The Worst Game I Ever Played

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I was doing my blog for the week of Gen Con where I give an easy compiling of the links from all the years I’ve gone (and you can find that “index” here), and rereading some of those old posts got me into a great mood for the upcoming week of gaming. However, it reminded me that somehow, someway I have never really talked about the worst experience in gaming I’ve had at Gen Con. And I feel like enough time has passed that it’s long since over due.

At Gen Con 2019, Egg, Lee, and myself played in a later night session of a game called Amber. Now before I get too into what worked and (mostly) what didn’t work, I realize that just because I didn’t have a great time during the game didn’t mean that the other 30+ players weren’t having the times of their lives. And that’s obviously OK, too. But…

First, this is what I said about the game at the time:

I kid Egg about diceless games, saying that they are Communist. Mostly I prefer games with dice… then again, I don’t have the horrible luck he does (seriously, it is odds defying). Amber is one of those diceless games that’s been around for decades, but none of us had ever played. Based on a series of novels I learned a few things about the game.

First, the people who are into Amber, are REALLY into Amber. Think of your favorite series of books (probably Game of Thrones or Dark Tower for me) and then multiply that love you feel for them by a hundred… and you’d still be short. They know everything about the world… everything…

Which can make it a little bit to penetrate such a thick history. The story seemed to trump everything throughout this session, which I’m not sure if that is how most Amber games go, or just more of a GM preference. I must admit that this one didn’t work for me. In addition, it ran over by 2 1/2 hours, so we didn’t get done until 2:30 in the morning, which threw off our schedules a bit for the remainder of the weekend (that lack of sleep starts here).

***

The first and immediate thing is the diceless thing. I’m probably never going to be onboard with a diceless roleplaying system. I feel like one of the things I like about the games I play is the uncertainty factor. The idea that there is a little bit of fate being pulled and pushed in various directions for me or my fellow players to react to. The joy at succeeding on a roll that could tilt the entire session/campaign in one direction or another. The agony at failing your die roll and suddenly having to scramble to find some way out of the predicament you find yourself in as a result of the disasterous roll… those are the moments I love.

At the same time I can also admit that much of the dice rolling during the course of a game may not really matter. If you have a perception roll for everyone in the party, more than likely you only need one person to have a success for all the players to effectively get the same knowledge… leading us to the question of why bother with the rolls in the first place? And we all have had the fun and excitement of a combat that runs on for far too long due to both the heroes and the villains not quite rolling well enough to sway the battle to one side or the other.

However, within this particular session, the idea of not using dice meant that everything was more or less determined by the GM only. Roleplayers talk about adventures in the terms of railroading the players or open sandboxes which allow those same players to pick and choose what they want to do. The idea being that the GM and the players should look to build a story together and not just exist at the whims of the GM.

He had more agency as a ghost than we did as players.

The problems with the session were as follows:

The Characters we were given/came up with had very little agency within the story. And this wasn’t a case where we (personally) we not getting agency, I don’t believe anyone really was. At one point, the three of us came up with some simple way to tie our characters together only to be told that we should be at odds. OK, no big deal. So we changed that and then immediately the story changed so we were tied together.

The GM was writing his own fan fiction. That night, long-since seared into my brain, felt completely like the GM had written us a fan fiction within the world of Amber and somehow we were all unwittingly playing a captive audience under the guise of roleplaying. To the point where after we had already exceeded our time slot, he proceeded to read page after page from his notebook detailing how the adventure’s story was to end. If there was any doubt that our character’s actions had any affect on the story he constructed, I’d been hard pressed to figure it out.

Too many players. I think there were at least twenty players for this game and one GM. Many of the things that we and other characters we doing by interacting (roleplaying) was completely lost because there was no need to check in with us if another player had somehow grabbed the spotlight.

One player tried to grab the spotlight. In college you have grad students who act as assistants to the Professor. They can help teach the class when the Prof is unavailable. They can grade assignments, etc. In this session, what that meant was helping to control the narrative to make sure whatever character you were playing had the most impact upon things. Oh, the guy did it in a very shrewd way by talking with players at the beginning and then being the point man for the GM. However, it got to a weird point where his voice was simply the loudest one in the room (and we were playing in Lucas Oil Stadium, so that’s saying something).

The session went over by 2+ hours. Listen, we’re all there to play games. Sleep is for the weak. Chicks dig narratively driven scars from tortured characters. But it is one thing to go over by 30 minutes, maybe an hour, and another to just disregard everything when it comes to time so that you can tell whatever story you wanted to tell.

Could we have left early? Oh yes, we could have left at the alloted end time of midnight. But I don’t leave games early. And I especially wanted to see if it would somehow turn around or remain the train wreck it appeared to be.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

***

The joke is that we actually are still playing Amber. The Shadow still grips us, and nothing we have done since is real. The three of us are forever stuck in an unending Hell where we can only watch as the story proceeds around us, never interating with anything… ghosts to a world who had long forgotten we were even there.

And much like any cautionary tale, I will not bother with trying to play another session in the hopes it was just a bad experience. I could not do that to myself. Living through it once had been more than enough.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Gen Con 2024 Recap – Part Two

Flashback to Thursday (Day 1)

If you missed Part one, you can find it here.

In writing this blog, I realized I left out one of the things we did on Thursday, and that was to attend the Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman Dragonlance 40th Anniversary Panel. I ended up getting there about 1/2 way through it (which meant I needed to pick up my copy of the book at the booth rather than at the panel, but luckily that process was smooth enough), but I was still able to listen to them talk about about the journey to this point… though, every time they said 40 years I felt a little bit older. Chronicles were some of the very first novels I read once I discovered the joy in reading. In many ways Dragonlance was more of a gateway to roleplaying than anything else I’d done, enabling me to see exactly what it meant and how these numbers and names on a few sheets of paper could be transformed into living/breathing characters. A process I still try to employ in my writings.

We all went into the panel thinking this was the last ride for the duo of authors within this world, so imagine our surprise when later that day it was revealed they’d be writing in Dragonlance once more, this time going way back in time to Huma.

I haven’t started in on the new trilogy yet, but now that this 3rd book is in my hands it is next on the reading list!

 

 

Friday (Day 2 cont.)

Old Gods of Appalachia

We pick up with my favorite session of the weekend. Horror games are not something I get a lot of opportunity to play overall. In my experience they seem to lend themselves more to shorter campaigns (stories), or perhaps it is just I’ve only been a part of a handful that have lasted longer than a few sessions. Whenever these sessions open up, I’m excited to see what opportunities they might provide.

The other thing I’ve definitely noticed about any horror or horror adjacent game is you have to have buy in from the players. And by that I mean you need to all be on the same page as to whether you are going to take it seriously or if you are going to effectively do a version of Scary Movie (or insert your Horror B-movie of your choice). We were lucky on Friday night (plus the best horror games are done at night, right?) where we had an excellent GM. His ability to set a scene and weave the right amount of tension throughout the session really made for an excellent experience. And all six of the players were pretty much bought in on the story. While there were definitely a few moments of laughter, it did exactly what you wanted it to do, give you a tiny pause from the impending doom that certainly awaited you.

We played the adventure “Best Leave Them Ghosts Alone” and without giving any spoilers, I felt like it had room within it for everyone to have a moment to shine. The story had some combat but also allowed for the roleplaying moments I really appreciate during these gaming weekends. After the game we spoke with the GM for a maybe twenty minutes and looked at the various products Monte Cooke had to offer. I thought about buying the book, then thought I shouldn’t, then we left the room… only for me to get about 10 feet and say f- it, and go back and buy it. I’m looking forward to reading through it and maybe get one of those short campaigns going at some point.

 

Saturday (Day 3)

13th Age

I was listening to the podcast Reading D&D Aloud when I heard Rob Heinsoo, co-designer on the 13th Age RPG. They had just finished up their Kickstarter for the 2nd edition, and in discussing the system he mentioned something called a Escalation Die, where every round it increased by 1 and added to your To Hit rolls in an effort to both end combat a little quicker and increase the ability of the heroes to potentially win the fight. I’d never heard of such a thing, and it made me wonder about the system in general.

Saturday, as originally planned, had a lot of free time with Daggerheart being the only game we’d secured to start. When I mentioned this to Egg, he said he might be able to get us a game of 13th Age through some of his media side contacts. Sure enough, we secured a two hour session… with Rob Heinsoo!

Normally with two hour sessions you get pregenrated characters, but Rob wanted us to see a bit of the character creation, so while the abilities and powers had been listed out on the character sheet – the “cool stuff” was coming up with our “One Unique Thing”. Basically, 13th Age has you come up with something extremely special about your character, and in theory, it could be anything you’d like. Anything is a large box to figure out, so Rob gave a couple of examples (which I wish I could remember them all), but the one that told me you could dream big was:

I am a former god who has fallen from the patheon.

I mean, you can’t get much bigger than being a god.

So we went at coming up with our Unique thing. Egg had his bard whose instruments were from skinned trolls (so the playing kept them from fully regenerating). Lee had a Draconian whose claws were his weapons. And I was playing an Elf Ranger…

As an aside, I’ve thought about Elves in our roleplaying games. Here are beings who are effectively immortal. And I always wonder how they could possibly live so many lifetimes without going mad from the pain and loss of loved ones. From the sheer amount of memories weighing them down. In my mind, I’ve thought it might be cool if every 100 years or so you must return to your homeland and have a Renewal Ritual performed that would excise some of those memories from you. It might not be a complete mind wipe, but by reducing some of your experiences, it would let your mind reorder itself.

In that vein, I said my Elf had forgone such a Renewal and now suffered from swiss cheese brain. All those memories are in there, but they come and go as they pleas making it so there would definitely be a lot to roleplay if this was an ongoing campaign.

Rob listened to each of our Uniques and you could see his mind racing to find threads to potentially use as well. Even though this was a 2 hour session, I felt like he’d have come up with a full campaign based on some of those ideas.

The actual play was a brief encounter where we fought some wannabe dwarves and got to experience 13th Age a bit. Given the lineage to D&D we had a leg up on much of the terminology, but it was still interesting to see how things like the Escalation Die worked. I liked that even if you missed in an attack, you still did some damage (3 for my character). Having damage be more based on your level and not on whether you had a Longsword or Short Sword worked well – one less thing to track, I think.

Rob Heinsoo has such an exuberance for the material (and for roleplaying in general) you couldn’t help but be sucked in by him. I’m a bit envious of any of those who get to have him as their GM for that reason. I’d like to thank him for taking the time to do the session with us, and show us a little bit about the game itself. They are still finishing up the 2nd edition (but you can still pledge here), but I’m super interested in seeing how it turns out.

Deadpool Roleplays the Marvel Universe

I still remember the good old days where if you played Marvel then there was a huge chart that needed referencing. This session had no huge chart… so I guess we need to figure out how to play this game?

Another 2 hour session, but there were a couple of roleplaying style opportunities within but mostly focused on the combat systems. Which appeared to work… fine. I did like that you roll 3 6-sided dice with two white and one red. The Red one has a MARVEL logo as the 1, but if you roll that it acts as a 6 and a Fantastic (critical) on which many of your powers and abilities do something extra with. I played Winter Soldier, so mostly it was a damage enhancer. Damage also keyed off whatever number was on the red dice.

There were really 2 “bad” things for this scenario:

The first was the example characters were Miles Morales, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Winter Soldier, Annabelle Riggs… who? Egg had her as his character and asked me (the comic guy) if I knew anything about her. We later figure out she has about 25 total appearances before this, and I have read a total of ZERO.

Look, in the main game if you want to stat out the lesser known characters – great, go to it. But at a convention, we should really focus on name recognition first.

The second “bad” was the character of Dagger (which Lee had). Her powers affect an ability stat called FOCUS, which is what you draw on to use your super powers. However, in this scenario we are going up against Gun Thugs and Taskmaster, who are melee types… which meant her powers weren’t going to do very much at all. Again, in a longer session/campaign, someone who can make it so the villain can’t use their powers because it has been depleted makes a ton of sense, but in this environment it was more of a feel bad.

Overall I thought the system worked well enough and would actually love to go through character creation just to see how that worked.

Daggerheart

Which brings us to the last game of the night and the trip. This is the Critical Role system which is still in a Beta (if I understood correctly) so this version may be vastly different when it is released in 2025.

I mentioned that sometimes the players and the GM mess really well at a convention and the game takes on a really good flare of its own. For me, this was another example of it. I think this was fostered as well by the fact that while we had the combat moments, we probably had a bunch of moments which allowed us all to focus on roleplaying. In fact, I made a decision that had I known how long the scene was going to last, I might have not done it.

My character was a Cat person, ranger type (a lot of that going around on Saturday for me apparently). Another of the party was a more grizzled veteran. After our first battle, someone asked him for pointers for the dinner we were going to have and he gave a couple of nice answers… so I said – “Remember the scene in Jaws where the kid mimics his dad while they are at the dinner table… that’s going to be me at this meal”. However, I’m not used to playing in person, being an online player these days, but then it occurred to me – I could just act it out.

So I did. The other side of the table noticed it immediately (the person I was copying sat to my left), but soon enough he not only realized what I was doing, he started f-ing with me. Dangling his arms, crossing them in weird ways, and placing them on the table in random ways. I was having fun, Egg snapped a picture of us at one point, and it was a good bit that really didn’t distract (too much) from the other players moments as well.

And the scene lasted for over an hour.

That’s a long time to keep up the bit. When we finally reached a scene change, I offered an apology to the guy “I hope I wasn’t annoying you.”

“Not at all. I appreciate your commitment to the bit.”

“Yeah, if I had realized I’d need to keep doing it for that long, I might have made a different choice!”

As to the system, there were things I liked and other things I’m not entirely sure of. Instead of a D20, you rolled 2d12s for skill and combat checks with one being a HOPE dice and the other being a FEAR dice. If you succeeded and the HOPE dice was higher, you accomplished your goal and got a HOPE point to spend on one of your abilities. It seems like another thing to track (and it is) but it also feels like something you’ll actually use a fair amount as opposed to Inspiration (which I never remember). Other things had to do with the damage/armor system which I think could be streamlined a little more. Egg’s character died toward the end of our adventure and it seemed like the rules did him no favors there.

Overall, I really liked the session. I liked aspects of the system. And the GM and players were great to play with. A win!

 

Sunday (Day 4)

Always a somber day no matter what convention you’re at. Some Sundays are a sort of sprint through the Dealer’s Hall in order to see the 4 or 5 rows that we’d somehow not managed to get over to during the weekend. This time was not one of those. Since most of our games started around 2PM, we actually had a good amount of time to make our way through the maze and see everything we wanted to see (a couple of times). After a final pass and couple of goodbyes, we made our way back south to Atlanta where I managed to walk in my front door at about midnight (much, much shorter drive on the way back).

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Gen Con 2024 Recap – Part One

 

Wednesday (Day O)

Normally we take a very leasurely pace going from Atlanta to Indianapolis, making stops for food, gas, and then normally for stop at a couple of toy/comic style stores. It turns a calculated 8 hour drive into around a 11 or 12 hour drive, but we’re so excited for the coming weekend it is well worth it. However, for some reason the drive took nearly 16 hours. We left Atlanta at 6:30 and arrived in Indianapolis around 10 or 10:30. We may have hit a time warp somewhere in there, I’m not entirely sure.

The other thing that I should note is we weren’t as lucky in our hotel placement as last year (where we were across the street from the convention center). Not that the Sheraton wasn’t nice or anything, but after a day of walking around and playing games, you kind of want to be able to get to your room sooner rather than later. The Sheraton must have moved by one block ever night as it always seemed one block further away than I remembered.

