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11:45
PM: Allan Sugarbaker says...
Okay,
I'm back. Getting *to* GenCon was a minor nightmare that took 28
hours, but getting back went quite smoothly. Plenty of thunderstorms
in both directions. And since my trip to GenCon was on non-OgreCave
business (I'm working for Wizard's
Attic and Skotos Tech on a
project to expand RPGnet. Check out
the press release
if you have a minute), I didn't have enough time to track down a
web connection while I was there.
Anyway, for those of
you who couldn't make it to GenCon this year, or those who already
want to start reliving this past weekend, let us begin...
GenCon 2001: A Space
Odyssey
The dealers' hall was packed this year. Traditionally, Thursdays
have good sales but lower attendance, sales slow a bit on Fridays,
and Saturdays see the families arriving. Sundays have good sales
and attendance, both from panicked last minute purchasing and gamers
who previously ignored the exhibit hall. This year, Thursday was
more crowded than veteran attendees had seen in a long time, and
impulse buying reigned. Wizard's Attic sold out of their more than
100 stuffed Cthulhu dolls, and in one day, Guardians
of Order surpassed their sales for all of Origins. Sales and
attendance stayed high for the con's duration.
This was the year of
D20/Open Game Licence fallout. My Homebrewed RPG Shields got quite
a workout as anyone with a campaign and access to Kinkos showed
up with their D20 products. Some of those new D20 companies may
be in trouble already, though, as Ryan Dancey posted a warning today
to everyone on the OGL mailing list:
...even a cursorial
review of the products in the exhibit hall demonstrated a shocking
lack of ability to comply with the Open Gaming License or the d20
System Trademark License. As a result, Wizards
is going to take some official actions in the next few weeks to
attempt to rectify the situation before it gets further out of hand.
In my
talking with exhibitors at the con, I heard of companies having to
glue in pages with the legal stuff they failed to include while printing.
One D20 publisher mentioned how surprised he was that other products
were mentioning the Dungeon Master's Guide, as even mentioning
DMs by name was forbidden by WotC. Perhaps the ignorant and incompetant
will be trimmed away from the D20 industry, unclogging the current
log-jam of products. Time will tell.
Some computer game companies
were at GenCon as well, getting in on the action. In fact, the block
party this year was sponsored by Microsoft, not WotC. Bioware ran
many demos of the next big thing in D&D on PCs, Neverwinter Nights,
which was the only computer game that really caught my attention.
The game was gorgeous, well designed, and very smooth -- at least
while it was on their souped-up machines.
Two different PA announcers
assaulted those walking the exhibit hall, including a woman who
was truly pathetic at publicly addressing anyone. Her habitual name
mix-ups, long pauses, and general crappiness earned her the title
"silly bint" from a respected game designer visiting from the UK,
and less polite names from nearly everyone else.
Let's get into the game
specific news:
WizKid's Battletech
Plans Revealed
As I warned you a few days back, WizKids
has plans for Battletech which lead down the same road of their
mega-hit, Mage Knight. Yep,
Battletech is becoming a Collectible Miniatures Game, or CMG, an
abbreviation I heard thrown around in conversation for the first
time at the con. Plans are to have starter sets available for $24.95
in a few months. Each starter will have a mech, some vehicles and
some infantry. Some of the larger mech figures will be piloted by
mech warrior figures, which sounds like they'll actually put one
figure inside or atop another. More
info has been posted online following the GenCon announcement.
