GenCon Report

I finally got back from GenCon last night at 9 pm. It was a successful and fun show and as is usually the case it helped recharge my creative batteries. It’s really nice to spend the week with other passionate game enthusiasts and see the cool stuff going on in all aspects of the hobby. The focus of my con was, of course, the Green Ronin booth and I spent most of each day there pimping our wares and talking to people about Dragon Age. We did a DA promo flier for the show and there was a lot of interest in the game, which made me happy. I don’t have the time or energy for a day by day breakdown but here are the things that stand out in my mind.

Ice and Fire: This is the first GenCon since the release of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying and it was great to see the depth of interest in the game. We sold out of core books and the new adventure Peril at King’s Landing by noon Sunday. Jim Kiley ran demos at our booth three of the four days and all slots filled up easily. And it won two ENnie Awards. The game has got legs and once we get the Campaign Guide out it’ll really be cooking.

Girl Scouts Gone Wild: GenCon did a program with the Girl Scouts this year. I donated five copies of Faery’s Tale Deluxe for GMs and an adventure. The demos went over so well that many of the girls and their families came to our booth and bought us out of the game. I love the idea of Girl Scouts learning to roleplay at GenCon. Thanks to Faith Felice for organizing this very cool program.

Punking the Punk: After our post-ENnies dinner, I ended up at this horrible dance club with Nicole and Paul Tevis. There was a party for the Brave New World movie there and Nicole wanted to drop by and congratulate Matt Forbeck. You could hear the music a block away and inside you had to yell to talk to anyone. We found Matt and the last holdouts of the party in a small room off to the side. After a couple of minutes, Nicole went out to the main room and the others followed. This left Tevis and I alone in the room. It didn’t take long for other patrons at the club to discover it. As Paul and I tried to have a discussion about wargames, the room filled up with dancing drunks taking pictures of each other. Imagine trying to talk about PanzerBlitz and For the People over thumping house music as club kids gyrated all around. Then they started taking pictures of us and still our friends were nowhere to be found. Finally, I yelled, “Are we being punked?” We were not but we didn’t stay too long either.

Sympathy for Monte: Fantasy Flight announced Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Third Edition at the show. I, of course, designed Second Edition so this was of some interest to me. To be clear all I know about it is what was said at GenCon. I heard rumors it was in development but no one from FFG ever contacted me about it. It’s taking an interesting approach, but my gut reaction is that they should have called it something else. There have been many, many games using the Warhammer IP. If they had called it Warhammer Uberquest or something, I doubt anyone would have cared. Calling it WFRP 3E invites comparisons to the previous editions, however, and seems bound to create the same sorts of tensions that are tearing up the D&D fanbase right now.

Grub Quest: Indianapolis loves its chain restaurants, which is bad news for people who want to eat good food. I made an effort to find some decent places to eat this year, though lunches still ended up being Chick Fil A more often than not. Finds included Café Patachou, which was a good spot for breakfast; TaTa Cuban Café; and Maxine’s Chicken and Waffles, a great soul food restaurant whose only downside is its distance from the convention center. We did our end of con GR meal at Barcelona Tapas, which was also quite good. Weirdly enough, the only disappointment in the meal was the sangria, which tasted like it was missing an ingredient or two. Their tres leches cake, which I dubbed by 20th GenCon cake, was awesome though.

A Night with Dr. Evil: Rob Schwalb ran a D&D game Thursday night in which I played my minotaur barbarian. Eight players plus a bottle of brandy made it a raucous affair. We all had a good time, though I think Rob regretted running for level 21 characters. He says I’m on the hook for next year, so maybe I’ll run Dragon Age. Hal and Adam AKA “Tennessee Hal” need to sit apart though.

Stuff and Things: It wouldn’t be GenCon without bringing home some swag, though this may be the first time I didn’t bring home even one miniature. I bought Kate a Dr. Who graphic novel and myself Chronica Feudalis, which was a pretty easy sell to me considering my history with Ars Magica. I finally got Trail of Cthulhu, as well as Shadows Over Filmland and Mutant City Blues from Pelgrane. I did a trade with Richard Iorio of Rogue Games for Colonial Gothic, Thousand Suns, and their various supplements. I got the boardgame Ubongo from Z-Man Games, which looks right up Nicole’s alley. Andrew Hackard of SJG also dropped by copies of their boardgame Revolution and the card game The Stars Are Right. I played the latter with Evan Monday night and it was fun. Lastly, I picked up the second edition of Reaper’s Warlord miniatures game. I set up a trade for Starblazer Adventures and then forgot to go to the Cubicle 7 booth to make it happen. D’oh!

