Gen Con 2012 - Day 4

Day 4 - Con of the Living Dead

By Sunday of Gen Con, the previous days have taken their toll on most attendees and exhibitors. Long days, little sleep, lots of walking, sensory overload, maybe a few pints at the Ram or another watering hole, it all adds up. Day 4 isn't a costume day for me. But after a breakfast accompanied by caffeine and Advil, I was ready for the last day of Gen Con 2012.

The only event I had planned was a two hour seminar from WotC about designing themes for D&DNext - which by Sunday had changed as themes had been replaced by specialties in the latest playtest document. It was interesting despite the one person in the crowd that kept going off on tangents and talking and talking... some mean-spirited tweets came to mind, but I resisted.

The seminar itself was interesting, if a little short, but not ground-breaking. I guess I was hoping for a little more crunch under the hood.

After the seminar it was back to the X hall for a final pass and to say good-bye to folks. I didn't really have an agenda to buy anything, I just like to be immersed in the con until the last minute and don't leave until the closing announcement.

Afterwards I made my way to Scotty's for dinner while watching Return of the King, collecting a couple of their dice for the current year, then finally admitting Gen Con was over a heading home to sleep 11 hours.

Only 355 days until Gen Con 2013!

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Gen Con 2012 - Day 3

Gen Con Saturday is the biggest day. I opted for a hotel room again this year, as then I didn't have to worry if the festivities went on late or if I had a few beers. Plus it made a mid-day costume change so much easier.

The plan for the first part of the day was to meet up with Nicole, her friend Amy, her daughter and nephew to go around in Star Wars costumes. Nicole's daughter had chosen a Star Wars theme, so I had hastily assembled a Obi-Wanish costume.

(this pic was snapped before Amy joined us in her X-Wing pilot costume)

We learned the more cosplayers you put together in a similar theme, the more picture requests. When I was by myself, I was asked maybe twice for a picture... Jedi are a dime a dozen. Later on Amy and I were in the X Hall and we had our pictures taken a few times. When I found Nicole and the kids, they were already posing. When you put the bunch of us together, we'd get a request every couple of minutes and once we stopped and posed, more people would pop up with cameras. The kids loved it and everyone polite.

That afternoon, we had our True Dungeon run. For Nicole, Weasel and I, it was our first time. As such, we were unprepared for the hurried nature of mustering our party of ten, nor of the fact that clues were salted in the mustering area.

We proceeded through the dungeon with mixed results. Like a tabletop game, you had people whining for healing right away, which was risky to our resources since every time we failed a puzzle we took damage. There was a lot of noise which made audio clues hard to discern. There was a GM in each room and they ranged from really good to bad.

Given the price of $38 a head (plus more if you bought tokens - I didn't), I was underwhelmed.

After a late lunch/early dinner, I checked into my hotel and changed costumes for our Brass & Steel Steampunk LARP. Jason and I had coordinated on choosing our characters, making things easier. He also brought a sword cane walking stick that fit in with my character quite nicely. Plus half the fun of Steampunk is the costuming.

(actual pic fro @knharter - it turned out much better than mine)

The LARP was a real good time, we all plan to play it again next year. I'm looking forward to the pictures from it (they had a photographer going around taking pictures as well as taking us out to pose for individual pictures). Not only was the game well organized but the players were great and the game masters were sincerely interested in feedback.

After the LARP we went over to Union Station to check out the Masquerade and have a couple of drinks before going in search of watering holes. The lines were horrible. Even at the House bar downstairs (more and more folks are discovering it). Plus the bar upstairs took cash only. Someone tell them that it's the 21st century.

With the MotoGP in town and downtown Indy clogged with bikers (a big fail on whoever in Indy thought that was a good idea), I was pretty dubious as to whether we'd have any luck at clubs we had hit previous years. We happened across enough seats at bar in the Ram and ended finishing the night there.

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Gen Con 2012 - Day 2

Costume for the day - my ren faire outfit.

I got my first picture request shortly after entering the hall. I don't get a lot of them in this outfit, but a few, and it fuels my ego. The only planned event on the agenda is a Pathfinder game later that night.

I returned to the X Hall and visited Randy Milholland of Something Positive a dark humor nerd-centric comic. He gave me a free sketch and I purchased a couple of pieces of his original artwork from the comic. I mentioned how a couple of terms from his comic had made their way into my gaming group's parlance and asked about his dismembering Wil Wheaton in his comic.

As a side note, it looks like Randy had a good time at Gen Con.

