Can we more background on what is happening on the incap side of Scholar of the Infinite and what led up to that point?
Any idea if it will be recorded Andy?
Tachyon is billed as "The Quickest Woman on Earth!", are there quicker aliens?
Long day. Lack of sleep is starting to seriously catch up with me.
There was a panel today on the state of GtG. I feel asleep for most of it. :( They reviewed the status of a bunch of projects that have already been kickstarted or will be coming to Kickstarter. I really can't remember a lot of details. One theme was 'taking the time to get things right'. This was particularly stressed for the RPG -- it's a difficult market to break into and there needs to be a lot of various aids and products that are released together. Adam, Paul, Christopher, and Chris were the panelists. Jeremy sat near the front and fields a bunch of questions. Last year this had been a packed house with a bunch more people on the panel. This year it was lightly attended, but perhaps there will be a bigger crowd for the lore panel on Sunday.
I stopped in to the booth in the mid afternoon. No line for the registers, but both in use. The demo tables were completely packed. I was pleased to see that all eight or so of them had a volunteer leading the game, unlike last year where there seemed to have been not enough volunteers in the booth for all of the tables. I took the opportunity to play SotM on one of Handelabra's computers, taking on Advanced Ennead with my standard team. Lost, though it was relatively close.
Not long after I went by the side room. It was packed -- all 16 tables or so were in use. There were multiple games of OblivAeon going on, both at over two hours and going strong, but the players seeming to dig it. One of the items mentioned in the state of GtG was an upcoming game about riding lasers around, cutting each other off, like in Tron. I found the two creators in the side room and played a game with them. I liked it. Super easy to learn and fun to play. Helps that I won. Donner mentioned that it had been lighter for a few hours in the early afternoon.
In non-GtG news, I had fun playing an NPC Soothsayer in a Cthulu game at a local brewery. The game included pizza, beer, and a lot of silliness. Pretty great. Then went on to a very successful run in an Escape Room. My other scheduled game of the day was Knight's Armory (or something like that) a cooperative tower defense game. Pretty good!
Not expecting much GtG news tomorrow -- I've got another go as the Soothsayer, than various concerts in the afternoon and evening.
[quote=arenson9] I took the opportunity to play SotM on one of Handelabra's computers, taking on Advanced Ennead with my standard team. Lost, though it was relatively close. [/quote]
It was nice meeting you at the Handelabra section of the booth, Andy. Thanks for stopping by.
I spent 2 PM to 6 PM helping Jennifer from Handelabra run the booth. We mostly had people playing with the tablet and PC interfaces, though a plurality of the people I talked to were excited about the smartphone version launching - either they already had it on tablet / Steam, or they didn't know the app existed at all. I think the smartphone version is really going to enhance the app's visibility.
anymore that people can elaborate from this panel? Been kinda hard lately since we have not gotten an overall status post in almost 8 months that sums everything up. Sentinel tactics would be interesting to know about since I did pay for the next expansion a year and half ago
I feel like most of what they said on the panel were things that have been said on the forums, but I admittedly don't tend to care too much about dates. For Tactics, they noted that Tactics had not performed as well as they'd like, and though they originally thought that a few tweaks would be enough for Broken City/For Profit to make Tactics great, they've changed their minds. They now plan to release Prime War instead of Broken City/For Profit, including a kit to update Core/Expansion 1 to work w/ Prime War. Kickstarter backers can get a refund or accept Prime War and the various extras that will eventually come with it for Kickstarter backers. They admitted that this was far from an ideal solution, but in the end they feel the need to release a great product.
There was mention of at least one new game that will be Kickstarted I think before the end of the year that I'd not heard of. I later had a chance to play this game with its creators and really enjoyed it. Sadly, I do not remember this name. Wait a second, they gave me a pin … Lazer Ryders. This is a very simple game where you are taking the role of someone who is riding a lazer that's kind of like the light cycles in Tron, trying to maneuver through a series of target spots and be the first one to claim some number of them (three for our game). If you hit someone else's lazer, you crash, loose your lazer (but retain any claimed targets), and start over from the edge.
The game has Formula De like speed mechanics, with a six sider representing your speed, able to go up or down one each turn. There are a series of straight and curve sections of lazer and you choose ones that have the same number as your speed – bigger ones for larger numbers, smaller ones and tighter curves for smaller numbers. The game can be played on any table. There's no board.
