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GenCon 2022!

I went to GenCon in Indianapolis this year. If you don't know, GenCon is the largest role playing convention in the world, and this was apparently its 55th year. A lot of Dungeons & Dragons and other table top role playing games, war games, card games, miniatures games, and bits of all the other things that fall into the "geek" constellation of interests (anime, cosplay, video games, etc.) Two years ago I had purchased a ticket to attend GenCon 2020, but you can guess what happened there. Fortunately, they were good with the ticket options, so I held my ticket over from 2020 until 2021, where I still was not interested in attending due to the pandemic restrictions, and then they let that same ticket roll over to 2022.

So, for the last decade or more I have been going to GenCon with a variety of friends that form my gaming group. Often I would drive and be sharing a room with 2 or 3 friends. From where I live the trip is around 4.5 hours. This year was a little different, as many of my friends work at Central Michigan University and they have managed to develop a "Center for Learning through Games and Simulation." This meant a couple new folks coming along, and that some of my friends would be working while at the Con. I also got to hitch a ride this time and we showed up on Tuesday, got to be a bit "behind the scenes". I don't know how most people plan their GenCon attendance, but I try not to get stuck in the Exhibitor Hall too much and I also tend not to pre-purchase tickets to scheduled events. In the past I'd taken to regularly getting into games through "Games on Demand", organized by some folks where you show up, grab a letter, then select what game session you want to play in from a menu of options they provide. The upside is that you can do this on the fly, with new games kicking off every 2 hours throughout the Con. The downside is that you have to be flexible and willing to play kinda whatever from what is available. For the most part I've been down to do this in previous years, not too fussy. This year, "Games on Demand" was a bit smaller than it has been in previous years, and also they have a tendency to focus on Storygames more than what you might call traditional role playing games. I can enjoy these games once in a while, but they are not my main jam at all.

A "new to me" event I noticed and spent a lot of time in this year is the "First Exposure" playtest hall. Here, also kicking off every 2 hours, there is a hall full of game designers playtesting their games. You grab a number and then get to file yourself into these unreleased games to try them out, and hopefully provide the designer some useful feedback. While there were a couple role playing games, almost all of the games here were board or card games. All together I played 5 events here and it was overall a great time. I forget the name of the 1st game, but it was a card based RPG where the character's abilities and equipment were all organized into cards that were slotted into card holders (like you might use to store your Magic cards or something in a binder), and it was full of some interesting mechanisms, even if I found its fantasy setting a little bland. The next game I tried I believe was called "WordSet", and it was a bit like Scrabble or Dominos, but with word parts instead of individual letters. It had a number of different ways it could be played, one of which even felt entertainingly tactical. The next game I recall I think was called "BullScript", and it was a party game. Basically, you get cards for the main character or archetype, movie genre and setting. Additionally there were Twist cards you can hand to other players. Then, you take these elements and craft them into a pitch for a movie. After you pitch your movie, people vote on favorite title and favorite plot. Those Twist cards introduce possibly wacky aspects you need to incorporate into your individual pitch. After a warm-up round, it got to where it was goofy fun. The 4th game I played with my friend Tracy, and it was not so great. It was a cyberpunk tactical thing that aspired to RPG, included a map, cards with barcodes on them, and a computer running a Python script and a barcode scanner. It kind of felt like trying to make a video game work on the table top, but the guy's Python script was very buggy and the whole game was a bit cumbersome to work, with the barcode scanning and the way enemies would interrupt people, etc. The final game I played in there was "Guilds of Bitalus", a game with an old school videogame graphic aesthetic where each player is trying to score points by doing expeditions and taking on jobs with the guilds in town, increasing your reputation and wealth. When the guy running the game explained it I feared it was all way too much, but once we started playing I thought it was a blast.

Outside of the "First Exposure" hall I played 3 other games. With my friend Tracy we played in a "Never Bring a Knife" event. This was a fun "Who are the cops, who are the criminals?" game with cards. I ended up buying a copy. At "Games on Demand" I played "Fedora Noir" which was a detective noir storygame. I like the genre, but being a storygame with strangers... the session was OK, but never really gelled into something super enjoyable. The game has 4 roles in it, you can be "The Detective", "The Hat", "The Partner" or "The Flame". I played "The Hat", which acts as the Detective's inner dialogue. It also meant I was responsible for the film noir voice-overs you get in those stories, so that was definitely fun at times. The final game I played (umm.. aside from some arcade games I played) was "Death in Space" with my friends Andrew, Bill and Jacque. It's a dark sci-fi RPG that seems a bit inspired by Mork Borg. We were tired when we played and the session was just OK. I kinda feel like the game leans on its aesthetic a bit too heavily, and the game itself isn't too much to write home about.

Oh, shopping: I found a Top Secret/S.I. box in great condition and picked it up. It's a TSR espionage RPG from the mid-80s. "Legendary", a supers RPG I'd never heard of was produced by a Canadian father/son team and was being basically released at the Con, so I grabbed that. The aforementioned "Never Bring a Knife" was purchased, and I grabbed "Mutant City Blues 2nd Edition" from the Pelgrane booth. It's a Gumshoe RPG about super powered detectives investigating super powered crime. I also grabbed the Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition 2022 Update, along with another supplement for it. Good stuff.

Anyways, despite my mild criticisms, I had a pretty great time. Aside from all of the gaming and shopping, we also got to eat out at some fun places. One place was an Edgar Allan Poe themed place under the railroad tracks, another Thai place had live jazz, another steak place was pretty fancy and had nice desert and in-house made grapefruit soda. Can't wait to give it another go again next year!