I met up with Nicole and as we walked the hall we swung by the autograph area. Nicole is not only a fan of Wil Wheaton, but also his wife. The line looked short, so I suggested we jump in line to get autographs. I'm not a big fan of the whole pay for an autograph thing, but Wil stays involved in the geek community so I thought of it as a way to show appreciation and encourage him and his fellow geek-celebs to come to Gen Con.

There were tables for Wheaton, Nichelle Nichols and Wes Bentley ( the ringmaster with the funny beard in Hunger Games). The line was only 15-20 people long, so I figured divided among three tables it would be super quick. Then an employee came along the line.

"Are you here for Nichelle or Wes?" "Are you here for Nichelle or Wes?" "Anyone here for Nichelle or Wes?"

When they received a response, that person was able to go right up because everyone else was there for Wil Wheaton (probably because he is better known in gaming circles). Nicole and I got to the front and went up to pick out the picture for him to autograph. I pointed out that both Nicole and and Wil were homebrewers, which got a conversation going (and led to our first reminder they had to keep the line moving). He struck me as the kind of guy that would be fun to hang out with and drink some good beer while playing a game. He seemed tickled that Nicole was also a big fan of his wife and suggested a website. I think that was when we got our second reminder.

An employee used our phones to snap pictures. Then we started another conversation that got us are final reminder there were other people waiting.

My friend @foxyfolklorist told me that her troupe, Different Drummer Belly Dancers (@ddbd)was performing in the Klingon Opera Ballet. I decided it might be fun (come on, belly dancers with bat'lehs are worth serious geek points). I enjoyed it, especially hearing a Klingon rendition of Bear McCreary's arrangement of Along The Watch Tower. Klingons singing the Ewok song from the end of Return of the Jedi was rather surreal.

The Pathfinder game was Sabrina and the Seven Dwarves. The evil demon behind Starbux had stolen all of the coffee, putting clan matron Grumpy out of business, so we were setting off to reclaim the magic of coffee. In retrospect, we should have started with someone playing the fighter or the barbarian. I began play with Dopey, a dwarven druid pothead. As Peter Jackson has established that dwarves have Scottish brogues, I affected a stoner Scots brogue as I hammed things up, much to the amusement of the GM. Sadly, Dopey died fighting the espresso-machine dragon, so I re-entered play with Bash the barbarian, a dwarf raised by hilljacks. So now I had a redneck Scots brogue.

Bash also finished off the demon, after felling several caffeine fiends then getting stuck by a Hold Person spell.

I went home to rest up for the big day, Saturday.

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Gen Con 2012 - Day 1

Thursday, the official start of Gen Con, is usually dominated by the opening of the Exhibit Hall. After being delayed in an unsuccessful search for my Captain Hammer t-shirt (I settled for my Evil League of Evil t-shirt and found my Captain Hammer shirt on the top of my laundry pile Monday) and stopping to get breakfast, I made my way to the ICC just shortly after the X Hall opened. While there is a certain excitement in the opening moments, I'd rather avoid the huge mob. Even with my delaying tactic there was a large crowd as people sought to get limited supplies of certain games or items being releashed by game companies at the con. A few times I wondered if I was in a traffic jam or a line (one time was a line for something Privateer Press was selling - whatever it was I had better things to do with tow to three hours).

I made sure to stop at the booths of people I knew. One of these was Gorilla Games, who produced World Conquerors (which we played the night before with the designer Jeff Siadek. Another was in the authors' alley, RudderHaven. The X Hall is too much to be taken in during one pass. Even on Sunday I was eeing things I had somehow missed the previous days. There were all of the usual companies, including the traditional trying to unload cheap gaming book companies (one started at $5 a book on Thursday and dropped to $1 by Sunday), as well as a plethora of dice vendors.

I made sure to get a feel for the dice in case @knharter wanted any. Look at all those 20s, how could they not be lucky? I also helped @knharter introduce a co-worker and fellow geek to Gen Con for the first time, plus there was some obligatory costume shopping. Thursday night, I was signed up for the Zombie Carnivale with my friend Weasel. It was billed as a casino-like event, so we were looking forward to few hours of lively mingling and zombie-themed games.

I think it was to shill zombie games by a publisher, but it didn't do a good job of that and the prizes were pretty lackluster (consisting of said games). About halfway through the event we bailed, giving our remaining zombie currency to a random player.

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Gen Con 2012 - Day 0

Trying to live blog Gen Con would be an exercise in futility, so each year I try to recap my experiences shortly after the con. As is traditional, the focus on Wednesday is the Stink then N-Con. The Stink started as a get together that started as a meet-up for people on the Gen Con Forums and has since ballooned into 400 ticket event that helps kick off the convention.