A Small Thank You: It’s always hard to know how much stock to bring to the show. You don’t want to run out of a title early but neither do you want to pay to ship a lot of stuff back. On Sunday a couple of the big consolidators came buy, asking if we wanted to sell our overstock to them. I could have taken the princely sum of 5 cents on the dollar but instead Steve Kenson and I carried four boxes of books to the GenCon office. These books were given away to the many volunteers who staff the convention. I figured they deserved our thanks for making the show run so smoothly.

Cool Stuff, Part 2: GenCon

It wouldn’t be GenCon if I wasn’t stuffing my suitcase full of games come Monday morning. This was actually a pretty light year all in all, as I didn’t have a whole lot of time out of the booth to look around the exhibit hall. One area I totally failed in was miniatures. I usually find something cool at GenCon but this year I only brought home two minis and they were for a friend who couldn’t be there.

3:16, Carnage Amongst the Stars: This is basically an Aliens/Space Hulk RPG. Looks easy to pick up and quick to run, which are plusses.

Battletech Technical Readouts 3039 and 3050: I could swear I used have some old Tech Readouts, but I can’t find them. These are the newest ones from Catalyst.

Cold City: It’s Berlin, 1950 and you are part of a multinational force hunting down the horrors unleashed by the Nazis during WWII. I love the premise and the game reads well, but I would have liked more discussion and examples of the core mechanic.

Dying Earth RPG: Saw this at Troll and Toad for $10 and couldn’t say no. Robin Laws designed this game based on Jack Vance’s classic fantasy series.

España 1936: Bill Bodden showed me this new boardgame and I picked it up on the last day of GenCon. It’s a two player game about the Spanish Civil War by Devir.

Houses of the Blooded: John Wick’s “anti-D&D” RPG that embraces tragedy in the classical sense.

Inquisitor’s Handbook: TS Luikart gave me this bigass supplement for the Dark Heresy RPG.

Legend of the Burning Sands: I had no idea this was even coming out, so when I heard it was at GenCon I made a point of tracking it down. Basically, it’s an Arabian-themed game tied into the Legend of the Five Rings setting. Al-Qadim fans take note.

Legend of the Five Rings, Third Edition: I never did pick up the latest edition of L5R, so I grabbed that along with LBS. Thank you, jim pinto.

Tour de Lovecraft: Ken Hite writes about many of Lovecraft’s classic stories.

War and Peace: This is an old Avalon Hill boardgame of Napoleononic conflict. I love AH games and make a point of buying them when I can find them for a reasonable price. Someday I’ll find Up Front and then there will be much rejoicing.

The Winter War DVD: Classic film from the early 90s about Finland’s fight against the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940. How could I pass it up after my recent trip? If you thought Saving Private Ryan was too upbeat, the Winter War is for you.

Eating on the Road

Here are a couple of food stories from our recent travels.

One night in Finland we went to the National Air Guitar Championships and a show by metal band Waltari. After that and (of course) much drinking, one of our fine hosts, Mikko, was going to give us a lift back to our hotel. As we were walking passed the Parliament building on the way to his car, I asked Mikko if Finland had its own variant of the hot dog. He said they sort of did and tried to describe what he called a meat pie. He then said, "If you want something like that, there's no better place to get it than right there." He was pointing to a kiosk not a block away, which was selling food to late night drunks. How could I pass that up?

We went over and of course the menu was all in Finnish. After some prodding Mikko ordered me a "student special." I was asked what condiments I wanted on it and it was difficult to say since I had no idea what I was getting. I went with ketchup, mustard, and relish and we got the food to go. Back in our hotel room I unwrapped my mysterious bounty to check it out. It was not, in fact, a meat pie but a sandwich that had a hamburger, a hot dog, and chunks of fried bologna in it. Sounds foul I know but Nicole agreed it was pretty tasty.

