Gen Con wrap-up
Obviously whatever time I had to post during Gen Con went toward quickie updates on Twitter and Facebook, not LiveJournal, but my eyesight survived because I didn’t type in the Mobile LiveJournal tiny text, so all is good.
Gen Con 2009 was fun and, to be honest, better attended than I expected. Certainly, the recession had an impact, and I didn’t see the staggering crowds of the last couple of years (someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe about 33,000 attended in 2007). Yet it was still pretty damn big. My pal Paul at Z-Man Games said they did very well at the con, which surprised him because business at regional conventions was relatively dead. (That comment was echoed by a few folks.) The explanation? Well, it could be a simple one: If you’re tight on cash, and you can afford to go to only one convention, you might as well go to the biggest one: Gen Con. Yeah, for most folks, that means getting on a plane, but flights were much cheaper this year compared to last year (at least if you booked seats early), and no regional con can begin to match the offerings at Gen Con, either in sheer number of events or the wealth of products in the Exhibit Hall. Where I mostly saw the difference, though, was in the RPGA hall: still supremely active, but definitely not as packed as in recent years.
Speaking of Z-Man Games, their board game Pandemic, which had just missed last year's Gen Con, was a big hit this year, disappearing from their booth pretty quickly. The reviews have been great; it's a cooperative game, where the players succeed or fail together. It's certainly topical! One final Z-Man note: I didn't realize until Sunday that they put the rules for all their games on the website, so curious gamers can review the rules and decide whether this is the game for them. Very savvy.
Wizards of the Coast, as is often the case, caused a stir with their D&D announcements on Friday, particularly the news that Dark Sun is getting revived as the campaign setting for 2010. I like that! However, I'm mostly psyched about the Ravenloft board game, also scheduled for release about a year from now. A cooperative game to kill or be killed by Count Strahd? If that's the concept, that sounds like next year's birthday present! (Side note: Next year's Gen Con will be tricky. It's going to be a week earlier than usual, which means it'll fall right across August 6th, my 50th birthday! Do I skip Gen Con or celebrate in Indy? Decisions, decisions!)
For much more on WotC's product news, see Critical Hits, which did a excellent job of summing it up.
Paizo's release of the not-Alpha, not-Beta, but Final Official Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook was extremely popular, and they had a sweet discount at the con to attract buyers. I haven't looked through the rulebook yet, but as with all things Paizo, it's gorgeous. (Kudos to Paizo, too, on a personal note: The GameMastery Map Pack: Slums, which I bought on Friday, was a big help to me in the two games that I ran on Saturday. I needed a huge, muddy pool to serve as the launchpad for necrotic activity and, voila, the Slums pack has a rat-infested landfill! Hello, necrotic pool! That said, if you happen to have GameMastery Map Pack: Village, then you can probably skip Slums - too similar.)
Another booth where I spent a lot of time browsing was Catalyst Games Labs. Back in the '90s, I was a huge fan of Shadowrun, when it was run by FASA, and I was buying and playing and occasionally even GM'ing it when WizKids/FanPro launched the 3rd edition of the game.
(I still treasure my hardcover limited-edition "Baby" release, available only at 2002's Gen Con.) However, I've been so happily occupied with my work for Goodman Games since 2003 that I had rarely given myself the luxury of wallowing through non-D&D settings in which my former gaming group wasn't interested or for which I didn't have any editing/writing assignments. And new books are expensive, to boot! So I had ignored Shadowrun 4th edition ever since its release several years ago ... but you can't keep a good runner down! The 20th Anniversary Edition of the Shadowrun game - containing rules from the 4th edition core book and all the major supplements - was the decisive blow! Not wanting to weigh down my suitcase even more, I waited until I got home and then I scooped that sucker up. I'm definitely going to run a game again.
Catalyst Games also drew attention for CthulhuTech, which it acquired from WildFire and which essentially is a cross between Event Horizon, Lovecraft, and Mobile Suit Gundam. It's been a critical success, and it looks both monstrous and beautiful. (I sound like Dieter on Sprockets.) Go to a gaming store and flip through the pages to see what I mean. I also dug Catalyst's cool promotional video that was running continually at its booth. (Don't worry: Paparazzi and High School Drama are card games, not RPGs.)
Of course, there were the many hours I spent hanging out with the Goodman Games gang, at the booth, at the annual "How to Write Adventures That Don't Suck" seminar, and socially. Thank you all for the "war stories" and for making me laugh, and to those of you who didn't make it out this year, you were missed. One big treat was that I actually got to PLAY at Gen Con. A bunch of us gathered for a game of Xcrawl, run by the creator himself, Brendan LaSalle, which is kind of like being in a Forgotten Realms game run by Ed Greenwood (who just made a deal with Goodman Games to produce new rules-neutral books). It was the first direct experience with Xcrawl for many of us, and we had a blast, almost literally! Expect some Xcrawl news by this time next year. I had another gaming first the next night: the board game Carcasonne. Very interesting! I was a quick learner, with courteous assistance from Rick Maffei, Chris Doyle, and Joseph Goodman, and I was winning until an insidious power grab at the very end. (Curse you, Goodman!)
Most of my pre-con attention had been focused on the game I was running in two slots on Saturday, using characters possessing powers and feats that had just been created by me and Jeff LaSala for the new Hero's Handbook that we just wrapped up. (Go get the new Hero's Handbook: Eladrin and Hero's Handbook: Tieflings - they were at Gen Con, they rock, they sold a ton of copies, and they'll be in stores soon!) The players at both of my events were very clever, didn't grab the spotlight for themselves, and were excellent roleplayers: a dream for any convention GM. I was even more pleased when folks from the second table came by the Goodman Games booth the next day to say hi and buy stuff. Well, that's what a good demo should do! (Jeff, you'll be pleased to know that several of the new powers were used extremely well, and the second table in particular really got into the roleplaying aspect.) At the Goodman booth, we sold many copies of our Dungeon Crawl Classics and we quickly sold out of issue #2 of Level Up magazine, which will be generally available in a couple of weeks.
Any regrets? Well, I idiotically forget to visit the booth for Cubicle 7, which will soon release the must-buy Doctor Who Roleplaying Game. (What was that I said earlier about the RPG hobby being expensive?) I also regret not spending more time at the RAM Brewery, but the Colts preseason game on Friday created a bit of a jam! It's interesting to see football fans and gamers packed together in a bar.
I've put a bunch of photos from Gen Con on Photobucket, a couple of which already pop up above. Don't mind some of the captions; I need to add the winners from the Dungeon Crawl Classics tournament, as well as the other cool tournament run by the creators of the Forgotten Heroes books.