Once again we were in the Union Station Grand Hall. For some reason Gen Con also stuck a boffer fighting event in the room, but it didn't to turn out to be as much trouble as I feared. I arrived a few hours early to scout things out which gave me an excuse to roam the ICC (Indy Convention Center) and take in the early Gen Con atmosphere. Unfortunately a glitch this year meant our swag solicitation to exhibitors went out way too late, so I didn't have an excuse to get into the Exhibit Hall early. After collecting the swag that Gen Con itself provided, I headed back to Union Station for set-up. I was concerned that we were light on swag, but the gaming groups that had tables at the Stink also brought swag. The Stink went smoothly, with my only concern being the huge line that started at the t-shirt table I manned and went on past the various gamer group tables. Gamers at Gen Con instinctively form lines. We'll have to brainstorm about our room layout for next year to see if there is a practical way to solve it. In years past, Starwind Design had provided bags for the first 100 attendees. This year, they donated t-shirts but we had a different mechanic to give them away. The first 100 people and the winners of various games and prizes received special tokens. Towards the end, we called the token holders up to receive their t-shirts, thus rewarding people that didn't dash in, grab swag and split. After returning the Nordic Distance Dice to the Convention HQ, I headed to N-Con, a night-before-GenCon get together hosted by my friend @knharter. She usually has a few game designers staying with her for the convention, so we get to try and play games with the folks that created them.

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Hacking Cortex Plus for Star Trek

Hacking Marvel Cortex (the Marvel Heroic RPG by Margaret Weis Productions) for use in a Star Trek campaign turned out to be pretty easy. The core mechanic of Marvel Cortex is the dice pool, where dice are derived from different sources such as Powers, Expertise (Skill), Affiliation and so forth. The question was how to make the dice sources appropriate for a Trek campaign?


I kept Distinctions as is. These make great descriptors and role-paying hooks - Klingon Wannabe, HotShot Helmsman, A Girl On Every World, all great ways to help define characters, giving them niches and possible complications.

I replaced Affiliation with Rank. Ensign and down d4, Lieutenant (including JG) d6, Commander (including lieutenant) d8 and so on.

Expertise remained the realm of skills. I included a catch-all Starfleet Training d6 to reflect the broad training characters seem to have in Star Trek. Then I set 3 levels d8 Specialist, d10 Expert and d12 Master. Like in Marvel, the expertise areas were somewhat broad, including Marksman, Hand-to-Hand, Tactical (ship combat), Helm, Engineering, Covert and so on.

I replaced Powers with Traits. These included Exceptional Attributes such as Strength or Intellect at d10, special abilities such as Leadership or Born To Fly, and 1 limitation for each character.

Finally, I have Equipment. It could be a Tricorder d8, a Phaser d8 or other appropriate gear.

Once the characters were put together, I tinkered with the Doom Pool, changing the name to the Complication Pool. Ones on the GM dice remained Opportunities. Instead of using pushes and stunts, players paid 1 plot point to add the Opportunity Die to their pool for their next action or reaction. Whenever a player rolled a 1, I paid them a plot point and added that die to the Complication Pool.

Instead of rolling the whole pool, the GM dice are referred to as the Opposition Dice. There are 2 static dice, 2d6, and the GM can spend dice from the Complication Pool to add to these. If the players are up against active opponents, their foes' appropriate dice are added, such as Klingon Warrior d10 or Hungry Targ d8. If they are up against a named opponent, that foe will have a dice pool in the same manner as the players, which is used in lieu of the static dice (but Complication Dice can still be added in).

I also ran a quick-and-dirty ship battle, assigning dice values to ship gear such as weapons and shields, and giving ships Shield, System and Hull Stress and Trauma.

A big part of the action was players creating Advantages to set themselves and each other up. Covering Fire, Taking Cover and On Their Six (in the ship fight) were examples of advantages they would set up. Overall it worked well, well enough that I'll have to come up with an advancement system. As much as I think Milestones are clever, they are a pain in the butt to come up with and use. Plus I'm not a big fan of players having their characters do something just for the xp as opposed to it being in character or missing out on xp because they decided to help their crew rather than follow an xp agenda.

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Marvel Heroic Roleplaying - First Thoughts

First a caveat. This is a preliminary review as while I’ve read the rules, I haven’t had a chance to actually play the game. Actual gameplay will likely differ to some degree to my expectations, so I am trying to base my thoughts on what I can infer from a reading.

MHRG is a Cortex Plus game, meaning it uses a variant of the Cortex System, first seen in the Serenity RPG, then later in games such as Leverage and Smallville. Like the various Cortex Plus games the system was designed to work specifically with this genre. In Cortex, various characters scores are represented by dice, such as a d8 or d10. Unlike many traditional RPGs, MHRG doesn’t break down characters into stats like Strength of Dexterity. It takes a very high-level view, one that some gamers will probably hate.


