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GenCon Update: Day 1, Part 2 – Gaming Sequels and Expansions

GenCon Update: Day 1, Part 2 – Gaming Sequels and Expansions

ImplodingKittensThe Best Four Days of Gaming have passed. I began my 2016 GenCon coverage with an earlier discussion of a handful of new and upcoming games. There will be more of those to come, as there was no shortage of new games worthy of attention, but a lot of great games at GenCon this year weren’t entirely new, they were either expansions to existing games, or sequels or variants.

Not all of these games are quite available to the public yet. For example, the wildly popular card game Exploding Kittens (Amazon) had copies of its first expansion, Imploding Kittens, available. The expansion featured only 20 new cards to the game, including several new game mechanics and allowing for a 5-player game. The size of the expansion package is because it also included a human-sized “cone of shame,” to be used on the first person who forgets that the “Reverse” card has been played. It is unclear whether this highly-amusing feature will be part of the public release of the expansion.

And yes, some potty-humor aside, this expansion falls in the “Safe for Work” category. (The core game of Exploding Kittens has a NSFW edition.)

So I’ll cover a mix of games and, when possible, link you to information on how to acquire those that are available.

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GenCon Update: Day 1, Part 1 – New Games

GenCon Update: Day 1, Part 1 – New Games

Pikachu shows up at GenCon 2016
Pikachu shows up at GenCon 2016

The Best Four Days in Gaming has come to Indianapolis, and again I’ve made my way into the dragon’s den to seek out new and interesting games. The scope of GenCon has definitely expanded over the decade or so that I have been attending and covering it, largely swallowing up downtown Indianapolis. This year, the Lucas Oil Stadium used by the Indianapolis Pacers has become the newest participant, becoming home to the popular “True Dungeon” live dungeon crawl adventure (which, one of these years, I will actually participate in). Even the types of games have expanded. Though in the past, Pokemon has had an incredibly sparse presence at GenCon, two giant inflatable Pikachu’s dangling from the ceiling have indicated a change in that trend.

In addition to the convention expanding in size, the number of games has become truly dizzying. The game company iEllo, best known for their breakaway hit, the monster-ravages-city game King of Tokyo (and its sequel King of New York), hosted a party on Thursday evening that I was fortunate enough to be invited to, and I ended up sitting next to Eric Summerer of The Dice Tower podcast. He discussed just the sheer difficulty generated by the volume of games being produced, and how it affects not just individual game consumers, but also those of us who spend some portion of our time trying to make sense of which games to discuss. What is the best way to present information about quality games, when the general quality across the industry has become so high and there are so many publishers seeking to get the word out on their new products?

One overwhelming trend in the gaming industry is expansions and sequel games, and that’s going to be the focus of my “part 2” review. For now, I’m going to focus on brand new games, as I think they deserve a bit more attention. And by “new games” I mean brand new games. There are some fantastic new games in the Legendary series from Upper Deck, for example, but since they largely apply an existing game mechanic, I’m counting them among the sequels. Definitely watch for that.

Now, on to some of the new and upcoming games …

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How No Man’s Sky Has Reinvigorated a Gaming Generation (No, Not That One)

How No Man’s Sky Has Reinvigorated a Gaming Generation (No, Not That One)

No Man's Sky-small

Let’s get something out of the way. Being just shy of entering my sixth decade, I am officially what I used to refer to as ‘an old fart.’ Not sure how this happened, but I’m dealing with it with world-weary humor and longer attempts to get up from the couch. This also means that I’m not quite the young buck any more when it comes to video games. My hand/eye coordination is no longer sharp enough to get Lara to that seemingly unreachable alcove in the Bolivian temple, my reflexes have dulled to the point where fifth place in any race is a win in my book, and being trash-talked by a twelve-year-old, killing me for the umpteenth time while I try to figure out where I am on the map, has lost its glamour.

I became aware of No Man’s Sky when a trailer emerged from E3 in 2014, which proved to be enough to win the game several awards based on promise alone. In that trailer we gazed through the eyes of a cosmic explorer as they emerged from a cave into bright orange sunlight and traversed a landscape so exotically hued that all it was missing was Doug McClure standing in the middle with one sleeve ripped off.

Then the explorer dodged a few skittish antelope-types and rounded a group of towering dinosaurs before hopping into a small craft and blasting off from the planet surface. Moments later (which included zero loading screens) the explorer was in space, joining in a skirmish and zooming down to a different planet to pick off a trio of interstellar ne’er-do-wells. The whole trailer was extremely impressive due to its seamless game play, but it was the aesthetic of the video clip that really captured my imagination. The color palette and fanciful forms were a breath of fresh air compared to the modern penchant for dark and gritty™ and that immediately had me reaching for the nostalgia goggles.

