCreationChallenge coming up next January. And thank you everyone who had fun. Even if you only made a few characters, I still enjoyed reading them.
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
Here we are on Day 30 of the 2026 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today I’ll be using the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game 2nd Edition by Cubicle 7. I had created a character using the 1st edition of this game all the way back in the first challenge in 2021. Cubicle 7 also had a game called Doctors and Daleks (based off of 5e) that I used in the 2025 challenge. In 2021 I had also created a character for the FASA Doctor Who RPG (which I had ran back in the 90’s). Then earlier this year I created a character for the little-known Time Lord RPG. This creation journey allowed me to create my own Time Lord called The Barron, two human companions, and a Sontaran. So, my goal is to expand the team by making a robot/android type character. Why not a female character? I usually stick with male characters because I’m always worried that I’ll represent a female character wrong at the table. I just stick with what I know.
Chapter two talks about the characters you can play in this game. There are a lot of different steps that have explanations, but no summary that I can see. So, I’m going to try to follow the steps presented.
The first step appears to be The Concept. What type of character are you playing? As mentioned above, I would like to play some sort of Android. So, if he’s from Earth, it’s in the future. The more I’m thinking about it, yea, he’s an Android from the 2160’s. By that time, I hope we have a better grasp on android technology. This character was designed to be a teacher unit for the equivalent of college students. I jotted down some notes to add to the character sheet later.
The next item is The Focus. This is a single word that explains the characters’ drive or passion. This has both a positive and negative side to it, and the book recommends talking with the gamemaster about this. I talked with the voices in my head, and we agreed that the Explorer sounds good. This teaching android is taking an opportunity to expand his programming by experiencing some of the things he actually teaches. I hope that’s not too vague. If I had to defend it to a GM, I would say that he is more interested in learning the new experiences and may not be aware of what he is getting into. In the system if I was able to use the Focus, then I’d gain an extra d6 to a roll. To those familiar with the first edition, these two items are new to the game.
Experience appears to be the next section. This is what the character was doing before they started gallivanting around the galaxy with a Time Lord. It’s not a complete history, but I’m instructed to pick two major events that happened in the character’s life. There were a few examples listed, but they seemed pretty human centric. I’m going to use “Death of a Student” and “Invalid Source of Information”. With the first, there was a natural disaster at the school, and the android was with the student in their last moments. The second was the android discovered a source of information that they were instructed to use was incorrect. Even with submissions to get the data corrected, it was not. This last part made the character interested in “finding out for himself” so that he could present correct information in his class. In this same section is a Shared Background Experience or something that all the players got to go through together. It had some interesting options, but I have no TARDIS Team to hash this out. So, I’m going to skip this one for now.
Ah, now we are at the Attributes. If you read my blog entry for the first edition of the Doctor Who Rolplaying Game, the attributes are the same. Awareness, Coordination, Ingenuity (smarts), Presence (charisma), Resolve (willpower and determination) and Strength. These scores range from 1-6 with the average Human having 3’s in most of the categories. There are 18 points to distribute between the six attributes. I wrote them down on my notes what I thought an android would have.
Alright, so next is the Skills of the character. The Attributes are the physical and mental abilities and skills are things that everyone knows. They are Athletics, Conflict (aka fighting), Convince, Craft, Intuition, Knowledge, Medicine, Science, Subterfuge, Survival, Technology and Transport. There are 18 skill points that I can award to different skills. A score of 1 represents basic knowledge of the skill. The highest level is 6 which is renown expert. Any skill that has a score of 3 or higher then I can spend a skill point on a specialization. I wrote down the skills that I thought an android teacher would have and picked a specialization for a few of them.
Next is the character’s Distinctions. In the first edition this was covered by Traits. Well for this character he is an Android (I wrote down the details from one of the sample characters in the Doctor Who RPG 2nd Edition Starter Set) and Experienced.
Story Points are something that a player can use to tweak the narrative of the story in your favor. Most characters start with 12 points but you reduce this number by 2 for every distinction present. So this android character would have 8 points.
