The run-up to GenCon

My biweekly game fell through this week, which probably for the best — I've got to pack for GenCon!

Typically I'll bring an assortment of notebooks, pencils, erasers and dice to carry around during the convention, just in case a game falls into place in a hurry (like lightning, games can strike anywhere at GenCon). I'm not currently signed up for any games, but I hope to do some last-minute registering and/or bump into some folks interested in playing.

As far as shopping, there are a few stops I make every year. First, I go to the dice vendor and buy a big mug full of random dice, which I then distribute over the course of the year to friends (mostly non-RPG players) as gifts to sucker them into gaming. (Disclosure: I also keep the occasional super-sweet dice for myself.)

I also make time to paw through the loose D&D miniatures, of course. It's almost always duplicates of the same dozen figures, and you have to shoulder aside sweaty dudes wearing 3 Wolves Shirts, but it's generally worth it to track down a few plumb figures for cheap.

This year I'm also planning to spend a lot of time browsing cool fantasy miniatures that could work for Song of Blades & Heroes. Since that game lets you use any combination of minis from different manufacturers, it's prompted me to look again at figures from Crocodile Games, Privateer Press, Reaper, Wargames Factory and others.

Fully Painted: Mantic Elves, freebies from GenCon

I've been painting a lot of miniatures in recent weeks (byproduct of getting married in September? You be the judge...), so I'm starting "Fully Painted," an occasional series on RPG Diehard, to show off some of my finished products.

Up first is a pair of elves I picked up as freebies from GenCon this year. They were from Mantic Games, a new game company dedicated to producing inexpensive plastic fantasy figures for use with "mass battle" wargames like Warhammer Fantasy and Arcane Legions. They hadn't yet launched at GenCon, so they were giving out a free sprue of these elves to generate excitement for their pending release.

These elves are sculpted like the traditional "high elves" with their imperious demeanor and helmet crests and master-crafted armor and whatnot, but for some reason I decided to paint them up more like the "wood elves" of Tolkien lore. So I did both figures in slightly different shades of green, along with a little detail work–not much, though, because I plan to play with these figs, not put them on a shelf. As such they'll get knocked around a little bit. Better not to spend much time on them, especially if I'll be re-gluing arms in a month or two.

The good part is that my Savage Worlds fantasy sandbox campaign has several elf and half-elf characters, so these guys will no doubt hit the table sooner rather than later.

GenCon photo highlights..finally

Yes, I know GenCon was more than a month ago. But I'm just now posting a few choice photos from the games I enjoyed last month. Gimme a break!

First up is a pic of Frank Mentzer DMing a session of Tower of Gygax. It really was a treat to watch him rock the party's world. I think the pic is big enough for you to zoom in and see the whiteboard o' death behind him. I didn't actually get to play with Frank, but I watched for the better part of an hour and then jumped in when a new DM took over.


Here's a shot of the GM Jam featuring (from left) Josh from Stupid Ranger, Zach from RPGBlog2, Jeff from Bonescroll, Mike/Chgowiz from the Old Guy RPG Blog and Tony Law of RPGCentric. Since I'm a player in Mike's sandbox fantasy campaign, I did my part by shouting questions designed to extol Mike's virtues and tout my own capabilities as a player.


I also played in Zach's Microlite74 game "Smash and Grab at the Kobold Caverns." The title was very accurate—the session was only two hours, compared to the normal four hours for a GenCon RPG event, and the players were literally competing to score the most loot and win the very real prize that Zach had hidden in his backpack. Toward the end of the session, as the characters began fleeing back to town with their treasure, my character drank a potion of strength, heaved open a huge door and grabbed a single gem that proved to be more valuable than anything else retrieved by the players. Thus I won the prize—a custom set of Call of Cthulhu dice! Thanks Zach—nice ears, buddy!


My first night at GenCon I arrived too late to pick up my badge. So I wandered over to a nearby hotel and watched as Luke Crane GMed a session of Burning Empires. I've played Burning Wheel and read Burning Empires, so it was a real treat to watch a game run by someone who knew the system and setting so intimately.


