It's okay, Andy! Some day we'll overcome diversity.
Thanks for the updates Andy, it's great to read your impressions from the floor!
You're the best!
Never made it to the booth again today and was only in the room briefly. The tables were mostly full. I offered rules advice to a group of people playing Fate of the Elder Gods who didn't have a volunteer with them. I feel _reasonably_ certain I was right.
Spirit Island sold out again, though I don't think it was as fast, as a friend of mine bought a copy around 11am
The live Letters Page podcast was fantastic. I'd expected to be bored, actually, but hadn't counted on the interactive nature of what they'd planned. I've seen other podcasts get recorded that completely ignored their audience, but most of this event involved taking questions from the audience. The BEST PART was that Christopher's brother was there to play the theme sound and transition music live, with Christopher and later Adam, too, on melodica. The audience sang along. It was truly great.
I didn't take notes and don't remember much of the responses, but I figure it will be in a podcast, so you don't really need me to report on it. One tidbit that stuck with me is that the OblivAeon enivoronment, Nexus of the Void, actually IS Spirit Island. Also mentiones was that Lazer Ryderz and the animated Sentinel Comics shows aired concurrently in the faux world that published Sentinel Comics.
My GenCon involved rather a lot of running around getting signatures on this present I plan to give. I've gotten all but two of the people who are actually present. One I plan to get tomorrow and the other is Peter Adkison, who owns GenCon. I've posted to Twitter and Facebook in the hope that someone will put it in front of him and he'll carve off a moment, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm a big fan of Kittens Slay Dragons (kittensslaydragons.com) and really enjoyed seeing them live.
Since this is GenCon 50, there's an exhibit of items from GenCon's past in Lucas Oil Stadium. It was really interesting to see artificats from the early days of gaming and game conventions, including original versions of Gettysburg and Civilization, as well as the first editions of D&D and my old favorite, Boot Hill.
The Gen Con through the years exhibit at Lucas Oil Stadium also had a working mid-80's Macintosh with games from the era installed. Seeing Might and Magic II, my first digital RPG, warmed my heart.
The overhead monitors at the stadium were cycling through pictures from the previous day's events, including things like the USAopoly demo booth and a picture of one of our own SOTM costumers (a Matriarch).
Two employees from a local sports talk radio station came by the Handelabra booth in the late afternoon. They were interested in Bot9 and already knew the physical version, so we set up a pass and play match for them to try out. They got into it quickly and had fun, hopefully they'll pass the word on to their compatriots at the station. (They did not identify themselves, but I noticed their employer listed on their badges and made sure they walked away with hats.)
We still get a surprising amount of "wait, there's a video game for Sentinels?" on that side of the booth. Most of the traffic has focused on Bot9, though. In addition to those who are already familiar with the physical Bot9 and those who know nothing about it, I've had several folks in Cardinals, Red Sox, and Blue Jays gear stop just because they saw baseball or heard the organ stings from the demo video.
I've had a rough time getting my impressions typed up, I'll try to get some more done later.
I'm curious to hear this explanation. They aren't supposed to be the same world as the idea behind Spirit Island is this occurs during colonial type eras. Then based on the Akash'Bhuta episode it wouldn't be possible since the Nexus was buried in the earth until the OblivAeon event.
Oh man, I totally cannot wait to hear the Gen Con Live podcast with Christopher's bro. Two more weeks! *cry* Was there a overarcing topic, or was it "whatever everyone felt like asking/talking about"?
I look forward to any notes you ever have, bolnerap, I know you've had some adventures.
I think I remember there being some commentary in the chat of a past Sentinels Live that the Nexus reminded people of Spirit Island, so interesting to see the comparison confirmed.
The Live Letters page was mostly people asking questions and then rounded out by some questions they'd received previously. I missed the first few minutes so maybe there was something else. Oh, also, guitar playing, and singing. Did I mention it was SUPER FUN. It was.