Thursday (Day 1)

Wizards of the Coast are in the process of preparing for the big release of One D&D (D&D 2024) in about a month’s time. While I think it might be nice to have the release at the 50th year of D&D celebration at Gen Con, the logistics didn’t work out. Instead they had 3000 copies (750 each day of the con), but instead of doing the same as the Lorcana release last year which created all sorts of problems, those interested had to be online at 7:00 AM and try to obtain a ticket there.

Lee, Egg, and I all discussed this. We’d love to have a shot at the Players Guide, but we also know that waking up that early is THE SUCK. I basically said that if I happen to wake up to pee and it is 6:50, then I’ll give it a try.

I woke up at 6:45… and hit the submit button as the clock turned to 7:00. The I watched the working circle on the phone spin and spin. Egg was wait listed at 900, Lee was higher I think… but mine said 275. Then it said 200. 150.

Was it actually going to happen?

Of course not. That’s not how my luck works. The odds were stacked against us anyway.

The rest of the con I woke up at 7:02 and 7:30, and 9:00… so I only tried the once.

1879

If it is somewhat Steampunk, you have my interest. Somewhere along the way of signing up for events months ago, I mentioned this one to Egg and he secured us a 4 hour block. It turns out the GM actually writes for the game (I did not write his name down, otherwise I would give him a shout out) which was really awesome for us since we had never played it. Many times the games may have a GM who knows the system only a little bit. That was not the case here.

1879 is a game where you have 3 factions struggling against each other on a distant planet in another solar system. Thousands of years ago a portal opened on Earth and the Babylonians went through and set up their own society while encountering and defeating the local lizard man population. Then the portal closed until the 1800s when it opened in Victorian Era Britain. Britain then did what they did during those times, which is colonize this new location.

The game can kind of take on a couple of different options depending on which civilization you want the characters to be from. The GM told us the previous year the players had played Lizard-folk. This time we were the Babyloanians dealing with the British.

The game was fun, though the system kind of felt like it was doing a little bit of everything. It had D&D style attributes, but then there were different dice used in your attack rolls (say d8+d6). It was fine but likely not a system we’d want to play regularly in our home game.

Cyberpunk Edgerunner

If Steampunk is my thing, Egg has a similar affinity for the Cyberpunk genre. The GM summed up the game in a very succenct way: You just have to give the characters enough money to pay 1 month’s rent and you will always have something for them to do. In the rebellion against the establishment, it is truly the rent which holds the biggest sway over our lives. The adventure itself was well done.  Some big corporate project manager decided our tenant building would be cheaper to buy and put up a new cell tower.

This would not stand!

Highlights of the session was Egg’s rocker getting a Nat. 20 when winging an empty bear bottle at the suit’s car and landing perfecting through the sunroof. Our group deciding to take the battle to the Project Manager’s house by posing as garbage men. Us finding him in a compromising position early in the morning. Me raiding his fridge for all sorts of expensive food and alcohol. And finally extracting the appropriate amount of revenge before slinking back to our side of town.

The only bad thing was we probably stole too much money from the PM, as I had enough to pay my rent for at least 2 months!

 

Friday (Day 2)

Shadowdark

We don’t play a ton of OSR style games in the home group. Our default ends up being 5e for the most part with the occassional White Wolf style games coming in second. But we were all interested in seeing the game that would end up sweeping up at the Ennies later that evening.

Given its lineage, it was easy enough to slip into as being D&D players we have a common language. We were playing pre-generated characters which helped us jump right into the game itself. Tasked with destroying an enemy fortress’s heavy balista, we encountered a world that had to make immedaite adjustments to the lack of darkvision for dwarves and elves with firefly style beetles trapped in overhead lights. A clever solution to a problem which doesn’t really exist in regular D7D settings.

In addition, setting up the turn order at the start of the game and just rotating through that kept the combat and non-combat moves flowing easily. At no point did you feel like you didn’t have some level of impact on the game. However, there was one tense moment where the Real-Time aspect of Shadowdark nearly snuck up on us. We had to set explosives to blow up the weapons and those would go off in 10 minutes. Literally 10 minutes of real time would have them explode. Which meant that we needed to get through another full turn to ensure Lee’s character was actually able to make it out. We were so engrossed in playing, there were about 3 minutes on the timer when I realized it and noted we might not want to monologue anymore and get to Lee’s turn!

Egg ended up buying a copy of the game, so I’m interested in seeing how the book presents the game and how any of those things might be used in any of our games (D&D or not).

Transformers

Transformers is my childhood toy. While the Star Wars movies captured my imagination, I had far more Transformer toys than I ever had for Star Wars. Issue 4 of the Marvel series was the first comic book I remember buying, even before I even really knew comic books were a thing that existed. I experienced the pain that every young chiuld hopes to avoid when their grandparents, who don’t even understand these cars who change into robots thing might be, buys you an assortment of Go-Bots for Christmas… scarring you well into your 40s.

As to the game, this was a two hour introduction session. Which most of the time I think those aren’t going to really allow you enough time to do more than an encounter or two. It doesn let you get a glimpse at the system, which is kind of the whole point in a lot of these cases. We did get to see some of the system which also uses addition dice (including a D2 – so flip a coin). One of the things I’m not sure I like is if you don’t have a proficiency in a skill, then you are rolling at disadvantage immediately. It is a bit of a “feel bad” for me. Heck, I already don’t have any skills in a particular thing and now I get an additional penalty as well.

While the system didn’t wow me, we did have a moment that was a bit odd. As we went around saying our names, one of the players said “TireIron”. I’m jotting down the character names and didn’t think anything of it since I could very well see a Transformer having that name. However, his buddy sitting beside him was like “that’s not your name… your name is on the first line of the character sheet”. It struck me as odd at the time, but the more and more I think about it, I’ve been struggling to make sense of it. Since we were in Kindergarden, we’ve been taught to put our name at the top of the page. It’s my default at this point. So… if TireIron wasn’t written at the tip-top of the page, why would you grab a word from some other random area of the character sheet?

Who knows?

***

Check back in for part 2 next week where there will be Cats, Giants, Frogs, Deadpools, and very, very Old Gods.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Once More, Into the Breach!

Another year, and another chance to go up to Indianapolis and play games with 1.5 million of our friends (ok, maybe it’s more like 70,000 at this point) at Gen Con. It will be a bookended by two longish drives and the middle will likely be filled with a random assortment of games we may or may not have any idea what system they are using prior to sitting down. In between those sessions we’ll travel, slowly, through the Dealer’s Hall (which realistically takes about a day to go through due to the sheer size), and then we’ll have many, many evenings where we try to kill Egg Embry by making him laugh so hard that he loses his breath completely.

Next week, I’ll likely have part one of my review, which I’m so thankful I started doing from that very first year we went (2017) as there are definitely little moments and games that I might have forgotten without my brief histories to jar the memory back to the surface. So in that tradition, here’s the full lists of reviews since I started going (minus 2020 and 2021 for world ending reasons):

Gen Con 2017 Reviews – Part 1 and 2

The Best Game I Played at Gen Con – Tales from the Loop

Gen Con 2018 Reviews – Part 1 and 2

Gen Con 2019 Reviews – Part 1 and 2

Gen Con 2022 Reviews – Part 1 and 2

Gen Con 2023 Reviews – Part 1 and 2

***

And for anyone else traveling up, down, or over to Gen Con… safe travels!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Gen Con 2023 Recap – Part Two

 

You can find part one here.

We left off on Saturday afternoon. A quick bite and it was off to…

Zombie World

We played in Lucas Oil Stadium, down on the field, which for a fan of the NFL is always a cool experience. This was the game we wondered most about since it was run entirely through cards instead of dice (based on the Powered By the Apocolypse system). But it worked extremely well. Having the deck there made combat run really quick, and it made for a very easy setup experience when we were pulling out backstories and tragedies, which helped craft the narrative for the players but also had a real tangible affect on the gameplay. The deck of NPCs was nice as well, since the GM was able to lay things out that much quicker. Even the act of figuring out our location and issues were done through a “draft” where each one took a chance to mark down something about the base. What kind of base, what our strengths were, what our liabilities might be, etc. It meant that we were able to get into the game pretty quick.

As to the game itself, we had a pretty good group, and with the scenario that was set up (Lee’s character was attempting to overthrow the people in charge and the rest of us needed to break him out of confinement before his execution), we actually did a fair amount of role-playing to the point that our GM made note of only having maybe 45 minutes left and we hadn’t encountered any zombies.

Which, like the best zombie stories, the monsters might have been us all along.

Saturday (Day 3)

Things from The Flood

A sequel to Tales from the Loop that exists in a damaged 1990s era. You’re still playing kids, though these kids are more on the older side (among our Players we stuck to mostly 15 year olds). But instead of new technology that is all bright and shiny, the world experienced a Flood, and now that technology has some sort of blight attached to it. Where Loop is about wonder from the innocence of a child, I feel like Flood is the step we all have to make in realizing the world isn’t always the nicest place. That means rebelling against that world.

Like Loop or Alien or any of Free League’s games, the system just works really well. With both a simplicity to it, but also allowing you to court doom by “pushing” your dice rolls, but only if you then take Stress. We avoided being eaten by a T-Rex, avoided getting run off the road by a Johnny Cab (effectively from Total Recall), and stopped the world from experiencing a complete meltdown of time… all the while saving out classmate from certain doom.

All in the day’s life when you’re in the Flood.

Pirate Borg

One of the Mork Borg inspired games, this one took place during the Golden Age of Piracy… in a Dark Carribean. All sorts of nasty monsters roamed the land and seas. Ghost ships attacked without warning, and strange ruins might lead to your doom or treasure to last you forever.

This one made full use of minatures, which was a nice thing to see at the convention. Since my group only plays online, I’m not sure when the last time we had minatures during a game.

The overall character setup was fairly straightforward and contained on one sheet of paper. However, if you are unfamiliar with how you are supposed to proceed, there are a couple of spots which weren’t quite as intuative as you might think, causing a couple of us to stumble a bit. Since the game is very OSR, there are limited hit points and the likelihood of a character dying pretty much seems assured. In fact, Egg’s characetr began with one whole hit point. Luckily, the GM was prepared and when Egg died, his character came back as a Skeleton (so we was able to continue playing with the rest of us).

Having played AD&D 1st edition for a long time, I am familiar with how deadly it can be, so I think that makes this game more of one to be enjoyed at a convention and less like one that would work with a campaign.

Sunday (Day 4)

Sunday is the day of trying to get any last part of the Dealer’s Room seen before we head out around 1-2 in order to not get home too late (after it was all done and the driving was done, I entered my house around 12:30-ish, so one of the earlier times for sure). We all noticed the number of signage that mentioned selling out of something. Whether that was books or accessories or what-have-you, it was both impressive how many we saw (much more than any of us had seen in previous years). Which I take as a good sign that people were ready to support gaming and art and anything and everything else that was there during the weekend.

I’m already looking forward to next year!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Gen Con 2023 Recap – Part One

Didn’t actually realize it until I began writing these blogs, but this was my 5th year attending Gen Con. I can remember talking about going for years and years as this thing that maybe could happen. So to not only have been able to go, but to be able to make it somewhat yearly as my own form of a “guys’ trip” has been really cool to consider.

Wednesday (Day O)

The drive up was fairly uneventful. We arrived at the Hyatt just across the street from the Convention Center and got settled in fairly quickily. In previous years we’ve spent time in hotels that were a few blocks away to ones across the street. Obviously across the street is the best, but I hadn’t considered how good of a placement this year’s hotel turned out to be. You had access to the convention center. We were on the Stadium side for that one event (which was one of the later ones), so the walk back wasn’t so bad. But the biggest thing is all of the food was on the end where we were staying. It’s one thing to have to walk a few blocks back and forth to your hotel and then a few more blocks to potentially get to food, but this location made everything very convienent overall.

However, while it was better this year, I do have to ask why some of the resturants don’t bother to stay open later during Con Week? When Dragon Con sets up shop in Atlanta, I feel like everything stays open until at least midnight, if not much later. Multiple resturants closed by 11 that week. I’ve never understood that.

Thursday (Day 1)

We began shortly after the initial rush of people that had gathered outside the Dealer’s Room to get Lorcana cards. I am apparently completely out of touch with card games not named Magic the Gathering, so I had no idea that Disney had a card game coming out, much less that there would be the level of demand where people would begin lining up at 6 PM to get cards the following day.

But as we entered the Dealer’s Room around 10:45 AM, I was unaware of any of this. So when we literally couldn’t make it down Aisle’s 100 and 200, worry began to set in. We figured that Gen Con would likely be back to roughly its pre-Covid attendance this year (and it actually exceeded it – over 70,000), but to have Thursday be so packed that we couldn’t manuever set a bad presedence in our minds. If Thursday was going to be bad, what would Friday and Saturday look like? In some ways it is a bit of a struggle to make it through the Dealer’s Room in the one or two hour bursts. Sunday ends up being the catch-all for last minute shopping, but we were concerned about the next couple of days.

Mothership

Mothership was/is one of those games who really just found its niche in the roleplaying space. The idea of playing in a horror space setting (think Aliens or Event Horizon) with a fairly straightforward system is definitely appealing. A couple of years ago I ran a game for our group that tried to focus more on a John Carpenter’s Thing vibe of “Who do you trust”. I think I did an OK job, but overall didn’t manage to quite hit the beats I wanted to. I’d wanted to play it ever since just to see how someone else ran the game.

The one concern I’ve had is I wasn’t sure how exactly a longer campaign might go. As with any horror based game, characters are supposed to die or go insane, which makes investing in your character a little more difficult. It felt like more of a One Shot style game, perfect for conventions.

This game was a little less horror and much more straightforward story of Salvagers trying their best to make their way from shitty job to shitty job. The game played pretty much how I remembered it, though maybe our rolls were better than average as during the firefights, none of our people died. If not for the suicide run that one player made while piloting a captured ship we might have all survived. Sadly, his ramming of the enemy spacecraft ended up killing three of our crew.

Lucky for me, I wasn’t on the doomed ship!

The key though was that after this one session, I could see a little bit better how a longer style storyline might go where you lean a little less hard on all the horror monsters and instead let the dread simmer in the background as best you can.

Stealing Stories for the Devil

This is the game I could see running like it was a tv show. Setting up your overall storyline and then having the big payoff after 12 or so “episodes”. The basic idea for the game is that you are time travelers from the future who have become stuck in the current era of Earth. Time is breaking down due to the existence of certain anomolies. These items create a version of a world where the impossible is possible and where time exists differently. The heroes job is to discover what the item is and remove it from the area (which will revert things back to normal).

What transpires within play is that as a group we effectively created the scenario: A Costco where time had slipped such that it was always both Halloween and Black Friday at the same time. We would need to work as a team in order to extract the 8 foot tall skeleton from the premises. And since all that really required was lying really well… that ended up creating a bunch of really goofy and fun scenes spread out amongst all of the players.

Like I said, I really enjoyed this one and could see running a short campaign with the system.

Friday (Day 2)

Pretty much each day was much the same. We’d grab food somewhere, head into the Dealer’s Room and see as much as we possibly could before our first game took place. Food, if there was time, between the games, and then rush off to the night game. The only bad was not being able to meet up with a few people as most of the time we were either in a game or on our way to a game (which is certainly the whole point), but it is nice to catch up sometimes as well.

