Black Gate

I read a lot of geeky books. And I don’t just mean science fiction and fantasy, I mean books that make even many normal geeks raise an eyebrow at my choices, such as books on game theory, economics and business, philosophy, and so on … things that have nary a laser rifle or robot or sword or sorcerer in sight. Right now, I’m reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine. (An abridged audiobook version is available for free.)

It seems like when I read these books, the principles they espouse often show up all over the place, and that’s certainly happening at GenCon. In fact, the principles of “free” described by Anderson have always, in some form, been at the heart of every industry of sales. (Early on in the book, he explains how free cookbooks made the failing Jell-O company thrive.) And the gaming industry is no different.

For example, many roleplaying games have for years offered free little booklets that allow you to get started with a game, try it out in a limited way, and see if you enjoy it before you invest dollars and hours into playing it. But the problem is that these books were not actually free. There was a trade-off, because the publishers still had to actually print out the booklets and distribute them and so on. There was a cost to this, so it wasn’t just that they wanted to make money – if the gambit didn’t work, they were actually out money! Now, with the online world, PDF versions of books can be distributed (virtually) free of cost! That’s how Black Gate is able to offer reviews and commentary for free through these online blogs, for example.

Many of the gaming companies at GenCon have also embraced “free,” such as Hero Mages, an online board/strategy game that is completely free to play, but which allows players to pay a price to access certain premium characters and options (such as the ability to create and save your own map designs). (Anderson calls this business model a “freemium” model, where a portion of the users spend money for upgrades, which supports the site for everyone.)

Another company that is brilliantly using “free” as a means of promotion is Shard Studios, who have created the Shard RPG. This game is based on the Hindu mythology of India and allows you to play a number of animal-based races. The setting doesn’t have any metal, but their weapons and equipment are built from gems of various types that can be used to power magical items, such as flying airships, or forged into weapons (such as the swords in the pictures above) with different properties. The books are beautiful and the setting is truly enthralling … it is one of a handful of games that I left GenCon knowing I would definitely want to try out by running a full game with.

How is Shard using “free”? Well, on their website, if you go to “The Game” link you can choose to download a “Welcome Booklet.” This booklet contains the entire game mechanics of the system, setting information, some introductory character templates, and so on. It is essentially the bulk of the main core rulebook … except for character creation, for which you need to buy the actual book. But, by checking out the Welcome Booklet, you can be sure that you really want the game before you shell out the money for the entire set of rules. And, if you just want to play the game and never create a character, I suppose you could even do that (although, as most gamers know, character creation is one of the most fun aspects of any game).

I don’t know how many attendees are making it to GenCon this year, but the place is certainly packed. For example, here’s one of the game rooms. Not a dealer’s room, but just a room where people are playing board games.

The rooms that house the miniature war games – WarMachine, Hordes, HeroClix, Dark Ages, and the like – are typically even larger than this one. They’re spread throughout the building, in rooms both large and small. And, of course, some of the attendees choose more elaborate clothing.

Today, I’m going to focus on some of the electronic/video games that caught my eye at GenCon. I normally don’t spend a ton of time in the video game section, because my life doesn’t leave a lot of time anymore for video games, but once upon a time I was an avid online gamer, and it is always fun to dip my toes into that genre of games now and again.

One of the games I played back in the day was City of Heroes, the MMORPG superhero game created by Cryptic Studios and NCsoft. (In fact, one of my first paying writing gigs was a review of City of Heroes for City Slab magazine.) I haven’t played City of Heroes in over four years, but apparently the partnership between Cryptic and SOE has fallen apart, with NCsoft retaining ownership of the City of Heroes intellectual property. Cryptic Studios, in turn, teamed up with Atari and Hero Games to create Champions Online, taking everything they learned from the original creation of City of Heroes and improving upon it. The graphics are slick and the game play looks pretty smooth. Visually, of course, it looks like a comic book world, and the overall appearance is much like City of Heroes, but the stats system is built upon the Champions RPG structure and it uses the Champions setting. It’ll be interesting to see how this superhero MMORPG competes with the established City of Heroes.

