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:

• Gen Con 2018 adventure booklet and XP deck I got for running Assault on Singularity Base (Cypher System) and Forgetting Doomsday (Numenera) for Monte Cook Games. I also got a limited edition unfinished Shin! (Not pictured: Cypher System playmat.)
• At top is the Operation Coldfront + Advance Pack Gen Con 2018/preorder exclusive by Corvus Belli.
• Next is some resin terrain I picked up at the Miniature Market booth.
• That's followed by some neat tokens from Dapper Devil LLC. I plan to use them for the Infinity RPG by Modiphius.
• Four sets of very nice dice from Roll4Initiative. Three sets of basic opaque dice and one set of Diffusion dice.
• Picked up that custom keychain for myself and a necklace that resembled a cartouche for my wife from Addy at Tangled Earth Art. She was hanging out with the folks from Bricks & Boards LLC. You can see her setup here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BmJ34dcHHCj/ Thanks Addy! You're the best!
• That big honkin' twelve-sider is a hit location die from Q-workshop. I eventually went in and painted the actual hits in red to make them stand out more.
• Those goodies are sitting on top of a factory-second GM screen from Hammerdog Games - too good a deal to pass up!
• Clank! In! Space! Apocalypse! by Renegade Game Studio was released at Gen Con 2018. We've had fun playing Clank! In! Space! so I had to get the expansion PLUS PROMOS! (Which are tucked inside the box already...) Now to get more card sleeves...
• At Origins this year, I picked up Dusk City Outlaws by Scratchpad Publishing - a super cleverly designed RPG in a box. When I found out metal tokens were part of the Kickstarter, I had to get a set. Fortunately, Campaign Coins had me covered. So purdy!
• Tucked above the Campaign Coins, is a copy of The Apocalypse Road by Brad Poikonen. It’s a post-apocalyptic road-warrior miniature vehicle combat game based on the board game Thunder Road. 
• Finally, I stopped by the @IPRTweets booth to pick up a fresh and just-released copy of Scum and Villainy from Evil Hat.

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

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.

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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:

• Plague & Pestilence - an oldie but a goodie!
• Exploding Kittens
• Bears -vs- Babies
• Noisy Person Cards

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:

• A copy of Little Wars, by H. G. Wells
• Gary Gygax's copy of Chainmail
• The prototype Dungeon! board game
• The original painting for the cover of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide
• Jonathan Tweet's personal D&D binder from high school with his original sketches
• The draft of Merle Rasmussen's Top Secret RPG
• A giant troll statue!

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...

"The Flute" - A Map for Ellomyr's Story in Numenera 2

If you're a fan of Monte Cook Games' Numenera, then you know they are Kickstarting Numenera 2—essentially a revision with new content and exploration of the future of the Ninth World. As part of the Kickstarter campaign, they have asked backers to contribute to story of the town of Ellomyr. When the campaign is over, some of the content generated will be compiled into a sourcebook called The Trilling Shard.

I've backed the Kickstarter and was tossing around ideas I could contribute. Wow, is the Numenera community active! Huge chunks of story have come and gone. I can't keep up with it! However, as I was mulling things around, I decided something static like a location might be useful. An image started to form, and I ended up sketching a map of a fragment of the Valley of Sins, another locale that was introduced as part of the story.

After some refinements and a pass through Photoshop, I give you, "The Flute":

Scroll brought back from the Valley of Sins,

possibly stained by the mysterious "Blue Mist".

At one end of the valley of sins, whatever ancient force gouged out the valley also cut through a long-buried structure, revealing several holes in the valley walls. At one corner of the structure, a steep spiral stalagmite rises up several tens of meters and exits a hole in the roof of its chamber. On windy days, the entire structure sings a haunting note. Local children brave enough to enter even this far have discovered that, by standing in front of certain holes or placing sheets of wood or synth over them, they can change the tone. Over the years, some people have reported that, every once in a while, the hills will sing out a deep and unsettling note—eerily similar to a war horn.
An interesting side effect of the structure is that the wind will collect and deposit various bits and pieces of drit here. Glow globes, broken carts, even a bipedal automaton have been found in the collected rubbish.

My One Page Dungeon Contest 2017 Entry

So, thanks to Twitter, I discovered this little thing called the One Page Dungeon Contest. This literally* got the wheels turning in my head and I had to put the wheels on paper. Three days later, that concept of a dungeon made up of five rotating intersecting chambers became my first-ever entry.

Here's the sales pitch: "Who would have need of such a brutal shifting thing? A trial by fire! And ice. And earth. And water... There's no going back—only forward!"

Since some GMs may want to print out the map for clarity or to actually cut out the pieces and rotate them in real space, I've included it here in 300 DPI - including a COLOR version!

The folks at the One Page Dungeon Contest also kindly posted an update in their blog.

*Literal, as in I saw them in my mind's eye. Not physical wheels inside my skull.

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:

• The announcement at the MCG seminar at Gen Con: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q4wbmfHMEM
• The official announcement: https://www.montecookgames.com/announcing-the-invisible-sun-rpg/
• The announcement video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJOeHfQFBy8
• Game Play Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDlXierCCeQ


• Website #1: http://pathofsuns.com/
• Website #2: http://invisiblesunrpg.com/
• Path of Suns Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/pathofsuns
• The Google+ Community, where all the speculation, oh, and geocaches are being discussed: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/108827865414792038629
• And a picture of the prototype box and contents:

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.

Numenera Status Tracker

I've recently started running Numenera for my Friday night gaming group. We're all having a good time exploring the Ninth World.

One thing I noticed, however, is that the players are constantly erasing and redoing their current stat pools, particularly when in combat or burning points to apply Effort. After just one session, their stat blocks on their character sheets are a mess.

So, I decided to whip up a Status Tracker to take the brunt of the erasing and rewriting. If you run out of space or burn through the paper, just print out another one (two per page) and fill in your stats – you don't have to rewrite your whole character. You can get the PDF of it here.

Warning: I'm apparently on a hexagon kick...