Deadlands: Weird West (Classic Edition)

Next on the list was a game I was looking forward to. I’m a big fan of Weird West style stories and Deadlands is really (as far as I know) the granddaddy of that genre within RPGs. However, you should always read the fine print. We thought we’d signed up for the current edition of the game (the Savage Worlds version) but instead we found out that we were going to be playing in a 1st edition version of the game.

There is a lot to the overall world of Deadlands. I supported the Savage Worlds Kickstarter and have read some of the book, but that’s about as far as my knowledge base will take me. So it can be a lot to dump on a bunch of players. That said, I understand why 1st edition rules might be considered too cumbersome. There were so many things to do. Some characters had decks of cards to help with their abilites. There was another deck of cards that you used for initiative. You had your bennie chips that could help alter dice rolls. There were dice rolls where you only took the best score and others where you definitely wanted to roll a ton. Once you hit someone, you rolled again to potentially figure out if it was a head shot or body shot.

Too much stuff going on honestly.

This is a game where we were very lucky to have a GM who knew the system, but in the end the system really felt overly complex. After the game we definitely talked about places you could just cut out potential rolls (and rules). I’d love to play in the world, but I don’t think I need to play 1st Edition again.

***

Check back in for part 2 next week where there will be teenagers in a Flood, zombies in a hospital, and pirates on the seas!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Nine Years In

 

As we turn the page on 2022, I like to take a minute and highlight some of the posts that I’m either especially proud of, posts I think deserve a second look, or just ones that struck me as worth highlighting.

Physical and Digital Copies Still Available! https://john-mcguire.square.site/

Behind the Comic: In Our Dreams Awake

Last year Egg Embry and I launched a Kickstarter for out comic book In Our Dreams Awake. While it was a bit more of a struggle to get across the $$ finish line we’d set, we managed to get it done and out. As we are preparing to at least do a Kickstarter launch for issue 2 this year, this was a comic project over 15 years in the making, with lots of twists and turns. It became that project I was sure would never see the light of day, and now we’re nearly 1/2 through the story. The post linked above takes you down that road with us.

 

Getting Scolded

One of the things I can struggle with as a writer (and a person) is not taking the time to appreciate my victories. Most of the time it is simply easier to focus on our failures instead. Focus on all the little things we haven’t done. Lament the list of things we should be doing. So I wrote this as a reminder to myself to celebrate how far I’ve come (even if I have a lot more to go).

 

Gen Con 2022 Recap – Part Two

There is a Part One which I also think is worth reading, but Part Two has some details on both the best game of the convention and the worst game at the convention… all within hours of each other.

 

The Reason Why – The Echo Effect

One of the things this blog is supposed to do is highlight my works (prose and comics) to those who might stumble upon it. However, I’m the first to admit I’m not the best at marketing myself. This year I decided to lean into an idea of telling those potential readers the reason why I wrote the stories. Sometimes it was where the idea came from or perhaps just an incident which ended up in a tale. But I liked taking a few minutes over the course of two months laying out my “Why”.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Gen Con 2022 Recap – Part Two

 

This is the second part of my latest trip to “The Best Four Days in Gaming”, Gen Con. Part 1 can be found here.

 

Day 3

It all came down to this. In previous years we’d try to only do 2 games a day. We’re not big on trying to get up at some way too early hour of the morning to make a game. We’ve tried that in the past and regretted it. Of course, most nights we’re not actually asleep until close to 3 in the morning, so that might have something to do with it.

However, this Day 3 we had 3 games to look forward to, including a game from Midnight to 2 AM.

Dread by The Impossible Dream

 

Dread is a roleplaying game we’d heard about before and was always on our shortlist of games to play. You see, it doesn’t use dice or cards or tokens or anything like that to determine if you are successful or you fail. Instead, you use a Jenga game to do that.

You need to fight off the zombie in front of you, make a pull from the tower. You need to see if you can shut the door before the grenade you threw goes off. You need to make two pulls.

And so it goes as you make your way through the game. Each time the easy pulls are disappearing leaving only harder and harder ones. Until finally the tower is too unwieldy and someone’s pull topples things. Then, well then you’re dead. And we rebuild the tower and somewhat reset a portion of the game state you were in before (we were on our 17th pull the first time the tower toppled, so when we reset it, we had to make 13 pulls).

The good is that the tension definitely builds throughout the session. You find yourself pulling for your teammates. If you are lucky, one of your companions will be REALLY good at Jenga and can save the team’s ass on more than one occasion. All of that is excellent and adds a level to the horror game that other games attempt but can’t duplicate with dice rolls/

There is some bad though. We had a 5-hour session, and our tower fell at the hour and a half mark, killing that player’s character. So they were out for the rest of the game. I guess they could leave, but since you are with your friends, you kind of want to stick around, but you are just an observer and have no impact on things any longer. It would be nice if there was a way around that. Secondly, you are offered choices in the game and learn something more if you make a pull. Part of the fun is getting in there and trying it out. Heck, I’d never touched a Jenha tower before in my life. However, we had one player who appeared to never want to make a pull. He’d talk a big game when someone else was pulling. He would offer suggestions, but when it came time for him to do something, he bailed.

Every time.

Now we all have different ways to play roleplaying games. And maybe this player had decided that they wanted to try to get through a game without making more than three pulls the whole time or something, but it came across as… well, I have words for it, but I’ve said enough I think.

Dread is one I can see doing for a party game for sure.

 

Never Going Home by Wet Ink Games

 

Never Going Home is a game where you are playing soldiers in a World War 1 where something terrible has been freed/released/brought into the world due to the war. Now, as men on the front line you not only have to deal with the horrors of the war but also the horrors from other worlds. Sadly I’m not sure I got the best version of this particular game. The GM was still learning the system, so there was a little bit of a delay on the front end, and then… well, one of our players was… something else entirely.

When you are playing in a roleplaying game there is a constant push/pull on the camera time a player gets to have in a game. The best games are ones where everyone gets the spotlight on them for about the same amount of time so that they can enjoy themselves. And part of being a good player means that sometimes you have to be good with someone else having that focus on them.

However, for this game we had a player among us who didn’t appear to understand that at all. He was there to be the star of the story and run roughshod over the rest of us. If there was a split second where there was any pause, any bit of silence, you had to jump on it, otherwise he’d jump back in front of the camera. Had his play been more in line with something that is supposed to be grim and gritty, it might not have been so bad, but instead he was the comic relief.

And then, as sometimes happens in war, his character died. I must admit that I inwardly smiled because I thought “while he’s making a new character, someone else will have a chance to shine”. Sadly, it didn’t take him much time to find his replacement character, someone who apparently didn’t have a gun… in WW1… on the front lines… just… didn’t have one. He never volunteered exactly why he might not have a weapon, but I can tell he was hoping one of us would have asked him (we didn’t).

His antics were enough that two of the other players left mid-game. One didn’t come back from a bathroom break (he gave a flimsy excuse) while the second one literally just picked up his stuff and left in the middle of the game. Never seen that before.

So… that was a game we played. I wouldn’t mind trying it again sometime, just with different players.

 

 

Mazes at Midnight by 9th Level Games

In a strange twist, Egg Embry was tagged into duty to run a game. So Lee and I, along with another couple got our indoctrination via someone we play with weekly. Last year at Origins the best game we played was with 9th Level’s Polymorph system: you get one die, a d4, d6, d8, d10 and everything you do is via that one die. It is very simple and intuative and really is focused on being able to succeed most of the time. Heck, we were playing ancient heroes awakened to put down a Lich and Dragon we’d previously defeated eons ago.

But the best part was we played in the dark with flashlights and glowing dice to help illuminate our way. Music played in the background. It was a real event, and one that everyone bought into completely. The best games are those where everyone is having a good time, and this had that all across the room.

Again, 9th Level Games knocks it out of the park, and for me, comes away with the best game of the convention.

***

Even in the games where we might not have had the best time, hanging out with friends, getting to play games, and just see all the talented people with their various games out there is a nice way to recharge some of my own batteries. And it has me jonesing to play some more when I can!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Gen Con 2022 Recap – Part One

After a lost year in 2020 and us opting for Origins instead last year, we picked back up on the pilgrimage back to Indianapolis, Indiana for “The Best 4 Days in Gaming”. From the announced attendance of over 50,000, it appears that things are returning to pre-2020 attendance levels. And that could be felt in both the crowds and our hotel location.

Day 0

Before we get to the actual convention itself, a few words on the process this year. We arrived Wednesday night and figured we could go ahead and pick up our badges and show our vaccination cards leaving the rest of our time for gaming and whatnot. Since we’d rolled over our 2020 badges to this year, I don’t think there was an option to have them mail the badge to us like in previous years. Let me say that paying an extra $10 is well worth avoiding what was a 45-minute line on Wednesday evening. But that would turn out to be the shorter of the lines, as the one to show our vaccination information stretched throughout the convention hall, doubling back on itself. Even finding the end of the line was an accomplishment. While the line mostly moved, it still felt as if our lives hadn’t existed before the Line and when we died, others would simply step over our bodies and continue on the never-ending sequence.

(There is a horror story somewhere in here.)

After an hour and 15 minutes, we wound through the hall and entered the room, showed our information, and then decided that it would be great to find some food.

As Hooters was within sight, we attempted to eat there. I say attempted because we arrived about 20ish minutes before they closed. A fact they let us know multiple times. “We close at 10.”

I understand that they might be short-staffed, but considering you have a convention in town, maybe a bar might want to stay open a little later? Maybe?

“We close at 10.”

We took our food to go and headed back to the hotel.

One last aside… Gen Con uses a lottery system to determine housing. The earlier in the day your time is, the closer your hotel is going to be. With three of us you’d figure at least one would have a decent time, but this year we did not have the luck. The hotel, while nice, ended up around a 15-20 minute walk. And let me say, that when you’ve been walking all over all day, the last thing you want is another 20 minutes of walking before you can get back to the room. Maybe we need to keep an eye on the hotels throughout the year to see if perhaps some closer hotel rooms become available.

With the location we had, we were also on the far side of the convention center which limited some of our food options. Let’s just say we ate at the same pair of restaurants about 5 times over the time we were there.

 

Day 1

Before we’d even arrived at the convention, we’d been informed that due to a shortage of Game Masters, one of our sessions had already been canceled, leaving us with an odd schedule of 1 game Thursday, 1 game Friday, and then 3 games on Saturday. Looking for the silver lining, it meant we’d get most of our Dealer’s Hall stuff done on Thursday, allowing us to strategically attack the booths later in the weekend if there was something we wanted to buy. It was pretty packed with vendors with the occasional empty booth area for some last-minute cancellations (I think around 10 at most).

Day became night and we were onto our first game session:

Fallen Heroes by Magpie Games

 

An Urban Fantasy Horror Game where you take on the role of one of the supernatural (or supernaturally touched) people in the city. We had Fae, someone who’d sold their soul, a ghost, a wizard hunter, and a gambler who had psychic powers. Using the Powered By The Apocolypse game, one of the things I thought worked really well was the ties we came up with between our characters. You might owe another character a Debt in the game which meant they could potentially use it to perhaps convince you to do something to help them (or hinder someone else). But that whole sequence worked really well as everyone had some reason to know each other AND also have reasons to want to work together (which can be an obstacle in any one-shot style game).

There was also a Corruption Mechanic that looked interesting for more of a campaign. You can gain access to other powers at the cost of your soul – and eventually, if it gets too much, then you become an NPC. Again, more of a long-term thing, but I can see it being something cool as the story progresses.

Overall, I liked the game and really enjoyed the session.

 

Day 2

More dealer’s hall and then we made our way to our second game.

Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary by Onyx Path

 

We’ve played a few of the World of Darkness games over the years, but somehow none of us had ever played Wraith. The idea that you’d roleplay someone who has died and now has to deal with all sorts of horrific things on the other side is definitely intriguing. I’m reminded a little bit of the scenes in What Dreams May Come where Robin Williams has to descend into the more hellish portion of the afterlife – stepping on the undead/lost souls.

Overall the game feels interesting, though this actual session mostly focused on the Shadows. The Shadows are the dark voices in each of us which compel us to go against our better interests. In this game, we had 5 players as PCs and then 2 others who acted as our Shadows. While an interesting dynamic (especially since if you aren’t careful, the Shadow will take over), the big problem is that if the Shadow takes over, there isn’t much the PC can do to retake control. This means you are on the sidelines for as long as it takes to kill yourself. At the con, this creates a bit of a  Player vs. Player dynamic which adds a layer to the game, but I’m not sure how well it might work outside of that particular setting. Again, thinking about longer stories, it might be better for the GM to handle the interaction.

***

That was our first two days, leaving a jam packed Saturday featuring 3 games! Part 2 will be up next week!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Press Release: Free League Wins Six ENNIE Awards, Including Best Game and Fan Favorite Publisher

Free League Publishing

Free League Publishing logotype

Free League Wins Six ENNIE Awards, Including Best Game and Fan Favorite Publisher

Free League Publishing – Aug 01, 2020 15:09 BST

It was quite a night for Free League Publishing at the ENNIE Awards last night. The ALIEN RPG claimed the Gold ENNIE for Best Game, and artpunk RPG MÖRK BORG won no less than four ENNIES, including Product of the Year. Free League was also named Fan Favorite Publisher.

The ENNIE Awards are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENNIES give game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a peoples’ choice award, and the final winners are voted upon online by the gaming public.

“The Fan Favorite Publisher award is especially humbling – feeling the love and support from the community is what drives us forward,” says Free League CEO Tomas Härenstam.

Here is the full list of awards to Free League Publishing and their games:

BEST GAME

  • ALIEN RPG – Gold
  • MÖRK BORG – Silver

BEST LAYOUT AND DESIGN

  • MÖRK BORG – Gold

BEST WRITING

  • MÖRK BORG – Gold

PRODUCT OF THE YEAR

  • MÖRK BORG – Gold

FAN FAVORITE PUBLISHER

  • Free League Publishing

The official ALIEN roleplaying game by Free League Publishing was released in December 2019 along with a host of supplements, in partnership with 20th Century Studios. The game immediately sold out its first print run and swiftly entered the Top-5 list of best-selling tabletop RPGs in the fall of 2019. The game is currently being translated into seven languages.

MÖRK BORG, designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League, is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a bleak and decaying world. Who are you? The tomb-robber with silver glittering between cracked fingernails? The mystic who would bend the world’s heart away from it’s inevitable end? The world is dying. And you with it.

Free League Publishing is a Swedish publisher dedicated to speculative fiction. We have published a range of award-winning tabletop role-playing games and critically acclaimed art books set in strange and wondrous worlds.

Our game range include the alternate ’80s Tales from the Loop (winner of five ENnie Awards 2017, including Best Game), sandbox retro fantasy Forbidden Lands (winner of four ENnie Awards 2019), postapocalyptic Mutant: Year Zero (Silver ENnie for Best Rules 2015), space opera Coriolis – The Third Horizon (Judge’s Spotlight Award 2017), dark fantasy Symbaroum, and the official ALIEN RPG.

We have also published the art books Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood  by visual artist Simon Stålenhag, as well as the illustrated edition of the Lovecraft classic The Call of Cthulhu by French artist François Baranger.