Anyway … not much to report related to GtG today. No panels or other events that I attended and although I did walk past the booth, I never made it to the side room. The booth was rocking – all demo tables full and people in line to buy stuff.
GenCon has continued to get larger and larger. The exhibit hall was increased a great deal. On top of that, for Halls A-E, which are not part of the exhibit hall, they are checking badges at the entrances, allowing the space between those halls and the exhibit hall to remain open during exhibit hall hours. This creates a lot more possible entrance points to the exhibit hall, which is great. They've also put some things, notably True Dungeon, over in Lucas Oil stadium. I'd imagined that I would at least walk over there to see how it looks and what, if anything, they've put along the long hallway that heads in the direction to make it interesting, but I'm not sure I'll ever find a window of time to bother with that.
Not sure if this is the first year of it, but I noticed today that some vendors have multiple locations in the exhibit hall – in particular, I noticed that two of the dice vendors have that. The exhibit hall seems to have reached such a large size that it's now increasing unlikely for someone to see all of it! So you have to have multiple locations, I guess, to try to reach everyone.
Did they talk about what Prime War includes / has / is?
Saw a demo of Lazer Ryders. It did look entertaining, with some interesting decisions around pushing your luck.
Ummm … look, I was very tired.
What is prime war and if they have changed plans on something I paid for why has this not been talked about in some form of update
Because the Gencon thing was the first announcement of it. I expect it will be up here in a blog post/mass email to those people who pre-ordered ... thingy... after Gencon, and I agree it's not the best way to handle it.
personally I would not have minded the announcement at gen con on this, as long as Craig was sitting in front of a computer hitting the post button on an announcement to the front page of the gtg website as they did. As the night goes on I am slowly getting more salty about this just because I would like to know more details of what is going on.
FWIW, the Sentinel Tactics info wasn't part of the original GtG report of status, but someone asked them about it, so they provided info.
I saw the booth again briefly today, and it was again packed with people playing demos. I got to the side room in the mid afternoon in time to see the 'meet and greet'. This consisted of Adam, Christopher, and Paul hanging out at the end of the room and chatting with people as they approached. It seemed relatively sparsely attended -- a nice chance for people to talk with them one on one.
With an hour to kill, I rounded up Donner, Braithwhite, Phantaskippy, and another person and the five of us decided to play a somewhat silly SotM scenario -- Baron Blade on advanced, but with only eight cards required for the Terralunar Impulsion Beam. We piled on the damage fast and furious to avoid mass destruction, then decided to make the flip side more interesting by spotting Blade 1DR. We won!
The costume contest was tons of fun. The standout, and inner of the top prize, was easily and awesomely Reedemer Fanatic, replete with massive wingspan. Lots and lots of great costumes. Not sure where pictures might already be or will be in the future posted. Another costume of note actually stumped Christopher, though Adam knew what it was immediately -- it was based off of La Capitan's reversed side, with half the costume being a reptilian creature.
The charity auction was held Saturday night, rather than at the end of the con. This required dealing with a side room full of ongoing games, but in the end doesn't seem to have hurt the bidding. Per usual, the big bids were for Young Legacy (~$300), Rook City Wraith (~$115), and Redeemer Fanatic (~$125).
Tomorrow at 1pm is the lore timeslot. Post your questions if you want me to ask 'em. ... Assuming I'm awake by then.
Last day of GenCon.
I was up ridiculously late on Sat and didn't roll into the convention until late morning. The side room and the booth were still packed with players. I got a cute picture of a group of three young girls lined up playing SotM on the Handelabra laptops.
I got a couple clarifications from Paul on upcoming Kickstarters for this fall: In September, an expansion for Isle of Trains and perhaps in October, Lazer Ryders. Also, by GenCon 2017, a starter kit of some type for the Sentinels RPG, with a Kickstarter for core books and more to follow. I like what I've heard so far about the approach to the RPG -- making sure that players have everything they need to jump right in and begin having a great experience.
Paul showed me Isle of Trains. Trying to play a game with GtG staff curing a convention requires some adaptability -- they're all constantly being pulled in various directions. We played a few rounds, enough for me to get a sense that it was interesting enough, though not something that spoke strongly to me. There's an interesting mechanic where you get more for loading materials on other people's trains, but then they can use your materials to do other things. It's a fairly complex economy for a relatively simple set of cards.