And that's it! Look for more horribly outdated posts here in the future.

Need an extra player at GenCon?

My GenCon plans have changed a little bit: my friend with whom I was going to be traveling had to bail, so I will be heading to GenCon on my own. So, I'm interested in dropping in on some games! Either official con events or hotel lobby affairs, doesn't matter to me. Send me a direct message through Twitter or post here and we can talk.

Photos from Gencon 2008

I forgot my actual camera, but it turns out that my new Sony Ericsson camera phone takes halfway decent photos. Here are a handful of scenes from Gencon 2008.














This was nifty -- Mayfair and Days of Wonder (and a few other companies I may have missed?) had set up a board game room where you could "check out" a game and play it on a nearby table, then return it and try a new one.














Here's the game room itself. Through the doors on the far wall was a much larger room, about the size of a gymnasium, with lots of game space.














Every table in this room was a different D&D game.














Scanthan and Ben on Saturday night playing Cuylas. A few minutes later we wrapped up our game and these two gents embarked on a night of hijinx in Indianapolis. They dropped in on the steampunk-themed Gencon dance and tried (unsuccessfully) to crash the uber-pretentious White Wolf party.














Tower of Gygax! The DM handed out two copies of each character, then proceeded to run a rotating cast of characters through a super old-school dungeon named for the iconic father of D&D. We used the first edition rules, and it was a blast. My gnome illusionist died after he looted the wrong body and a cascade of molten gold washed over him.

Gencon shout-out

Props to my friends Tom and Garrett, who started playing a D&D 4e game on Thursday at Gencon and didn't stop until Saturday evening. They logged something like 55 hours between the two of them. I could never -- indeed, would never want to -- do that, but at some point the sheer endurance of these two geeks becomes admirable. Now that they've proven they can take a brand-new character through level 4 in a long weekend, there are just a few accomplishments left unconquered for them. Climbing Everest is one. Piloting the Space Shuttle is another.

Bound for GenCon

Apparently there’s a bit of liveblogging going on from GenCon. Will I do this? Not if it means missing out on cool demos or shopping or meeting designers. So, most likely no.

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Big news has already trickled out about one of my favorite game companies. Fantasy Flight Games, which secured the license to publish material for Warhammer 40k Roleplay and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay earlier this year, announced the first substantive release for the 40k RPG product line: Rogue Trader, set to debut at GenCon 2009.

Like Dark Heresy, which digs into the furtive schemings of the Imperial Inquisition, Rogue Trader promises to be an in-depth look at another fan-favorite part of the 40k universe: the raffish captains who pilot ancient starships deep into unexplored space. These rogue traders, as they’re known in the game’s lore, operate at the very fringes of civilization, often encountering never-before-seen cultures and creatures. If Dark Heresy was the 40k conspiracy game, Rogue Trader promises to be the 40k exploration game (though as always, count on a hefty dose of gothic, Cthulhu-inspired horror).

From a purely nostalgic point of view, Rogue Trader is the spiritual successor to 1987's Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, the seminal work that laid the groundwork for the rich, detail-drenched 40k universe we know today.

I’m hoping to chat up the FFG developers either today or tomorrow about their plans for the 40k RPG line.

From the shadows of a Cold City, a Hot War

Cold City is a lean, keen game about monster hunting in the ruins of postwar Berlin. The players are American, German and Russian agents motivated as much by their mutual distrust of each other than by the actual task at hand. It’s a fun premise, and the game system itself includes a robust trust mechanic to model those complex interpersonal relationships.

To me, Cold City seemed like a great one-off game, something that couldn’t really support campaign play. And although that hypothesis is still untested (I own the game but haven’t yet played it) the mythos got a little richer this summer with the release of Hot War.

Billed as the spiritual sequel to Cold City, Hot War imagines London 1960s as a tense, apocalyptic powderkeg of a city, strewn with scheming politicians, twisted science, demonic creatures and a healthy dose of paranoia. The review is on RPG.net; I don’t know much more, but I’m thoroughly interested in trying out this game.