And now we wrap things up with the Finishing Touches. What is the character’s name? Advanced Learning Android Number 1701-Delta (aka Alan), a Background (the teacher story listed above) but there are ten questions listed in the book that would help players come up with this information (thank you). What is the Home Time Period and Technology Level (examples are provided), Personality (what? he’s an android), Personal Goals (learn more from experience) and Equipment (I really don’t know on this one). And since the book has started talking about Experience, I’m assuming the character creation process is done. Here is the one-page sheet.
Afterthoughts:
I ran the starter set adventure for this at a past SaltCON. From what I recall, going in cold it ran very well. I don’t think that the players knew that I was just as new to the game as they were. As I said then, I could very easily see myself running or playing this game.
This game really could have used a Character Creation Summary that fit on one page. If I was going to run this at the table, I’d probably write one up for my players.
There is a character conversion guide from the first edition to the second edition at the back of the book. I was glad to see this as I like seeing what the differences are between editions. I think it would also assist me with any homebrewing. But there is a large number of fan made publications where they hombrewed stats from the Doctor’s appearance in novels, comics and video games. Gah, I shouldn’t have pulled them up while working on this blog post. I got distracted by the shiny things.
Additional Notes:
While I was finishing up this character, I still had people reach out to me having just learned about this challenge. For those of you reading about the #CharacterCreationChallenge, welcome. I hope that the characters you see here, on other blogs, on social media or on the different RPG message boards inspire you to check out new games or even plan to participate next year.
Coming Up Next:
Star Trek
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
As most readers of my blog may have already guessed (by the title) I’m a big Doctor Who fan. It was another sci-fi genre that my father introduce me to while I was growing up. So for day 2 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge I’m going to create a character for a rare game called Doctor Who: Time Lord. I had picked this book up when it came up really cheap on Ebay. And I didn’t know until after it arrived that it was a discarded book from a public library. Luckily I wanted it for the information inside and not as a collectors item. So, I didn’t complain about it to the seller. But be certain you know what you are bidding on with that site.
Now I’ve created several Doctor Who RPG characters in past challenges. During the first year I had created a character for the FASA Doctor Who RPG which I had played in the 90s. Also in that same challenge I later made a character for the Cubicle 7 Doctor Who RPG 1st Edition. In 2025 I had the opportunity to make a Sontaran for the 5e inspired Doctors and Daleks RPG.
When I started reading the Time Lord core rulebook, something became very clear. This game, which was published in 1991, was meant to be played by the players as one of the characters seen in the TV series. Every single Doctor that had appeared on the TV screen (at the time) had been stated. Same with all of the companions, enemies and other characters. The bulk of the book is a character guide with their stats in tow. I was actually quite impressed and a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to use it for the challenge. But then I came across Appendix I on page 276 where it gave you the rules to create a companion based upon yourself. Thus began my descent into the weirdest character creation process I had ever come across.
There are several attributes for a Time Lord character. Strength, Control, Size, Weight, Move, Knowledge, Determination (aka Bravery) and Awareness with a score ranging between 1 (extremely bad) and 6 (extremely good) with 3 being the average. These are pretty basic RPG attributes. The book states that you are supposed to create the character representing you with the referee. I’m going to base this Carl character off what he would have been back in the early 90’s when this book was published.
For Strength, the referee and the player has an arm-wrestling match to determine the rating. Now you see why I picked 1991 Carl. In all likelihood, I would have been arm-wrestling Geothan or Jill back then. But we were basically the same stature when we were younger. If I was beaten, I would have gotten a lower score (like 2 for puny) or if I won then I could have been awarded a score of 3 or 4. I know I wouldn’t have had a 5 for body-builder. I’m going to guestimate that I would have been average (score 3).
Control was pretty easy. 1991 me wasn’t in track and field and I didn’t play sports or exercise three times a week. So the book states that most players will have a Control score of 3 (again average).
Size was a little weird. It stated that male characters will usually have a score of 3 (average) but females will have a score of 4? I went back to the abilities descriptions on page 51 and re-read them. For some reason with size, the smaller the number, the taller you are. Very weird. So I guess that makes sense that some females could have a score of 4, but the book says Size affects both bulk and height and should be modified according to the player’s extremes. 1991 Carl is a little tall compared to others, do I make him a 3 or a 2? This is where having all of the characters in the show stated helped out. I flipped through them and found random characters and even the ones I thought would be taller (Ogrons, Zygons, etc.) and they were still listed at a 3, so a score of 3 it is.