From 1pm to 3pm Christopher and Adam took questions and endeavored to answer as much as they could w/out giving away important plot points for future stories. It was recorded, I think, but I've no idea how they'll release the video. Info I remember:
- Scholar basically exists because he has the philosopher's stone. On the incapacitated side of Scholar of the Infinite, we see Scholar faced with a choice of saving himself or using the philosopher's stone to save Guise, his mentee. He chooses to save Guise, and does so by pushing the philosopher's stone into Guise's body.
- Any time someone time travels (to the past at least) they essentially create a new timeline. Visionary is one of the most powerful characters in SotM. When she time travels to the past, she enters a timeline in which the events that lead to her time traveling don't happen. On the trip to the past, a version of Visionary from a third timeline who is evil, but has been defeated in some way, latches on as an unwelcome passenger into the past. Visionary has to spend a considerable amount of energy keeping Dark Visionary in check.
- In the Iron Legacy timeline, The Wraith decides that the only way to get the resources necessary to fight Iron Legacy is to takeover the Organization for herself. She dispatches The Chairman and the Operative and assumes their power.
- The Tactics and Sentinels RPG games are in separate timelines, both of which branch off from the SotM timeline at about the point of OblivAeon.
- In Tactics, Ra is Thiago. The Staff had been put in a museum in the Freedom Tower. Though well protected, it had called to Thiago.
- Omnitron: I is the villain from the core game. II is Cosmic Omnitron. III is the Omni Blade from Vengeance Blade's deck. IV is the environment. V only exists in Tactics, not the RPG. Omnitron-U only exists in the RPG, not in Tactics. I'm not quite sure how that makes sense, since I thought that Omnitron-U would have happened before the timelines diverged.
- The Block is an extra dimensional space created, in some way, by the Realm of Discord. FILTER discovered and claimed this space. Eventually, FILTER forewent their government funding and became essentially mercenaries.
- Fanatics's Aegis and Sword have power because Fanatic believes they should have power. We did not learn the source of Fanatic's power and whether or not she is 'divine'.
- The Mask of the Matriarch was previously owned by a powerful magic user of some type. When Lillian put it on, some of the personality of the previous magic user overtook her own personality.
- We did not learn why Haka is essentially immortal.
- The fighting on Dok'Thorath started because Voss' fleet was destroyed, some rebels seized the opportunity to try to take over. The Prime Wardens ended up in the midst of the fighting because they were in some way helping Sky Scraper. The fighting was occuring before the heroes showed and continued after they left.
- The deck requiring the most effort from Christopher was Argent Adept.
Well, I think there may have some more, but I'm falling asleep.
I taught a friend SotM from the games library in the late afternoon, and then went to hang about seeing if I could be useful cleaning up the room and the booth. I helped out a bit, and was once again amazed how quickly the exhibit hall gets broken down. GTGs took video of games of Lazer Ryders and Fate of the Elder Gods, with the designers of each. Not sure exactly what those taped playthroughs are for -- perhaps to put on Kickstarter.
Eventually there was just no more to be done, and so went home. BUT, the fun wasn't over yet. Rabit and I and a few friends got together for dinner and played a game of SotM. Sadly, we had to call the game before finishing so we could all sleep!
Thanks for the reports!
The Q&A was pretty great, I thought. Expanding a little on what Andy wrote:
- Omnitron-X is explicitly from neither the Tactics timeline nor the RPG timeline. That timeline no longer exists because of the time travel.
- Among the differences between the Tactics and RPG timelines is that in Tactics, the government is distrustful of the heros, because some powered individuals tried to seize power. That did not happen in the RPG timeline due to a yet-to-be-disclosed event.
- Adam at one point referred to the RPG timeline as the "main timeline" before correcting himself.
- The Staff was responsible for letting Thiago get past the Freedom Tower security (as shown on the Staff of Ra card). I got the impression the Mask did a similar thing with Lillian.
- Lillian is naturally magically sensitive, which is why she got attuned to the Mask. As the Matriarch, she is not really in control. As The Harpy and Pinion, she has more control.
- FILTER was referred to as a "para-military organization". They also worked on giving people power.