Website: www.freeleaguepublishing.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/FriaLigan
Instagram: http://instagram.com/frialigan/
Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/FrialiganSe
Twitter: http://twitter.com/FriaLigan

PRESS RELEASE: Housing Registration Opens Sunday

Gen Con Logo

Housing Registration Opens this Sunday, February 9

If you want to make a housing reservation this Sunday:
  • By Friday Evening: Buy a badge (It doesn’t matter when you buy your badge, as long as it’s before Friday evening).
  • Saturday Morning: We’ll send you an email with your portal access time.
  • Sunday: Log in to the My Housing section of your account about five minutes before your access time and wait for the countdown to complete.
  • When your time comes: Click to access the housing portal. It’s OK to refresh your page if the link doesn’t appear right away, just don’t mash refresh.
  • Once you’re in the housing portal: Select a reservation from the available inventory, and make sure to complete checkout within ten minutes of adding your reservation to your cart.
This Friday at 2 pm (PT), join Kristen and Mike live on Twitch for a special Housing Registration edition of Gen Con News!

They’ll walk through the housing process on screen and answer questions from chat. Can’t watch the stream live? Check back after it ends to watch it on demand on Twitch.

For more details and information about using our housing portal, check out these resources:

Gen Con Returns to Indianapolis
July 30 – August 2, 2020!

Badges Available at gencon.com
Hotel Registration: February 9
Event Registration: May 17

Gen Con 2019 Recap – Part One

For a third year, I managed to make the pilgrimage up north to the great state of Indiana and another installment of how many hours of sleep does a person truly need.

Also known as Gen Con 2019!

This year we stayed at the Westin, which was amazing as we were directly across the street from the Convention Center. It meant we could sleep in another 10 minutes or so, and when it came time to walk back to the hotel, it wasn’t a 15-minute walk, but more like a 5 minute one.

Day 1

Heroic Dark

Thursday began with a 10 AM game of Heroic Dark, which was developed by the same guy who did the Sythicide game (of which I ran a short campaign of around 10 to 12 sessions last year). Heroic Dark comes with an interesting premise in that the group gathered to play end up coming up with the setting and genre that they are going to play. The Creator mentioned that he’d game mastered a previous game where it ended up being Sailor Moon style girls fighting the big bad. Basically, each person has the opportunity to add something to the game based on some categories laid out before you: Monsters, Magic, Races, etc. So you could end up with anything from a Fantasy world to a world where, due to the development of some wickedly awful technology, humanity is now using demon parts in order to build their mechs. And the Angels have had enough, vowing to terraform the planet in order to start over.

We’d laid out a bunch of thoughts: Demons, zombies, mechs, terraforming, angels, and so on, and that’s where we ended up. Then, the GM had about 10 minutes to come up with some kind of story to run us through. Talk about putting yourself under some pressure. But he managed to bring together an adventure where the spare demon parts were disappearing, and it was up to us to figure out what was happening to them (turns out the Angels were purifying them and then using the now holy parts to fuel their own war machines).

The game is currently available in playtest form, with a Kickstarter likely due next year. You can find the game here!

Mutants and Masterminds

Normally when it comes time to pick the games, I leave it mostly to Egg, as he is the game guru. However, since the very first year, I’d wanted to find a way into a Mutants and Masterminds game. I’d read and heard, over the years, that if you wanted to play a superhero roleplaying game, it was the one to go to. This session ended up being a jaunt back in time to the Golden Age of comic books. A time when the Flash was not Barry Allen or Wally West, but a man named Jay Garick. A time where Superman leaped over buildings rather than fly.

Running as the Justice Society, Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl (yours truly) attempted to save a woman wrongly convicted of murdering her husband… but we only had a handful of hours before she would be sent to the electric chair. Mobsters were rattled, giant robots were battled, a train was stopped from going over the edge of a ravine, and the mastermind foiled!

Using a pre-generated character was interesting, but it also meant there were TONS of stats to navigate through. All three of us liked the game but wondered how easy it would be to pick up if you were starting a new character using the system.

 

It was finally time to sneak over to the Dealers Room, which was just as enormous as it had been in previous years. It always seems like the first time in that room you are just trying to get a foothold on where some things are located. Throughout the weekend, Lee and I managed to make it through the whole thing probably twice, which is our best run at it so far.

After dinner, we ventured over to Lucas Oil Stadium to play on the field.

Amber

I kid Egg about diceless games, saying that they are Communist. Mostly I prefer games with dice… then again, I don’t have the horrible luck he does (seriously, it is odds defying). Amber is one of those diceless games that’s been around for decades, but none of us had ever played. Based on a series of novels I learned a few things about the game.

First, the people who are into Amber, are REALLY into Amber. Think of your favorite series of books (probably Game of Thrones or Dark Tower for me) and then multiply that love you feel for them by a hundred… and you’d still be short. They know everything about the world… everything…

Which can make it a little bit to penetrate such a thick history. The story seemed to trump everything throughout this session, which I’m not sure if that is how most Amber games go, or just more of a GM preference. I must admit that this one didn’t work for me. In addition, it ran over by 2 1/2 hours, so we didn’t get done until 2:30 in the morning, which threw off our schedules a bit for the remainder of the weekend (that lack of sleep starts here).

 

Day 2

Song of Ice and Fire

Sleeping as late as we could, our next game was to see the Song of Ice and Fire game system. However, when we arrived we realized that this game wasn’t exactly what we thought it would be when we selected it. Using the roleplaying game’s rules as a base, it was really a LARP (Live Action Roleplaying) which meant that you moved around the room and interacted with other players while a Jousting tournament was going on.

I just wasn’t in the right mindset for this one. Maybe it was the experience from the night before or just not getting locked in with my character, but I wasn’t feeling it. The session was interesting enough though, and some of the moves people did during the game turned out to be very interesting. The final recap at the very end opened my eyes to some of the possibilities I might have been able to explore had I been a little more engaged.

***

That’s the end of Part 1, next week I’ll finish up Day 2 and reveal the best game I played all weekend (by the same company as a Best game of Gen Con from a couple of years ago!).

***

John McGuire is the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Want to read the first issue for free? Click here! Already read it and eager for more?

Click here to join John’s mailing list.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow EmpireBeyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

On the Road Again

This weekend is one of the largest gaming conventions, Gen Con, takes place in Indianapolis, Indiana. Along with Egg Embry and Leland Beauchamp, it will be my 3rd year of playing way too many games, walking all over downtown Indy, and trying our best to get a couple of winks of sleep in there as well.

I never know what is going to happen. I have a couple of predictions though:

If Lil’ Egg Embry has to miss a gaming session, it will either be the “Best Game of the Weekend” or at least feature “Some Cool Mechanic that we need in our games!”.

We will be cramming our faces with food because we don’t know how to schedule a true “break”.

We’ll all be very sad and tired on Sunday to leave…

Since I’m in the process of packing tonight, one of the things that this blog has provided is to help remind me of the moments that might get lost in the maze of my mind:

Gen Con 2017 Reviews – Part 1 and 2

The Best Game I Played at Gen Con – Tales from the Loop

Gen Con 2018 Reviews – Part 1 and 2

***

John McGuire is the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Want to read the first issue for free? Click here! Already read it and eager for more?

Click here to join John’s mailing list.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow EmpireBeyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

PRESS RELEASE: Crafty Games: Gen Con 2019 Special Edition

Gen Con 2019 Special Edition

We interrupt our usual broadcasts to bring you news of the Best Four Days in Gaming!

Crafty Games will once again be making the annual pilgrimage to Indianapolis, and this time we’re bringing so much great stuff with us! There’s a lot to cover for this show. Here are the highlights…

New Booth Location

We are no longer in the Studio 2 block. This is our first year in Gen Pop. You can find us in Booth 2439, near the Family Fun Pavilion.

Mistborn Metal Dice

We are so excited to finally announce our next big Mistborn product…

This luxurious set includes 20 all-metal dice, each featuring a different Allomantic symbol on the 6 face PLUS a unique metal plating and finish hand-picked to represent a magic metal from the Mistborn universe. 

Down to the smallest detail, these dice are designed to be the crown jewels of your collection. We’ve worked for months with the master metal workers over at Die Hard Dice to ensure they absolutely dazzle on your gaming table.

Come by our booth and see the dice for yourself! Near-final production proofs of all 20 dice will be on display all weekend, along with a custom Mistborn dice tray we’ll be offering in the upcoming Kickstarter campaign!

Storm Hollow

Just as exciting for us: we have acquired the rights to the wildly popular roleplaying game…

Created by Escapade Games and originally Kickstarted in 2012, Storm Hollow isn’t just ENnie-nominated. It isn’t just one of the finest coming of age roleplaying games we’ve ever seen. It’s one of the finest all ages family RPGs we’ve ever seen, full stop. We can’t be happier to bring it into the Crafty Games family alongside our best-selling kids’ title, Little Wizards.

Our acquisition of Storm Hollow came with a very limited supply of the existing edition of the game – a title that’s been out of print and unavailable for some time. We’re bringing a very small quantity of the game with us to Gen Con, and the rest of this short supply is available through our webstore right now. 

Simply click on any of these images to go straight to the product page!

This isn’t the end of the story, either. We’re currently working with Escapade Games and members of their original creative team to bring an all-new edition of the game to game stores everywhere! Once again, watch this space for news as we approach this exciting relaunch of one of the most deserving games out there.

The Siege of Luthadel

We’ve been busy with the continuation of Mistborn: House War as well! Just this week we released a backer-only print and play version of the expansion, The Siege of Luthadel, and we will have full, gorgeous demo copies of it with us at Gen Con!

Yup. Vin and the Koloss are joining the party, too! Hope you can make it.

Mistborn: House War Promo Card

What’s that now? Free stuff? Yes indeed. Swing by the booth for a demo of anything and get a copy of this upstart miscreant to spice up your copy of Mistborn: House War!

Visit the Crafty Games Lab

Want a glimpse even further ahead for Crafty Games? Stop by our Lab where Alex Flagg will be testing new games we have in development. This is your chance to get directly involved in the development process. Pick the brain of one of gaming’s greatest luminaries! Lord it over your friends that you got to play their favorite game months or years early! Or just hang out with us and talk shop over a diamond in the rough for half an hour. We not picky about your motives, so long as we’re all having fun. 😃

Complete Your Collection!

Crafty Games will have its full current catalog for sale in the exhibit hall as well. Stop by for special show discounts on nearly everything, from Little Wizards Second Printing to the Mistborn Adventure Game to Mistborn: House War and more! We’ll even have the Mistborn novels there, one of which is signed by Brandon Sanderson!

Where to Find Us

Anytime you need a Crafty fix, you can find us at…

…and at retail stores worldwide!

How to Reach Us

Have a question? Missing a game component? Need a digital high-five? We got your back…

Thanks for subscribing, and for reading! We hope we’ll see you at the Best Four Days in Gaming!

Stay Crafty!


Alex, Ed, & Pat
Crafty Games

Copyright © 2019 Crafty Games, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you asked to receive updates from Crafty Games.
Our mailing address is:

Crafty Games

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LakewoodWA 98499

[UPDATED] 2019 ENnie Awards Dream Date Guide 

UPDATED 2019-07-22:

After most of the first round of auctions closed, two were re-listed for a second shot at them!

 

Alligator Alley #1 – 2019 ENnie Dream Date!

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 28th July, 2019 at 1:30 PM EST 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the team at Alligator Alley Entertainment  
  • Some amazing swag from Alligator Alley Entertainment 

 

Petersen Games – Dream Date with Sandy #2 at the 2019 ENnie Awards

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 28th July, 2019 at 2:17 PM EST 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the Petersen Games team   
  • Some Petersen Games swag! 

 

NOT A RE-LIST BUT ENDS THIS WEEK:

Dwarven Forge. – 2019 ENnie Awards Dream Date

AUCTION ENDS: Wednesday, 24th July, 2019 at 3:32 PM EST 

REWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the Dwarven Forge team
  • “A painted Starter Dungeon set! The set includes 19 pieces in pure Dwarvenite to start off (or top off) your dungeon. This set comes fully hand painted”

 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Want to step up your RPG freelancing game? RPG publisher looking to shake up the industry? Are you a fan of award-winning RPGs? Going to the ENnie Awards at Gen Con 2019? Chaosium, Cubicle 7, Magpie Games, Pelgrane Press, Petersen Games, and more will be there and they want to hang out with you! The ENnie Awards (the Oscars of tabletop RPGs) are auctioning off seats with these publishers as well as swag. On eBay, they’re offering you the chance to get some one-on-one time with some of the best creators in the industry!  

Each year, I write an “ENnie Awards Dream Date Guide” to share these fantastic opportunities for fans, freelancers, and publishers. Curious what the prior options? Check them out here: 2017 and 2018. 

In 2017, I won a “date” with Cubicle 7 and could not have been happier with the experience then and since. We sat at a table right in front of the stage, they shared industry tales, introduced me to other creators, and hooked me up with Adventures in Middle-earth books and maps (print and PDF). The cherry on that night was when they won an award while I was there. I went from random fan to someone that C7 talks with every time I see them. The experience boosted me as an RPG fan, journalist, and creator, and I would recommend it to anyone that’s interested in RPGs whether a fan, a freelancer, or a publisher. To that end, let’s review these dates! 

Cubicle 7 and Egg (shorts) at the ENnie Awards 2017. [Egg is going for a record for re-using this image.]

But, before we do, here’s a few notes: 

The 2019 ENnie Awards are held August 2nd, 2019 at 8pm at Gen Con! Don’t forget to vote for the ENnie Awards here. [Auction] winners must have a valid Gen Con badge [not provided] to attend the ENnie Awards and [the winners are] responsible for any associated expenses with attending Gen Con in Indianapolis, IN. All proceeds from the Dream Date auction are used to fund the production of the ENnie Awards each year. Egg Embry is not a part of the ENnie Awards. He writes these dream date guides for fun.  

See all of the auctions here. 

Cubicle 7 – 2019 ENnie Dream Date! 

AUCTION ENDS: Saturday, 20th July, 2019 at 3:30 PM EST 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the Cubicle 7 creative team 
  • A signed copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Core Rulebook - Up for two ENnies this year! 

Cubicle 7 is the creative team behind many ENnie nominated and winning products! These include 2019 nominated Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Fourth Edition, The One Ring Roleplaying Game, Adventures in Middle-earth, Age of Sigmar Roleplaying Game, The Doctor Who Card Game, Doctor Who Roleplaying Game, and many, many more. 

EGG’S THOUGHTSI’ve met C7 on multiple occasions and they’re nice, nice, nice. You’ll have a good time, they’ll keep you entertained, and, if you’re interested in one of their properties (Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, Doctor Who), they will share more insight into their worlds than you can handle.  

But one of the hottest options for this night is the swag. If C7’s Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Core Rulebook picks up either, or both, of the ENnies it’s up for, your signed copy will become something of a gaming artifact: The signed ENnie Awards Dream Date Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Core Rulebookfrom the night it won ENnies.  

Pelgrane Press – 2019 ENnie Dream Date! 

AUCTION ENDS: Saturday, 20th July, 2019 at 1:45 PM EST 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the Pelgrane Press team including CathrionaCat” Tobin, Ken Hite and Robin Laws 
  • Hideous Creatures t-shirt  
  • Hideous Creatures – Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos book  
  • A GM ribbon  
  • Pelgrane Press button 

Pelgrane Press Ltd is a British role-playing game publishing company behind many ENnieAward winning products! This year is no exception, as they are up for multiple 2019 ENnies! Pelgrane Press currently produces Fall of Delta Green, Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents, 13th Age, the Diana Jones award-winning Hillfolk RPG, the Dying Earth Roleplaying Game, and other related products. 

EGG’S THOUGHTS: Hideous Creatures – Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos is up for an ENnie Award this year and is a part of the swag the winner of this auction gets. As I mentioned with C7’s swag above, if this book wins then your copy defaults to a piece of gaming history, the ENnie Awards Dream Date Hideous Creatures – Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos.