Weight is our next attribute. The average person has a score of 4. We are back to the higher number representing more on the character (thus heavier). I didn’t argue on this one and wrote down the score.
For Move it only says that all human characters have a score of 3 with a special ability (a sub-skill under an attribute) of Running 1. As we all know, there is a lot of running in Doctor Who. Usually in a gravel quarry substituting for an alien planet.
Knowledge used examples from the UK Educational system (which I seem to be learning a lot about while making different characters). It is based upon what education level you had reached. Well 1991 Carl had been to some community college, but didn’t have his university education (score 5) just yet. So I put him down with a score of 4.
The average Determination score was 3. I wasn’t stubborn as a mule, or in a brave occupation (firefighter, soldier, etc.) so I couldn’t bump it up higher.
Awareness is the use of sight, smell or hearing. I don’t think the use of glasses pushes me down to a score of 2, so I kept it at a 3. With how many girls flirted with me in the 90’s that I missed (according to friends who told me after-the-fact) I know I couldn’t bump this up to a score of 4.
Now we have the Special Abilities of the character. These are based upon the background and training of the character and refers us to chapter 3. The attributes listed above are the “Common Abilities” that each character has. Under each Common Ability, are special abilities (such as the Running 1 under Move listed above). The guidelines in the back of the book suggests that the Referee should provide Cheat Death 1 to Humans with average Strength (3). Again I thought of 1991 Carl and wrote down what I thought would be reasonable. I didn’t give any of the Special Abilities a score of more than 1.
There wasn’t anything in the Appendix about the wounds or equipment on the character sheet. I went back and looked at the chapter they were described in. You mark off wounds when damage is taken, but I couldn’t see anything about what each character starts with. When I looked at the boatload of character stats in the book, they all had the same number of wounds to check off. So, I guess I’ll leave that be. As for the equipment, again little is listed other than a few weapons that are usually carried by the opponents. I went back to the many characters listed and it looks like common sense items that they carried. So I just jotted down a few things and called it good. Here is the character sheet that I would have presented to the Referee for their approval.
Afterthoughts:
And for clarity’s sake, the way the system works is that the player rolls two D6s when they are attempting a task with a chance of failure. They then subtract the lowest number rolled from the highest number rolled and add any scores from the applicable abilities. These numbers are then added together to see if they meet or beat a target number between 0 to 10 based on the difficulty of the task.
Looking through the list of Special Abilities I had to chuckle when I saw that Screaming was listed. Yea there was a lot of that in early Doctor Who episodes. Gloating was also listed and specifically mentions The Master.
From what I understand, there was a bit of an online community for this game before the new Cubicle 7 books were released. The fans had expanded the game and included a better character creation system. However, since I’m focusing on the rules themselves, I did not use the fan made system.
As for playing or homebrewing for this game, I doubt I’ll get a chance to do either. The system sounds interesting enough to try and I wouldn’t turn down a chance. But the likelihood of that happening seems very slim.
Additional Notes:
I was able to get a few more links put up at the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge page. Keep them coming in. I’m also following a lot of entries on the different message boards and on the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge on BlueSky and Mastodon.
Some of the feedback on my Rivers of London entry encouraged me to pick up the first book of the series. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to do that soon, but I’ll see if the e-book ever comes up on sale.
Coming Up Next:
Twillight: 2000 4th Edition
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
Some of the games that I plan to use in the 2026 #CharacterCreationChallenge.
Welcome to the end of the worst year that we’ve experienced since 2020. In some ways it was even worse than that dreaded year. Multiple deaths, an economy going bad and too many other things to mention here have cursed the past 365 days. I will eagerly shove 2025 out the door when the clock strikes midnight on New Years Eve. As mentioned before, January is almost upon us which means it’s time to create the characters. Over the past several months I’ve been prepping for what I hope will be a better year. Something that I really look forward to is participating in (and reading the other entries) for the #CharacterCreationChallenge. I like seeing the creativity of those in the RPG community. I like seeing what I come up with as I make these characters. I enjoy trying out (and reading about) different RPG systems that I don’t get a chance to play at the table. Thank you to everyone in the community who participate in this challenge.