While that was the only MMORPG that really caught my eye, there was another online game of interest – Hero Mages. This is a free (yes, you read that correctly!) online board/strategy game, which can be played by up to four players against each other. Each player controls a magic-user (chosen from fighter mage, wizard, sorcerer, and summoner) and two guardians (chosen from bard, rogue, barbarian, paladin, psionist, soul reaver, warrior, and samurai). The goal is to destroy the enemy teams before your own team is killed. It’s a fun game and free, so check it out.

Two other stand alone games warrant mention. If bloody console-based game mayhem is your thing, then check out Dante’s Inferno from Electronic Arts. The game follows Dante as he battles his way through Hell to rescue his fair love, Beatrice, who is being held captive by Lucifer. I’m not much on these slash-em-up games even in the best of times, but if there were ever a game that made me want to pick up a gaming console and rip through some demons, this was it. The graphics were phenomenal, and the players seemed to be hypnotized by the screen.

On the other end of the spectrum, and much more my speed, was the quirky stand alone PC game Odd Society. You play one of the ODDs, a race of creatures that have recently gained freedom from The Conglomerate, to whom they were enslaved. Now they are forced to find resources and build a society for themselves. The mechanics are mostly simple point-and-click, so it’s pretty easy to get into the game quickly. The graphics on this game aren’t nearly as slick as Dante’s Inferno, but that’s part of the point … unlike the Inferno hellbeasts, the ODDs are unusual little beings that are supposed to be endearing and sort of roughly rendered, like Dr. Seuss characters.

The first day of GenCon is over and done with. I’ve made it along one and a half walls of the dealer’s room, a massive space in the center of the Indianapolis Convention Center. I seriously believe that the dealer’s room is about the equivalent of half a city block in size, all of it open and full of vendor booths. For those who have never been, GenCon is the major event of the gaming industry, with vendors representing game developers of all stripes – role-playing games, card games (classic, collectible, tradable, etc.), electronic/video games, board games, dice and gaming supply companies – as well as authors, artists, musicians, media personalities, and so on.

For our purposes, of course, the interest is on the adventure fantasy folks, and they are out in abundance this year. I’ve already spoken a bit about the Catalyst Games people and their Shadowrun and CthuluTech lines. Another of my favorite settings is Privateer Press’s Iron Kingdoms, which I’ve reviewed previously in the pages of Black Gate (see issues 10 & 12). With the switch to new fourth edition rules for Dungeons & Dragons, the Iron Kingdoms steam & sorcery line (which is based on the d20 system utilized in 3.5) has been mostly on hold, except for supplements provided regularly in the Privateer Press magazine, No Quarter. I was told that there are plans on the drawing board to continue this line, possibly with a proprietary mechanics system. It sounds like this is very much in the preliminary phases, though, so don’t hold your breath. For now, the only new Iron Kingdoms setting or RPG material that looks like it’s on the horizon will be through No Quarter.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, it lives on in the form of Pathfinder from Paizo Publishing, this game represents an “evolution of the 3.5 rules set of the world’s oldest fantasy roleplaying game.” This monster rulebook is a brilliant marketing tactic, giving those who dislike D&D 4^th edition something to spend their money on so that they can keep playing in the system they grew to love. I’ve personally not played with the 4^th edition rules, but I really liked 3.5 and have heard negative things about 4^th, so am pleased to see the 3.5 rules system is alive and well in some form, at least.

On to Hollow Earth Expedition, a game from Exile Game Studio that was reviewed in Black Gate issue 12. Hollow Earth utilizes their own proprietary rule system, the Ubiquity Roleplaying System^TM – which “emphasizes storytelling and cinematic action” (according to their website). The rules are easy to follow, as you play a pulp hero who is performing a Jules Verne-style exploration of the center of the Earth, which contains Nazis, dinosaurs, native peoples, and other strange monsters. In fact, the system is adaptable to a variety of pulp scenarios, with a recent sourcebook, Secrets of the Surface World, allowing for adventures that take place entirely on the surface as well, with mad scientists and secret societies right out of the pages of the pulp magazines. A forthcoming supplement will add to the possibilities by presenting Mars as a campaign setting, allowing for planetary romance genre adventures as well.