2019 JUDGES ENnie Awards Dream Date 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 12:30 PM EST 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with 2019 ENnie Awards judges, Brian Nowak, Ben Adelman and Chris Gath  
  • The winner will also receive some amazing swag custom tailored to your gaming interests. Value of the prize pack will be at least $50 over that final auction bid!
    At end of the auction, winner will receive an email asking for your tastes in genre (Horror, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, board games, etc…) We will do our best to match it with a selection of items that have been submitted to the ENnies and award them to you the night of the awards 

EGG’S THOUGHTSIf you’re a gamer, this will probably be the best swag deal of the convention as they’ll provide you with a lot of games (the judges get plenty throughout the year).

If you’re a publisher, it might open doors to talk with the judges to learn more about judging criteria, which could lead to improved products through your studio.  

 

Magpie Games – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2019 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 1:00 PM EST 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with Magpie Games team  
  • One of Magpie’s main product lines:  
    • Masks pack - a copy of the core book, supplement, one deck and a set of dice  

 Or  

    • Zombie World pack - a copy of the core book, both supplements, and a set of Kickstarter Exclusive Cards 

Magpie Games is a multi-ENnie Award nominated and winning game development and production company devoted to creating interesting, innovative, boundary-pushing, and most of all high-quality games across a wide variety of genres and styles. The majority of Magpie’s productions are tabletop roleplaying games, ranging from games designed to recreate disaster movies, to games designed to tell the stories of baby dragons on adventures, to gritty games about supernatural criminals and power brokers. Since its inception, Magpie Games has released many games, including Urban Shadows, Epyllion: A Dragon Epic, Masks: A New GenerationandBluebeard’s Bride. 

Petersen Games – Dream Date with Sandy #1 at the 2019 ENnie Awards 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 1:15 PM EST 

Petersen Games – Dream Date with Sandy #2 at the 2019 ENnie Awards 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 2:15 PM EST 

Petersen Games – Dream Date with Sandy #3 at the 2019 ENnie Awards 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 3:15 PM EST 

NOTEThere are three dream dates being hosted by the Petersen Games team 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the Petersen Games team   
  • Some Petersen Games swag! 

Petersen Games was founded to make games with top-grade components, amazing art, and great depth of gameplay. Their games include the immensely popular Cthulhu Wars, All Orcs Must Die! and Theomachy. In addition, Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for 5E is up for an ENnie this year! 

Game Designer,Sandy Petersenfirst conceived of the idea of doing a roleplaying game based on H. P. Lovecraft’s stories. That original idea, the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, is still in print today. Since that time, Sandy has worked on many tabletop products, including helping develop the original Arkham Horror board game. He also spent almost 20 years in the computer gaming industry, as a designer on the teams that produced Civilization, Doom, Quake, the Age of Empire series, and Halo Wars. He returned to the world of tabletop gaming with the famed Cthulhu Wars strategy game, and now he is Chief Creative Officer of his own company. 

EGG’S THOUGHTSI’m hoping the “Petersen Games swag” includes a copy of Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for 5E since it is up for an ENnie this year. Obviously, it’s not mentioned in the swag (that’s ambiguous), but if the game wins, having a copy gotten at the awards ceremony will be a special memento of gaming.  

Alligator Alley #1 – 2019 ENnie Dream Date! 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 1:30 PM EST 

Alligator Alley #2 – 2019 ENnie Dream Date! 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 2:30 PM EST 

NOTE: There are two dream dates being hosted by Alligator Alley Entertainment 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the team at Alligator Alley Entertainment  
  • Some amazing swag from Alligator Alley Entertainment 

Alligator Alley Entertainment is the publisher of adventure games including Witch Hunter: the Invisible World,Esper Genesis, andDemonbane Chronicles 

EGG’S THOUGHTS: Alligator Alley is the company behind Esper Genesis (sci-fi D&D 5e), which I reviewed for Knights of the Dinner Table #262. When I see them at cons, they’re always ready to talk and share lots of good information about being a small publisher that is making it. Plus, freelancer tales and more. Well worth checking out.  

Executive Creative Director of Games at Andrews McMeel Universal, Daniel D. Fox. HONEST! Would I lie?!

Andrews McMeel Universal and Grim & Perilous Studios – 2019 ENnie Dream Date! 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 2:00 PM EST 

Andrews McMeel Universal and Grim & Perilous Studios #2- 2019 ENnie Dream Date! 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 3:00 PM EST 

NOTE: There are two dream dates for the Andrews McMeel Universal and Grim & Perilous Studios table 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the team at Andrews McMeel Universal and Grim & Perilous Studios, the team behind the twice GoldENnie winner from 2018! 
  • Zweihänder(pdf and print) 
  • Main Gauche (pdf and print) 
  • Character Folio(pdf and print) 
  • GM screen (pdf and print) 
  • Monster Cards (pdf+print) 
  • Injury & Mishap Cards (pdf and print) 
  • One voucher of Zweihander Player’s Handbook(pdf and print) as it releases in December 
  • Drinks at the ENnies (must be over 21) 

Andrews McMeel Universal (AMU) is an American media corporation based in Kansas City, Missouri. It was founded in 1970 by Jim Andrews and John McMeel. AMU is passionate about discovering authors and creators who have a distinct point of view. They nurture humorous and inspirational voices that they believe have the potential to be both profound and popular. They respect the creator’s vision as the primary source of inspiration at every stage, offering an individualized, flexible approach to publishing success. 

Daniel D. Fox is the founder of Grim & Perilous Studios, an independent publisher of over 30 titles since its inception. Dan is an author and game designer, having won the gold ENnie for Best Game and Product of the Year at Gen Con 2018 for ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG. His break-out success withZWEIHÄNDER was featured on Forbes.com, and recognized by Kickstarter as one of their Projects We Love. ZWEIHÄNDER is ranked one of the best-selling tabletop games of all time at DriveThruRPG, with over 90,000 copies sold worldwide. Daniel is the Executive Creative Director of Games at Andrews McMeel Universal. 

EGG’S THOUGHTS: First, the winning bid gets hundreds of dollars worth of great gaming!

Second, I interviewed Daniel D. Fox (Zweihänder) at Origins Game Fair and can say he’s a fun guy to hang out with. Creators and publishers, part of Daniel’s job at Andrews McMeel Universal is finding the next hit RPG and bringing it to AMU. AMU has lent muscle to ZWEIHÄNDER as they’re stocked at Barnes & Nobles next to D&D, Pathfinder, Starfinder, and Star Wars. I am *NOT* saying Daniel will take your pitch or product, but I am saying that AMU is going to be a growing player in the world of RPG and it’d be good to talk to their ECD of Games.  

Chaosium Inc. – 2019 ENnie Awards Dream Date 

AUCTION ENDS: Sunday, 21st July, 2019 at 4:00 PM EST 

AWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the Chaosium team  
  • Miskatonic University the Restricted Collection Boardgame 
  • Chaosium Clandestine Game case Poker Chip set (special item from Horror on the Orient Express Kickstarter) 
  • Chaosium “tuxedo”black t-shirt 
  • One of these three premium game sets: 
    • RuneQuest:Roleplaying in Glorantha slipcase Set + PDF 

 OR  

    • Call of Cthulhu slipcase set + PDF 

 OR  

    • Masks of Nyarlathotep slipcase set + PDF 

Chaosium was founded by visionary game designer Greg Stafford in 1975. For more than forty years, Chaosium has captivated gamers, readers and mythic adventurers worldwide. Its award-winning roleplaying games, boardgames and fiction have been acclaimed as some of the most engaging and innovative of all time. 

EGG’S THOUGHTS: Picking your swag will be a challenge as your choices include more than one product that is up for an ENnie this year. This is a good problem for the winner to have because they know they’re choosing between strength and strength. 

Dwarven Forge. – 2019 ENnie Awards Dream Date

AUCTION ENDS: Wednesday, 24th July, 2019 at 3:32 PM EST 

REWARDS 

  • Attend the ENnie Awards 2019 with the Dwarven Forge team
  • “A painted Starter Dungeon set! The set includes 19 pieces in pure Dwarvenite to start off (or top off) your dungeon. This set comes fully hand painted”

Dwarven Forge was founded in 1996 by artist Stefan Pokorny, a medieval fantasy devotee and an avid Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast. After many months of painstaking design, sculpting and painting, he introduced the world’s finest pre-painted miniature terrain in 1996. Since then, Dwarven Forge has released many new sets, each fully compatible with the others, and each a new step forward in terrain design, yet maintaining a dedication to fine craft and excellent durability. These sets are built to last, and many collectors are now sharing them with their children and grandchildren.”

Again, don’t forget to vote for the ENnie Awards here then see all of the eBay auctions hereAuctions end between Saturday, 20th July, 2019 at 1:45 PM EST and Wednesday, 24th July, 2019 at 3:32 PM EST.

RPG NEWS – Gamers in the WA State Senate

From Gen Con’s March 29th, 2019 newsletter (Gen Con at Indianapolis August 1-4, 2019):

 

Gamers in the WA State Senate

This week, Gen Con President David Hoppe joined a select group of industry professionals invited to present at the Washington State Senate’s first-ever work session focused on the tabletop gaming industry.

The work session was designed to inform Senate members about tabletop gaming’s impact on the Washington state economy and included representatives from Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Loan Shark Games, and Green Ronin Publishing. The committee, which included Washington Senators Mark Mullet and Steve Hobbs, heard about each company’s experience in starting and developing their business during a series of panels Tuesday morning on the Capitol’s campus.

The information and experience shared were invaluable in educating the state legislature on the tabletop gaming industry and community in Washington.

Gen Con at Indianapolis August 1-4, 2019

PRESS RELEASE – Help Gen Con Name the New Mascot Dragon!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, January 28, 2019

Name the New Gen Con Dragon!

Gen Con, the largest and longest-running tabletop convention in North America, is revealing a new mascot for the Gen Con brand. On Monday, January 28 at noon (PST), the Gen Con Twitter account (@gen_con) will start a weeklong contest to name the new dragon mascot, giving away two 4-Day badges for Gen Con 2019 to the lucky winner! Participants can enter by replying to the tweet announcing the contest with their name choice, and the hashtag #gencondragon. The submission with the most likes by noon (PST) on Monday, February 4 will be named the winner (subject to Gen Con approval)!

The dragon is designed by award-winning fantasy illustrator Craig J. Spearing. Spearing has worked with numerous distinguished board game and literary publishers, including Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Arcane Wonders, Fantasy Flight, Penguin Random House and Scholastic.

Link to contest: https://twitter.com/Gen_Con/status/1089984306011811843

PRESS RELEASE – Get Your Gen Con 2019 Badges Now, and Check Out New Shows on Gen Con TV This Week

Gen Con Returns to Indianapolis
August 1-4, 2019!

Badge Registration Now Open

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Check Out Gen Con TV This Week

Just bought your badge and can’t wait for Gen Con? We can’t either! Four days of gaming and fun just wasn’t enough for us, so we’re bringing a little bit of Gen Con to you throughout the year on Gen Con TV! Below, you’ll find two new shows we’re launching this week that we think you’ll love.

TableTakes Presented by Gen Con
TableTakes is a weekly tabletop news show, streamed live from our studio! Gather ’round the table with our hosts to catch up on the news and geek out with us about all the latest in the world of tabletop gaming! Catch the show weekly on Fridays at 11 am (Pacific) / 2 pm (Eastern) on twitch.tv/gencontv and the recording later that day on our YouTube channel.
Game Night with The Brothers Murph
You know them, you love them, or if not, you’re certainly about to. The Brothers Murph live up to their name in that they’re actually brothers, and on top of that, they make you feel like you’re part of the family. We’ve partnered with them to bring you a great variety gaming show filled with laughter, fun, and giveaways! You’ll find them playing the latest in new releases, and some good ol’ favorites. Tune in every other Monday starting next Monday, January 14 at 5 pm (Pacific) / 8 pm (Eastern) on twitch.tv/gencontv.Live Stream Schedule:
Mondays (bi-weekly) 5 pm (Pac) / 8 pm (Est): Game Night with The Brothers Murph
Tuesdays 4 pm (Pac) / 7 pm (Est): Welcome to the Table – Magic: The Gathering Arena with Kristen
Fridays 11 am (Pac) / 2 pm (Est): TableTakes Presented by Gen Con

We will continue to bring you even more content throughout the year, so follow Gen Con TV on Twitch to get notified of when we’re live!

New Badge Wallet from OffWorld
Give your badge a good home with one of these fantastic badge wallets on sale now at the Gen Con Store from OffWorld Designs! Keep your badge out and easily recognized by our Indiana Convention Center staff and store a few small, but important items in these handy badge wallets.Order yours today!

PRESS RELEASE – Fan Buzz Builds as The Fantasy Network SVOD Launches Founders announced early access at Gen Con Indy 2018

Fantasy Network

Fan Buzz Builds as The Fantasy Network SVOD Launches
Founders announced early access at Gen Con Indy 2018.

Seattle, WA. (December 2018)— The Fantasy Network, a joint venture of Arrowstorm Entertainment (The CW’s The Outpost), The Forge Studios (The Rangers), and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment (JourneyQuest) invited their audiences to early access at Gen Con Indy 2018. It is now available to the public.

The Fantasy Network is a freemium SVOD service with a mission to make creator-owned content accessible, shareable, and discoverable across the web, rather than locked behind a paywall. Subscribers receive first access to new releases and to a host of unique features, including the ability to contribute to wikis for each show and to help greenlight new seasons of their favorite shows for production.

The Network is positioned as a global hub for independent fantasy films and series, including syndicated, new, and original content. Each partner has contributed their own libraries of content to the network, including the Mythica series, The Rangers series, and The Gamers. They have licensed award-winning fantasy content from dozens of other independent creators, notably fan favorites Ren: The Girl with the Mark, AFK, and One Hit Die. They also feature a special channel dedicated to original digital programming from Gen Con LLC, the biggest gaming convention in the United States.

“Think of us as your first destination for original Fantasy Content”, says Ron Newcomb, owner of The Forge Studios. The network offers a premium subscription membership, as well as a significant library of free content. As a fan-supported and creator-distributed endeavor, the network not only directs support from subscriptions to the production of new content, but actively runs crowdfunding campaigns for the network’s content providers to empower fans to keep the stories that they love alive. They most recently worked, in parallel with Telus, to renew Canadian comedy One Hit Die for a third season.

But, what else makes them different? They invite content creators and fans to create their own commercial spin-offs in many of the worlds they have brought to life, via their opt-in Shared Cinematic Universe License Agreement (http://scu.la). Third-party films and series created under this license, beginning with the Strowlers Shared Cinematic Universe, will be eligible for distribution and revenue share on the network. Inspired by the Open Gaming License and the Creative Commons phenomenon, the SCULA is a filmmaker-friendly copyright alternative that empowers interconnected global storytelling and cultural exchange.

“Stories want to be free. By enabling storytellers to remix and reimagine the intellectual properties participating in the SCULA, we keep stories alive and relevant, rather than creating copyright orphans. This active and collaborative dialogue empowers fans and creators to set their imaginations free,” says Ben Dobyns of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment and CEO.

The trio of established production companies have each found success in the indie film world and are looking to bring their experience and skills together under one roof for the benefit of all. “We waited around long enough for someone else to do this, it’s now our time,” says Jason Faller of Arrowstorm Entertainment.

The network has launched with the proven streaming platform established by Zombie Orpheus and is now available on many IPTV apps. No matter the device or browser, they want you to have easy access. The Fantasy Network is currently available on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Chrome TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire.