- Writing the game can be emotional for both of them. When Christopher wrote the Kickstarter update for Iron Legacy, he had bullet points, and was planning to write that post first thing and then go do other tasks. But after the post, he was done. Ra's last words were similarly emotional. ("I always believed in you" to Fanatic.)
- Ra and The Ennead in the Tactics timeline are new characters, as the originals are dead. The new Ennead come from a variety of places, some know each other, some don't. (As opposed to the orginal Ennead, who were grave robbers. There were originally more than 9 of them; 9 of them survived.)
- There are definitely plans to post the video, apparently they got clean audio (somehow or other--there were a lot of trains).
As expected my question was partially answered and brings up more questions. 
Very interesting that Scholar is kept alive by the stone and that the events of Guise melting on the incap side led the Scholar to having to make a choice on that matter. You'd think Guise having the stone thrust into his chest would give us a variant specific to that since it would give him some alternate powers. This also means we aren't seeing the original Scholar in Tactics ever.
In Tactics, Ra is Thiago. The Staff had been put in a museum in the Freedom Tower. Though well protected, it had called to Thiago.
I know someone guessed that shortly after Tactics was released but another person shot it down. It makes sense.
Omnitron: I is the villain from the core game. II is Cosmic Omnitron. III is the Omni Blade from Vengeance Blade's deck. IV is the environment. V only exists in Tactics, not the RPG. Omnitron-U only exists in the RPG, not in Tactics. I'm not quite sure how that makes sense, since I thought that Omnitron-U would have happened before the timelines diverged.
The RPG from what I recall is supposed to those place around the events of OblivAeon and Omnitron-U comes to around that time. Looking at the card Reset the art and Flavor text seem to indicate a new version of Omnitron-X. The flavor text references FFA#30 the battle with OblivAeon and the art shows an image of Omnitron which seems to be joining of X and U versions possibly others.
The fighting on Dok'Thorath started because Voss' fleet was destroyed, some rebels seized the opportunity to try to take over. The Prime Wardens ended up in the midst of the fighting because they were in some way helping Sky Scraper. The fighting was occuring before the heroes showed and continued after they left.
Based on artwork it makes sense the Prime Wardens were there but I'm surprised it was to help Sky-Scraper
That was me. Adam's art in the Tactics comics made it pretty clear who it was (for me at least), so it's a testimate to his art that made the dots easy to connect.
I couldn't recall if it was you who said it was Thiago or you were the one that said it couldn't be. I knew you were involved in one side of the argument which is why I didn't list any name.
Wel, my first GenCon came and went and my head is still spinning from it. So many people, so many games. Crazy fun times!!
I did get to meet some of the GTG and forum folks over the past week. Met up with grysqrl in Chicago before Gen Con and saw him at the con as well (briefly). Unfortunately, we just werent able to coordinate a demo time for Spirit Island, which sounds pretty awesome. Oh well, I'll be keeping an eye out for release.
I swung by the booth a few times and got to meet Craig who was on full booth duty throughout the con. In one of my booth visits I managed to get in on a demo of New Bedford being done by Rabit. The game managed to combine two things I never thought to very interesting (worker placement and whaling) into a surprisingly fun experience. Andy swung by while we were playing so I got to briefly meet him too.
I visited the demo room a couple of times and met Donner, who was working as a bouncer there one of those times. The room was as busy as the booth with a lot of gaming going on. They had a set up with different phones on one of the days for people to try out the new phone version of SotM by Handelabra. In the middle of all the game demoing chaos I noticed one empty table with a lonely volunteer sitting in front of Bottom of the 9th. This is another game that never really caught my attention, but I had about 20 minutes before my Art with Adam Session so I decided to sit with the poor lonely soul and he ran me through the game. Wow. So much fun!! This really was the unexpected hit for me and my friends with all of us picking up a copy by the end of the weekend.
I attended the Art with Adam Session which was really good. We got some great advice and he pointed us to some excellent resources, but the best part was just having him talking with him through it as he talked about his style, influences, and overall process. I also went to the Q&A session which Andy reported on above. I felt like Christopher was a lot less cryptic than I expected he would be.
Overall I had a great time at the Con and it was great to meet some of the GTG folks and forumites. I am fairly certain I will be going again in the future and will probably put in some volunteer time at the booth/room.
I'm happy someone else really liked Bottom of the 9th! Totally a game that is flying super low under the radar that is frankly brilliant.