Showing posts with label Gen Con. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gen Con. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Gen Con 2018 Recap

I apologize that this recap is late as well. At least it's before Gen Con 2019 and not as late as my Gen Con 2017 recap! As before, my memory ain't what it used to be, so I'll do my best.

Wednesday
This year I carpooled with Vic, one of the Chicago Area Game Writers Colloquium (CAGWIC) regulars. We had a lovely discussion of the gaming world we live in and life in general.

Once we settled in, I headed over to the Crown Plaza ("the Train Hotel") to attend Monte Cook Games GM Meet and Greet. They went over the general guidelines, answered any questions, and handed out some very nice GM materials (which I will recap below). Somebody also brought in some MCG-themed cupcakes! They were yummy! Monte Cook Games is a great company to run games for. If you get a chance, sign up to run for them, at Gen Con OR your Friendly Local Game Store!

Back at the hotel, the first game of Gen Con 2018 was Photosynthesis by Blue Orange Games. I've been wanting to play it for a while as it is always so pretty setup in the demo halls. Brad brought his copy and set it up for us. It's such a beautiful game with a strategy that changes every round. There was a race for the middle, but Brad pulled out the win with his own private grotto. Good game gents!

We finished out the first night with Hellapagos by GigamicWorld. It's what you would call a 'coopetitive' game. I think 10 of us were playing. We all start as shipwreck survivors on a remote island. There is just enough food and water to last us two days. Initially, we are trapping water, fishing for food, gathering wood, building a raft from said wood, or scavenging the wreckage for supplies. That didn't last long. I ended up drugging friends to steal their supplies and then claiming immunity when getting "voted off the island" (i.e. dying from lack of food or water). I made it to the final four. It looked like there was only enough supplies for two people to escape the island, so with the two bullets I scrounged, I shot DJ and Brendan. DJ deflected the bullet with a scrap of steel and then produced enough sandwiches to save more than four people. Shashank said I didn't have to brutally murder Brendan as he had a machine that converted food to water. Too little to late, my friend; bullets travel faster than food processors! So, DJ, Shashank, and I made it off the island and escaped the hurricane. In an ironic twist, that would be the last game I would "win" at Gen Con 2018.

Thursday
Adam, Tyler, and I decided to brave the rush and tackle the exhibit hall first. Brad asked us to hit up the Smirk & Dagger booth to pick up a copy of Tower of Madness for him.

Since I was close, I headed over to the R. Talsorian booth. A long line was forming. Apparently, the Witcher RPG has a big following! I waited in line so I could find out when to expect Cyberpunk Red (later 2019 - Jumpstart Kit at Gen Con 2019!) and snag some cool cyberpunk dice!

I then stopped by the Indie Press Revolution booth to pick up Scum and Villainy by Evil Hat Productions. Scum and Villainy uses the Blades in the Dark rules to play a spaceship crew trying to get by. I had seen a print proof at Origins Game Fair and had to get my hands on a copy!

At 1:00, Monte Cook Games held their Discover your Destiny seminar. The first half was discussing Numenera: Discovery and Destiny and what to expect from that new edition. Of course they talked about Invisible Sun. Then they announced the Kickstarter for Your Best Game Ever—a collection of essays to improve your role playing game experience.

After an early dinner of a Salmon BLT from High Velocity, I headed back to the convention hall to run the two Monte Cook Cypher System games I signed up for.
Salmon BLT with Asparagus! Yum!
First up was Cypher System - Assault on Singularity Base, a multi-table cooperative free-for-all set in your typical space opera. I ran green team, who had to assault the barracks and keep the waves of troopers from reaching the other parts of the base and keep the heat off the other teams. It was a suicide mission. I knew it was a suicide mission. I tried to convey that uphill battle to the players. By the time we took our halftime break, at least one player was frustrated with the apparently insurmountable odds. After the break, the tides turned! The other teams started sending reinforcements. May table jumped from six players to nine! With the extra bodies, they were able to lock down the barracks and escape before the base blew. Total blast Afterwards I got some really flattering feedback, that totally made up for the rough spot in the middle.

I didn't have much time to reset the table for Numenera - Forgetting Doomsday. The adventure is a tale of two war-torn villages who have to come together to save both from a mysterious mind-altering machine between them. The setup requires that players be split between the two tribes. After some initial and expected friction, they fully embraced working together in brilliant ways! Well played, folks!

Several of us finally got to play Brad's brand-spankin' new copy of Tower of Madness. It's a push-your-luck game where you are trying to investigate and "solve" locations with your dice rolls. In the middle of the table is the Tower of Madness, which is pierced with tentacle-handled skewers and topped with marbles, à la KerPlunk. If you fail to investigate properly, you have to pull a skewer. If a marble drops, depending on the color of the marble, you can gain victory points, lose sanity, or begin to summon Cthulhu! The first game didn't go so well, as we all died unceremoniously. The second game, a few of us were sprinting to go insane and try to summon the great Old One. Scott became a cultist first, but got consumed with the rest of us as Cthulhu awoke hungrily.

Friday
Due to a scheduling blunder on my part, I was late to my session of Apocalypse Road being run by the game's designer Brad Poikonen. It's a larger home-brew version of the board game Thunder Road. Even though I was late, Brad let me run the two "bad guy" tanker trucks! I didn't last long once the other players set their differences aside and ganged up on me...

Had a quick but tasty lunch with Scott and Kristen at Café Patachou.

Back in the exhibit hall, I hit up the Roll4Initiative booth. I've been meaning to show these guys some love at past Gen Cons, so I made sure to hit their booth this year! Their main product is their dice. They're larger than your "typical" polyhedral dice and have larger numbers making them easy on old gamer eyes! I picked up three of their basic opaque sets with a buy-two-get-one-free coupon. They also had a "toss a d20 win a prize" dice tower in their booth. I rolled an 18 and won another basic die set. I had been salivating over their Diffusion sets, so I snagged one of the blue sets as my prize. Thanks guys!