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Solitaire Wargaming: B-17 Leader

Solitaire Wargaming: B-17 Leader

b17 More and more I think John O’Neill is right — we’re in a golden age of boardgames. And not just the familiar sort where it takes a room full of friends to play, but solitaire wargames, such as those produced by Victory Point Games, White Dog Games, and Dan Verssen Games, or DVG. Given the dearth of nearby board gamers, it was these solitaire games that most interested me, and I’ve played and reviewed a number over the years. Eventually I began to loiter on the periphery of some boardgame sites, most regularly Board Game Geek, where I noticed that there were some great game tweaks to DVG’s U-Boat Leader game by a fellow named Dean Brown.

We struck up a friendship, and when I saw he was developing his own game for DVG, I signed on as a playtester. I wasn’t actually that curious about B-17 bombers, or airplanes in general, but it didn’t matter: the game’s turned out to be a blast. Tuesday it launched as a Kickstarter, so I sat down yesterday and talked with Dean a little about it and his history with gaming.

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Chaosium’s Borderlands: Can Playing RPGs Really Make You a Billionaire?

Chaosium’s Borderlands: Can Playing RPGs Really Make You a Billionaire?

Chaosium Borderlands-small Chaosium Borderlands-back-small

Some of the most treasured possessions in my games library are the boxed adventure supplements published by Chaosium between 1981 – 1986. They include some of the finest adventure gaming products ever made, such as the classic Thieves’ World (1981), Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer (1981), the brilliant Masks of Nyarlathotep (1984), the Arkham Horror board game (1984), Larry Niven’s Ringworld (1984), the revolutionary King Arthur Pendragon RPG (1985), and H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands (1986).

I bought each as it was released, and over the last 30 years I’ve made a concerted effort to pick up spare (i.e non shrink-wrapped) copies whenever I can find them. I had to give that up about a decade ago, as prices have skyrocketed… copies of many of Chasoium’s early boxed sets in good condition sell for $200 and up these days. A few years back I was lucky enough to find a decent condition copy of Borderlands, an epic campaign for RuneQuest published in 1982, for 40 bucks — a bargain! — and snatched it up. It’s been sitting next to the big green chair where I write all my BG posts ever since, waiting until I have the time to say a few words about it.

Coincidentally, yesterday I stumbled upon a fascinating tidbit at Geek & Sundry that reports that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman — who recently sold his company to Microsoft, becoming a billionaire in the process — was one of the writers of Borderlands, and in fact was a contributor to Chaosium at a very early age. Here’s the relevant part of the article, written by Ben Riggs and titled “Playing RPGs Can Totally Make You a Billionaire, You Guys.”

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The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

The Son of the Return of Ravenloft Again

Plane Shift: InnistradOver at Dragon+, Wizards of the Coast has published James Wyatt’s Plane Shift: Innistrad, a free pdf that introduces Dungeons & Dragons to Magic: The Gathering’s world of Gothic horror:

The starting point for this document was The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Innistrad. Consider that book to be a useful resource in creating your Innistrad campaign, but not strictly necessary. An abundance of lore about Innistrad can be found on the Magic web-site. This document is designed to help you turn the book’s adventure hooks and story seeds into a resource for your campaign with a minimum of changes to the fifth edition D&D rules.

It’s hard to determine where the snake’s head begins and its tail ends here: Innistrad was MtG’s version of D&D’s Ravenloft, which itself has gone through umpteen editions, the most recent being WotC’s Curse of Strahd hardback; and Plane Shift: Innistrad contains suggestions for moving the action of Curse of Strahd from Barovia to Innistrad.

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Teaching History through Wargaming: Strategy & Tactics #280: Soldiers 1918

Teaching History through Wargaming: Strategy & Tactics #280: Soldiers 1918

ST280-2I’ve been a history buff all my life, and this interest led me to a career as an archaeologist before becoming a writer specializing in history and historical fiction. Thus it’s not surprising that I want my ten-year-old son to have a firm grounding of history, even though he takes more after his astronomer mother and will almost certainly go into one of the STEM fields.

One of my main interests is World War One, so when I visited Belgium a couple of years ago for the centenary I brought him back some Belgian comics on the conflict. Now we’re watching the excellent Channel Four series The First World War. I’m also vocally hoping he’ll read my Trench Raiders series, so far with no luck! I’ve been pushing this particular era of history because we live in Madrid. Since Spain wisely stayed out of the war, I don’t think the Spanish educational system will teach him as much about WWI as I think he should know.

So why not add a little extra knowledge through wargaming? He’s been expressing an interest in it lately since his favorite comics shop has some wargaming tables, so I invested in issue #280 of Strategy & Tactics, a classic wargaming magazine that’s older than I am. This issue comes with the game Soldiers 1918: Decision in the Trenches, which one BoardGameGeek labeled as “medium light” in difficulty.