As in many fantasy stories, this is about a journey against the odds. But as fantasy teaches us, we’re stronger together. The Fantasy Network looks forward to inviting more producers, subscribers, and contributors into their active community.

The Fantasy Network, LLC, is a privately-owned, Seattle-based independent film company. It looks to be a one-stop shop for all things fantasy. For more on the network, go to www.TheFantasy.Network.

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RPG News, Press Releases, and Conventions – Wraith 5th Ed, Conan Lawsuit, The Fantasy Trip OGL, AetherCon VII, and more

RPG news is delivered in small bites and press releases throughout the week and, as best I can, I filter through them to focus on the under-reported odds and the ends. From White Wolf to Etsy, from upcoming conventions to legal rulings, this week there’s a lot to talk about.

 

NEWS BITES

  • At Gen Con, I had the opportunity to talk with both White Wolf and Onyx Path. While they White Wolf September as the month for a major Werewolf: The Apocalypse announcement, they preceded it on Facebook with a different revelation, Wraith: The Oblivion 5th Edition is on their agenda. What makes the announcement intriguing is Onyx Path’s Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition (licensed from White Wolf) was Kickstarted and funded in January, 2015 with the PDFs of the core book available as of February, 2018 and the deluxe edition of WtO 20th being printed now. While it’s logical that, with the success of Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition White Wolf will move forward with their other major games, it’s aggressive to announce a new one is coming before the current edition has completed its roll out.

NOTE – There are several White Wolf press releases with even more information about Vampire: The Masquerade games linked below.

Status: Coming Soon!

  • Conan Properties International LLC has successfully sued artist Richardo Jove Sanchez over his unlicensed Conan miniatures. From Amanda Ottaway with Courthouse News Service, “Cracking down on the unauthorized sale of miniature Conan the Barbarian figurines, a federal judge hit a Spanish artist on Wednesday with a $21,000 copyright judgment.” The key point pulled from this is: “Senior U.S. District Judge Frederic Block called it erroneous Wednesday to treat “characters as separate and distinct copyright subject matter, divorced from the works in which they are embodied.”” While I’m not a lawyer and I may be misreading the tea leaves, this ruling could have consequences for “homage” projects or projects that use characters whose founding works are in the public domain, but whose later works are not.

Conan Properties entered a screenshot of this post into evidence to support its copyright claims over figurines of its character, Conan the Barbarian.”

Read the full article on Courthouse News Service here.

Status: Case Closed

Status: Funding

  • On ENWorld, I share a few freelance RPG and fiction writing jobs. Do you want to write superhero fiction or design anthropromorphic adventures, and get paid? Read it all here.

Status: Hiring

Status: Coming Soon From You!

  • Can’t wait until 2019 to create a game? Venger Satanis (Kort’thalis Publishing) announced he is “officially opening up my neo-quasi O5Rish rules-light vampire RPG [Blood Dark Thirst] to those interested in licensing that shit for FREE!!! Yes, you can write, publish, and reap all the rewards for your very own Blood Dark Thirst supplement, sourcebook, or scenario from now until January 1st of 2020.” I’ve spoken to at least one creator that is interested in producing a down and dirty product related to BDT. If you’re interested, you can read the full announcement here.

Status: Venger Satanis-ing

  • On Esty, OddForge is selling a dice tower that clips to your GM screen and can handle or two dice at a time. It’s a 3D printed product, economically sized and ready for your gaming table or a convention.

Status: I like dice towers

  • I’m a part of the CREATE YOUR OWN FANTASY RPG ADVENTURE – RPG RESOURCES BOOKS Kickstarter. Its creator, Matthew A. Bogdan, gave me a glowing write-up on the fifth update for the campaign. I’m humbled and inspired by his praise. Join the whole wide world and read all about me, me, ME! here.

FEMALE HALFLING ROGUE

FEMALE HALFLING ROGUE

Status: I’m proud to be a part of this project!

 

* * * * * *

 

EGG’S MUSINGS

  • I’ve been reading about the end of the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer license at Dark Horse Comics. It reminded me of Eden Studio’s BtVS and Angel RPGs. It’s interesting that they ceased to be in-print in 2006 but are still available as PDFs at commercial sites. I’ve wondered why this license has not been picked back up, then I see that the original RPG is still available and I wonder, with the BtVS reboot on the horizon, will another company pick up this game?

 

* * * * * *

 

CONVENTION NEWS BITES

  • Online convention, AetherCon VII, is recruiting publishing companies and GMs for their November 9th to the 11th, 2018 con. It’s online, it’s free, you run games, you *may* win swag.

 

* * * * * *

 

DEAL

  • Cubicle 7’s The One Ring – Tolkien done right in an RPG! – is on Humble Bundle for $15 for 20ish books and maps and a coupon. This is an unbelievable deal! Go, get it here!
    • The game’s awards include:
      • Lucca Games and Comics Fair 2012 – Best in Show
      • Golden Geek 2012 – Best Art and Presentation
      • Origins Awards 2012 Nomination for Best RPG
      • ENnie Awards 2012 – Silver – Best Production Values
      • ENnie Awards 2012 – Gold – Best Art
      • Golden Geeks 2012 – Best Art and Presentation Nominee

One does not simply skip this deal.

 

* * * * * *

PRESS RELEASES

 

* * *

 

CREATE YOUR OWN FANTASY RPG ADVENTURE – RPG RESOURCES BOOKS by Dark by Dezign (DriveThruRPG or Open Gaming Store)
Ends on Fri, September 14 2018 2:00 PM EDT.

Disclaimer: I am a creator on this project.
“Contributing authors James Ward, Lenard Lakofka and more share some of their pro tips on how to create your first fantasy RPG adventure”
Looking for advice on how to create your tabletop RPG along with stock art to get you going? Learn from ” industry greats and legends James M. Ward, Lenard Lakofka, as well as exceptional talents such as Johnn Four, Rick Hershey, Lucus Palosaari, Kevin Watson, Bobby Nash and Egg Embry.” I’m excited to be a part of this project and offer my insights into the world of crowdfunding!

You can see examples of their work at DriveThruRPG here or at the OpenGamingStore here.

You can support this Kickstarter campaign here.

 

* * * * * *

 

Disclosures: This article contains affiliate links.

Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Freelancer for EN WorldKnights of the Dinner TableOpen Gaming Network, and the Tessera Guild.
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Want to share news? Press releases? Rumors? Sneak peeks? Deals? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).

Gen Con 2018 Recap – Part Two

You can read part one here.

Day 2 (Cont)

Eclipse Phase

There are two potential hurdles when playing new games:

You are unfamiliar with the mechanics of the system.

By that, I mean actually how to play. What stats do what thing. What should you roll if you want to attack or climb a wall or hide. Many times you can lean on your overall knowledge to get you by. Other times you may not be successful.

You are unfamiliar with the language of the game.

D&D is fantasy – most of the stuff is easy enough to understand. Vampire the Masquerade is set in the modern world. But when you start getting into some of the science fiction settings, the language gets… complicated.

So that was the issue with Eclipse Phase. It is a science fiction setting with a language all its own and a ton of stats and skills that don’t always jump out at you as “Use me to do X thing!” It was a 2-hour session that really needed to be 4 hours if they are hoping for you to “get it”.

Luckily, our friend Nate has promised to run a game of it for us at some point in the future – so the nail has not been put in this coffin by any stretch.

Afterverse

Another sci-fi setting that was a bit easier to understand. The Game Master was actually the creator of the game (and is in the process of running a Kickstarter for the launch of the game if you want to check it out here!). The game ran fairly smoothly with only a couple of minor hiccups. During the course of the game, the GM (who was recording) had to leave a note to himself about a particular rule call. We were all interested in the potential for space combat (which sadly the adventure we played didn’t have) as he mentioned that he thought his system played pretty well on that front (everyone has something to do – as opposed to just having the pilot and maybe gunner being the only important jobs).

After the game, we chatted with him for a bit. He’s planning on running a few games at Dragon Con, so if you’re interested in checking out something completely brand new – check it out.

 

Day 3

Shadows of Esteren

Last year Lee mentioned that there was so much to see in the dealer’s room, that in order to actually make your way through it you had to have a high caliber for the artwork used to even bother checking out your project. However, even that doesn’t work because everyone has beautiful stuff adorning their booths, books, posters, and everything else. Shadows of Esteren has all of this in spades and we both lingered near their booth last year, but never pulled the trigger on buying any of their stuff.

Cut to this year, where we had a non-standard session. I believe one dice was rolled during the entirety of two hours. The conceit was that our session was actually one happening in the middle of a longer campaign, but that this particular session would be a spotlight on one character and their past. The other players at the table would then play other roles (in this case, a sister, a mother, a brother of the main character). The hope was through these various little scenes the main person would gain some insight about their charact, and the other players would become invested in that story.

Now for some people that might not work, but for Lee and I (Egg was detained elsewhere), it really got us thinking about stories, ideas for how to incorporate these type of scenarios in our home games. And while I wasn’t 100% on how the game was going to work (and since we really didn’t get to see the mechanics of the system, we may need to come back to this one at the next convention).

Legend of the Five Rings

It said “No experience necessary”, yet when we arrived there was a line to get into the room to play.

And people were grouping up together.

And various GMs were shouting things.

And Egg, Lee, and myself were confused.

“Are you new players?”

“Yes, it said no experience necessary.”

“That it did!”

It turns out that we found ourselves in the middle of the final battle of the weekend. Clan honor was at stake. A battle would rage at various tables… 3 rounds in fact. If you died, then you left the room. If you won your round, your team was awarded points, and those points were added to the total for your Clan.

Not knowing what we were in for (the fourth member of our table had only played twice before and one of those times might have been in the 90s), we opted for an easier scenario at first before ramping up each round. Around the room, you could hear tables roar out their approval at good plays. And while you were waiting for the next round to begin, people would go watch other games (not something you experience at most games).

Luckily, we were joined by 3 other players in time for the final battle who had a little experience playing the game (6 years running the game!). It worked out well as by that point I had a decent enough understanding of the rules, but one of the new players helped me understand a couple of other aspects I didn’t 100% catch previously.

While we may not have gotten a great feel for the world of Legend, we certainly were educated in how to play the mechanics… and they might have been my favorite overall of the games we’d played over the weekend. I can understand why it has such passionate fans.

 

Day 4

The Dark Eye

Apparently, The Dark Eye is the #1 game in Germany for the last 30 years. It is a fantasy game (so right in our wheelhouse). The GM did a great job with running the game, and I enjoyed the voices he used for the different characters.

However…

Within about 5 seconds of him explaining the system to us, I knew this wasn’t going to be “The ONE”. Most games you are asked to roll your dice to perform an action like climbing a wall. You roll one dice, add your bonuses and penalties and then see if you were successful. With Dark Eye you had to roll against 3 different skills… and if you failed one of those checks, then you failed the overall check.

I’m not sure how that works in the long run as I’d get too frustrated to bother. Just running simple odds would tell you trying to succeed at something 3 different times is probably going to fail a decent amount of the time. At some point, I’d like to seek out the players of the game and see if there is some good reason for the multiple checks (and hence why it might be in the game, to begin with).

***

Overall it was a great time at the convention. I was sore after all the walking, but made it through all the same. Got to see a couple of friends from the previous year, and somehow managed to hang out for 5 days and get along with my convention mates as we talked pretty much non-stop the whole drive back to Atlanta. So, until next year (hopefully)…

***

John McGuire has co-written, along with his wife, two Kindle Worlds novellas set in the world of Veronica Mars: Theft & Therapy and There’s Something About Mac.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Want to read the first issue for free? Click here! Already read it and eager for more?

Click here to join John’s mailing list.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow EmpireBeyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

RPG News, Press Releases, and Deals – Fat Goblin Games and TinyD6, John Silence Open Call, New James S.A. Corey Expanse Short Story, and more

Yesterday I covered four RPG KickstartersTiny Supers, Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD, Art of War, and Power Outage here. Today, let’s look at some news, press releases, and RPG deals.

 

NEWS BITES

  • Are you a fan of The Expanse either the novel series or the TV series? If/when Green Ronin Publishing’s The Expanse Roleplaying Game reaches $300,000 and $400,000 in funding, the plan is to offer:

    “$300,000: James S.A. Corey Flash Fiction
    We will add a new flash fiction reward tier. Imagine if you could have Daniel and Ty write a one page story about your Expanse RPG character. A select number of backers will be able to do just that if we unlock this stretch goal. All backers who pledge $30 or more will get a PDF of these stories for free!

    $400,000: New James S.A. Corey Short Story
    The big enchilada! If we unlock this stretch goal, Ty and Daniel will write a brand new Expanse short story for the rulebook. It will be set in the period between Leviathan Wakes and Caliban’s War (the timeframe of our core rulebook) and feature new characters. How awesome is that?”These stories (getting official flash fiction is an amazing opportunity) will cement the RPG as canonical within the Expanse-verse.

    Status: Funding
  • Fat Goblin Games, recently we reported Rick Hershey’s public discussion about launching a new RPG stock art site. Well, that site is live to support all of your publishing art needs:Status: Live
  • I covered the Kickstarter for John Silence recently. After it successfully funded, they’ve started looking for submissions for an anthology. Do you have poetry or fiction for John Silence that you would like to submit by September 30th for paid publication? “The John Silence RPG & Anthology is a collective projective reinvisioning Algernon Blackwood’s “John Silence” short stories to focus on non-white/POC/ethnically and racially marginalized psychic detectives in an alternate American noir setting spanning the 1920s to the 1990s.” If so, they’re open to short submissions here.
    Status: Recruiting
  • New Agenda Publishing (Facebook link here, their website here, and check out the quickstart for their upcoming project, Orunhere) announced the list of writers that they hired from their open call for writers. On top of DC Comics writerRoute 3 creatorBlackSci-Fi.com EiC, and Tessera Guild member, Robert Jeffrey (Facebook), NAP selected David Castro, Samantha Day, Tim and Kristin Devine, Sharene Gilchrist, Kathryn Lee, Alexa Fae McDaniel, Thomas Manuel, Nell Raban, and Alex Whalen. Their bios are available here.

    Status: Writing
  • As John McGuire discusses (here), I had a chance to play Savage Worlds Flash Gordon at Gen Con 2018. It was excellent and if you’re interested in getting a copy, there’s still a few more days to do so (here).
    Status: Funding
  • Are you a fan of Fat Goblin Games? Did you back any of the TinyD6 Kickstarters or bought them from DriveThruRPG? FGG has signed “a licensing agreement with Gallant Knight Games to create roleplaying game supplements based on the popular TinyD6 Engine. … Fat Goblin Games has teamed up with Gallant Knight Games to expand on the amazing TinyD6 genre books with new supplemental material. … The first planned release will be Heritage Composer, a complete guide to creating new heritages for your TinyD6 games.” For more details, you can read the full press release here.
    Status: Funding
  • Have an original Mage: The Ascension product that you’d like to share with the world? The Storyteller’s Vault is now open to buy and sell 3PP Mage: The Ascension RPG products.
    Status: Creating
  • The Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition is available via DriveThruRPG. Funded via Kickstarter, this is the celebration of Wraith and its history within the Storyteller world.