Brad brought his copy of Red7, so he, Jeremy, Tyler, and I settled in to play a couple of rounds. Red 7 is Uno on Steroids. Each color has a rule and the object is to get rid of all of your cards by playing the best card following the current rule, or change the rule to give yourself the lead. Brad trounced us both times.

Saturday
So my buddy Pete Petrusha, with the help of Kickstarter backers, published Dreamchaser, a rules-light story game where any adventure is possible. I've been trying to get in a session or two and was successful this year. At the table were two enthusiastic ladies, two young girls with their father as a guide, and myself. The first task was to create our shared dream. After a brief discussion led by the GM, we came up with: “Bring the faerie dragons back to the world of unicorn mermaids.” The characters we generated ended up being (if I remember correctly) a Pigpen-esque adventure guide with a pocketful of gummi bears, a veterinarian with severe anxiety, a beautiful and politically motivated unicorn mermaid, and my artistic Victorian little girl, modeled after Brian Froud's Lady Cottington (of Pressed Fairy Book fame). We uncovered and foiled a faery dragon smuggling ring in the underwater city of Mermaid Ocean. The adventure brought quite a few giggles and "awwws" to the table.
#MakeMermaidOceanGreatAgain
The big climax happened at Mer-Mart, so I sketched it!
This year, R. Talsorian has introduced Cyberpunk Chronicles, their living campaign. I got into a session titled, "Guns, Lots of Guns", in which we had to break into a high-security firearm and pawn shop and steal as many guns as we could carry. We had our stuff together and were able get in and get out with firearms with minimal complications.

I was left with a couple of hours to finish out my exhibit hall crawl and then met up with Brad, Scott, Kristen, and their friends for our yearly sushi dinner at Mikado. Bonus: Vic was in the area and was able to join us!

On our way back to the JW we stopped at a vacant table so Brad could introduce us to That's Not Lemonade. The first thing he pulls out of the box is a half dozen shot-glass-sized Solo cups. We were intrigued! Unfortunately, our interest quickly waned as we learned it was simply a poorly implemented push-your-luck game that didn’t even use the tiny cups.

Back at the JW, we played a couple of rounds of Codenames. I should be ashamed of myself as I had Brendan on my team and he was using all kinds of theatre references. Alas, with my brief set design dabbling, I only recognized one or two of his references...

The surprise hit for the evening was an EXIT The Game: The Abandoned Cabin. It's essentially an escape room in a box. To be honest, I forgot if we escaped or not, but we had a blast going through all the clues, scribbling on and tearing the provided materials (a pair of scissors would have been helpful), and searching every scrap for hints.

Sunday
The last day of Gen Con presented my least favorite game of the con. One of my roommates accidentally grabbed my convention badge as he was driving out of town.  Brad and I had to chase him down before one of his passengers had to catch a flight! Sleep deprivation followed by an adrenaline surge does not make a fun game.

The reason getting my badge back was so important was because I had a slot in “Mike Pondsmith Kills Everyone,” a Cyberpunk 2020 RPG one-shot run by the great Mike Pondsmith himself! True to its title, I did not survive the mission. Hell, I didn’t survive the AV crash landing! Fortunately, Mike let those of us who died early run some of the opposition. Definitely an experience. I’m so glad I was able to get a ticket to Mike’s table (and didn’t miss it due to the badge fiasco)! Thanks Mike!

And that’s Gen Con 2018!

Gen Con Haul

Clockwise from top left:

Seeing as it has been taking me sooo long to post these, this may be my last Gen Con recap...


Friday, October 5, 2018

Gen Con 2017 Recap - Gen Con's 50th Anniversary!

Sooooooo..... this recap is WAY overdue. Over 14 MONTHS overdue. Better late than never, right? The drawback is that you tend to forget a lot of the details of an event over the course of 14 months. As such, dear reader, I apologize that you won't get the detail I usually provide.



Comparing Gen Con's 50th anniversary to the previous year, I'd have to say it was much better than Gen Con 2016. Even though it SOLD OUT for the first time in its history, somehow it didn't feel as crowded. I did some miniature painting, but no speed painting. And I felt like I got to spend more time with friends, old and new.

Wednesday
The first thing we did after dropping our gear off at the hotel was to hit the Will Call line to pick up our badges. Despite the convention selling out, the Will Call line moved amazingly quickly. We discovered the reason: if you don't have badges to sell, you convert those booths into Will Call! Boom!

A quick visit to Thai Paradise for dinner, then back to the hotel.

Once we got settled into our chosen conference room,  DJ Douglass presented me with a copy of Titansgrave! Apparently, I was the winner of the contest he was running on Twitter. Yay!

Then we got to playing some lightweight fun games. Specifically:
Thursday

I decided to ride the wave into the exhibit hall as soon as it opened. First stop was the Indie Press Revolution booth to pick up the just released Fate Adversary Toolkit. While I was there, I was drawn to the Blades in the Dark Special Edition, so I snagged one while there were still copies on the shelf.

At 11:00, I attended the Monte Cook Games Seminar, at which they announced Numenera 2: Discovery & Destiny (Since over a year has passed, you can order it now!). The important thing to note is that it expands on the existing Numenera universe—it does not change the basic rules and is backwards compatible with the original Numenera.

Next up was Painting with Angel Giraldez: Nomads in Red, at noon. Red is a tricky color to highlight without it turning pinkish, so I thought I'd get some tips from Angel.
Angel's on left, mine on right
Next was a quick bite to eat from Edward's Drive-In Diner, where I picked up a tasty Fish Basket with Onion Rings.

Then, back to the exhibit hall, where I stumbled into Exploding Kittens' Vending Machine. Their setup is clever and hilarious! It's like a bizarre interactive puppet show. A customer places their order by punching in the big buttons on the front, the vendor crew communicates via signage, and payment and product is a exchanged through the slots.

I was able to meet up with Brad and we walked the hall together. Brad was a good sport, as, once we discovered the Weta booth, I spent a half hour chatting with Leri Greer on everything from movie props to living in New Zealand. Thanks, Leri! Totally cool of you to spend so much time chatting!