We found out later that this food kiosk is frequented by members of Parliament and many of them have sandwiches named after them. The last night of the trip, we stopped there again. The stalwart Timo, who was in charge of getting us to the airport in time for our 6 am flight, wanted to make sure we had a chance to eat something after the drunken debauchery of the afterparty. Nicole got the "Tarja Halonen", named after Finland's president. This was, IIRC, a "double meat and double cheese" burger. Timo told me they had blood sausages and I was all over that. They were served with a lingonberry sauce on top and that was quite tasty. If you are in Helsinki and want street food at 3 am, find the kiosk by the Parliament building.

In general we found many interesting and delicious things to eat in Finland. Then we went to Indianapolis. In our hotel room one of the travel magazines had a cover story called "Chain City USA." It talked about how Indianapolis had more chain restaurants than just about anywhere. More than that, folks in Indy liked it that way because chains are consistent. Eyaaa. So I had OK meals at Rock Bottom Brewery, Palomino, and PF Changs (chains all), but given the choice I'll take something homegrown and unique every time. The last night in Indy we did our traditional Green Ronin end of con dinner at a Brazilian churrascaria called Fogo de Chão. This too was part of a chain, but it was started in Brazil and the Indy location is run by one of the founders. It was not cheap but at last we found a chain place worth going back to next year. Not only was it endless meat on swords brought right to your table, the meat was really well cooked. Even something as mundane as chicken legs was juicy and bursting with flavor. In some churrascarias the quantity of meat seems more important than the quality, but I must say that Fogo de Chão delivered in both areas. It turned out one of our waiters was a Warhammer Fantasy Battle player too. What are the odds?

GenCon #19

At the ENnie Awards on Friday night Peter Adkison assured the crowed that there would be a GenCon next year. This was a relief to me, as it'll be my 20th in a row and I'd hate to miss it because the con itself was canceled. It sounds like the success of this year's show ensured GenCon will get out of its financial difficulties and that is good news. There is no other convention like GenCon and it has a recipe that I don't think can be replicated.

This year's show was good but a bit strange for me. Coming so quickly after Ropecon I didn't feel like I was really there, if that makes any sense. The upside of that was that it was a real low stress show. I was still on a high after the Finland trip, all our GenCon plans went off without a hitch, and there was just nothing to get worked up about. Spending quality time with my GR homies and excellent sales ensured I stayed in a good mood for the whole show.

Green Ronin debuted the Wild Cards campaign setting for Mutants & Masterminds, the first of our George R.R. Martin projects, and sold out of that handily. We also had a lovely Freeport poster map for sale (coming to our webstore soon), which really does justice to Andy Law's new city map from the Pirate's Guide to Freeport. Fittingly, one of the four ENnie Awards we won was for Best Cartography for that book; well deserved, Andy! The surprise upset of the ENnies was the True20 Companion beating out Hero High. Traditionally, the M&M fans come out in force for the ENnies, so we figured if we won anything in the Best Supplement category it'd be for Hero High. Looks like the True20 fans really stepped up this year. Congrats to Erica Balsley, Dave Jarvis, Matthew Kaiser, Steve Kenson, and Sean Preston! I would also be remiss if I didn't mention my excellent co-authors on the Pirate's Guide to Freeport, Patrick O'Duffy and Rob Schwalb. That book picked up a silver ENnie for Best Setting, while Hobby Games: The 100 Best got one for the bizarrely named Best Regalia category. I must give a shout out to Jim Lowder, the book's editor, who did a tremendous job, and the 102 other contributors who made it sing. I'm hugely proud of Hobby Games: The 100 Best and it was great to see the book pick up an Origins Award and an ENnie this year.

My only real regret about GenCon is the same one I have every year: I wish I got to play more games. I spent most of the convention at the Green Ronin booth, with Thursday being particularly brutal because of last minute set up. That day we were all at the booth from 7 am to 6 pm. Saturday night I got to play D&D with friends from my college game group (Bill, Todd, and Aaron) and Rob Schwalb and two members of his group (Tom and Adam). We didn't come close to finishing but with such good company it didn't matter.

Like any good gamer, I picked up some cool stuff at GenCon. I'll blog about that later, as I have to get ready for work now. Overall, GenCon gets the thumbs up as always.