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GenCon 2017, Pt. 2: Science Fiction Edition

GenCon 2017, Pt. 2: Science Fiction Edition

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starfinderScience fiction themes were front and center at GenCon this year, in a way that surpasses what I have seen in previous years. Usually the science fiction games are almost entirely tied into existing property lines, like the various Star Wars miniature battle lines produced by Fantasy Flight Games. These were certainly present, but they were matched by new science fiction games that had an appeal independent of being tied to well-established and beloved properties.

I’ll dig into several of these games more deeply in future full reviews, but for now here are some high-level looks at some of the new science fiction-themed games and expansions from GenCon.

Starfinder

The release of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game was one of the central events of the convention, the science fiction/space fantasy game set in the distant future of Paizo’s Pathfinder universe. We’ve spoken about Starfinder previously (see here, here, and here). I’ve been enthusiastic about the prospect of this game since the day it was announced, so it’s a pleasure to see that its release was an astounding success. As Erik Mona of Paizo explained to me, the company had looked at their past records and brought more copies of the Starfinder Core Rulebook than the number of any previous book they’ve ever released at GenCon … and it sold out in less than 7 hours. (The PDF, however, is available through Paizo.com for only $9.99!)

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GenCon 2017, Pt. 1: Fantasy Deck-Building Games

GenCon 2017, Pt. 1: Fantasy Deck-Building Games

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Cardhalla at GenCon is a fundraiser. Over the four day event, donated cards are used to build elaborate towers and other structures. On Sunday, convention goers hurl coins at the structures to topple them ... and the collected funds are donated,
Cardhalla at GenCon is a fundraiser. Over the four day event, donated cards are used to build elaborate towers and other structures. On Sunday, convention goers hurl coins at the structures to topple them … and the collected funds are donated,

This is the 50th year of GenCon, “The Best Four Days in Gaming” convention, since its humble beginnings as a small convention of gamers in Lake Geneva. In what I believe is a first ever in Indianapolis, the convention is completely sold out, without offering any at-the-door purchase of badges. Fortunately, mine was waiting for me in the press room.

Over the years, GenCon has expanded to fill every available space in downtown Indianapolis. In addition to using the entire Indianapolis Convention Center, Lucas Oil Stadium (where the Indiana Pacers play baketball) now house the True Dungeon living dungeon crawl, the game library, and the Mayfair Games play areas, while tendrils of GenCon spread out into the ballrooms and meeting rooms of several hotels on adjacent blocks.

And with the rise of Kickstarter, there are more small, independent game companies than ever vying for attention, promoting not only their existing lines of products but also their upcoming Kickstarter campaigns. Trying to make sense of all of the different games is easiest if I try to tackle them by theme and play style, and one type of game that seemed prevalent on the first day of the convention were deck-building games with a fantasy theme.

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I’ll Slip by the Dragon and… CLANK!

I’ll Slip by the Dragon and… CLANK!

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Clank!-small

Clank! is a deck-building, dungeon-delving, push-your-luck board game designed by Paul Dennen at Dire Wolf Digital. It’s also the most fun “throw caution to the wind” board game I’ve played in a long time.

Players are thieves heading into a dungeon, challenged to see who can come back with the most loot. Bonus points if you walk out instead of getting carried, but you won’t be allowed to walk out unless you have an artifact. (And if you’re too deep in the dungeon when you tip over, the locals won’t carry you out.)

The players each start with identical decks of ten cards. A player shuffles their deck and draws five. These provide movement points to delve deeper and skill points to buy additional cards to add to their deck. There are also stumble cards that force them to add their cubes to the Clank! pile. At the end of a player’s turn, the cards they played and any newly acquired cards are discarded. Once they’ve played through all their cards, the discard pile is shuffled, and those new cards enter play.

Thus the players are building up their decks in the hopes that their draw of five cards will give them an increasing number skill points to buy better and better cards, and also to start bringing combat points and gold into their hand on a turn. (Yes, there are shops in the dungeon.)

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Playing Child Friendly OneDice Fantasy on the Edge of the World

Playing Child Friendly OneDice Fantasy on the Edge of the World

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255 OneDice Fantasy
Vaguely renaissance setting that recalls Warhammer Fantasy RPG

Isle of Harris, Scottish Hebrides.

Still bleeding from the last trap, the wounded warrior positions himself against the wall on the hinge side of the door, leans out and turns the handle.

SLAM!

The door swings open with surprising force and whacks him like a fly swat.

And outside the window, the dark clouds sweep in from the Atlantic. Rain rattles on the glass.