While I was at the Weta booth, I picked up the Ghost in the Shell and District 9 art books (Leri was also cool enough to sign them), and Neck Port Cyber Enhancement Tattoos!

At 5:00 I had a class on Blending & Glazing Basics for Miniatures & Models. I wish I could remember what I got out of it...

Then dinner with the gang at High Velocity at the JW, where I ordered the Salmon BLT—yummy!

At 8:00 PM, I attended the RPG session: C-Squad. It's Not Just a Job, It's a Death Sentence! Apparently, Cyberpunk 2020 is popular again, as not only was it full, but the GM kept adding folks who showed up to fill empty slots. I think we had eight or nine bodies around the table.

Friday
I started Friday at 10:00 AM with another Painting with Angel Giraldez class: Dog Warrior Skin. Angel showed us how to add texture by painting in the muscle strands across the warrior's chest. He made it look easy, but I need to seriously up my game in order to pull it off.

It was getting pretty crowded and I wanted to hit the exhibit hall again quickly, so, for lunch, I hit one of the convention center counters for pizza.

I made a beeline for the Corvus Belli/Warsenal booth so I could pick up the Limited Edition Gen Con bundle of Infinity miniatures as well as a Xǐguǎn Tower from Warsenal. 

At 1:00, I had a Technoir game where we played Mega-Tokyo book. I had fun, but the GM scheduled 5 hours, 'cuz he likes to take his time...

I then met up with Brad, Scott, Kristen, & Marty at Mikado for our obligatory annual sushi dinner. Again, those Seafood Puffs are amazing!

Back in the hotel conference rooms, we gathered at 10:00 to play Titansgrave with DJ. He ran a fun game and I'd like to see where the plot could have kept going.

Saturday
I was excited to try out some old school RPGs this year, so I signed up for the 10:00 AM session of Star Frontiers - The Return to Digsite Delta-3. If I remember correctly, I was a Dralasite demolitions expert and we ended up packing a mine cart full of explosives and shuttling it directly into the middle of the Sathar operations. Old school explosive damage is amazing!

Once out of Star Frontiers, I left the rest of the day open for a full "Hall Crawl", only stopping for lunch at Der Pretzel Wagon for the obligatory Greedo sandwich.

After the hall closed, I met up with Brad, Scott, and Scott's crew briefly before heading back to the room for a quick nap.

After a few winks, I met up with the gang in our regular conference room to get our last night gaming in. I started with a round of Kaiju Incorporated which I enjoyed, but the regular Magic and 7 Wonders players felt was too simple. That was followed by Mysterium, a fun cooperative murder mystery game. Surprisingly, we rounded the evening out with some late night chatting. It's something we don't do much of anymore (because schedules) and I'm glad we had the chance at Gen Con.

Sunday
Time to wind things down for this gathering of the geeks. After packing the car, I popped into the hall for some last minute shopping on the way to the stadium.

My ride was gracious enough to give me some time to check out the Gen Con 50 Museum, particularly since I had pushed it out of my mind until the last day.

The entrance to the 'museum' was a recreation of the entrance to Horticultural Hall which was Gen Con's home from 1968 to 1970. Once inside, the convention's history was laid out as a timeline across several posters along the periphery. Clustered within, were several cases full of artifacts, for example:
I took a ton of photos and these are just a small sampling! Suffice it to say, I was glad I got some time to check out some of the history of gaming!

Sadly, it wasn't enough time to fully immerse myself in it, as my watch said it was time to go home.

Next time, Gen Con... Next time...

Monday, August 15, 2016

Gen Con 2016 Recap

I'll give this year's Gen Con, "The Best Four Days in Gaming™," a solid 'Good Time.' But, for me, it was also strange.

It didn't feel quite like Gen Cons of years past. It could have been that we were screwed by both the housing and event lotteries (luckily, we got housing sorted out). It could have been that this was the first year I actually Game Mastered a couple of roleplaying sessions (I've done so at other cons, just not THE Con). It could have been that I didn't do nearly the miniature painting I've done in previous years.
Will Call line out the door and around the block, but we get our own Grand Ballroom?
Most notably, attendance exploded again, but seminars weren't well attended—the prevailing theory is that gaming culture is more accepting and expanding, but there is now so much more to do, that some events suffer. Likewise, the exhibit hall was expanded by about a third, but several vendors seemed to be absent (or maybe I couldn't find them?).

Mmmmm... Ham, turkey, bacon,
cheese and wasabi on a pretzel bun...
Wednesday:
Ten of us arrived in Indianapolis early Wednesday afternoon. After checking into the hotel and taking care of parking, we went to stand in the Will Call line to get our badges. In years past, the line wound its way through a half or three-quarters of the Indiana Convention Center. This year, we joined the line just outside the Northwest doors. (See the picture above, taken as we were returning to the hotel...)

To avoid the restaurant wait we had last year, we hit up the food trucks. I couldn't wait to get my hands on a Greedo sandwich from Der Pretzel Wagen!

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and staked out a game room. After checking with hotel management, we ended up with a whole Grand Ballroom to ourselves. Weird...

Shortly after, since I was running two sessions of Numenera for Monte Cook Games, I had to step out to attend the Volunteer Game Masters meeting. There I picked up my MCG shirt and badge holder, the adventure book containing the games we were running, and a nice Cypher System portfolio. Afterwards, there was a meet-and-greet with the designers and staff of Monte Cook Games. I didn't stay long as I wanted to get back to spending time with friends I hadn't seen in a while, so back to the Grand Ballroom I went.