Decipher's New Star
Trek RPG Won't Disappoint
Fans of Last Unicorn's Star Trek game will be pleased to hear that
they need not worry. The demo of Decipher's
new Star Trek RPG, their first venture into the RPG market, shows
the development team is on the right track. Players can now play
as nearly any race, on any ship, in any occupation, rather than
just being limited to the Federation. The extra D6 that could roll
forever is gone, replaced by rolls of 2D6 that gain extra rolls
on a 12, continuing until you stop rolling sixes. Skills are grouped
with their parent skills on the character sheets, speeding up gameplay
a bit. Also, individual skills just to use tricorders and phasers
are replaced by more generalized skills and highly detailed equipment
listings. Health and the process of suffering injuries remains nearly
unchanged, with the health status category of Stunned getting a
name change (being Stunned is now a special effect caused by phasers
and such). And of course, since much of the Decipher RPG team used
to be Last Unicorn Games, conversion rules to the Icon System
will be included. After stunning four Cardassians and finding a
way to beam up through the ionic dust, I continued wandering the
exhibit hall.
11:56
PM: Allan Sugarbaker says...
Sovereign Stone D20
Over
at booth #347, Sovereign Press
had the entire line of last year's Sovereign Stone RPG, now converted
to the D20 System. There always seemed to be activity there, partly
because Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were at the booth, signing
everything from Dragonlance to their Sovereign Stone novel. Don
Perrin was also hanging out, and he showed me the three new Sovereign
Stone miniatures, sculpted by famed artist Julie Guthrie, that were
now available from Don's other company, Perrin
Miniatures. A handout on the Codex Mysteriumwas available
for perusal, so I read about the massive spell listing (over 200),
prestige classes, magic items, and some guilds/special oranizations.
The Codex should be available in October, followed in November by
an adventure called Escape into Darkness.
Restless Dead and
Nazis at the Pagan Booth
Across the way from Sovereign Press, Pagan
Publishing was showing off the cover to an expansion for The
Hills Rise Wild! called The Reanimated. Yes, undead are involved
(how'd you guess?), brought to life by a mad scientist. This new
set will bring nine graveyard boards to the game, which the lab
assistant must scavenge for bodies to animate -- including those
of fallen enemies. According to one of Pagan's staff, "The zombies
tend to either get wiped out or overwhelm everything," which is
as it should be with a zombie outbreak.
Godlike, expected to
be at GenCon, will be heading to press in a week or two. The superhero
RPG is set during World War II, and will include complete D20 conversion
rules. With Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze (of Delta Green
and Unknown Armies,respectively) involved, this is one of
the few superhero games I plan to check out. Other than Godlike
not making it to the show, Pagan seemed to be doing very well this
year. If only the guys at Wizard's
Attic had known about Pagan's secret stash of plaid and patterned
Cthulhu dolls, more cultists could've adopted an evil friend. My
two year old calls ours "Tulu." Hey, the kid's gotta learn to respect
her elder gods.
| Wednesday,
August 08, 2001 |
10:54
PM: Allan Sugarbaker says...
GOO's Tekumel Tested
One of my roommates ran a scheduled playtest game of the new Tekumel
RPG being developed by Guardians
of Order. The new game uses the Tri-Stat system, used throughout
most of the GOO product line. Though I didn't have a chance to join
in, my roommate said the players thought the combat was fast, while
as GM, he thought it was slow. Nothing conclusive there, I guess.
I've already resolved to check it out for myself when it comes out
in a couple months.
11:02
PM: Allan Sugarbaker says...
Going Native
One
of the more entertaining single-space booths was the tribal tent
of Outside the Asylum Productions,
who were at GenCon promoting their boardgame, Nomad. In the
game, which is packaged in a strange tent-like box, are several
cloth gameboards and a number of game pieces. Each player uses a
small circular cloth for his tribe board, and places it near the
larger central map cloth. This central map is a beautiful full-color
cloth map the tribes roam around on, going where the resources take
them. The game concept, the game components, and the game packaging
all intrigued me, and I might have bought one if it weren't for
the game price -- $49.95. [As
I reported
at Origins - hah! -misuba]
Grab Their Sack. They
Like It
Tyranny Games' Sack Armies
was doing quite well at GenCon, as the booth ran out of one type
of starter partway through the con (the ones with green sacks).