Status: Available

* * * * * *

PRESS RELEASES
* * * * * *
DEALS ON KICKSTARTER
  • MAIN GAUCHE – a ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG supplement – Ends on Wed, September 5 2018 11:32 PM EDT.
    At the $1 Beggar’s Bowl level, you will receive a PDF of a hat… which, at first blush may seem odd, but it’s put to clever use as a hat that tracks your damage level in-game. Here’s an update describing it in more detail. Check out the full Zweihander campaign here.
    more of our former winners
  • Folklore: Creatures of Myth and Legend for Fifth Edition D&D – Ends on Thu, September 6 2018 6:04 PM EDT.
    This is a limited time, early bird deal. At the CA$ 10 (US$ 8) Loremaster (Earlybird) level, you will receive a PDF of this 5e supplement at half price. If you’re going to back this, early is the time to do it! Check out the campaign here.
    Folklore
  • Domina Magica – A Magical Girl RPG – Ends on Thu, September 6 2018 10:00 PM EDT.
    At the $1 Classmate level, you will receive:
    💙Classmate💙
    At this level you […] get a “FIGHT LIKE A MAGICAL GIRL” slap bracelet!!! […] Fight Like A Magical Girl Slap Bracelet (US backers only)
    How cool is it that they’re bringing back slap bracelets? Along with this, there’s a lot of good coming from this Kickstarter! Check out the full campaign here.

* * * * * *

 

Disclosures: This article contains affiliate links.

Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Freelancer for EN WorldKnights of the Dinner TableOpen Gaming Network, and the Tessera Guild.
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Want to share news? Press releases? Rumors? Sneak peeks? Deals? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).

Gen Con 2018 Recap – Part One

After the success of the trip last year (which you can read about here and here) (you know, none of us killed any of the others after being together non-stop for the better part of 5 days), Lee, Egg Embry, and I took a drive back to the land of corn and at one point Peyton Manning.

This year continued the idea of checking out all the gaming systems we’d never had the opportunity to play previously. In fact, much of the last year or we’ve played a handful of games just to get that different kind of exposure.

DAY 1

Thursday started off with a trip to the Dealers’ Room. I’m not sure if I mentioned it last year, but the room is enormous. Even if you were moving quickly and barely taking any time to look around it would probably be a couple of hours. Throughout the weekend we’d squeeze an hour here or an hour there to try to slowly move through the building and even then it was easier said than done. In addition, you have all the game demos going on, but if you are only in the room on a scattered basis, there is almost no way to fit it in. The best we can figure is MAYBE you set aside Thursday and not do anything but go through the room playing demos and squeezing everything you can out of that room and then basically be done with it.

However, we couldn’t do that, and after a couple of hours, it was on to the first game.

Flash Gordon (Savage Worlds)

While I’d like to claim that I have an in-depth knowledge of the old serials or the cartoons or even the comics, my brush with Flash Gordon is limited to three things:

  • The Queen Soundtrack
  • The 80’s Movie
  • And explaining to people that the Flash and Flash Gordon are two entirely different characters.

Savage Worlds is an interesting system in that the is probably just enough complexity to give those people who really like the more Crunchy systems, but for the most part, it was fairly easy to understand. We were introduced to the “Exploding Dice” mechanic which basically means that if you roll the maximum value on a dice you get to roll again (so a 6 on a d6 would mean a reroll and add it to the first result). I enjoyed the system enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of it at some point.

Given that we were playing in a pulpy game setting with ray guns and short skirts and evil robots, Lee and Egg told me that I had to use my newsreel voice for whatever character I get (to get an idea of what that might sound like, think about the old movies where the news was also played along with the film and how the narrator might have sounded). I chose a Mad Scientist type character and put maximum effort into the voice. I hope that the other players had fun because I had a ball (as goofy as it might have been to say “What’s that dame up to now?” or “This just in, we need to get the hell out of here!”).

Rest easy, we stopped Ming’s latest plot to destroy the Earth, so you can thank me the next time you see me!

Wicked Pacts

I didn’t have any idea what Wicked Pacts might have been, but it was pretty easy to figure out as it plays in the Modern Day (Urban Fantasy, where the supernatural are all too real, and you get to play a magic user of some type). The system combined Tarot cards along with D10s. The DM did a great job, and the players seemed like they were having a good time as well. There were minor things that I wasn’t overly thrilled with in regards to the system, but there was plenty of good as well. I think that if you wanted to play a Dresden Files type of game this would be a good one to check out!

Day 2

Geist

We had it all figured out. A five-hour session playing Geist (a Storyteller/World of Darkness Game). We visited Onyx Press’s booth on Thursday and talked to one of the guys who had worked on the 2nd edition of the game. And promptly got screwed up… on the time and place of our game. He said he was running the demo at 10 AM and that was the time we had set up for our game. But it was actually in the dealers’ room – something none of us had done before. Still, we didn’t think anything of it until the game ended about an hour and a half… it was a five-hour session. At which point Lee double checked the ticket and realized we were in the wrong place!

The game just completed a Kickstarter for the 2nd edition we played. You can check that out here.

As to the game demo itself, I’ve now played Storyteller games a few times in the last year, so the familiarity is now there. I was more concerned with the story. I know nothing of the original 1st edition Geist, but this idea of people who deal with ghosts while dealing with the fact they’d come back to life in another way. Even as a simple short story, it suddenly clicked on how you could do a full campaign with the system and really have some fun with local ghost stories in your area.

Hmmm, research, where I have to visit creepy places in and around Atlanta, may not be the best idea…

***

Hope you enjoyed Part 1, Part 2 will be up next week.

***

John McGuire has co-written, along with his wife, two Kindle Worlds novellas set in the world of Veronica Mars: Theft & Therapy and There’s Something About Mac.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Want to read the first issue for free? Click here! Already read it and eager for more?

Click here to join John’s mailing list.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow EmpireBeyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

PRESS RELEASE – World War Occult RPG Coming From Wet Ink Games, LLC

Wet Ink Games, LLC has partnered with artist Charles Ferguson-Avery to produce new tabletop roleplaying games based on his setting from the World War Occult art book which was successfully funded on Kickstarter in January of 2018.

World War Occult is a gritty horror setting where an eldritch hellscape flows over the battlefields in a fantasy World War, heavily inspired by the first-person accounts of the Great War.

The first book in the line “Never Coming Home: A World War Occult RPG” will detail the setting and the ongoing war effort, the soldiers caught up in the fight, and the strange magics that have begun coursing through the veins of humanity.

This full-color, 96-128 page book will contain all the rules and material needed to play the game, and will present a new narrative-focused, rules-light system based on Wet Ink Games’ innovative Compass System. It will release at Gen Con 2019, following fulfillment of a planned Q4 2018 Kickstarter.

 

 

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See the Kickstarter for the World War Occult Art Book here.

 

PRESS RELEASE – Gen Con Reaches New Heights in 2018 with a Year of Firsts

Gen Con Reaches New Heights in 2018 with a Year of Firsts


INDIANAPOLIS (August 6, 2018) Gen Con, the largest and longest-running game convention in North America, has announced that its 2018 convention is the most attended ever, propelled by a record number of 4-Day badge sales, a 16% year-over-year increase in Saturday badge holders, and astounding 60% jump in year-over-year growth for both Sunday badge holders and children attending with wristbands.

“By any metric, Gen Con 2018 was an enormous success,” said David Hoppe, Gen Con President. “The combination of a record number of veteran gamers arriving from around the world with an amazing surge in first-year attendees illustrates the bright future of gaming. We were also delighted to welcome many game industry partners back to the convention, including Blizzard, Pokémon, and Magic: The Gathering, which celebrated its 25th birthday at Gen Con. We’re proud that while substantially more than 60,000 unique attendees were on-site over four days, the feedback from customers, sponsors, and exhibitors was that we provided a smoothly-run show and top-notch customer experience.”

Beyond attendance records, Gen Con also set philanthropic high marks in 2018, raising more than $50,000 for its charity partners, The Jack Vasel Memorial Fund and Second Helpings, through multiple on-site events. Since moving to Indy in 2003, Gen Con has now raised more than $300,000 for its charity partners.

In a year of firsts, Gen Con launched convention-long streaming of events on Twitch, the online gaming network, netting more than 300,000 unique viewers of its programming with more than three million minutes of watched footage. The convention also successfully released a successful beta test of its on-site electronic event ticketing system, supporting nearly 10,000 transactions with the intention of expanding that service in future conventions.

Gen Con’s Block Party debuted in 2018, expanding Gen Con’s outdoor, free, unbadged experience spanning Georgia Street, on to South Street, and with placements around the Indianapolis downtown. The 2018 Block Party included 65+ food trucks, two Sun King Beer Gardens, Hot Box Pizza stands, an activation from the Indianapolis Public Library, and a free concert with the bands Local H and Brother O’ Brother.

This year’s convention featured more than 520 game companies, more than 600 new games, 17,000 ticketed events, and a significant increase in programming in Lucas Oil Stadium. The convention plans to continue its development of Lucas Oil Stadium as a new hub of convention growth.

Gen Con will return to Indianapolis August 1-4, 2019.

Quotes about Gen Con 2018
“When Gen Con comes to Indianapolis, everyone leaves a winner,” said Mayor Joe Hogsett. “This year, a record-setting number of attendees enjoyed a quality convention experience, as well as our city’s world-class restaurants, hotels, entertainment, and amenities — resulting in a local economic impact of more than $70 million. Since 2003, the Indianapolis community has embraced this convention and we are excited to continue to break records and find new and better ways to host the Best Four Days in Gaming.”

“This year’s Gen Con was another epic experience for a record number of attendees and exhibitors, as well as for the city of Indianapolis,” said Leonard Hoops, president and CEO, Visit Indy. “We are proud to have hosted this incredible event for the past 16 years, and we look forward to hosting it more many years to come.”

“Gen Con lived up to its reputation as the Best Four Days in Gaming!” said Scott Gaeta, President, Renegade Game Studios. “Once again, it exceeded our expectations and we can’t wait to return next year!”

“Hot Box Pizza was honored to be the official pizza of Gen Con,” said Gabe Connell, Owner of Hot Box Pizza. “The engagement with tens of thousands of Gen Con attendees is exhilarating! We truly value our partnership with a first-rate organization and phenomenal group of visitors to our great city of Indianapolis.”

About Gen Con LLC

Gen Con LLC produces the largest consumer hobby, fantasy, science fiction, and adventure game convention in North America, Gen Con, The Best Four Days in Gaming!™. Founded in 1968 and acquired in 2002 by founder and former CEO of Wizards of the Coast, Peter Adkison, the company is headquartered in Seattle and takes place each August in Indianapolis.

RPG News, Sneak Peeks, and Deals at Gen Con 2018 – New Robotech RPG, Free Zweihänder Grim and Perilous, and Things to do at Gen Con

I’m headed to Gen Con 2018, excited to play games, see friends, and talk to publishers! As I’m headed up the road to Indianapolis, there are a few news items and deals worth mentioning.

 

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At EN World, Angus Abranson shares Strange Machine Games announcement that they’re launching a new Robotech RPG. In the 1980s, Harmony Gold licensed three Japanese anime series and bolted them together to create Robotech. This series spawned, among other things, The Robotech Role-Playing Game by Palladium Books (1986 to 1998, and 2008 to 2018). With the lapse of Palladium’s license, Strange Machine Games is picking it up and creating a new game. Which is a win for gamers! However, as Chris Helton (Dorkland Blog) pointed out, Harmony Gold’s Frankenstein-ime… er, license expires on March 14, 2021. [Here’s Karen Ressler’s article about that end here on Anime News Network.] They are hitting the ground running (From their Facebook page: “Hello Robotech Fans! If you want to see a hard copy preview of the Robotech RPG game, visit our booth at GenCon: 2963. We will have 1 or 2 on hand!”) That said, they have two-and-a-half years before the parent company’s license ends and that implies SMG’s Robotech RPG will have a limited run. Which begs the question, how much of the franchise will they be able to cover?

I contacted Strange Machine Games, however, Gen Con prep prevented us for connecting in detail but they are “happy to discuss the project”. Expect an interview/discussion post-con.

 

STATUS: Monitoring.

 

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From mid-June to early-July, New Agenda Publishing (Facebook link here, their website here, and check out the quickstart for their upcoming project, Orun, here) hosted an open call for writers and artists. In keeping with NAP’s founding mission, they listed three criteria:

  • Are you into tabletop RPGS?
  • Have you ever wanted to work on a game?
  • Are you a member of an underrepresented group in TTRPGs (Person of Color, Woman, Non-binary, Trans, Queer)?

Among the applicants was DC Comics writer, Route 3 creator, BlackSci-Fi.com EiC, and Tessera Guild member, Robert Jeffrey (Facebook). NAP selected Robert to freelance on their “Post Apotheosis Space Opera RPG”, Orun. As Robert shares below (screenshot from his Facebook page), I, too, am geeked as f&^% about this, NAP made a great choice and Robert is going to bring a lot of good to RPG.

STATUS: Congratulating.

 

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At Gen Con, on DriveThruRPG, and on Kickstarter there are DEALS to be had!

 

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Going to Gen Con 2018? Want a free PDF of the 2018 ENnie Award nominated Best Game and Product of the YearZweihänder Grim and Perilous RPG? “If you can find Daniel Fox or Adam Rose at the convention, they will give you a handout, good for either a free PDF or 15% off the print-on-demand hardcover of the two-time ENnie nominated ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG!”

 

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At Gen Con, “Find Jerry, get a FREE MYTHIC D6 Book!” Jerry D. Grayson of Khepera Publishing (and New Agenda Publishing) will be looking for three folks that know the secret pass phrase of the day. If you see Jerry, give him the phrase, and get a free Mythic D6 book! A free physical book! Each day’s phrase is here.

 

* * * 

Ray Machuga of Higher Grounds Publishing is going to be wandering Gen Con. If you find him, take a picture, post it, and he’ll give you a copy of his game. Check out the details here.

 

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Gary Gygax Day – Zweihänder Grim and Perilous RPG

* * * 

Not going to Gen Con but you still want something free from Zweihänder? Introduced on Gary Gygax Day, Grim & Perilous Studios are offering a free Zweihänder Grim and Perilous RPG preview/supplement showcasing “our Henchman profession from the upcoming supplement Main Gauche. We’re also including the Dungeoneer, an expert profession from Zweihänder Grim & Perious RPG.” You can get the Gary Gygax Day – Zweihänder Grim and Perilous RPG as a Pay What You Want (“Suggested Price $0.00”) on DriveThruRPG here.

 

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On Kickstarter, Palegain Press is running a campaign to develop Flower of Heaven: Shrine of the Fallen Heroes, “An Asian themed module for the Universal Storytelling System: Second Edition“. The $10 backer reward, Mountain Spirits, gets you both a PDF of the module plus a PDF of the Universal Storytelling System: Second Edition.

Ends on Tue, August 14 2018 9:59 AM EDT. Find the campaign here.

 

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What Am I Playing At Gen Con 2018?

 

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Disclosures: This article contains affiliate links.

Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Freelancer for EN WorldKnights of the Dinner TableOpen Gaming Network, and the Tessera Guild.
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Want to share news? Rumors? Sneak peeks? Deals? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).

PRESS RELEASE – Gen Con to Sell Out of 4-Day Badges this Week

Gen Con to Sell Out of 4-Day Badges this Week
Saturday Badges Also Expected to Sell Out Prior to Convention

INDIANAPOLIS (July 23, 2018) Gen Con has announced that it expects to sell out of 4-Day badges as soon as this week, setting a new record for the number of 4-Day badge holders. The convention also anticipates that Saturday badges will reach a sellout prior to the convention opening next week. Gen Con will alert attendees of any badge sellouts via Facebook, Twitter, and email newsletter. Those interested in attending all four days of the convention or on Saturday can purchase badges at gencon.com while limited supplies remain.