From the image above, you can see some of the physical books that I plan to use for the 2026 challenge. Some I picked up at different SaltCONs for volunteering or picked up in the game swap room. A couple of others I received as rewards for backing the Kickstarter campaigns. A few were gifts (thank you again to those who gave me games, you know who you are). And then there were a few that I had owned for quite some time, but hadn’t used in building a character. I have a ton of games on PDF that I had picked up from DriveThruRPG or charity sites.
Because the upcoming January is already hectic I haven’t really nailed down what game will be on what date like I have in the past. The funeral for my mother-in-law is quickly coming up and I have other family commitments that are happier occasions. So I’m hoping my prepping will allow me to get all of the 31 characters done by January 31st. However, should real life dictate that I have to go into February, I’ll not stress out too much like I did last January.
As in the past, I’ll try to walk through the character creation process as I understand them in the rules-as-written (RAW). This also gives me a chance to do a review of the process. I will then scan the character sheet for all to see.
For the five previous years of the Character Creation Challenge (in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025) I’ve had quite a few people reach out to me using various methods to let me know of their participation. Please let me know, Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com if you plan to post your characters up on a blog. I’ll link to it from the Character Creation Challenge section of my website.
I have had some people tell me that they are pre-making some of there characters before the challenge. I’m not going to blow the referee whistle at them. As I’ve stated when this was started five-years ago, this is for fun. I know we all have real lives to worry about. And as much as we’d like to be able to focus on our hobbies and what makes us happy, we still have to function in this society. So I’m not going to dock you for setting up a buffer. All that I ask is that you post your entries in at least one location (the #Character-Creation-Challenge channel on the TardisCaptainDotCom discord, on a personal blog (tell me the URL), on one of the many RPG message boards, on social media with the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge). I love seeing what other RPG fans have come up with.
If you are reading this after January 1st and you still want to jump into the challenge, please do. A few participants last year either did a quick catch up or just made sure they ran a full 31 days. The choice is yours. This challenge is just for fun with our gaming systems.
Remember to have fun with this. That was one of the primary goals of the challenge.
You can also use this graphic to help promote the #CharacterCreationChallenge.
Feel free to share this image on social media to spread the word.
What games are you using for the challenge? Do you have any questions about the challenge that wasn’t covered on by the FAQ? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
On special Day 21 of the RPGaDAY 2025 Challenge we get to talk about the ‘unexpected’. I specifically wanted to talk about keeping things unexpected for the players so that they can experience the storyline that the GM has planned for them. Yes, a proper RPG session is a joint storytelling experience, but the GM still works out the appropriate plot points ahead of time.
To quote River Song from Doctor Who: “Spoilers” (wicked grin). Spoilers in a game can be a bad thing. We hate spoilers for the latest TV episodes and movies. And it should be the same for gaming. Seeing the look on the players faces as they figure out the clues (or completely miss it all together). That is part of the fun of the game.
I recall two things about this from my past. When I was early into the RPG hobby, I remember being at a local gaming store talking about some of the modules that were for sale. I wondered about players buying the module that the GM was going to run to know the story ahead of time. This is probably why I preferred to homebrew my adventures and gaming world to keep this from happening. I remember the person I was talking with making the statement that he could (and had) changed the module to fit his campaign needs. Even to the point of just keeping the module title to present the unexpected to his players.
Recently at a SaltCON event, I signed up to play a one-shot of the Fallout RPG. One of my kids was in attendance and really wanted to play a session with her Father. At the table I quickly realized that I had already played this one-shot at a previous convention. So in order to not spoil the other players fun, I did not say or do anything about the knowledge I already had on the plot. It was actually to my benefit as we got farther along the plot on this session than we had previously.
I’ve also blogged about the multi-year Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 campaign that I played with some friends. While talking with the DM, I mentioned that I was going through some older Dragon Magazine articles looking for some research information. He cautioned me about reading some of the older adventures found in the magazines as he was currently using one for the campaign. I was glad that he had warned me, just in case as I wanted to feel the thrill of the unexpected.
What do you do to keep things unexpected in your game? Would you make drastic changes to the characters or plot? Have you found yourself at a table where you knew the adventure? How did you handle it? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
So last year I talked about attending my first Ogden-Con, a local small event convention. If I understand this correctly, this is the third year for this event. There was a Christmas version of Ogden-Con last December, which was a ‘mini’ version of the event. But, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it to see how it compared.