Demos were also going strong, catching interested gamers and increasing
the number of SA Generals out there. Much to my surprise, a copy
of my recent review was
displayed at the booth as well, and I saw folks flipping through
it on a few occasions. Though Precedence's
booth also had a Sack Armies display, their main attention seemed
focused on their RiftsCCG, and on selling what they had left
of Babylon 5. Though Precedence lost the B5 licence, there
are rumors that Warner Brothers might let them have the licence
back in a few months after unsuccessfully shopping around. Either
way, as a fan of B5, I'm grabbing what I can now.
Oh, and I met a D20 publisher
that traded some of his stock for a copy of D&D 3's Manual of
the Planes. I didn't see the book for myself, so I can't tell
you anything about it, but at least one copy is floating around
out there already. It will be interesting to see Jeff Grubb returning
to his old haunts.
| Thursday,
August 09, 2001 |
4:50
PM: Allan Sugarbaker says...
Cards Springing Up Like
Weeds
New card
games were everywhere at GenCon this year. Let me see what I can remember...
- The Ebay
card game from Journeyman
Press looked promising, though uncomplicated.
- WotC's Harry
Potter CCG had major displays inside the castle, and seemed
well designed from a cursory glance at the game. However, $3.29
for an 11-card booster was a bit steep.
- Decipher's
upcoming Lord of the Rings CCG was shown to a select few. I wasn't
one of them, so I had to settle for the movie trailers and booth
babes. Wheee.
- Third
World Games had a large booth to display and demo Firestorm,
a sci-fi CCG with four different factions to play. A few packages
sold at GenCon had damaged cards in them, and Third World has
already instituted a replacement
program to keep their customers happy.
- Jolly
Roger Games was selling Dia de los Muertos, a trick-taking
game with a lot of skeleton artwork.
- Our buddies at Looney
Labs were giving away promo Fluxx cards that added
a new goal to the game: time travel (in reference to Chrononauts,of
course).
- The Dragonball
Z CCG had a Humm-Vee with their logos all over it, which was
amusing to watch as it drove out of the hall at convention's end
(I'm reminded of a quote from The Tick:"Hey cool -- they've
got a blimp!"). A couple of the cartoon's voice actors were in
attendance.
- A game called Geeks:
The Convention had a huge booth with piles and piles of their
single game, about... uh... geeks at a convention.
- R3
Games was showing off their CTG (Collectable Token Game :-)
Obsidian Lords,which has a cool name but is rather light
on artwork.
6:35
PM: Allan Sugarbaker says...
Friends and Foes Takes
Flight Soon
I checked
with Fantasy Flight
at GenCon about their expansion to the Lord of the Rings boardgame
(formerly a WotC game). There was a single, unopened copy of the expansion,
Friends and Foes,at a booth dedicated to nothing but the boardgame.
From looking at the back, the game will have added feature cards and
a single, double-sided board (Bree and Isengard are the two locations
on the board). Also, enemy cards will be introduced, which I couldn't
determine much about. In fact, according to the guys at the booth,
there's a chance the expansion will be out a bit early, arriving in
stores late September rather than October. The next expansion is targeted
for a Fall 2002 release, with the ominous title of Sauron.
I spent Friday night
at GenCon teaching the guys from Realm
of Imagination to play LotR. Todd's efforts as Frodo
made this cooperative game more cutthroat and competitive than I
thought possible. And they still came close to destroying the One
Ring. "Frodo, get away from the tiki statue. Dammit, Frodo, stop
trying to get Pippin killed!"
Warhamster Rally On
The Way
Jim Dietz of Jolly
Roger Games found himself telling a lot of GenCon goers that
Orcs at the Gates, last year's Origins Award winning Sci-Fi
or Fantasy Boardgame, was out of print. "But don't worry," he said,
"We'll be putting out Warhamster Rally soon, and in my opinion,
it's twice the game Orcs was." Big talk, but if it's based
on the work of John Kovalic (and
it is), I'll be checking it out for sure.
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GenCon
2001 Photo Gallery
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