“So far in 2018 we’ve already sold more 4-Day badges than ever before in Gen Con’s 51-year history,” said David Hoppe, Gen Con President. “The team has honed our operations and event planning to allow for increased attendance while still maintaining the same level of comfort for everyone as they move about the convention. We want to allow the maximum number of attendees to experience Gen Con without diminishing the event’s quality one iota.”

This year, more than 80% of badges sold for Gen Con 2018 will be 4-Day badges. In addition to online sales, Gen Con plans to sell limited quantities of the remaining single day badges (Thursday, Friday, and Sunday) at the Indiana Convention Center, beginning at noon on Wednesday, August 1.

Gen Con returns to the Indiana Convention Center from Thursday, August 2 through Sunday, August 5. This year, Gen Con’s Sunday badges cost $15 and children 10-and-under may attend any day of the convention for free with a child wristband. All badges and child wristbands may be pre-ordered at gencon.com for Will Call pick-up at the convention while supplies last.

Last year, Visit Indy estimated that Gen Con provided $73 million in economic value for Central Indiana, and this year, the convention plans that number to rise. Gen Con’s sponsorship growth for 2018 has increased more than 24% year-over-year with partners including Lyft, Blizzard Entertainment, Square Enix, Pokemon, and Magic: The Gathering, which will celebrate its 25th year at the convention.

About Gen Con LLC
Gen Con LLC produces the largest consumer hobby, fantasy, science fiction, and adventure game convention in North America, Gen Con, The Best Four Days in Gaming!™. Founded in 1968 and acquired in 2002 by founder and former CEO of Wizards of the Coast, Peter Adkison, the company is headquartered in Seattle and takes place each August in Indianapolis.

8 ENnie Awards Dream Dates for Gen Con 2018!

Going to Gen Con? Need a “date” for the ENnie Awards on Friday, August 3rd 2018 at 8pm? Want a great seat for the event all while getting to know some of the premier publishers in the industry and some excellent swag? Then look no further, these RPG publishers and judges have you covered with the second annual ENnie Awards Dream Dates! [To read my review of last year’s ENnie Awards Dream Dates, click here.]

The best reason to go is the chance to talk gaming with some of the best creators in the industry and make a connection. But, if that does not move you to bid, keep in mind that the swag tends to be some of each publishers premier materials. Which publishers?

The ENnie Awards Dream Date Auctions on eBay “All proceeds from the Dream Date auction[s] are used to fund the production of the ENnie Awards each year.”

Want to “date” Cubicle 7 AND get swag? Here’s your chance!

What is Gen Con? “The largest gaming convention in the world held annually in Indianapolis, Indiana.” [August 2-5, 2018]

What are the ENnie Awards? “The Gen Con EN World RPG Awards (the “ENnies“) are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENnies give game designers, writers and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a peoples’ choice award, and the final winners are voted upon online by the gaming public.”

Vote for the 2018 ENnie Awards here.

 

Cubicle 7 (with Egg [shorts]) at the ENnie Awards 2017 where C7 won the Silver ENnie (Best Rules) for Adventures in Middle-Earth Player’s Guide, and Egg *almost* got to bask in the spotlight of their success (literally… I tried elbowing poor Dominic out of the light…).

Cubicle 7 – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 5:30PM EDT

Come experience the excitement of the ENnie Awards with Cubicle 7!

Winner of this auction will receive the opportunity to join the Cubicle 7 team at a specially designated table right in front of the stage at the 2018 ENnie Awards, held August 3rd 2018 at 8pm at Gen Con! You may also receive a gift from the publisher.

 

Why do you wanna “date” Cubicle 7? They’re the publishers of:

  • Adventures in Middle-earth (for D&D 5e)
  • The One Ring Roleplaying Game
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Fourth Edition
  • Age of Sigmar Roleplaying Game
  • The Doctor Who Card Game
  • Doctor Who Roleplaying Game
  • Winners of multiple ENnie Awards, Origin Awards, and more
  • You may also receive a gift from the publisher
  • Last year, beyond the pleasant evening of hilarious stories, they rewarded me with every Adventures in Middle-earth book they had out at the time (hardcover and PDF) as well as maps. I was HAPPY with that but I was happier at Origins Game Fair 2018 (9 or 10 months later) when we had a chance to talk again and catch up. They are a lovely group of people and whoever gets to “date” them this year is in for a treat! 

You’ll be at the table with Cubicle 7 when they learn if they won an ENnie Award for:

 

Click here to bid on Cubicle 7 – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018

 

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Chaosium Inc. – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 5:45PM EDT

“Come experience the excitement of the ENnie Awards with Chaosium Inc.!

Winner of this auction will receive the opportunity to join the Chaosium team at a specially designated table right in front of the stage at the 2018 ENnie Awards, held August 3rd 2018 at 8pm at Gen Con!

You will also receive your choice of one of the following:

RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and Glorantha Sourcebook + PDFs

OR Call of Cthulhu slipcase set + PDF

OR Masks of Nyarlathotep slipcase set + PDF

Khan of Khans special “dwarven metal” tin-box edition
—An additional slipcase you can fill with any of our current releases of your choosing.
Chaosium “tuxedo”black t-shirt

For over forty years, Chaosium has captivated gamers, readers and mythic adventurers worldwide. Its award-winning roleplaying games, board games and fiction have been acclaimed as some of the most engaging and innovative of all time.

Up for Best Free Supplement

Why do you wanna “date” Chaosium? They’re the publishers of:

  • Call of Cthulhu
  • Runequest
  • Khan of Khans
    I only listed three games but CoC has a depth of catalogue that can only be compared to D&D, which is to say it’s massive.
  • Winners of multiple ENnie Awards, Origin Awards, and more
  • The swag they’re offering is epic, especially the Khan of Khans special edition since it’s up for two awards that night

You’ll be at the table with Chaosium when they learn if they won ENnie Awards for:

Up for Best Free Product

 

Click here to bid on Chaosium Inc. – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018

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Pelgrane Press Table One – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 5:55PM EDT

Pelgrane Press Table Two – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 6:15PM EDT

“Come experience the excitement of the ENnie Awards with Pelgrane Press!

Winner of this auction will receive the opportunity to join the Pelgrane Press team at a specially designated table right in front of the stage at the 2018 ENnie Awards, held August 3rd, 2018 at 8pm at Gen Con!

You will also receive a signed, limited edition copy of the Fall of DELTA GREEN, along with an exclusive Fall of DELTA GREEN t-shirt from the Pelgane Press team.

Established in 2000, Pelgrane Press Ltd publishes award-winning tabletop roleplaying games, including 13th Age by Rob Heinsoo and JonathanTweet, Trail of Cthulhu and Night’s Black Agents by Kenneth Hite, and The Dying Earth, The Esoterrorists, Hillfolk and Ashen Stars by Robin D Laws.

Their groundbreaking GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system shifts the focus of investigative play from finding clues (or worse, not finding them) to interpreting clues, solving mysteries, and moving the action forward.

Pelgrane Press is also the home of the webzine Page XX, The Birds comic, and RPGsoundtracks by James Semple and fellow composers.

Up for Best Rules

Why do you wanna “date” Pelgrane Press? They’re the publishers of:

  • #Feminism
  • 13th Age
  • Cthulhu Confidential
  • Dying Earth and Gaean Reach
  • The Fall of DELTA GREEN
  • TimeWatch
  • Trail of Cthulhu
  • The Yellow King
    [I apologize that I’m skipping so many of their best games]
  • Winners of multiple gaming awards
  • From either table you’ll get a “signed, limited edition copy of the Fall of DELTA GREEN, along with an exclusive Fall of DELTA GREEN t-shirt”

You’ll be at the table with Pelgrane Press when they learn if they won ENnie Awards for:

  • BEST RPG RELATED PRODUCT – #feminism
  • BEST RULES – Cthulhu Confidential, Authors: Robin D. Laws, Chris Spivey, Ruth Tillman [NOTE – Curious about Cthulhu Confidential and want to try a sample? Try it here.] 

 

Click here to bid on Pelgrane Press Table One – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018 OR Pelgrane Press Table Two – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018 (it’s the same reward for each, just different tables).

 

Up for Best Rules. Try the free sampler here.

 

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ENnie Awards Judges Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 6:11PM EDT

“Come experience the excitement of the ENnie Awards with the 2018 ENnie Award judges!

The winner of this auction will receive the opportunity to sit with this year’s panel of judges at the 2018 ENnie Awards, held August 3rd, 2018 at 8pm at Gen Con! Sean McCoy, Reece Carter, Kurt Wiegel, and Brian Nowak spent this past year reviewing over 500 different submissions to determine the nominee list.

You will also receive a swag bag of RPG related items!

 

Why do you wanna “date” the 2018 ENnie Award judges?

  • These are the individuals that decide the ENnie nominees
  • To talk about 2017/2018 RPGs with some of the best informed individuals in the industry (after all, they looked at over 500 submissions)
  • To learn more about the process and decide if you want to be a judge
  • I’m going to combine two quotes and let you decide what it portends – “over 500 different submissions” [PLUS] “You will also receive a swag bag of RPG related items”
    I’m not in the know, I’m not saying that you’ll get amazing stuff, but there exists some possibilities…

 

Click here to bid on ENnie Awards Judges Dream Date 2018

 

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Modiphius Entertainment – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 6:18PM EDT

Come experience the excitement of the ENnie Awards with Modiphius Entertainment!

Winner of this auction will receive the opportunity to join the Modiphius Entertainment team at a specially designated table right in front of the stage at the 2018 ENnie Awards, held August 3rd, 2018 at 8pm at Gen Con!  [You will also receive copies of both the Star Trek and Conan corebooks both signed by their team at Gen Con!]

Modiphius Entertainment is a British Entertainment publisher partnering with global creative talent to develop unique creative properties. 

Modiphius Entertainment has a wide range of worlds to explore, including their own terrifying vision of World War Two – Achtung! Cthulhu, a roleplaying setting for Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds.They have re-booted the fantastic sci-fi dieselpunk world of Mutant Chronicles with the 3rd Edition of the roleplaying game and the new edition of the Siege of the Citadel board game. They launched the official RPG for Corvus Belli’s Infinity universe, the Thunderbirds co-op board game by Matt Leacock, Airfix Battles, a new introductory wargame, Robert E. Howards CONAN -Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of! and Star Trek Adventures, the 4th edition of this fantastic roleplaying universe. Fallout: Wasteland Warfare is launching soon, a miniatures game set in Bethesda’s fantastic video game universe and now the official Kung Fu Panda board game!

Why do you wanna “date” Modiphius? They’re the publishers of:

  • Star Trek Adventures
  • Achtung! Cthulhu
  • Mutant Chronicles
  • CONAN -Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of!
  • Tales from the Loop as well as other Free League games
  • Vampire: The Masqurade 5th Edition from White Wolf
  • Winners of multiple gaming awards
  • You’ll receive a signed copy of the Star Trek Adventures: Core Rulebook and a signed copy of the Conan core rulebook

You’ll be at the table with Modiphius when they learn if they won an ENnie Award for:

 

Click here to bid on Modiphius Entertainment – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018

 

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Gaming Paper – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 6:38PM EDT

Come experience the excitement of the ENnie Awards with Gaming Paper!

Winner of this auction will receive the opportunity to join the Gaming Paper team at a specially designated table right in front of the stage at the 2018 ENnie Awards, held August 3rd, 2018 at 8pm at Gen Con!  You will also receive a massive prize pack of Gaming Paper swag!

Gaming Paper started as a single product -an inexpensive, reusable, and disposable 30 sq. ft roll of 1″ squares  paper. They have since grown into a variety of products that include additional color options, 8-½” x11″ single sheetswrapping paper, dry erase gaming tiles, and our own roleplaying adventures!

Why do you wanna “date” Gaming Paper?

  • If you play tabletop RPGs around the, you know, tabletop, their products make for a more fun experience
  • If you’re looking for some direction on how to enter the gaming market with something other than a game, this company has blazed that path and, I’m guessing, have some advice to share
  • You will also receive a massive prize pack of Gaming Paper swag!

You’ll be at the table with Gaming Paper when they learn if they won an ENnie Award for:

 

Click here to bid on Gaming Paper – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018

 

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Magpie Games – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018
Ends on July 22nd, 2018 – Sunday, 6:53PM EDT

Come experience the excitement of the ENnie Awards with Magpie Games!

Winner of this auction will receive the opportunity to join the Magpie Games team at a specially designated table right in front of the stage at the 2018 ENnie Awards, held August 3rd, 2018 at 8pm at Gen Con!  

The winner will also receive a choice of a pack of one of Magpie’s main product lines, for example: 

Bluebeard’s Bride pack – a copy of the core book, Book of Rooms, and the play materials, which include a silkscreened playsheet, tokens, and a set of Bluebeard’s Bride branded dice, 

or

The Masks pack – a copy of the core book, Halycon City Herald Collection, choice of either the Deck of Influence or the Deck of Villainy, and a set of Masks branded dice.

Magpie Games is a game development and production company devoted to creating interesting, innovative,boundary-pushing, and most of all high-quality games across a wide variety of genres and styles. The majority of Magpie’s productions are tabletop roleplaying games, ranging from games designed to recreate disaster movies, to games designed to tell the stories of baby dragons on adventures, to gritty games about supernatural criminals and power brokers.  Since its inception, Magpie Games has released many games, including Urban Shadows, Epyllion: A Dragon Epic, Masks: A New Generation, and Bluebeard’s Bride.

Why do you wanna “date” Magpie Games? They’re the publishers of:

  • Epyllion: A Dragon Epic
  • Bluebeard’s Bride
  • Masks: A New Generation
  • Urban Shadows
  • And other award winning games
  • You’re going to go home with everything you need to enjoy Bluebeard’s Bride or Masks and, either way, that’s a crit!

You’ll be at the table with Magpie Games when they learn if they won an ENnie Award for:

Click here to bid on Magpie Games – ENnie Awards Dream Date 2018

 

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Don’t need a “date”? With a badge to Gen Con, tickets to the ENnie Awards are free (click here to secure yours). There’s also a silent auction – ENnies Cocktail Reception & Silent Auction – just before the awards ceremony available here. And, again, vote for the ENnie Awards here.

 

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This arrived in my inbox from Pelgrane Press just as I went to press:

The innovative noir-themed one-player, one-GM game Cthulhu Confidential and award-winning RPG anthology #Feminism are available at 25% off unti the end of July.

Both books have been nominated for ENnie awards, and we’d love you to consider voting for them. Voting ends at 11 PM EST on July 21st.

Cthulhu Confidential drops your hero into the noir nightscape of hardboiled Los Angeles, New York, or Washington, D.C. Meet powerbrokers and politicians, and rub shoulders with Hollywood studio bosses and fiery evangelists. But beneath it all, under the scrim of all this human endeavour, lives corruption so old and inhuman you’ll need all your courage and resourcefulness to face it. Download sampler>>

Written by feminists from eleven different countries, #Feminism offers bite-sized takes on contemporary feminist issues. Each of the 34 nano-games in this collection requires between three and five participants, simple (if any) props, and up to an hour of play time. Download sampler>>

 

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Disclosures: I freelance for EN World, host of the ENnie Awards. However, I am not involved in the ENnie Awards.

This article contains affiliate links.

Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer™
Freelancer for EN World, Knights of the Dinner Table, Open Gaming Network, and the Tessera Guild.
Want your RPG Kickstarter reviewed? Want to share news? Rumors? Sneak peeks? Deals? Have some RPG wanna-lancer thoughts to share? Contact me here or on Facebook (Egg Embry) or on Google Plus (+Egg Embry).