Brief Gen Con Report

Now that I'm between semesters I can turn some attention back to games. It's been some time since Gen Con, so rather than going over the show in detail, I'll cut to the bullet points.

The photo above is all of the loot I picked up at the con -- 13th Age, Arkham Detective Tales, The Armitage Files, and Owl Hoot Trail (from the Pelgrane Press 4-for-3 sale), one of the Creature Card Decks from Inkwell Ideas, Gygax Magazine #2 from the OSR Productions booth, Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography from McFarland Publishing, and the Hellfrost Player's Guide from Triple Ace Games and Studio 2 Publishing.

I participated in the 2013 GM's Jam panel on Saturday morning with Zachary Houghton from RPG Blog II, Phil Vecchione from Gnome Stew, and Chris Sniezak from the Misdirected Mark podcast. Chris recorded the panel for the podcast. We had a great time talking with the audience about ways to improve campaigns, and I only lost my train of thought once. My friend Derek was in attendance and picked up the slack for me by telling a story about our Freeport campaign. I was honored to be a part of this event, and the panelists intend to do it again next year.

My friend Lowell was one of 16 finalists for the Tabletop Deathmatch boardgame design competition sponsored by Cards Against Humanity. He was in interviews, meetings and judging panels all weekend. All of this was filmed for a upcoming web video series -- I'll post a link when it begins.

I got a chance to play Night's Black Agents on Saturday afternoon, in a session with D. A good GM and a good group of players made this a fun session.

Mrs. Kaiju and I saw J., a friend and Indy local, for about 15 minutes on Friday, and played Zombicide and AD&D with the usual crew of  D., R. and J. It was fun to see them all.

We didn't arrive in town until Friday afternoon, and then didn't get to the con itself until around 4pm. We barely saw any of the Exhibit Hall until Saturday. By the time I made it to the Pelgrane booth, copies of Double Tap were sold out. This expansion for Night's Black Agents was at the top of my list to buy this year.

I didn't get to the Studio 2 booth until Sunday so I didn't know about their incredible Solomon Kane deal: all the print books for the line (including the rulebook) for $50. By Sunday I had used up most of my gaming loot funds.

Another disappointment: no booths for Media Blasters or Discotek Media, so no obscure kung-fu or monster movie DVDs this time.

We were on the move all weekend and still missed out on seeing people and events. Next year, I think we will look at arriving on Thursday to give us more time to see everything we want to see.

500th post!