By that time, Marty, Alex, and Jason from Play The Game Podcast joined us. Since there was a request to play Fiasco, Andy, the three Fiasco virgins (Brendan, DJ, and Shashank), and I secured a table and started the setup.  We all agreed to run Marty's and my playset, The Depot. I finally got a chance to try it outside of a playtesting capacity! I ended up the crime lord, Roscoe Biggins, of this frozen micro-community. DJ and Andy ended up as call girls, Betty Sue and "Diamond" Johnson, in my employ. Shashank was the town sheriff, Morgan Truman Wainwright, with a drug addiction - that I was providing for. And Brendan was the town deputy, Brant McGunter, who had some weird relationship with Diamond. Check out the wonderful mess we ended up with:
A picture is worth a thousand... oh, whatever.
Thursday:
Since I didn't have any speed painting to do yet, I thought I'd participate in the Exhibit Hall Opening Ceremonies, which is really just waiting for the doors to open and riding the waves of bodies surging into the hall. I made a bee line for the Infinity/Warsenal booth to pick up the Gen Con 2016 Bundle, which includes the Operation: Red Veil box set, Miyamoto Musashi (a beautiful two miniature set), and the Gen Con exclusive Unknown Ranger. While I was waiting in line, I couldn't take my eyes off Warsenal's Kum Garage. I ended up circling back and picking that up later.

At 1:00, I was able to fill a seat in the Impact! Miniatures Speed Painting event. I was hoping we'd paint an urban warrior or something, but we were given a Chibi Evil Fighter to paint. Chibi's not my thing, so my heart wasn't in it. Somewhere during that session, Mike arrived and acted as my own private heckler. Following that round, at 2:00,  Mike and I both secured seats for the Reaper Miniatures Speed paint. We were given Salim Ghadafar to paint—a really cool miniature with a lot of detail. I like what I did with it, but apparently I didn't have enough contrast.

Afterwards, Mike and I attempted another run at the hall. The one takeaway from that run was that we came across the Role 4 Initiative booth. They were selling decent quality, slightly larger, EASIER TO READ polyhedral dice at $3 a set with a buy-three-get-one-free deal. Mike jumped at the deal. If I wasn't already swimming in dice, I would have too.

We quickly stopped at the Serendipity Mobile Catering truck to pick up a Mac & Cheese Grilled Cheese with Truffle Fries and a side of crab cake. Yum!

After devouring dinner, Mike and I parted ways as I was heading to Evil Hat's State of the Hat panel, ran by Sean Nittner and Chris Hanrahan.
7 new books and 3 ENnie nominees! That's 10 products.
This will become important later.
As I had mentioned, event attendance was off. Previous years, the room was mostly full. This year, there were maybe seven of us in the audience. These were the tweets I sent during the panel:
  • Lenny Balsera is now Fate Line Developer for Evil Hat?!?
  • Kaiju Incorporated card game and RPG to be released at the same time. First half of next year?
  • Dresden Files Accelerated and Cooperative Card Game second half of next year?
  • A bunch of Fate Toolkits and Worlds of Adventure in the pipe.
If you are looking for a more complete list of topics covered, Sean Nittner posted his notes for that panel in the comments of this discussion: https://plus.google.com/+ScottAcker/posts/bNAxdPBuEG7

At the beginning of the panel, they handed out some nice swag: Spirit of the Century patches and Fate bookmarks. At the end, Sean pulled an Oprah Winfrey and told us to check the back of the patches. Each patch had a number written on it. I was number 1! Sean then called us up in order and allowed us to pick and keep from the ten products (eleven if you count the Fate Dice). I chose War of Ashes - Fate of Agaptus as it's gorgeous and I didn't already own it. If you're keeping score, that also means a few items still went home with Chris and Sean.

From there, I ran back to the hotel to collect my thoughts and my Numenera gear to be ready to GM my first session of Skein of the Blackbone Bride for Monte Cook Games. It's important to note that in all my um-teen years of going to Gen Con, this was the first time I was running a role-playing game. I've game mastered games at other cons to varying success, but this is the Big League. Fortunately, all my prep work, including subjecting the regular Friday night gaming group to a Numenera side-track, paid off. I knew the adventure well, was able to keep pacing up, and the players completed the session with a win and with just a bit of time to spare. The game ended with applause! Definitely the highlight of the con for me!

After basking in the glow, I returned my gear back to the room and joined the rest of the crew back in the Grand Ballroom (no longer the only table there) to round out the evening with some quick games.

I ended up filling in for Chad as they were playing Entropy. Blurb from the website: "Entropy is a fast-paced competitive card game of risk and deception, combining simultaneous action selection mechanics with order resolution." It's a very pretty game, particularly when you can piece together all four of your fractured Realities, which I did, to win the game. Unfortunately, the ease of understanding the rules is mired in setting-specific jargon.

We finished out the night playing I Hate Zombies, created by Board Game Geek and published by Steve Jackson Games. Players alternate taking the role of zombie or survivor and the zombies take turns attacking the survivors. Combat is resolved with rock-paper-scissors! Each survivor card has a special ability perk that gives them a chance against the zombies, but, out of three games, the zombies never lost.

Friday:
The next morning, I got up early to try to get into the 10:00 Painting with Angel Giraldez class as I was unable to score any of them during event registration. Unfortunately for me, all ticket-holders arrived.

So, I decided to return to the Exhibit hall to continue the crawl through the aisles. This year, Upper Deck Entertainment released their deck-building game, Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China. I did not check it out, but I couldn't pass up snapping a picture of the Pork Chop Express!
"Like I told my last wife, I said, 'Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it's all in the reflexes.'"

At 2:00, I headed back to the Miniature Hobby Events area as I had an actual Reaper Speed Painting ticket. We were given Vonsalay, the Half Orc Wizard to paint. Since she had a flowy gown on, I thought I'd try an experiment with translucency, and try to show a little leg through the gown. The experiment started out fine, but I guess I put too many 'glazes' on and the detail was lost. The judge gave it about a two second glance.

From there, it was off to Game Design 101 with Mike Pondsmith, of Cyberpunk 2020 and R. Talsorian Games fame and game designer (and DJ and comedian) Ryan Miller. I didn't get much out of the panel, but it was nice to see Mike Pondsmith back on the speaking circuit.

