MRAAKTAGON

Gencon 2013 blatherings

Holy shit was it crowded. I’ve been there many years in a row (I think close to 20) and I have never, ever seen Gencon that crowded before. All the parking lots were full, the entire con area was packed with people. Normally you’ll see the same people around, the same security guards, the same cos-play nerds or larpers or insideout jelly doughnuts, but this year it was such a WAVE of humanity you’d never see the same people twice unless you went to the same type of regions in the gaming hall.

As this was Matt and Steve’s first time to the Con since it was in Milwaukee, I had some things to prove since I had been talking up Indy since it moved there– that it was and is far better than Milwaukee as a location for this large of a convention. Milwaukee’s downtown is pretty but let’s face it, it’s got shitty hotels and it’s dangerous at night right in the area of the new convention center. What’s more, though I didn’t remember this much, Matt said that Milwaukee never welcomed Gencon as a city much, only tolerated it.

Indy is different for sure, the bars nearby all go into full fucking nerd mode when the con starts with odd menus and drinks. There seems to be a Warmachine bar and a Pathfinder bar–likely some others. The people on the streets and in the attached mall (which is an actual mall, unlike the one in Milwaukee that is about as dead as you can get without being closed down) are confused by the gencon nerds, but not alarmed– they know there is a big ass nerd convention going on in the city and welcome it. There are random gaming posters in shops, taxi’s hang dice from their rear view mirrors and so on. All worshiping the nerd dollar descendant upon the town.

What’s more because the hotels are all connected (and quite nice) there is a massive and I mean massive party scene. Remember the White Wolf parties circa 1996/97 at the Hilton with the kickboxing and tons of beers and drinks and chicks? That’s going on every night of Gencon full on everywhere.

So what were we up to? I got in late Thursday night and headed into the con messing around the crowded ass retailer hall until the 4PM Shadowfist tournament, which had a great turnout with 20 people. I didn’t make the finals this year– but I played a REALLY crap deck and still pulled out a very lucky win in a game. My other two Swiss games did not go well, but were fun. I got to see what seems to be the trend after the endless big bruisers returning from the smoked pile of years hence: endless big bruisers unturning and attacking over and over again. Otherwise there was a TON of Ascended on the table this year compared to last. I counted four decks including mine. After a poor showing in the last couple years for the transformed animals, that was great to see. Mouth got to the final with his Bonechill deck but came in second. We need to tune that fucker to win next year. Matt’s deck was just not up to par and Steve’s relied on Infernal Army– while a big scary site-taker, is still basically a thug and got targeted for events or taken over more often than not. Matt cornered some of the design team for Fist for awhile and gave them a probably undeserved earful about some of the issues with the game. I guess I’d be happy if the Architects were back in the game and they didn’t have so many fucking NERD cards!! Just slapping a nerd head on a previously created painting to fulfill a Kickstarter reward is not anyone’s idea of a card they want to look at. Fuckn’ A. What’s more, we encountered TWO decks where the player had centered their deck around a card with their picture on it. This was terrible. Otherwise, time will tell whether the new cards make a good effect on the game or if they are overpowered. It certainly LOOKS like the dragons got a big boost.

Other than Shadowfist, we got in a few games of Seasons– which is excellent! It’s in the Glory to Rome/Race for the Galaxy vein, but the dice/action mechanic put it into the fun zone. While I wouldn’t say it’s better than Glory to Rome, I would play it over Race for the Galaxy and 7 Wonders any day (though both of those are excellent games as well). Also we got in a horrible game of Eclipse where no one was attacking until the very end. While I love the game, we’ve played so much I need a break from that one for awhile.

Shit that I saw. My Little Ponies was fucking everywhere at the con. For good reason, it’s a good show, but I think next year it will fucking EXPLODE even more. There’s a CCG coming out that will likely be a Pokemon rip off (which is fine) that I’ll have to buy for my kids and I saw some odd mission based game. It’s certainly a franchise worth gaming up and while we look very much down upon the bronies from a high level and urinate– it IS a really good show for kids (and adults forced to watch it). Even though it’s about female multihued ponies, the plotlines are excellent and much better than sitting through a five episode fight in Naruto…

A line at Fantasy Flight. Yeah.. was this necessary? They have some popular games for sure but a line? I think they are doing good work with the Star Wars license but… I am so fucking sick of the Star Wars license….let it go away again for a few years so we can like it again– it’s just been beaten to death.