The core mechanic of MHRG is the dice pool. Unlike Serenity, where you take a die for stat and a die for a skill, maybe throw in a die for an asset (a special advantage) and roll them for the result, in MHRG you add dice to your pool from several different sources and roll them. The downside of this is that I foresee players needing more dice, especially with the way the roll is read. If a group plays around the table and don’t mind using each other’s dice it would make things easier. And because of the Doom Pool (the GM’s dice pool which ebbs and grows), the GM will likely need a few more sets of dice.

The dice mechanic will probably have a slightly higher learning curve, as part of it is counter-intuitive (one of the results is determined by the die type, not what is actually rolled on the die). Plot points and Doom Dice will have a steeper learning curve, as it may take a while for GMs and players alike to learn all the ins and outs.

Characters are painted in broad strokes. This means there is little variation in certain aspects of characters. For example, the skill system (called Expertise) has just two tiers of skill, Expert (d8) and Master (d10). This is probably to let a character such as Daredevil play in the same game as Thor. It still strikes me a too little variation and will be one of the first things I’ll house rule, adding d6 and d12 tiers.

There is no character generation system. There are some guidelines for modeling characters from the Marvel universe, but the expectation is that you’ll play actual Marvel characters. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest shortcomings of the game. The advancement system is pretty sparse as well, as XP seems more for building power-ups than improving your character. To play devil’s advocate, many Marvel characters change very little, but it is rewarding for a player to see their character grow and improve.

I’ll probably have more thoughts after actually giving it go, assuming I can talk the players into trying a one-off session.

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DDXP and DnD Next

So I am finally expanding on my thoughts in regards to the D&D Experience (DDXP) and the new edition of D&D in the works, also known to almost everyone except WotC as 5E, to WotC as D&D Next (DDN). My guess is that WotC is avoiding the term 5E or 5th Edition to try to avoid the stigma of the edition wars. I can't say as I blame them, as long as they don't pretend that the fallout in the D&D community is one of the big reasons they have to dump 4E.

There has already been a lot of info in the gaming blogosphere about DDN and the info from DDXP. Like everyone else, I signed a NDA, so I won't be disclosing any crunch that wasn't talked about in the seminars, which were NDA free.


First of all, my impression from the playtest was very favorable. It felt a lot more like playing old-fashioned D&D as opposed to spending 3 hours trying to get through a tabletop approximation of a couple of WoW instances. We were able to get through several fights and our characters were in genuine peril. As a player, I would enjoy playing this system. As a GM, I could run it.

Any of my players reading this are thinking "sure, you could run it after you tamper with it, like every other game you run." That's one of the things that interests me about DDN, the intended modular rule design. It will be premade so that I can take rules systems I like and plug them into the framework. Yes, I'll probably make some modules of my own, especially since we don't know how many modules will be out at launch. My guess is enough to play the game, not they will hold some stuff back to make more books we'll want to buy.

One of the statements that caught my interest during the seminar was that they intended to include every class that has appeared in a Players Handbook, or the PHB1 in the case of 4E. That's a lot of classes. My first question was "do we need something like 20 classes?"

What really is the difference between wizards, sorcerors, warlocks and illusionists? Aren't warlords really just fighters with some leadership ability? Assassins are rogues that are more stabby and less thiefy. Barbarians are tough fighters (or rangers) with anger management issues. It seems like these could be handled with themes and class ability options.

I think the basic classes should be iconic. If you go to D&D players and say fighter, rogue, druid, wizard, they'll have a solid mental icon. Try sorceror, illusionist, and warlock and they'll probably look like the wizard. Say warlord and you'll get a blank look or a fighter. While I'm sure the designer are reluctant to let go of their 4E creations (and warlocks were actually my favorite class out of the 4E PHB1), the class list should be pared down.

I don't remember races being discussed, but my opinion is along the same lines. They should have the basic races and save the races created or added to the core rules in 4E (dragonborn, eladrin, and tiefling) for an advanced race option module.

I couple of other things in the seminar that I think hit the mark was their intended approach towards multi-classing and magic items. Multi-classing will probably work a lot like it did in 3rd edition, while magic items go back to being treasure and having some mystery to them as opposed to progression you can buy in a store.

So far I'm not in the playtest... and I guess even if I was it wouldn't matter as I couldn't talk about anything in it. But I'm keeping a hopeful mind regarding DDN and will buy the first round of books. Maybe WotC will turn me back into a game buyer as opposed to someone who peruses the internet looking for ingredients for his homebrew d20.

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