The early morning was getting to me, so I went back to the hotel for a quick nap before prepping myelf for my second session running Skein of the Blackbone Bride. This session didn't go as well as the first. The pacing wasn't as tight and the PCs had a rough time getting through the big boss battle at the end. I'm going to chalk it up to the following: I didn't read the players' frustration early enough, the adventure pits first tier PCs against seventh tier baddies (which I nerfed, but not enough), players may not have seen all the resources available on their character sheets, and the tactics were off. Live and learn, I guess.

After returning to the hotel, I popped back down to join the crew and play a quick round of Gloom. I forgot how delightfully dark the screw-your-neighbor card game is. Just before we finished it up, Brendan showed up with a new copy of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu. It's a different, Lovecraftian take on traditional Pandemic, where you have to seal four gates while trying not to wake The Old Ones. At first, we found it to be too easy, however that was before we realized we weren't following ALL of the rules.

Saturday:
Saturday I slept in a little before resuming my "hall crawl". Then, at 1:00, I headed up to the Miniature Hobby Events area to take my Two Brush Blending class with Bryan Beck of Paladin Miniatures Studio. I've done two-brush blending before, but this helped me hone my skills—you want translucent paint, pull the blend from only the top edge, use a soft damp brush, and clean up the excess water and pigment.

Since the Monte Cook Games seminar was the same time as the class, I ran to their booth to find out what I missed. To my surprise, it was still going on! So, I hustled over to the Westin, was handed a T-shirt, playing card, and a magnet, and then sat down. My butt wasn't in the seat for longer than a minute before they thanked everybody for coming and ended the session. However, there was an excited murmur about a Kickstarter for a new game called the Invisible Sun and a mysterious black box. So I headed back to the booth to find out more.

Invisible Sun is MCG's new premium roleplaying game focused on storytelling. It's supposedly designed to take into account the current-day gamer's busy lifestyle in that it can handle short gaming sessions, missing players, and even includes a mobile app to handle some between-game mechanics.

Here's a bunch of relevant links:

When I got back to the booth, I saw folks lining up to have the card they received at the seminar stamped, and then they were handed a secret envelope with a seal and a "do not open until" date. Fortunately, I didn't lose my card in all the running about, so I presented it for a stamp and received my secret envelope:

The Kickstarter for Invisible Sun starts on the same date - August 15 - and I'm excited to see what's in the envelope.

The sunburst maze I created at the booth.
Since I was already in the exhibit hall, I decided to do some more wandering until dinner time. On my way out of the hall, I stopped at the FoxMind booth to demo their Maze Racers Game. I was huge into mazes as a kid and Maze Racers totally tapped into that side of me. I could play it solo just for the zen-like experience. When I found out they were offering it at a $25 Gen Con price, I ordered it immediately. As I was finishing up checking out, Brad called.

Brad already had a table at Mikado Japanese Restaurant, so I rushed out of the hall and met him there. The sushi was decent—definitely get the Seafood Puff, even though it probably goes against all Japanese cuisine. We had a nice long dinner and got to catch up on things—Brad was still excited about watching the U.S. Championship Klask Finals Tournament. He was so into it, he bought a set without even playing it!

Once we settled up the bill, we headed back to the Grand Ballroom to finish out the last night of gaming at Gen Con 2016. I was hoping to meet up with some of the CAGWIC friends to play Fiasco or Nights Black Agents or Call of Cthulhu, but that fell through.

We played a few quick rounds of Klask with Brad's new set. Rich ended up trouncing us all.

BRAAAAAD.....
After seeing the Watch Ya' Mouth video, Brad decided he had to get that game for us to play at Gen Con. He says there are many different games available, but he picked up Watch Yo Mouth because they could ship it to him in time for the con. After some hemming and hawing about how sanitary the cheek spreaders are (yeah, cheek spreaders—Brad brought individual baggies for them and you just toss them in the dishwasher when you're done), we played. It is indeed hilarious to play. We ended up laughing ourselves hoarse! Unfortunately, once you've gone through the included cards, you know them all. They need some sort of webpage or app that generates thousands of phrases to try.

Once we recovered from Watch Yo Mouth, I wanted to keep up the pace with smaller quicker games, so Marty, Alex, Janson, and I played a round of Kittens in a Blender with the Expansion Pack I picked up from the Kickstarter.

We followed that up with Isle of Skye, a bidding and tile placement game similar to the Castles of Mad King Ludwig, but I found that there were too many facets to keep track of that late in the day.

We finished out the night with a few hands of Schrödinger’s Cats, a card game I backed on Kickstarter. It's a bluffing and deduction game, similar to Liar's Dice, with a cute mechanic where each player has a Cat Physicist Doctorate that changes up the rules a tad.

Sunday:
Last day. We packed up the cars, checked out of the hotel, and made one last run at the convention hall for last minute gifts. I finally decided to pick up a copy of the Cypher System Rulebook with a coupon I found on the Monte Cook Games Twitter Feed. I also finally found the Games and Gears booth. I really want these guys to knock it out of the park. I really do! I love the idea of brushes that store into the handles. Great for painting at conventions. Unfortunately, their quality wavers. I still picked up the Gen Con Collectors Brush Set MK3, as it contains the fine-tipped brushes I want from them. Unfortunately, I found clear tape on the brush ends to help maintain a snug fit into the handles and it's already scraping off.

Since I didn't make it to any of the Speed Painting Finals this year, the obligatory photo is replaced by one of our crew this year:
Back Row: Shashank, Jeremy, Jon, Adam, Chad, Brad, Pete, Chewing Lady
Front Row: DJ
Finally, here's a photo of my book haul from this year:
From left to right: The Sprawl (Powered by the Apocalypse), War of Ashes - Fate of Agaptus, Torment: Tides of Numenera—The Explorer’s Guide, Cypher System Rulebook, the Gen Con 2016 Adventures booklet, Cypher System Portfolio

Next year, Gen Con. Next year.


Thursday, September 3, 2015

The Amazing Sinbad (Glue)!