King of Tokyo– I think the game is finally getting it’s due after a cult release as I saw it everywhere in the con and there was both a massive playset (with child sized monster stand ups) and a massive tournament going on. This is a great game for beer and pretzels in the BANG vein and really good with the kids– even if they cannot read.

D&D Next? Where was it? Matt got the new book (which is chock full of art from the old sets) but I didn’t see anything special– especially compared to something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess–which is awful special (module called Fuck for Satan for instance). I don’t know where WOTC are going to go with this next– but it’s nice to see all the Basic D&D and AD&D books reprinted beautifully after all these years. Too bad AD&D fucking sucked.

Bolt Action. I tried this out last year and I think it’s starting to get some traction. There were five table setups this year for demos and the game looks great. I splurged and filled out my 1000 point brits with a Cromwell and another infantry unit. I feel it’s a mash up of EPIC 40K and AT-43 and that’s a good thing. So many tanks….

Here is my hoard of loots from the con.

New Cosmic Encounter expansion was probably the biggest score. I picked up another box of On the Edge (10$) and the On the Edge survival book which from what I’ve heard is EXCELLENT shitter-reading materials. Fist was cheap at the con this year. I scored a box of Empire of Evil and a box of Critical shift for 60$ total. If we are going to go Zman only for playing going forward, I needed these— and I still needed them. I was looking for some Blood Wars but it was nowhere to be found. Also, Dreamblade was in just a few nooks and crannies…if you were ever thinking of picking that shit up at all, the end is nigh and I bet in the next 4-5 years the prices for stuff starts climbing and climbing…

I did pick up some random stuff for Epic 40K– Razorbacks and Ork dreadnoughts. I’m itching to get that played again.

It was a great con, much better than last year when I had that coughing crud people had for a couple months at a stretch and hadn’t slept for weeks. It was all still a blur but that was due to self-imposed sleep deprivation and the demon drink. I hope Matt, Steve and mouth can come along next year as we could all get into some Roleplaying games in addition to the other crap, which was sorely missed. Even with 3 days at the con– it was not enough gaming!

Now we’re looking DIRECTLY down the barrels of Saints Row 4 and

Gencon 2013 prep

Gencon, a whirlwind of a day and a half (usually) of everything gaming– you really feel like you are at the center of the gaming world for a weekend and in a lot of ways, you are. We’re going to have D&D NEXT on display, lots of stuff from Fantasy Flight, Ascension tournaments, a Shadowfist expansion around (for kickstarter people and lord knows whatever else is there for exposition and purchase.

This year I’m heading down Friday to hit the “Classic” Shadowfist tournament and there will be a ton of Wisconsin folks in there (by ton, I mean 6 or 7) expats and current residents of the horrible Walker “please international business, rape my state” regime.

Fist aside, I’d like to get in some games of Seasons, try out some miniature gaming (likely hit the AWESOME Bolt Action tables they had last year) and with Mouth, Matt and Fryburger all being at the con, this should be fairly legendary.

One thing about Gencon is that it’s very much what you make it. You could walk around and around the vendor hall the whole weekend and feel lonely and fat and just overwhelmed with all the shit there for sale and all the fucking people talking, but the real deal is getting in and playing games you’ve never tried before, playing with friends you see only once a year and talking shit about various nerds and their hobbies. Oh and drinking and ripping on star wars and getting fat.

List of stuff I’m looking for and going to play:

Various Dark Elf warhammer bits

Another box or two of On the Edge core

Lamentations of the Flame Princes modules (Fuck for Satan, the God that Crawls and Better than Any Man especially)

Visit Bully Pulpit and tell them Carolina Death Crawl is an awesome game.

