Category: Gaming

This time, it’s stuff I did at Gen Con.

Showed up Thursday afternoon. It’s really nice to have Gen Con within a reasonable distance from where I live; much better than when I lived in California. Not losing two days to travel greatly increases the chances that I’ll go back next year. The cab from the airport to the hotel was quick, checkin was easy, etc.

I hit the dealer’s room first. Assume that filled in a lot of the excess time throughout the con, and you’ll be right. Much hellos, hiyas, good to meet you face to face, and so on. The dealer’s room was enormous, but poorly laid out. Upper Deck had a huge chunk of the room, in which they erected some kind of a mini-mountain. Absolutely nobody visited it and they cut off a third of the room, dramatically reducing traffic in that neck of the woods. Ooops.

Thursday night I played Fulminata with a very good group, including the semi-legendary Lisa Padol and Nick Wedig, who I just remembered I recognized from the UA group. In the first big coincidence of the show, Jess Banks (who I’d never met face to face) showed up to take the last slot. As always, the secret to good gaming at Gen Con is to play obscure games; the only people who show up are dedicated. Mike Miller, who wrote Fulminata, GMed an excellent humorous game. I had a blast.

Friday morning I played Buffy with Mike Grasso GMing. The plot was tres cool; 80s girl band crisscrosses the country and fights vampires. Some really nice roleplaying, a good group, and a fun time was had by all. The second big coincidence was sitting down at the Buffy table next to Jeff Wilder.

That was it for formal roleplaying, although I also got into a pickup game of D20 Modern that Mike also ran. Very Shadowrunesque, and amusing as all getout. I ran a drow who was fond of collecting family pictures from the desks of companies he, um, visited. I like quirky characters; what can I say?

I played a ton of Shadowfist. I still suck. My weekend record in tournament games was 1-6.

The recommended Indianapolis bar is the Claddagh. They treated a fairly inebriated group of gamers very well indeed. It takes a strong man not to blink when someone orders a Guinness with a shot of butterscotch schnapps. (I would also be remiss not to mention Nicky Blaine’s if you want a pricy martini bar.) The Alcatraz brewpub was merely OK.

Finally, the White Wolf end of the world party was about what it was. While waiting to get in, I did get a cynical laugh out of the guy behind me who was whining that he shouldn’t have to wait in line because he knew Steve Weick. “Dude, that’s Stewart Weick up there keeping you from getting in; why don’t you complain to him?” No coherent reply ensued.

I always spend too much money at Gen Con.

Dark Inheritance totally tweaked my fondness for Christian mythos modern fantasy. It’s also a very nice piece of work; I concur with the reviews linked to on the Mythic Dreams Studios site. Probably useful for all kinds of D20 Modern games. I think the coolest aspect of the game is that it’s a D20 Modern fantasy game that blows off the D&D tropes. It goes way beyond the suddenly limited-seeming settings that come with D20 Modern.

I picked up a lot of Dying Earth books. I was quite pleased to have done so. Pelgrane was also repping the new Hogshead Publishing. Somewhat to my surprise, Hogshead’s D20 Modern Crime Scene books were really good; I’d have bought them if I hadn’t been buying so much Vancian goodness. They’re professional-looking and the material inside is good law enforcement reference material. Considering that Mark Ricketts only bought the company in February, I am deeply impressed that he got quality product out so quickly.

Time of Crisis has a superhero team made up of simians, so you know that’s good. Also in the simian category: Gorilla Warfare, which on brief readthrough is one of the better Feng Shui supplements I’ve read in a while. John Seavey is moving onto my list of RPG writers to watch.

I preordered Phil Brucato’s new game, Deliria. I may come to regret it, but it looks kind of like what I wanted Changeling to be.

Patchworky commentary ahoy. Um, I guess I’ll talk about indie gaming at Gen Con now. The Forge folks had a shared booth, which looked very busy every time I dropped by. Yay them! I bought some stuff and talked to some people and generally had a good time there.

I met Scott Knipe (who wrote Wyrd and Charnel Gods), and he is just about the nicest guy in the world. He insisted in pressing a printed copy of Charnel Gods on me, so I made him autograph it. We had a nice chat about fan sites and upcoming stuff and so on, and he was one of the people I met at Gen Con who I’d love to have a beer with sometime. Stupid busy schedule. Maybe next year.

Ron Edwards, ringmaster of the Forge, is gregarious, cheerful, and charismatic. Very nice guy. My favorite metaphor for the Forge is jazz; it’s a very structured discussion space and there are a lot of conversations which don’t fit into that space. However, it’s absolutely perfect for talking about critical theory of roleplaying according to the GNS model, and it’s a valuable resource in that regard. Ron is the orchestra leader. Wish I’d had more time to talk to him, too.

I picked up several games, showing my lack of self-control. My favorite purchase was My Life With Master, which rocks — I wouldn’t mind playing it but it’d require committing for a few sessions. It is funny and sad and eloquent. The players are minons of an evil master, attempting to form human connections while serving his bidding. Probably the best value of the con.

I also got Kill Puppies For Satan. Bwah hah ha.

Um… Universalis, which I have not been able to read while in a proper state to comprehend it. Dust Devils, which I liked quite a bit. I want to try using it as an engine for Hong Kong melodrama at some point.

Oh yeah, and The Riddle of Steel, because Jake Norwood demoed the combat system and it is in fact amazingly easy and slick. In fact, in terms of ease of use it’s up there with Feng Shui. You roll a big fat d10 dice pool, divided into offense and defense pools each round, and you hope that you don’t get hit because getting hit is nasty. There’re some table lookups but they don’t come often, because the average combat will not have more than one or two hits in it. I want to try it out in more depth sometime.

There’s also a cool passion system, which provides you with extra dice when you’re fighting for something you feel strongly about. It’s good flavor and encourages roleplay. Finally, the sorcery system is a functional ad hoc system which allows you to cast random effects on the fly, not entirely unlike Ars Magica in that. I always like those.

I’m not entranced by his world, but I think it would be fairly adaptable to Warhammer Fantasy, which is the ur-gritty fantasy roleplaying world in my book. It’d also make an interesting system for L5R if you wanted to replace one deadly combat system with another; but that would take more adaptation work.

So that was what the indie RPG scene was like at Gencon. Fun.

First things first: Indianpolis is not big on the wireless access. The nearest Starbucks to the convention center is in Conseco Fieldhouse, and while it was a pleasure seeing Larry Bird’s arena, they did not have wireless. If you’d been around Saturday morning, you’d have seen me warwalking down the street trying to nail down one of the maddeningly unstable wireless connections emanating from sixth floor apartments. I had no luck.

Next year I’m going to bring an Airport and a hub and try and sneak ‘em into the “check your email” stations. It was irksome — if you’re going to pay for Internet, why not hook up wireless alongside the PCs?

Bitching aside, some comments about the city and the convention center. Indy’s a good place to have a convention. There are about a billion hotels connected to the center via Skywalk, and a mall, and it’d be pretty easy to never go outside the entire con. The facilities were good, with plenty of mediocre food in the center. I liked my hotel fine, although I will be finding a cheaper hotel with Internet access next year.

Who, me, withdrawal? Well, yeah.

More Gencon recaps to follow. See also my photo album.

Not enough gaming today? I have more! See now the UPC Bar Code Character Generator, which informs me that the Johnny Cash album sitting next to my computer is a female elf with Str 14 and no other notable stats. Star Wars Galaxies is a fairly wise, cute halfling with special military training.

Via One Hit At A Time. So much gaming talk. It must be Gencon coming on.