Like last year’s event, this was put together by Rudy Entertainment. There was no charge to get into the event this year. And there were several other changes as well which showed small steps needed to grow the event. I think this is a good way to do this so that you don’t get project creep pushing the event beyond the capabilities of the organizers and volunteers. I’ve seen smaller events with some good ideas get too overloaded which either burned out the people or ran out of funding.
It was still at the Comfort Inn Ogden Conference Center (located in West Haven, not Ogden) and one of the changes was the addition of food trucks outside the event. I had forgotten that this was planned as I had grabbed some food on the way in. I wish I had remembered since one of the food trucks had chili dogs. Another change was the opening of an additional conference room that contained some gaming elements (see photos below). This was primarily Warhammer tactical gaming with a lot of miniatures. There was also a cosplay contest that was held in a very interesting manner. The participants signed up and when it came time for the judging, the coordinator went to the different vendors and asked them what costume they thought was best. So if you visited the different tables and booths, you were seen more. While the wrestling group had returned, there was no wrestling ring set up this year. Probably because there were more vendors this time around. I actually ran into a former manager of a gaming/comic store that I had a hold with back in the mid to late 2000’s. He had recognized me while I was talking with the convention chair. We were able to reminisce about some old times.
As you can see from the photo above, I came away with some good treasures. Like last year, the bulk of vendors were selling comics. Some had some graded comics protected in collector boxes, but there was a lot of $1.00 comic boxes. It was these that I went through and I found some older items that I was looking for as well as some surprising new titles. I also found some good deals on collector cards that were very low priced. These included cards from Doctor Who and a Star Trek behind the scenes card set. I did see a vendor with some older Dungeons and Dragons modules from the 80’s, but they were graded and in protection boxes (and a little higher than what I was willing to pay). There were also several local artists who were drawing and displaying their latest works. A few toy vendors, a company that could 3D print you as a figure and other collectables. A raffle was also being held with some very good prizes, but again I had limited funds at the time.
It was a relaxing small event. I’m discovering that I enjoy these more as I get to talk with more people than I do at a large mass gathering. I’m also not so overwhelmed that I want to escape as soon as I can. I’ve noticed that I’ve been buying more from these smaller events as well. Speaking of buying, make sure you bring some cash with you when you attend a smaller con like this. Some of the vendors are just people selling their private collections and don’t even have venmo, paypal or a credit card reader.
So moving forward, the con chair/owner did talk with me about having the USS Ticonderoga run a charity booth at a future event. They are planning for an October event (no date yet) probably at the same location. I let him know that this would be a charity booth just like we do at other conventions. With the extra room, I could see some RPG sessions or other tactical games being set up. From what I’ve seen, the two conference rooms are the only ones at this facility so there really isn’t room for a panel track. But a track set up with local volunteers or businesses would be a possible idea. Yea, I don’t want to see too much project creep, but I’m certain that one of these could be a future baby-step for the convention.
I would strongly suggest setting up a website for the event, nothing too flashy, just the basic information needed for attendees to find out more. The Facebook posts are kind of hard to find since they are under the Rudy Entertainment account. Not everyone is on Facebook. I’ve also seen flyers at some of the local comic stores. I know that after the event I swung by a few other geek stores and one owner asked if the event was still going on Sunday as he wanted to come check it out. Unfortunately it was only a one-day event (again baby steps, I think one day is the best for this event).
Here are some other photos I took at Ogden-Con.
Have you recently attended a smaller convention? What is the best way to let you know of local events. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
Holy crap I made it. I was able to get 31 characters made for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. The last character was officially done on March 14th, but I rolled up (well mostly) 31 characters using 31 different systems. Thank you for sticking with me and for cheering me on until I made it to the finish line. I had several of you reach out to me after reading my SitRep Report towards the beginning of February. A few more real life issues came and kicked me hard. After several vet visits, overnight stays and stressful financial burdens, one of our younger beloved cats unfortunately crossed the rainbow bridge. This had devastating mental and financial issues (vet bills) that the family is still working through. On top of that, the real world issues of government shutdowns and layoffs has been adding to my stress. I also wanted to make sure that my gamemaster commitments for SaltCON-Spring 2025 were fulfilled, which I gladly did so. Especially since I was receiving two admission passes for myself and my geek wife.