OneDice Fantasy
Nerd Outreach on the Isle of Harris

Yes, we’re playing OneDice Fantasy on the Isle of Harris, practically the  edge of the world. Step out the door and swim the wrong direction and the next stop is the USA. (Go take a look at where we stayed.)

Around the table are my wife and both kids — 13 and 8 –, plus the drummer from my old rock and roll band, his wife — a novice player — and their two kids, 11 and 8.  It’s their son’s Fighter who just took several points of damage from an old school dungeon. His little sister, meanwhile, is having fun being an elf.

It’s more adults than I’ve ever GM’d at one go, and actually more people. However, the rules are easy to run so I’m surviving.

Skeletal ferryman aside, it’s not quite Nerd Outreach Beyond the Styx. Our hosts were already keen players of co-op games like Forbidden Island and Warhammer figures have already invaded the table in the lounge.  That’s why I brought a selection of OneDice books with me on holiday… that and the chance to actually read them in depth.

The OneDice engine is like Fate, but more simulationist and using only  1D6…

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Microsoft Xbox One vs PS4 Pro

Microsoft Xbox One vs PS4 Pro

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m-xboxonexps4pro

“War, war never changes.” It’s a quote that opens the Fallout series of video games, and is often used to describe the video game console business.

The console wars, it’s been called. Since the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, many different companies have entered this war. Each competing for games enthusiasts time and money. Each promising to be the absolute best console to experience the joy of playing, and to increase player immersion in the game.

At this year’s E3 video game conference, Microsoft unveiled its newest video game console in its war with Sony. It’s a mid-cycle update to the Xbox One called the Xbox One X, positioned to compete with Sony’s mid-cycle update to its PS4, the PS4 Pro.

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The Traveller Central Supply Catalogue Page by Page: New Rules and Armour

The Traveller Central Supply Catalogue Page by Page: New Rules and Armour

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csc-coverTraveller Rule 0 is, roughly, “The Referee Can Make S…tuff Up.”

Even so, in the case of equipment, it’s handy if somebody else has worked out the details, and if the stuff doesn’t just break the universe.

Edgar Rice Burroughs could put in Radium Rifles — fantastically accurate at fantastic distances — and then ignore the logic of their existence and write a Sword and Planet romp. However, if RPG players find a loophole, they will “exploit” it; and in a simulationist game such as Traveller, that’s what they’re supposed to do anyway. You can’t tell players, “be creative in your problem solving, but not in this or that area”.

This has to be especially true for rumbustious teenagers… which takes me to my son’s gaming group, for whom I’m planning to referee later in the summer. They’re not really interested in narrative or genre conventions, or even schooled in them. (Some of them — shock! — haven’t watched Firefly yet.) So they’re bound to break what’s breakable.

With this in mind, I asked Mongoose to send me a review copy of the Traveller Central Supply Catalogue.

It’s a 150 page hardback, with nice authoritative binding. There’s an index at the back (hurrah!), nice illustrations throughout, and a lots of equipment with supporting rules.

The expanded equipment lists also include items from the Core Rulebook, making it self-contained enough to just hand the thing over to players when they want to go shopping. The “players’ reference” angle more than justifies the use of paper real estate for amusing adverts and flavour images: the book is the game’s user end.

I have a few quibbles.

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Gaming Summer Camp

Gaming Summer Camp

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Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook Fifth EditionMostly, those of us who are passionate about roleplaying games fell into the hobby in a fairly informal way. But as the hobby becomes more widespread, there have also become more formal ways of being introduced to the games. Conventions often have panels or gaming tracks that are specifically designed for introducing new gamers to either gaming in general or to a specific game system. I’ve even heard of college courses that include elements from roleplaying games as part of the curriculum.

An old high school friend of mine is doing his part, running a summer camp centered around Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition in Durham, NC. Unfortunately, he’s already completed the first of three weeks of the camp, but there are two remaining, so still plenty of time to get your kids involved if you live in the area. It runs from 11:00 am to 3:30 pm at the Dimensions Family School, with more information and registration available here.

In speaking with my friend, Brock, about what he had planned. He’s taught courses on Dungeons & Dragons at Dimensions Family Camp for 3 quarters now:

Each quarter I try something different. The first quarter was a multi-generational epic, where they played the same heroes, re-incarnated over and over, battling the same world-ending villain from the creation of the world until the climactic apocalype-averting battle at the end of class. The 2nd quarter was a world-hopping romp through the D&D settings, where they met all the most iconic heroes and villains from D&D history. The 3rd quarter was a “bottle episode”, where they spent almost the entire quarter in the same dungeon, over a period of only a few days, with a high body count and many tough ethical choices, rounded out with a grand finale involving the Deck of Many Things and the Tarrasque.

