Gen Con 2016 Post Show Part 2

SEAFALL or BUST!

In which we suffer setbacks, buy too much and get turned into a zombie...

I awoke at 6:30 AM and proceeded to get myself ready for the day ahead. By 9 AM I had coffee from Bee Coffee in hand, my camera around my neck and my messenger bag on my hip.   Unnecessary weight.  Jason had gotten up shortly after I had and struck out on his own in search of a lab coat so that he could lay down bad science or something to that effect on fellow con-goers. 

I checked in with both him and Alex as I settled into position on the second level of the ICC overlooking the main doors to the Exhibitor's Hall.  I watched as the crowds grew and grew and grew.  Eventually both of my travel mates appeared and we made our way down into the crowd.  Jason and Alex tensed in preparation, planning to make haste to the Plaid Hat booth and SeaFall.  I fingered my camera and snapped a couple of shots of the crowd, waiting patiently.

After much (necessary) nonsense about safety and "No Running", the doors opened and the masses stormed through the gates. I immediately lost both Alex and Jason and proceeded to very casually make my way in.  I knew where they'd be, I had time.

As with previous Gen Con's, the Exhibitor Hall is overwhelming.  That it had grown in size since the last time I had visited, meant that an extra few seconds were required to take in the scale and scope of the floor.  I eventually spotted the banner for Plaid Hat and made my way there, arriving in time to hear the announcement that SeaFall had sold out.  It had taken me less than five minutes to make my way to the booth.  Sold out.  Wow.  For the day?  NO...for the con.  I searched the line for Alex and/or Jason.  Neither of them were present.  

Uh oh.

After walking the floor for a little bit, I managed to find Alex in line at White Wizard's booth, waiting to turn in one of the coupons from the books that have replaced swag bags at Gen Con.  He and I both enjoy the game Star Realms and this coupon offered us promo cards to add to our sets.  Alex proceeded to buy some expansions for the base game as well as collect his promo cards.  I would gather the promo cards on a later occasion.  He told me of his ill-fated SeaFall run and how the game was already gone by the time he had gotten to the booth, some 30 seconds after entering the Hall.  Ridiculous.  I won't get on any more of a soapbox here than I need to or may have alluded to earlier, but let me restate...building hype or generating bad will...ridiculous.

The rest of Thursday saw me picking up a mini Five Tribes expansion, The Thieves of Naquala for our friend and fellow gamer Molly, the expansion for Shakespeare, simply called Shakespeare: Backstage and the hand/eye taxing drawing game Loony Quest, a game that I hope to play with my son in the next few years.  Alex and I proceeded to try to find games to demo.  We walked the various Halls looking for games that had room for people with Generic Tickets...alas, it seems that with games demos now being events outside the hall, Generic Tickets have fallen out of favor.  Every time I tried to use one, I was told that I couldn't.  I ended up refunding the entire bunch.  Well, refunding isn't quite the term.  I gained system credit for next year minus 5%... ...

Coming to the convention, I had prepared to spend some money at the Modiphius booth. My regular group is currently running through a campaign of Mutant: Year Zero.  I had learned earlier in the week that Modiphius was planning to give 20% discount on purchases of a $100 or more.  That was a little steeper than I would have liked, but the aforementioned coupon/swag bag offered a 20% for $50 at their booth alternative.  That I could do.  I scoped out the products at their booth, realized that I wanted one of everything and then set about making the hard decisions.  The extra nice thing about their booth was that they had con pricing, meaning that all of their products were already discounted. Adding the coupon to that brought me closer to purchasing one of everything, but no, not really.  I ended up grabbing the heavy duty GM Screen for Mutant: Year Zero as well as the Artifact, Mutation and Events cards pack.  I pondered the actual Hardcover Edition of Mutant: Year Zero, but figured that the PDF would continue to suffice.  I grabbed a copy of Symbaroum instead.  Making that purchase, I was done buying things for the day.  I played with the thought of being done purchasing stuff for the rest of the con, but put that thought aside as silly and defeatist.  