OK, enough real world bitching. What are my final thoughts on the 2025 challenge? (Why do I suddenly feel like Jerry Springer at the end of one of his shows?) While this was probably the most challenging of the five years I’ve been doing this, I’m still really glad that I did it. I’m even more glad that I stuck with it and made 31 characters. I think one of the bad things that happened after January 31st is that I let a lot of distractions (most legit) get in the way of me completing the last few characters. During January I’m in “go go go” mode. Taking a lot of time to make sure a daily post is made and uploaded. Once that urgency was gone, I had to focus on real life sacrificing play time. For those of you who can post significant daily content on your blogs, I salute you.
The entries that stood out to me in the 2025 challenge included Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition, Planet of the Apes and Red Dwarf The Roleplaying Game. All three of these books were beautiful, the character creation process was easily explained and I want to homebrew for all three of them. Look forward to more from me on these games.
The games that were disappointments in this challenge were actually quite limited. While there were a few that were frustrating, I wouldn’t really call them disappointments, with one exception. The Strange. It started out with so much high potential, then crashed hard. The feedback I had received from that blog post has already been documented in the “additional notes” sections of other entries, but it was from people who had similar experiences that I encountered with this RPG.
Speaking of feedback, I really want to thank the publishers/authors of the GI Joe RPG and Shadow Ops RPG for providing feedback to my blog posts. This tells me that they loved working on their projects and were grateful to their customers. I’m hopeful that my feedback will help improve future publications/editions of their works.
Also, the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server during this challenge. Even now we are still having some regular conversations on a variety of subjects. For those of you who have joined me there, thank you.
For all of those who are still reading my little corner of the internet, thank you. For all of those who reached out to me or came up to me in person to give me a hug, thank you. The friendships and camaraderie of the geek and gaming community has really been a rock that has helped stabilize my life right now. If you made it to 31 days, congratulations. Send me a note via email (carl (at) tardiscaptain.com) on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. I want to make sure you got the completion graphic for completing the challenge.
Also, if you purchased anything after clicking on the affiliate links to DriveThruRPG or Amazon, thank you. I’m not doing this blog to make money, but the kickback helps when making game purchases for future challenges.
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.
This was probably one of the most interesting and entertaining SaltCONs that I’ve attended. There were some games that I missed, but I still played in many others and the games that I ran were very well attended. I think what helped the most is the friends that I met up with at the convention. As most of my regular readers know, 2025 has been sucky to say the least (at least using words that don’t involve swearing). In fact one of the issues that has been affecting my household came to ahead when one of our furbabies (not the one pictured in the Prepping for the 2025 Character Creation Challenge post) passed beyond the rainbow bridge a few days after the con. That is what delayed this after-action report. We are happy that he is no longer in pain, but it has been one of the things on our minds for the past two months.
Sigh. Back to talking about the con and the fun that I had there. I arrived on Thursday and checked in. I had some time before running my first game and I started wandering around the convention center. I found one set of friends, but they were in the middle of a session. I found a second set of friends, but they were running the Artemis bridge simulator. After wandering through the dealers room and seeing all of the stuff I wasn’t able to buy because of lack of funds, I walked into a hallway and found a friend who was attending the convention for a first time. I sat down next to her and asked for a hug. She instantly grabbed me and said “I’ve known you for 35+ years I can give you a hug.” That was the start of making this conventions one of the best conventions I’ve attended in a while. Not only did she spend a lot of time with me making sure that I was OK, as we were wandering around together for most of the con a lot of other friends ran up to me and asked for hugs. I didn’t know if they had heard about my issues that I’ve blogged about, or they just wanted to see me. The small acts of friendship really helped me out. I tried to make sure all of you heard a “thank you” from me individually, but if I didn’t get to you, please know that you really boosted my spirits. Thank you.