Go ahead! Try to break that bond!
"Ladies and Gentlemen! Step right up and witness the one glue for bonding everything to everything else! Canvas! Cork! Glass! Leather! Metal! Rubber! Stone! Vinyl! Wood! You name it and this product will stick to it! And it will do it in 30 seconds flat! How strong is the bond you ask? Not only will it hold aloft a construction worker glued to a girder by his helmet, but he can be riding a motorcycle at the same time! That's right! It will hold up to 2000 pounds! And can you believe this miracle glue is non toxic?!? You there! Watch as I cut this vacuum cleaner belt and repair it with our wonder glue. Try to pull it apart....."

That's not exactly the pitch the salesperson used to get me to stop and look at Sinbad Glue, but it might as well have been. And it still would have been free of marketing lies and half-truths.

This sales pitch happened at the Sinbad Glue Corp. booth at Gen Con – the Google tells me it was 2006 – the only year that Sinbad Glue Corp. was at Gen Con. Fortunately, I happened to be there and happened to walk past their booth. It didn't take much for the woman to convince me this was a superior cyanoacrylate "super glue".

I have just purchased my fourth bottle.

For those of you familiar with "super glues" and good at math realize that I've had three bottles of CA glue in nine years, when it should have been a bottle of glue each year minimum, probably quadruple that. Honestly, I have tried several brands from the generic "super glues", to better quality glues, such as Gorilla Glue's version, to hobby CA glues, like Zap. Although some are decent glues, they all cured in the bottle once opened. I didn't even take the Gorilla Glue out of the package before it cured! If you check the wikipedia entry on cyanoacrylates (go ahead, interesting stuff), it says the shelf life of CA glue is about one year from manufacture, or 30 days once opened.

Sinbad Glue Corp. boasts that their cyanoacrylate has an incredibly long shelf life of 3 years, opened or not! I can attest to that statement – after all, I'm only on my fourth bottle! Further, they say if you store it in the refrigerator, it will last indefinitely.

As a side note, even the bottle design is clever! There is a steel pin in the cap that keeps the nozzle from clogging. If you keep the tip of the bottle clean, you shouldn't have a problem with the cap sticking, but they suggest applying their Sinbad Gloves product to the tip to prevent it altogether. More on that later.

But how's it work as a CA glue? Simply fantastic! Just as they claim, it will bond in about half a minute (less with their accelerator) and will bond pretty much anything. I use it for assembling tabletop miniatures of all materials. I'm sure there are some things it won't work on (maybe acrylic?), but I haven't found out which yet.

Here are some more facts from their website:
  • Shear strength of 1,000 lbs. after cured. 
  • Holds up to 2,000 lbs. 
  • Non-toxic. 
  • Dries clear. 
  • Waterproof.

By the way, it won't fog plastic. This is huge! If you've ever tried to glue clear plastic windows into a toy or model, you know that fogging is a legitimate concern.

Okay, so what's the downside? A 20 gram bottle of Sinbad Glue will cost $20 plus shipping & handling and is only available by calling them or direct from their website: http://sinbadglue.net
In their defense, they say, "It takes an average person 3 years to use up the glue." That may be true for someone doing regular household repairs, but after 3 years of gluing miniature arms and heads on, I only use about half a bottle. And sure enough, after that time it starts to get thick and stringy and loses some of its strength. So, I have to buy another bottle.

That's not to say it's not worth $1 a gram – it's worth every penny – I just wish I could buy it in 10 gram bottles so I wouldn't be tossing so much of it out.

The "Value Pak"!
To get the best bang for your buck, they offer a "Value Pak" which includes their whole line of anything to do with cyanoacrylate glues:
  • 20 gram bottle of Sinbad Glue - The best CA glue you can buy!
  • 1/2 ounce bottle of Accelerator - The pump sprayer cap allows you to prep a surface for immediate bonding or to accelerate the glue bond while holding two items together.
  • 10 gram bottle of Sinbad Filler Glue - A very thin version of Sinbad Glue. The company intends you use it with the Sinbad Filler to seal leaks in pipes. I use it for flowing into hard to reach gaps and for stiffening cardstock and wood.
  • 1 ounce bottle of Sinbad Filler - Essentially glass micro-beads. You can use it as snow on miniature bases!
  • 2 gram tube of Sinbad Glue Gel - A thicker no-drip CA glue with a slightly longer working time. Has some gap-filling properties.
  • 1 ounce jar of Sinbad Gloves - A water-soluble cream that you are supposed to apply to your hands. Once dry, it prevents CA glue from sticking to the applied area. When done, simply wash it off. They also recommend coating the tips of your glue bottles with it to prevent the caps from sticking. In use, it feels kind of weird on your hands and I always forget to apply it anyway.
  • 1/2 ounce bottle of Debond - In case you do stick things together unintentionally, you can use the brush in the cap to apply it to the problem spot. It does say it takes two hours to work, tho...

So, there you have it – Sinbad Glue – my favorite cyanoacrylate glue of all time!

Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments.


Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Gen Con 2015 Recap

This year's Gen Con was fantastic (and crowded) as usual! However, it's been over a week since Gen Con ended, so forgive me if the details have faded a bit. You won't get all the games played and meals eaten as much as in my Gen Con 2014 Recap.

You know you're at Gen Con
when you got your badge!
Wednesday:
Eight of us arrived in Indy early afternoon. After sorting out rooms (the hotel pre-registration in January was a nightmare, BTW), we went down to Will Call to grab our badges, coupon books, and bags. We then indulged in tasty food (and slow service) at Granite City Food & Brewery.

Afterwards, we scurried back to the hotel to grab a table and get to gaming. I forget what all was played, but Brad finally got to try out Arctic Scavengers. This time we played with the Medic cards, which made purchasing cards from the common decks much easier.

Thursday:
Initially, I had a ticket to the 10 AM Privateer Press Speed Painting Event, but wanted to check out Evil Hat's "State of the Hat" address, so I talked my buddy Mike into giving speed painting a try. This had an interesting repercussion.

