Gen Con Day 3
Let’s start with what I forgot to mention yesterday: the mysterious Thursday slowness in Skulduggery sales reversed itself on Friday and continued on Saturday to sell as a new core game out for Gen Con ought. I even heard of my first instance of someone creating and running a new scenario pack for it. The concept: LARP fans competing for social dominance at a game convention. Characters, naturally, were based on real people from the GM’s gaming scene. Genius.
In my mind, Saturday was going to be a day of mostly being at the Pelgrane stand and/or booth. In reality it was a day of my mostly not being there, as I got pulled away to meetings, event times extended, and so on. Apologies if you came by and couldn't find me. In my mind, Sunday is going to be a day of mostly...
The last few copies of Hamlet’s Hit Points reserved for the signing slipped inexorably away during that event. If you rush to the IPR booth immediately when the hall opens you might get the last two signed copies. There may also be a few still at the Adventure Retail (Atlas/SJ Games/Cthulhu Corner) complex.
The Pathfinder fiction panel went well. More about that next week, when I'll tell you a bit about the novel I'm writing for the fine folks at Paizo.
I’ve had little chance to check out the new hotness, except for cases where folks take the initiative and thrust their fine products into my hands. And what fine products they are:
Ren Faire, by Michelle Nephew (Atlas Games) uses the transparent sleeve cards you’ll remember form Gloom to create a geek-culture card game fusion of Cranium and paper dolls. Assemble outfits for your Renaissance Faire visitor, slowly accumulating your outfit of pseudo-Medieval garb. To earn your costume pieces, you have to get up and perform.
Rumors that Michelle’s follow-up, Measure the Sphinx!, will be ready for next year’s show may be completely invented.
Tim C. Koppang's Mars Colony, found at the Design Matters booth, is a tiny package of great ambition. In this two player game, the attempts of a colonial governor to right the many crises besetting a troubled Martian settlement provide a framework for the participants’ feelings about government and personal failure. The game brings the author’s interior life to the game table in a way few others have attempted.
And finally, there’s that indie-cutting edge game from those scrappy authority-defiers at Margaret Weis productions, Smallville. Yes, major mass media entertainment property meets vanguard storymaking at the intersection of lovely production values. Like many others I find this obscuring of the boundaries between the mainstream and the underground bracingly exciting. The essential peg of its game play is the relationship map. Cleverly the graphic design leaves these maps as hand-scrawled items you could actually create on the fly, resisting the urge to pretty them up, robbing them of their accessibility. Congratulations to Cam Banks, Josh Roby and team.
Gotta run! See you in the hall!