Alright, shaking that off, despite the lack of funds this weekend, I did pick up some loot at the convention. For running a lot of one-shots the gaming coordinator allowed me to pick a book from the box of prizes. I elected to pick up the core rulebook for Tales from the Loop. Primarily so I could use it in the 2026 Character Creation Challenge. Yes, yes… I know, I still have two more characters to pump out to get to my 31 characters. I should be able to get those done very soon. The shirt was also a gift to the GMs from the coordinator and it was specifically for those who had volunteered a certain number of hours at the convention. I was tempted to get the regular convention t-shirt which also looked good, but funds were limited. The convention itself had handed out specialty D6s (this was the 10th anniversary of the convention) that had playing pieces to represent the 6 on the die. I was able to obtain several of these. Another GM had given us a special D6 for his game which advertised his group called RPG Sessions. SaltCON was also having another pin quest and I was gifted a cyberpunk beholder. You probably can’t see it very well in the photo posted above, but he’s all metallic and kewl looking. And finally, a friend saw the “My puns deal 3d8 psychic damage” sticker in the dealers room and had to pick it up for me. Not pictured was a rubber duck dressed up as a witch that someone dropped in front of me. I missed who did this so here is another random “Thank You”.
I’m very happy with the games that I ran for the convention and I had a ton of fun running them. In every single one, someone who hadn’t signed up for a session walked up to the table and asked if they could join. My Star Trek Adventures game was based off of a scenario provided in the Klingon Empire Gamemaster Toolkit and it quickly turned into a “Weekend at Bernie’s” situation. One of the characters had been physically taken over by an entity and didn’t have full control of their body. So the other characters had to drag them around why they flopped their arms in the direction they wanted to go. We were talking about that game over the course of the convention. I was really impressed with the intro adventure for the Doctor Who 2nd Edition RPG that I ran on Friday. Every one got into their characters very well and as I was running it, I thought to myself “I could be talked into running a campaign with this system.” On Saturday morning I ran the intro adventure for the new Planet of the Apes RPG that I had backed on Kickstarter (review coming when I get the physical product). This is the one that is an update to the old D6 system by West End Games that was used for Star Wars and Ghostbusters. This was the first time I had GMed for this system and I could tell it had been a long time since I had actually played. I can’t wait to get the physical book for this game. And finally on Sunday I ran a game that the games coordinator told me was getting lots of talk over the weekend. The Wendy’s Feast of Legends game. We had a full table by the end of the session and honestly, it didn’t run too bad for a joke advertisement game. I had to house-rule a few things just to keep the flow going, but I would have done that with any RPG. I did have to explain some of the in-jokes within the game since the food prices had risen since this game was released. Unfortunately, because of the no-outside food rule at the convention center, no one had any bonuses from bringing in Wendy’s food. The convention organizers had posters made of all the RPG games that were scheduled for the weekend (to try to draw in players from other sections) and here is the one they did for the Feast of Legends.
As for the games that I was able to participate in, this is how it went.
Basic Roleplaying, Cypher System, Curseborn: Ashcan Edition and Pendragon. If you were running these games at the con, I apologize for missing them. Due to some real life issues (one mentioned above) and pure exhaustion I had to miss your games. I really wanted to try them out and I tried to see if I could sign up for another open table spot, but the schedules just didn’t pan out. If they are run at future SaltCONs, I’ll try to see if I can sign up for a seat then. One of my goals is to at least try one or two new games each convention. I like checking out the variety of games that are out there just to see how I like them.
The Starfinder game was listed as a play test of the 2nd edition. But I don’t believe it was an official play test with the publisher. I had asked if there was a way to provide feedback and the GM was running something that they had gotten off of Facebook (if I understood him correctly). I’ve played in a short 1st edition campaign back in 2020, but I don’t recall much of it. I hadn’t been too impressed with it then but part of the issue may have been running on the sucky Fantasy Grounds VTT. The 2nd edition played at the table seemed OK, but there wasn’t anything to write home about. I played a Vesk tank with several big guns and lots of armor and it just seemed like we were in a dungeon, in space. I don’t know, I’m not getting the appeal of Starfinder.
TRON: Vasser’s Game. This was a homebrew of the Genesys system to run a TRON RPG. The GM had things laid out pretty well. Turns out this was the same gentleman that ran the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG at the 2024 SaltCON-Spring. The same tablets were used that had the character sheets but we got to roll the weird dice on the table this time. This allowed me to try to understand the system a little bit better, which I don’t think I did very well. This wasn’t the fault of the system or the GM, I just kept feeling like I was slowing down the pace of the game not understanding the symbols of the special dice. After the game I was thinking about this and if I had prepped myself with a dice cheat sheet I don’t think I would have felt guilty slowing things down. Both myself and the other players were very interested in a TRON based RPG as we kept making references to the movies. I also referenced the TRON 2.0 video game that I’ve enjoyed many times over.