Final day is done. Spirit Island continued to sell out the limited quantities available. Paul mentioned that both Lazer Ryders and Fate of the Elder Gods are selling at the upper level of the expected range and that Spirit Island is well above what they expected. I went to part of the freight and shipping panel that Jodie, Paul, and Matt gave. There were a couple dozen people in attendance. I was impressed. Would not have been too terribly surprised if there were only a handful. There was lots of interesting information about the nature and differences amongst parcel shipping and various levels of freight shipping -- LTL (less than truck), partial truck, full truck, and container, and the differences between private (i.e. fedex) and public (i.e. US Postal Service) costs/expectations. We got to hear horror stories of pallets ruined by forklifts and containers possibly being dropped to the ocean floor. It was good stuff -- much more than I'd imagined, frankly -- and came fast and furious.
I went by the booth and peeked in the side room a few times and they were always busy
The most surprising Sentinels thing that happened to me occurred just a couple minutes before GenCon ended. I was on my way out and happened to be walking past an area where I'd learned two different games from two different people yesterday and today. They were both their cleaning up, so I stopped to thank them both again. One of them asked me if I was Andy Arenson from the GtGs forums. Turns out his handle is awmiller (probably) and though he hasn't been around for a few years, back in the day he posted a Villain contest submission about Visionary becoming a Villain who was fighting to maintain the timeline. And the other one was _also_ a big fan of SotM. Earlier, I'd happened upon Paul on the show floor talking to a couple people at a cash register. I'd just assumed this was an informal chat with business colleagues. Nope. Turned out Paul had bought something and the person working their recognized him and started telling him how SotM was her favorite game.
My quest for signatures turned out victorious. I'd asked everyone who signed to peruse the list of people to help me locate them and they had universally commented about Peter Adkison (the owner of GenCon) that, sure, they knew him, but they had no idea where to find them. But mid day today I got the suggestion to ask at Event HQ. I'd discounted doing so earlier, but with nothing to lose I gave it a shot. Turned out Peter was on a panel right then and all I had to do was wait for it end and he was happy to sign. The panel itself turned out very cool. It was the various people over the years (from TSR and elsewhere) who had run GenCon talking about the history of the convention, including fun stories about (unnamed) celebrity guests and whatnot. It sounds like there basically is not another place in the US that they think they could run the convention as well as Indianapolis. The city and the space are actually able to accommodate many more people -- consider that the Superbowl accommodated 150,000 people in roughly the same space. The reason they capped attendance, then, is not the sure number of people who could be accommodated, but the problem of dealing with the vast majority of them trying to get into the dealer hall all at the same time. Peter floated the rough idea that if they had to tackle that problem they'd do it with carrots instead of sticks, but didn't elaborate.
I enjoyed demo'ing Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Card Game. It's a deck builder using two-sided cards and besides just the fact that I love Scott Pilgrim, I also found the mechanics to have a nice combination of interesting choices without a paralyzingly large decision space. Other games I could describe are Magic Maze and Ex Libris, if anyone's interested.
I didn't stay to help with tear down for various reasons, which I would feel bad about if I wasn't in so much back pain.
At 3pm I found myself at loose ends and decided just to walk through the exhibit hall one more time in the final hour. I ran into no less than five friends I hadn't yet seen at the convention, as well as a number of others, and got some of my favorite pictures.
congratulations on getting all the signatures!
Ex Libris has my curiosity up, especially because it's the phrase I write into copies of books before I loan them out. What are your general impressions?
Thanks for the posts Andy
I'll write up more later, but the highlights of my Gencon were:
1. Demoing Spirit Island and seeing people start to get the game and love it.
2. Demoing Lazer Ryders and seeing how much fun people have with it.
3. Playing Spirit Island with Paul, and Christopher coming by, telling him he needed to play someone other than Heart of the Wildfire.
4. Meeting up with Yoshi and Tosx from the BGG SOTM forums, and playing their games, and playtesting expansions and new content. Really cool to see those guys move from custom SOTM decks to having their name on their own games, and great to be able to participate in the crreative process with them again.