Exalted – pester them about 3rd edition and then stand around and talk to my players about the 2nd edition campaign we haven’t touched for years but all jones for (except the combat)

Play some Cortex or FATE (to make sure we are doing it right)

Play some Lamentations of the Flame Princess (i.e. OD&D)

Ascension – a percentage break down

I’ve long been a proponent that Ascension is simply an exercise in random card drawing with a random outcome for the winners. We play this a lot on the iphone/ipad and while I could never imagine putting up with the complete mess of cards that this one likely generates (in comparison with the excellent iphone app that cleans all that shit up for you) but, I now have over 210 multiplayer games under my belt and I can say with 100% pseudo-statistical confidence: Ascension is a random game. Your percentage chance of winning any game of Ascension equals 1 (you) divided by the number of players. 3-man games you will win 33% of the time, 4-man games, 25%, etc. I am not a good player, but I’m not a terrible player either, I know what cards are good and will win you the game if grabbed early or grabbed late, but I don’t use any tactics, I don’t watch what other players play and I don’t really pay much attention except to execute a singular deck combo I’ve started at the beginning of a game (like draw lots of cards or kill tons of stuff).I’ve seen a lot of combos, but there are some I certainly have not seen. The fact is, regardless of 100% knowledge of combos, you don’t know if you will have access to those cards that you feel you need to win. That said, let’s look at my stats:

2 player: 42 wins, 44 losses. This is statistically 50%.

3 player: 16 wins, 47 losses: 26% wins. this should be near 33% where 1 out of every 3 games, I win! (yay!).

4 player: 13 wins 59 losses. So here we have it being statistically low at 18% of wins, it should be 25%. I’m thinking if we had a bigger data set (for me) it would even out.

So what I’m going to do in the next few months is try to get good at Ascension– if that’s even possible. Playing with all the cards in the game (on iphone) and actually paying attention to what I’m grabbing, what other people are doing to actually use some tactics.

I’d like to see all stats for all players that have ever played– I think that would be just as telling as the percentages likely match those above. So here we go, I will actively be trying to kick your ass at this point to try to disprove that this is just like a game of War– totally random winning.

Prepare yourselves

A man from creative assembly getting is teeth kicked in by the AI in a skirmish game of Rome Total War 2 below. Soon this will be mine and yours if you chose to be a man about your computer gaming choices.

Note the buffing is more visible now (so you can track duration on screen rather than just seeing that it’s available again on your leaders), this may seem new, the buffing that is, but it’s been in the game for a long time, just not super visible.

I’m really looking forward to this game, probably more than any game since Torchlight 2 and certainly any strategy game. I really dug TW: Empire but just couldn’t get into Shogun all that much. Played through the campaign a bit, did the set piece battles but that was it. Usually I milk the Total War games for all they are worth and leave them a husk on the side of the road. I expect even with children and work and some various other responsibilities that this will happen with Rome Total War 2, and all will be right with the universe.

Derek and Clive- full on

Derek and Clive- I’ve seen clips of this but this is the entire thing shot with the interim stuff that’s not on the record. I know there are some bits that they’ve done before here but a ton of this is off the cuff which is simply amazing. Can you get tax relief on an unemployed knob?

“Where are we going other than Hell?”

We got in a game of Carolina Death Crawl Sunday and oh boy– it’s a doozy! I’m going to try to write this session report without saying too much about what happened, just in case others get a chance to play, but this may be difficult.

The essential premise is that four characters (there is no GM/DM) are members of a Union cavalry regiment raiding into North Carolina in 1863– the issue is that all four characters are from North Carolina themselves– some from the areas they are raiding into. The characters commit various atrocities against towns in the raid and then the game begins with them cut off behind enemy lines–likely shot as deserters by the Union and CERTAINLY shot by their own kinfolk for being traitorous fiends to the fine state of North Carolina.