Before leaving the convention floor, Alex and I did stumble upon the Z-Man Games booth and managed to get in a demo of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu.  Yeah, I know, mashing up some of your stygian chocolate with some of my squamous peanut butter ... and a tentacle or two for good measure.  Fortunately my prejudice could not have been more unfounded.  This version of Pandemic felt more refined and was a refreshing new coat of paint on an aging game.  The madness mechanic was nothing to write home about, but worked to enhance the theme beautifully. 

We still had a chance at this point.

We closed down the Hall and as Thursday finished up we made a run to the food trucks for dinner and then some more gaming.  I joined in a game of Entropy and then finished up the evening with I Hate Zombies, a glorified (and glorious) game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with Zombies turning human players into Zombies.  It was goofy fun that left my face hurting from smiling.

Let's Role...

In which we sail the 7th Seas, Unite the Clans of the Riddermark and wonder why we did either...

Friday was my day to game.  I had signed up for two RPGs, both of which were four hours long.  The first, 7th Sea 2nd Ed., started at 10am.  I headed down to Bee Coffee again, got in the quick, I only want black coffee coffee line and was out the door in minutes, leaving all those frappe guzzlers in my dust!  I arrived a little early and got my pick of characters.  I ended up grabbing the Bosun, a Vesten (read Nordic) sailor who was big on rage and equally as consumed with regret.  Reserved was one of her traits.  The GM was experienced and knew her Theah.  We played a crew of sailors in service to the ATB, 7th Seas version of the West India Trading Company.  Not surprisingly we discovered they were up to nefarious doings and part of an incredibly illegal slave trade.  We set about storming an island fortress/mine and freeing slaves, bringing some of the slavers to justice, striking our colors and becoming privateers.  The game was full of pirates, sea monsters and daring do.  And it totally fell apart for me in the final hour.  The system, based on rolling sets of 10 (roll 5d10, add the results so that you end up with sets of 10, get multiple to earn raises and thereby achieving greater success), became too abstract when it broke down to combat.  Sure, shipboard we cannonballed the hell out of a cannon emplacement, rained hell down on the deck of an opposing ship and beheaded two sea serpents, but nothing of the dice rolling or the set building translated to anything more than an abstract concept of accomplishing anything.  On top of that my play was rusty and between my Bosun and the other player's First Mate and Captain tripping over who ordered who, my reserved character play seemed more removed than I would have liked.  I had been excited to play this Second Edition, but coupling my less than enthusiastic view of the system with the books price point, I took a pass on pursuing the game any further.  I'll take a look at it again in the future, but for now, I'm more than content with what I currently have on the table.

My second game of the day came later in the evening and went until midnight.  It was The One Ring, an RPG set in Tolkien's Middle Earth some five years after the Battle of the Five Armies.  I've played it once before and had fun with it, so I was definitely looking forward to getting to inhabit that world again.  The GM for this game was much lower key.  When asked if his table was one of the tables set aside for The One Ring, he would state that it was one of two or three and, in a shoulder shrugging way that encouraged no faith in me, players could choose to sit at his table to play if they so wanted to, but didn't have to... I stayed, mostly out of laziness, but also out of hope that his presentation would improve once game got going.  It didn't.  It wasn't bad.  It was perfectly serviceable, but imagine John C. Reilly at his most hang-doggedly and you get an idea of the confidence and verve that was brought to this game.  We did have a full table, ultimately, but of the five of us, three faded into the background, and only the player taking the Defacto Leader character and myself actually raised our voices above a careful whisper or showed any initiative in helping to move the story forward or interact with the NPCs in the game.  For my part, I was simply trying to make up for my lack of roleplaying earlier in the day, during the second half of the 7th Seas game.   The story was simple enough, revolving around the need to unite the fracturing Rohirrim Clans and hoping to do so by marrying off a pair of star struck Romeo and Juliet style lovers.  It was handled with all the aplomb of someone who cares very little for the source material and is merely counting down the minutes until midnight...it was an on-the-rails type of adventure that left me still enjoying the system but desperately hoping to redeem the Con on Saturday, when I only had one game left...the one that I was looking forward to the most.  That's a lot of faith and pressure to put on strangers.

There were going to have to be sacrifices made.