5. Pitching Richard Launius the Lazer Shark as an elder god idea, I think it went well.
6. Seeing They Might be Giants in concert in an arena. It was a bit surreal.
Ex Libris is a fairly standard worker placement game with the twist that the actions one's workers can take change every round, drawn from a random pile, and t he way one places cards is a relatively rare mechanic. There's a minor hidden role segment: Players get extra points for books of a particular color. The game has interesting choices along a couple of different axes – use existing cards or fish for better ones, place cards such as to maximize points based on shape or to retain flexibiilty for future cards, focus on points from the type of books shown on the cards or from where the cards can be placed into one's shelves.
Imagine Splendour (sort of) as a worker placement game
I had a fantastic time there. It was really great meeting some of the denizens here (again), including arenson9, grysqrl, Chaosmancer, BlueHairedMeerkat and his friend Steven, Codie and other members of the Adaptive Subroutines, and more.
The Letters Page recording was definitely one of my highlights. I went to a couple of other panels/podcasts, and they were good, but didn't have nearly the energy that was in that room. I hope it comes across in the audio feed.
Other highlights came from Spirit Island games. There was a super-epic game on the thematic map with grysqrl, Paul, BlueHairedMeerkat, and Steven against England. It was lots of fun. At some point Christopher came by and looked at all the white figures on the map and said "you guys are so screwed". But we pulled it off!
Another great game was with grysqrl, closing the convention, winning at the very last possible instant. Details here.
In general, it was great to see so many people enjoying the game.
Just waking up from my traditional post-Gen Con mini-coma. The convention was so excellent this year! It was great to see some familiar faces and meet lots of new ones.
I think I played about 15 games of Spirit Island, many of them teaching games but a handful of more challenging games that were exactly what I was looking for this year. The 5-player game and the final game dpt mentioned were both a ton of fun. I love how much buzz this game is getting - lots of people would come up and ask about it while we were playing and I saw a handful of other groups clearly figuring things out in the middle of their first game.
I was sorry to miss the Letters Page recording; it sounds like it was a lot of fun. I don't have Proletariat's talents, so I'm limited to being in one place at a time. Excited to listen to the pod when it's cast.
Anyway, it was great to see everyone. Safe travels for everyone still out and about. See you next time!
I really wish there was more time availalbe to do all the things… And I have no idea how Andy does everything he does and still have time to write about it!
I spent half the con running demos for Spirit Island, which seemed to go over really well. The rest of the time was mostly helping out a little at another booth (Collapsible Construction, run by friends staying with us for the con) and exploring the Exhibitor Hall. I also:
- Many and varied enjoyable conversations with friends.
- Played the upcoming Firefly Adventures. Unlike Gale Force Nine's other Firefly games, this actually felt like it was related to Firefly (and not just skinned). I enjoyed it and really liked how it felt! It's also coop, which helps significantly. :wink:
- Made it to the Letter Page recording. I haven't gotten to my camera, yet, but I'll post some pictures (including a panaramic shot of the room) as soon as I can.
- Watched some of a Sentinels RPG session. I really like the way it feels like the players are playing comic book characters! It's crunchier than our play group usually prefers, but I might try to get a small group together to do some games on the side. Pre-ordered the starter set, so I'll at least have a game I can test to see what folks think. (So I wouldn't recommend spoiling yourself on the starter set, Andy! :sunglasses: )
- Talked to someone who had played 1st Ed SotM with 2 heroes and had a horrible experience. Was able to show them my copy (yes, I carried a demo copy of SotM around the con :innocent: ) and explain how it should be played (i.e., 3-5 heroes) and convince them to buy a new version.
- Picked up some little things I was looking for, but not everything. (Some RPG props are apparently harder to find than others... :confused: )
- Checked in with vendors on a few products that I was waiting for and options to deal with the situations. (For example, I'm still waiting for my players to have web access to Ream Works data... :rage: )
- Enjoyable dinners catching up with a variety of folks.
- Got in some evening games with friends who were staying with us for the con, including Spirit Island, Clank, Hero Realms, and Epic Tiny Galaxies. Lots of fun!
It was a great con. 