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Delivering on the Promise of a True Open World: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Delivering on the Promise of a True Open World: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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The Legend of Zelda Breath Of The Wild-banner-small

The Legend of Zelda series is one of the most iconic video game series of all time. Nintendo has continually released new iterations since the launch of the original in 1986. Each new release brings with it new concepts, new art, new and interesting twists on game mechanics. Every release stands on its own; each feels like a completely new and different game.

The newest iteration of The Legend of Zelda series is subtitled Breath of the Wild. The game is commercially available on the Wii U and Switch. It opens with a familiar Legend of Zelda story: A great evil has taken over the world of Hyrule and you, Link, the legendary hero, have been resurrected to fight it. This fight however, isn’t yours alone, as you will meet many different characters who will offer assistance in battle against the great evil, Ganon.

The game begins with Link awakening in the Shrine of Resurrection, bereft of his previous memories. You have spent the previous 100 years in the Shrine of Resurrection. You are given a Sheikah Slate and clothes. Once you leave the shrine you are shown a large open world, filled with mountain peaks, rivers, fields, forests, and an imposing volcano. The camera pans over and shows you a crumbling temple, with a mysterious and mystical figure, waiting for you.

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Game Informer 290, June 2017: The Top 100 RPGs of All Time

Game Informer 290, June 2017: The Top 100 RPGs of All Time

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Game Informer 290 June 2017-small

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon here in St. Charles, and I spent much of it on the porch, listening to the rain and reading the latest issue of Game Informer.

I’m told Game Informer is the top-selling video game magazine in the US, and that’s not a big surprise. It’s my favorite of the current crop as well. While I subscribe to other gaming periodicals (PC Gamer, The Official XBox Magazine), they’re each devoted to a single platform. I own several gaming systems, and I like to keep on all of them, and Game Informer delivers. The June issue has the usual assortment of highly readable articles, including multi-platform news, reviews, and previews, plus features on the best indie PC titles, the bankruptcy of accessory maker Mad Catz, Microssoft’s lagging First Party development, and a peek at their upcoming 4K console Scorpio.

But the big draw this issue is a massive 34-page feature on the Top 100 RPGs of All Time. Pieces like this are always controversial of course (where’s SSI’s Eye of the Beholder, or Dungeon Master? Or Oblivion?) But we don’t read these big survey articles to agree with them… or at least, I don’t. I read them for the surprises, to see what games I’ve overlooked, and which ones history has judged kindly. I’m pretty old-school in my RPG-love but, somewhat to my surprise, I found myself nodding along as I made my way through the list.

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Modular: Adventuring in Dangerous Terrain – Frog God Games’ Perilous Vistas

Modular: Adventuring in Dangerous Terrain – Frog God Games’ Perilous Vistas

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Fields_CoverBack in 3rd Edition D&D, there were five supplements that fell under the ‘Environmental Series’ category (I’d argue it should only be the first three, but I don’t make that decision):

  1. Sandstorm: Mastering the Perils of Fire & Sand (Bruce R. Cordell)
  2. Frostburn: Mastering the Perils of Ice & Snow (Wolfgang Baur)
  3. Stormwrack: Mastering the Perils of Wind and Wave (Richard Baker)
  4. Dungeonscape: An Essential Guide to Dungeon Adventuring (Jason Buhlman)
  5. Cityscape: A Guidebook to Urban Planning (Ari Marmell & C.A. Suleiman)

It’s not uncommon to hear one of those books cited as a favorite by players from that era. They gave Dungeon Masters lots of material to incorporate into their adventures. Necromancer Games (who you read about here, right?) added to the concept with Glades of Death (a wilderness book) and Dead Man’s Chest (sea adventuring).

The concept has been continued by Frog God Games (surely you read this post about them!) for Pathfinder, Swords & Wizardry and 5th Edition D&D under the moniker, Perilous Vistas. Along with an updated Dead Man’s Chest, there have been four releases so far, all written by Tom Knauss:

Dunes of Desolation (Deserts)
Fields of Blood (Plains)
Marshes of Malice (Wetlands)
Mountains of Madness (Mountains)

The fifth installment, Icebound (Frozen Wastes), is in the works!

The general idea is that if the Dungeon Master wants to infuse some atmosphere and environment into the adventure, these supplements provide a myriad of options. Sure, they can just have the party get to the abandoned fort in the desert, or have them uneventfully move through the mountains to the deserted abbey or the monster-infested dwarven hall. Some folks like to just get to the dungeon crawl and start hacking away. That’s fine.

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