So, I attended the "State of the Hat". Evil Hat has their own breakdown on their site, but here's what I took note of:
  • Fate Accessibility - Elsa Henry of Feminist Sonar announced her handbook "for bringing characters with disabilities into games and players with disabilities to your table, using the Fate system as a lens for both."
  • Fate of Cthulhu - Think Terminator, but replace Skynet with Cthulhu.
  • Portal Jumpers - A kid-centric game along the lines of the 80s cartoon, Dungeons & Dragons, utilizing the Apocalypse Engine. It's my understanding that they will be revealing several worlds over time - fantasy, space, dinosaurs, etc.
  • Kaiju Incorporated - From Evil Hat's page: "A satirical setting about corporate excess and profiteering in the wake of wide-scale kaiju attacks..." Will be released as both a card game and an RPG.
  • The Dystopian Universe Roleplaying Game - A Fate-system RPG based on Indie Boards and Cards’ games The Resistance and Coup.
  • Dresden Files Accelerated - There was a discussion of using "Mantles" as part of character creation.
  • Bubblegumshoe - Veronica Mars-like teenage detective RPG using Pelgrane Press' GUMSHOE system. It's been enhanced with relationship mechanics and a fun layout. You can bet Kenneth Hite is involved.
  • Dresden Lives - The Dresden LARP continues to evolve.
  • Majestic 12 - A supplement for the Atomic Robo RPG with new comic art! I'm looking forward to this one.
  • Young Centurions - A young adult prequel to Spirit of the Century using Fate Accelerated.
  • Do: Fate of the Flying Temple - A Fate version of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.
  • War of Ashes RPG - To sum up in two words:"Muppet wars". It's a loosely Fate Accelerated RPG based on Zombiesmith's miniatures game and capable of using minis. It is in the process of being printed, due in October, and they are taking preorders.
  • Shadows of the Century - Spirit of the Century takes on 80s action TV. It is currently in alpha playtesting. I'm SO excited to get my hands on this!
  • Blood on the Trail - Vampire Oregon Trail anyone?
  • Don't Turn Your Back - Card game based on the Don't Rest Your Head roleplaying game. Just starting to ship to Kickstarter backers.
Say it: "verdigris"
I had to leave "State of the Hat" early as I had another Privateer Press Speed Painting Event at 11 AM. There were some extra seats, so Mike decided to purchase two of them and speed painted TWO miniatures in 45 minutes! I did some nice burnishing, verdigris, and rust effects, but they did not impress the judge.

After that was a quick run into the exhibit hall to hit up the Games & Gears booth for my Gen Con Collectors Brush Set that I preordered. They were kind enough to let me upgrade my set so I could get Mike a set of synthetics, a towel, and some brush soap. While we were there, we ran around looking to take advantage of some of the coupons.  Imagine my surprise when we ran into Trace Beaulieu and Crow of MST3K fame. I totally didn't realize he played Dr. Clayton Forrester!
Trace, Crow, and me!
Trace is starring as the human in the VERMIN Web Show, which just got funded on Kickstarter!

"El Toro"
Mike and I couldn't stay in the exhibit hall very long as I had a ticket for the 2 PM Reaper Speed Painting Event. Mike decided to sit in on this one too. There was some sort of mix-up and we were given clay golems from the Bones line to paint instead of a primed metal pirate. It was difficult trying to paint mounds of flesh and still stand out from the crowd. I decided to paint mine as a luchador complete with an "El Toro" tattoo on his back. Mike painted his as the grown up version of the Coppertone Baby. Surprisingly, I came in second place, beating Marike Reimer! Marike is a real good sport and gave everyone who placed above her a $10 gift certificate to the Dark Sword Miniatures booth.

I couldn't celebrate too long, as I had the "Airbrush Techniques Q&A" class with Angel Giraldez immediately after. It was amazing seeing Angel work up a miniature from a black primer coat to clean highlights with just an airbrush. Immediately after that was "Highlighting & Shading, The Next Step to Competitive Painting" with Golden Demon winner Dennis Smith. I was able to follow what Dennis was doing, and actually achieved some decent highlights on the provided Infinity miniature (pictures don't do it justice), but I was not keen on the color choices – the red came out more orange when we were done.

Since this was my busiest day, the rest of the evening was a blur, but I'm sure I had a Greedo sandwich from Der Pretzel Wagen. Unfortunately, they forgot the wasabi horseradish!

Friday:
At 10 AM, I participated in the only hands-on class I could get with Angel Giraldez: "Painting with Angel Giraldez: NMM". It was my first time trying Non-Metallic Metals under instruction, so it came out surprisingly well. It turns out it's pretty much highlighting up to white. The Non Metallic Metals Set from Vallejo made it relatively easy. I should post a photo...
Angel Giraldez's work on the left, my attempt on the right.
I spent the rest of the day walking the entirety of the exhibit hall, even handing off my 2 PM Reaper Speed Painting Event ticket to Mike. I bought surprisingly little this year, but I did pick up a slightly dinged up copy of Machikoro from CoolStuffInc based on recommendation alone.

Upon leaving the hall, I made arrangements to meet Brad, Scott, and Kristin at Mikado Japanese Restaurant for sushi. Even though they are contemporary sushi, the fish was good and their Seafood Puff is to die for! Yum!

After returning to the hotel and staking out a couple of tables to game on, I followed the ENnies twitter feed. Even though Dungeons & Dragons swept most of the categories, I was happy to see Evil Hat Productions (Atomic Robo The Roleplaying Game), Monte Cook Games (The Strange, Ninth World Guidebook), Modiphius Entertainment Ltd. (Achtung! Cthulhu: Terrors of the Secret War, MUTANT Year Zero The Roleplaying Game), and Kenneth Hite (Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, Ken Writes About Stuff Volume 2) get some lovin'.

Around that time, you could clearly see fireworks from the window of the room we were gaming in. It was part of a nearby baseball game, but I like to think it was Gen Con's way of saying hello.

Even though we had planned to play Fiasco Wednesday night, Friday was the first time we actually got a chance to. Mike and I wanted to see how Fiasco would handle cyberpunk, so we played the Hard Wired Playset by Alex Mayo. Sadly, it wasn't the best attempt as half the table wanted to do J-pop cyberpunk while the other half wanted to do dark and gritty cyberpunk. I will give Rich credit for staying in character and shooting the kneecaps of two other PCs in the first go around the table, particularly since he hasn't roleplayed in years.