The Ubiquity Roleplaying System^TM is also being utilized by Greymalkin Designs, LLC’s game Desolation, a post-apocalyptic setting … except that the world that’s been apocalypsed is a traditional high-fantasy world, complete with magical races, powerful sorcerers, and mystical artifacts. The apocalypse took the form of a “Night of Fire” which killed 90% of the population, followed by “The Long Winter” during which many others perished. You play one of survivors and hopes to continue surviving. (The first supplement, which adds new orcs, goblins, and kobolds as player races, along with other additions, is in fact called Desolation: Survivors.) Not only are magic users now scorned because of the belief they caused the cataclysm, mystical energies have become so disrupted that magic itself does not work right, and errors in casting spells result in physical damage manifesting back on the magic user. The series’ tagline “High Fantasy, Brought Low” certainly seems appropriate … and inviting.

Finally, since this is a magazine of fantasy literature, I figure it would be nice to direct everyone to some free reading material, courtesy of new author Maxwell Alexander Drake. He’s been able to get a publisher to agree to start him out with an astounding 6 book epic fantasy series called the Genesis of Oblivion saga, and the first volume, Farmers and Mercenaries, is now available. Drake is so confident of his abilities that he’s offering the first four chapters of the book for free online (you don’t have to sign up for his mailing list to get the free sample). I’ve read the first few pages and, while I can’t say I’m hooked quite yet, I’m interested enough to keep reading the full sample and see if it hooks me. Book two, Siblings and Rivals, looks like it’s due to be out early next summer.

Welcome to the Black Gate GenCon report. My wife and I knew we were entering the looking glass when, on the walk from our parking lot to the Indianapolis Convention Center, we saw a Crusader, 2 Ghostbusters, and guy (or gal) in a white wolf costume … and, oh yes, the women in corsets. Upon our arrival at 9:30 am, the line wrapped around the block, but fortunately we didn’t have to stand in it. For us, it was straight to the Press Room and, within minutes, we were ready to Con.

This is my fourth GenCon and I’m probably close to the double digits on conventions in general, so it’s not an unfamiliar sight to me. My wife, on the other hand, still lives in … well, maybe not fear, but at least mild anxiety. There is a limit to the amount of furriness she can handle in a person, and it comes just shy of white wolf costumes on a sunny summer day.

Fortunately, GenCon has a track of activities “for the better half” – gaming widows and widowers who are dragged along to these events. One of today’s “better half” events – create your own critter. Unfortunately, we arrived a bit late for that activity, so we will leave the event critter-less. We did, however, see this beautiful rendition of the Magic: The Gathering card “Serra Angel,” but they wouldn’t let us take it with us.

I’m a big fan of the writing seminars , but once we got through our first one (on pitching to game companies) we went into the dealer’s room. Right off the bat, we come into the Catalyst Games booth. There, the kind exhibitors inform me that it’s the twentieth anniversary of Shadowrun … a game which indirectly led me into meeting my wife, so I’m a big fan.

As part of the twentieth anniversary, Catalyst has released a Seattle city guide, Shadowrun: Seattle 2072. The book is slick, to say the least, filled with superb full color illustrations. They’ve also released a full color version of the Shadowrun 4th Edition: Core Rulebook in honor of the twentieth anniversary. The rules are still 4th edition, but if you like books with great full color illustrations, this would be a good volume to add to your collection even if you already have this edition.

Their release at the convention is an adventure module, Dusk: Dawn of the Artifacts I, which is the first in four short adventure modules that will quickly get you into the action of the game, as you search for lost mystical artifacts. The developer anticipates a new module every couple of months, followed about three months later by a fifth book, this one a full campaign book … so that’ll probably be out in about May 2010 or so, if the math comes out right.

I also learned about Catalyst Games’ CthuluTech game, a future Lovecraftian dystopian game, where the secret to unlimited energy has triggered the attention of Cthulu-style dark gods. The developer treats it very much like an “open source” concept, because he’s providing a basic structure that can be utilized in a massive number of different ways, from a mercenary-style military campaign to a more traditional Chthulu occult investigator style … or you can load up a demonic being with battletech and jack in to run it directly through neural link.

So that’s my first report, folks … on to the next booth.