The game is played with action cards, that come in three flavors: Kill, Destroy, Disgrace. In order to get one of said cards you need to act out a scene that involves your character killing someone (not the other characters), destroying something or disgracing your own character in someway. Examples of killing would be shooting contraband, shooting the horses so people have to walk, stabbing people, blowing people up with dynamite–that’s the easy one. Destroy is all about property, livestock, personal items, trains, maritime devices and the like. The third is the difficult one, but I think the most room for creativity. Your character has to act in some disgraceful way like getting drunk during a raid, hiding and running away, stealing from children, goldbricking, mistreating women, mating with various farm animals, running through the streets of town naked brandishing only a gun, these types of things.

When you get the cards, each has some sort of prompt on it and a point value. The game is played via a series of scenes that take place during three acts. During each act every player starts a scene like running away from angry farmers or out of a burning forest or during a robbery of some stately home– during this they can make up characters which are then played by the other players. You play these scenes out to their conclusion (decided by the group) and players can play their prompt cards on the scene to bring in complications like attacking rebels or various wild animals, natural dangers or other drama. At the end of each scene, points are added up and the character with the lowest value dies. The game continues then with the remaining characters until only one is left. Each character gets to describe their death in any way they want.

This would be quite boring for the dead characters except that they become SWAMP GHOSTS who create a scene after all the other characters do so and can play cards on any scene when they want–these are negative cards that subtract from a character’s total at the end of an Act. The swamp ghosts become essentially the king makers as to who lives or dies. They don’t know what cards the player’s have put down on the table or their totals, but they know who they feel should be killed next based on the scenes and roleplaying. If a player wronged another player during the game, certainly that Swamp ghost will make it very difficult on that person to be able to live.

My semi-reglar play group has been experimented on with various RPG’s since the end of their Pathfinder campaign with FATE and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, both of which stretched their narrative powers from before, but nothing like Carolina Death Crawl. It took them a bit to understand that they could make up ANYTHING within the context of the game but they soon got the hang of it and things went completely off the rails. Towns were burned and looted, characters were shot and stabbed by NPC’s and other players, women were needlessly hanged, contraband was at first released and then killed in cold blood.

The points became a bit contentious at the end of the game because everyone basically gets the same number of cards but the points on them are not the same (5 is highest, 1 is lowest). People were saying that you could just make up anything to add a prompt to a scene–and some of them were great, but a few were really stretching it to use the prompt. The equalizer here are the Swamp ghosts. If you play your 5 point card with some shitty description that adds nothing to the scene, the swamp ghosts may NOT go after the character that left them for dead in the mud bleeding out from a gut shot in the middle of the street–they may go after you for shitting on the scene for points! I would just assume you will get to play all of your prompt cards at some point and don’t sweat it– just use them well to create interesting actions, places and complications and it’s all good. The game is not supposed to be fair even though someone technically wins (shot, bitten by snakes and morally crippled as they are).

All in all, an amazing experience for everyone that I hope to both repeat and see other ‘modules’ built out with different situations. The cost is only 15$ or so to get the cards off Drivethru CCG. Since we had 6 players, 2 of us had to play as Swamp Ghosts to start– so I didn’t really get to play as a character (I did get to be a bunch of terrible and helpless NPC’s though) While I recommend this to everyone as a great RPG experience, the subject matter is extremely adult with all manner of atrocities committed both by and TO the player characters.

Ready to get in on a good shootin'! — Ready to get in on a good shootin’!

Shadowfist 2nd Edition

A blast from the past– I found these bits about Shadowfist 2nd edition circa 1996 (hosted right here) a couple days ago and was filled with wonderment. A lot of these ideas are fair but a few seem crazy to me (multiple sets out of a box, starters that are fun to play). Collected from quotes from Jose Garcia himself in 1996, as we approach the same sort of situation it’s interesting to see the parallels (though Jose didn’t have Kickstarter to help limp things along for years until receeding back into the loam again).

Blast from the Past

That said I’ve got a long post coming on why the most recent kickstarter limped along (still made an outrageous amount of money compared to what they likely needed) and why none of my play group supported it (some were even more against it than I was) and with the crazy ass shit on the Yahoo message boards recently, it’s time to start writing the obituary again. So stay tuned.