Saturday:
Saturday started with another 10 AM class: "Freehand with Marike Weimer". Found out two interesting things about Marike: 1. Her Real Life Job™ is IT-related (as is mine) and 2. She takes quite a few clever shortcuts when painting miniatures, not that you'd know it. Her freehand is impeccable. Go ahead, check it out. Here's her website again.

After her class, I decided to drop in on the Games on Demand room and see if I could pick up a 2-hour game. Note for newbs: you need to sign up for games at the table in front of the room and games cost generic tickets, generally two. I did none of these things. I wandered in looking for Will Hindmarch to see if I could drop in to his Project: Dark game. Will kindly let me know his game was full, but his buddy Cory was available to run a game and runs them well. So, I stopped by Cory's table, and he let me know I was a newb and how to get things sorted out. At the registration table, under Cory O'Brien (I'm pretty sure this is his website), was listed Fate and Leverage. I chose Fate as I'm always interested in seeing how other folks run it and headed back in. Eventually, the table filled up and we jumped into an animorphic pirate tale full of swashbuckling and shenanigans! Cory does run a fine game, and started by canvassing the players for a list of 'Pirate Codes' unique to our ship – breaking one of these codes created a one time boost against you. Unfortunately, my two hours went quickly so I had to leave. But, I left the metal golem stuck with a "tangled in rope" aspect with two free invocations.

The reason I left early? Another Reaper Speed Painting Event at 2 PM. The miniature as a fur-clad female druid and I tried some of the NMM skills I picked up, but no win for me.

Brad picked up Poop: The Game for my lovely wife who finds humor in all things scatalogical. It's kind of like Uno, but there's a toilet/flush mechanic that can return stacks of cards to your hand and keeping you from going out.

Shortly after, I got a text from Keith Potter, one of the Chicago Area Game Writers Colloquium (CAGWIC) guys, asking if I'd be interested in hosting a Fiasco game for a few friends. We were also able to snag another CAGWIC member: PK Sullivan. I secured a game table at the JW, we decided on the News Channel Six Playset by Chris Norwood, Ken Coble, and Tom Gurganus, and ran with it. I played, Bruce Bauer!, the grizzled veteran news anchor just looking to retire after 60-some years. Keith played the Arts and Events reporter, Olivier Devereaux, who had been around as long as I had, but was having the best time of his life and looking to keep me around for company. His roommate, Jeff Flynn, played by Bear, was an unscrupulous bookie and all-around crook. On the other side of me, PK played the young, fresh-faced rookie, Rob Bolton, with a proper education looking to make it big. He had ousted the previous weekend anchor, Drake Dunbar, played by John, who had slipped into a drinking habit after losing his job of 15 years, wife and kids. The game was rife with ballot-box stuffing, horse racing scandals, and even Rob punched Bruce ON-AIR. Loved it! Easily in my top three favorite Fiasco games!

After bidding my CAGWIC friends adieu and taking a quick breather, I sat down for a full night of card and board games. Specifically:

  • Castles of Mad King Ludwig - A tile placement game where you purchase rooms to build a castle worth the most victory points. Players take turns as the Master Builder who sets the prices for the room tiles. It was fun and I won the game (never mind Jose bumping the score track), but I found myself trying to build the perfect castle. Is there a solo mode?
  • Red7 - A card game that looks like Uno, but is so much more intricate. Each card has a number, color, and rule attached to the color (and an icon that does special effects for the super-advanced game). The object is to follow the current rule but be higher than the rest of the table by number or color – red being high on the ROYGBIV scale – thus Red7 is the highest. If you cannot play a card to follow the rule, you can change the rule, or both. Yeah, it's tricky. I was just starting to get the hang of it and would like to try Red7 again.
  • Tricks & Treats The Card Game - What a way to come down from Red7. You lay out several trick-or-treat baskets, randomly and secretly determine which is your basket, and then play candy cards on top of the baskets, trying to get the most candy at the end without letting on whose basket is whose. Aimed at a younger crowd, methinks.
  • Chopstick Dexterity MegaChallenge 3000 - The premise of this Kickstarted game is simple: fill a large bowl with 25 wooden food pieces (in five colors and five shapes), flip over a cardboard token with a picture of a piece of food, and use chopsticks to grab that piece of food and drop it into your smaller dish before the other players do. In reality, it's a mad frenzy of chopsticks jousting, food flying, and bowls clacking! The box says it takes 15 minutes to play. It took us half an hour to get through 10 of the cardboard tokens and we were drenched in sweat. 
Sunday:
Sunday, we packed up the cars, checked out, and headed to Steak and Shake for a surprisingly quick breakfast. Then it was back to the exhibit hall for one last shopping spree.

I headed to the Geek Chic booth to pick up a new "Cowboy" mustache monocle/necklace for the wife. Then I picked up the 3rd edition rulebook for the Infinity tabletop miniature wargame - the art is gorgeous! While I was at the Infinity/Corvus Belli booth, and since my regular gaming group is playtesting the Infinity RPG, I picked up some Infinity Tokens from the Warsenal folks who were sharing the booth. In talking with them about the Infinity RPG, they mentioned that Corvus Belli would be producing miniatures for the Kickstarter when it launches. They just happened to announce the miniatures at Gen Con. Check out these beauts:
I got a chance to thank Angel Giraldez and shake his hand one last time before he had to leave. Before I left the booth, I had to snap a few pics of this gorgeous piece of scenery/terrain:

Finally, at 2:30, was the Reaper Speed Paint Final. We painted the same miniature we had for the final last year, so I decided to go with lighter colors. I did not win. Alas.
And with my brushes, gaming bag, and fresh purchases in hand, we left Indianapolis; Gen Con 2015 came to a close.
Obligatory Speed Paint Finals Photo
Courtesy Pete