One of my methods for doing more stuff is to not do them completely. Fairly often I'm in back to back events that are separated by significant distances, so I'll leave before one ends and arrive after the other starts. That works better in demo games that people don't expect to run to completion anyway.
The main reason I can write about stuff every day is become I come home all keyed up from the day and if I _don't_ write it down, I have trouble sleeping. So I don't get as much sleep as I'd like, but as a morning person, once that sun is up it doesn't matter. Where this hits me is in the afternoon. I missed considerable sections of the Letters Page, despite being physically present, because I couldn't keep my eyes open. I think it was last year that I was so sleepy in the State of GtG panel that I nearly fell out of my chair. Christopher called on my at one point to say how many cards were in SotM and luckily I had that number burned into my psyche at the time. I think I responded before I was actually awake.
And it helps not to volunteer. I love volunteering for GtGs and teaching games, but I'm jealous of my time at GenCon, so I try to help out as much as I can during the setup and takedown. This year was a big exception, since I arrived back from a work trip Wed night and then was in too much pain to help with teardown. I did what I could though, helping to bag up some promo items and getting a group started with Spirit Island. And I say no to things. NASCRAG is a fantastic time, but takes up two full gaming slots (and probably some time Sat night). Friends run a hilarious game that I enjoyed being an NPC last year, but wasn't willing to commit two full slots to again this year. True Dungeon is quite an experience, but I don't need the hassle or cost. I'm sure I would enjoy the costume parade, but I've never taken the time for it. I usually only play demo games that are particularly untriguing -- some sort of new mechanic or from a fandom I love.
And I just straight up miss stuff -- sometimes accidentally, like this year's costume content. Still kicking myself for that one. I ditched a chance to go to the BGG Hot Games demos on Sunday to get the last two signatures I needed. That was a difficult to get ticket and I was sorry to miss it! There were two different groups of people I know gathering Sat night and I had to choose. I would have enjoyed those 5-6 player Spirit Island games, but something had to give. I got invited out drinking at like 1:30am and almost went. That would have been ridiculous.
Finally, the best way to save time is to do events with the people you want to see, so I put effort in advance into finding out what folks are up to and arranging lunches and dinners and shared events.
Finally, finally, I recommend not buying much of anything. I mean, get that super cool thing you can't get elsewhere or that is really inexpensive at the con, but spending a lot of time shopping for a whole bunch of items seems odd to me. You can usually get these items elsewhere, often for cheaper. Of course, shopping can be fun, particularly when you're doing it with others, but if it means you can't do many events, perhaps because you can't move very quickly or you have to spend a lot of time going back and forth to your hotel/car, maybe it wasn't worth it? I dunno. Just a thought.
I was also there at GenCon - it was even more rushed than usual since I was only there for the weekend.
One of the highlights for me this year was definitely the Letters Page. I'd been thinking for ages that it'd be a great idea to organize a group singalong for the theme song but never bothered to do so myself and was kicking myself for that oversight - turns out that it was 0% necessary because we geeks are all of one hivemind. There's never enough time to do everything you wanna do at GenCon - perhaps the most notable thing I missed out on this year was demo'ing the RPG. I did one last year for what they had and it seemed fun, would've liked to go a bit more in depth this year.
Side note: this isn't exactly family-friendly fare, but the D20 Burlesque show on Saturday night is always a huge favorite of mine and is highly recommened.
Did anybody get a chance to play this Photosynthesis game I’ve read about in a couple places?
I assume you mean Risk Legacy. I'm not a fan of the Legacy concept, or Risk, and Pandemic is just OK, but I would totally play Pandemic Risk if that was a thing.
I just reviewed the notes, and I don't see that Akash'Bhuta buried the Nexus again after the first Virtuoso and his disciples dug it back up again. But if she did, the first time after it got dug up that she's have had the opportunity to bury it again would be when the Virtuosos stopped kicking her butt, which would be after Franz Vogel's time, which is late in the colonial era.
Yeah I was wrong on that point timing wise. I still want to hear the explanation on what I see as an unnecessary retcon.