A GM that I knew was running the Star Trek Adventures 1st Edition because he hadn’t picked up the 2nd edition book again. Which was actually good for me because he ran a comedy based adventure called “Blueberry Trill” which was weird. It was one of the mission briefings that he had found online that allowed him to improvise parts of the adventure. One of the things he did was run us through an extended task in the one-shot. This was something that I really hadn’t experienced in the times that I had played 1st edition. I think I’m glad that this part of the game was changed for the 2nd edition of the game. Oh, and if someone offers you a genetically modified blueberry designed to grow on the planet Trill, don’t take them up on it. Trust me.
Titans of Atlantis was not only the last game for me, but the last RPG to be run in the RPG room for the convention. It was a weird D12 system where you got to roll more D12s if the character was more skilled in certain areas. But there was still a low target number to try to roll under. I had a basic fighter that was only armed with a spear and a shield (all with fancy greek/roman inspired names). With how “skilled” he was at fighting, he sure didn’t connect on a lot of strikes. I ended up helping to push one of the big monsters into a magical portal with the other characters instead of trying to slay it since that seemed to be more effective. The game itself was pretty funny, but that was because the players were probably exhausted from the weekend and the constant low success rolls. This resulted in throwing caution to the wind on a lot of antics that were performed in the game. Was this done on purpose to prevent murder hoboing in the game? I’m not certain. While I was grateful to try out a new system, I don’t see this being a repeat system for me to try.
One last nugget to drop before I wrap this up. I had a game designer ask me if I’d be willing to review his RPG that he had just released. He agreed that I was free to write what I wanted in my review. A few days after the con I had a message from DriveThruRPG with a free copy of the game. I hope to get this review posted in a month after I’ve taken care of a few other blog obligations that I need to catch up on.
If you are looking for a good gaming convention, I’d recommend SaltCON. There are quite a few out-of-town people who show up for the spring event. But the Summer event on June 6-8 and the End-of-Summer on August 29-31 are also enjoyable as well. I’d love to see other publishers and blog readers there. I’m already trying to decide what games I’ll run in June as the call has gone out for submissions.
Do you have any questions about the convention weekend? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
Ignore the 2024 badge, I’ll be picking up my new badge very soon.
It’s time once again for the biggest SaltCON of the year. SaltCON-Spring will be running from February 27 to March 2nd at the Davis Convention Center and I’ve signed up to run four games this year. By running four games I was able to get a ticket for both myself and my geek wife. You can read about my past adventures at SaltCON in my past blog entries. I will be packing my Convention Backpack that I have documented in a previous blog post.
As you can see from the photo above, I’ve signed up to run another one-shot for Star Trek Adventures. Two other games that I will be running are also based off of popular franchises. Doctor Who 2nd Edition and the brand new Planet of the Apes RPG that only Kickstarter backers have. I just created a PotA character in the recent Character Creation Challenge. As for the fourth game that I’m running, well because lots of attendees come to conventions to play games that they don’t normally get a chance to play, I’m running Feast of Legends. Yes, that is the RPG that was used by the fast-food company Wendy’s to advertise their product.
As for the games that I’ve signed up for. Well for the first time I’ll have a chance to try Basic Roleplaying (no I won’t be using the character I made in a recent challenge). Another new system for me will be Pendragon. I don’t know what edition, but I’m assuming it will be the latest. Titans of Atlantis is a system that I’ve never even heard of before. A game master is going to be using the Genesys system to run a TRON RPG. Also on the new game front for me is Curseborn: Ashcan Edition by Onyx Path Publishing. I’ve also signed up for a Star Trek Adventures game run by another GM and a Starfinder game.
My wife has signed up for a Labrynth game, something called Lifewish: Ravenheart, another game called Black Powder and Brimstone and The Electric State. She also signed up to be in two of the games that I am running.
With how this year has been so far, I really hope that I can get a nice relaxing weekend with some dice, some friends and hopefully some good memories. I really could use some of that right now. I’ll have an after-action report when it’s all over.
What should I be on the look out for? Any recommendations for the games I’m going to be playing? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