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Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

FROG GOD GAMES

Last November, I did a post on the history of Necromancer Games. I wrapped up with, “And there, our saga of Necromancer Games draws to a close. But our story has most certainly not come to an end.” That’s because Slumbering Tsar would rise from the ashes and a new RPG company would be built on its foundations. Welcome to Part Two: Of Necromancers & Frog Gods.

Waking the Tsar

FGG_DesolationShortly after Necromancer hung it up, co-founder Bill Webb established Frog God Games just to publish Greg Vaughan’s The Slumbering Tsar as a fourteen-part subscription saga, to be issued as one massive book at the end of the project.

Starting at 7th level, Tsar is divided into three books. If you want to start from 1st level, I suggest using The Wizard’s Amulet and/or The Crucible of Freya, then part of Tomb of Abysthor as a 1st through 6th level lead-in. The Lost City of Barakus is another excellent option, though not as thematically linked. Though it wouldn’t take much to give the villainous Devron a tie-in to Tsar.

Book one, The Desolation, is three installments (parts) dealing with a small settlement in the barren plains. It totals about 125 pages and gives the party a staging area for adventuring towards Tsar. Think of a Necromancer version of The Village of Hommlet – but way nastier. The story of The Army of Light at the very end of part one is worth it alone for me.

Part two includes the Ashen Waste: with such highlights as The Tomb of the Sleeping Knight (not a lot of sleeping going on here) and the burial mound of the barbarian warriors led by Tark. The Chaos Rift, featuring The Sepulcher of the Last Justicar, is even more deadly.

Part Three gets the party to the walls of Tsar, though it might well perish in The Boiling Land or The Dead Fields first. And a sticky situation waits outside the walls…

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Is There Such a Thing as an RTS Board Game? Rivet Wars: Eastern Front Thinks So

Is There Such a Thing as an RTS Board Game? Rivet Wars: Eastern Front Thinks So

Rivet Wars-small

Last month I bought a copy of Rivet Wars, one of the most popular light war games on the market. It was designed by veteran computer game designer Ted Terranova (Rise of Nations), who worked hard to give the game the feel of a computer RTS (real time strategy) game…. and, going by the reviews, he largely succeeded. Here’s the description.

Rivet Wars is a miniatures boardgame that springs forth from the warped imagination of Ted Terranova – set on a world that never quite left World War I but with crazy technology like walking tanks, diesel powered armor, unicycled vehicles and armor plated cavalry! Don’t let the cute visuals fool you; it’s a world full of angst, war-torn camaraderie and dark humor. Rivet Wars is at its heart a strategy game, with both players deploying units each round to counter the threats set forth by their opponent and stay one tactical step ahead. Heavily influenced by Ted’s experience working on RTS games like Rise of Nations, players gather resources (bunkers and capture points) and use these to deploy streams of new units! There’s an ebb and flow on the tactical landscape and you can stock up surprises for your opponent to be unleashed even as he thinks he’s winning!

And here’s a peek at the back of the box.

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John DeNardo: In Defense of Media Tie-Ins (Part 1)

John DeNardo: In Defense of Media Tie-Ins (Part 1)

Dan Abnett Eisenhorn-smallJohn DeNardo has closed up shop at his Hugo Award-winning blog SF Signal, but he continues to write about SF and fantasy in his regular column at Kirkus Reviews. One of his best recent articles — indeed, one of the most enjoyable blog posts I’ve read in a long time — was his passionate and articulate defense of Media Tie-ins, published on June 15.

As much as I bemoan the poor public of image of science fiction by mainstream readers, there’s an even worse injustice going on. Some people in those very same slighted genre circles are often quick to dismiss a certain type of book: media tie-ins. These are the books that are based on a story most often found in another media (like film, television, and games) but could be sourced from other literary properties as well. These are the Star WarsStar Trek, and Dungeons and Dragons prose novels that the bookstores like to relegate to the end of the science fiction and fantasy bookshelf section. They are positioned like an appendix in a non-fiction book “in case you’re interested in more reading.” You know, if you’ve run out of other things to read…

So, yes, media tie-ins are worth your time. I’ll even back that up: one of the best set of books I’ve ever read — in any genre — was the Eisenhorn trilogy by Dan Abnett. The books are set in the richly-imagined Warhammer 40K universe, which is based on the popular role playing game. (Even WH40K itself is an offshoot of the fantasy RPG Warhammer, for which there are even more prose novels.)  Abnett is a one of the most skilled master storytellers you’ve never heard of.  This is the series that I point to when anyone is quick to dismiss tie-in fiction. The fact that it is set in the Warhammer 40K universe is incidental, though if you are familiar with the games, that would be an added bonus when you read them. I don’t play the game, but that didn’t stop me from losing sleep because I couldn’t stop turning page after action-packed page, or cheering when a bad guy finally got his comeuppance.

Read John’s complete article here.

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