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Gen Con 2025 Recap – Part Two

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When we last left our intrepid heroes, their Gen Con had taken a turn for the not so great. Whether it was the games, the scenarios, or the GMs, the last three games were never going to make a best of list and it made the one game which had been cancelled preconvention the second-best game thus far.

To say they needed their luck to turn around is an understatement.

Day 2 Continued

Curseborne

The last game of the day was Curseborne from Onyx Path. This is a World of Darkness style game, using the same d10 system you’re familiar with if you’ve ever played any of those games.

The only bad thing about this game was when we originally looked at the schedule, we thought we’d have to hustle from the JW Marriot to the Stadium with no time between the games. However, ending the previous game early did have the side effect of allotting us ample time to make this game (and disaster was averted). That said, our fourth player (Holly) was about ten minutes late for the same reason. Lucky that she made it, as Holly immediately made an impact on things by speaking in a sort of Eastern European accent.

I must admit that at first, I thought it might be her real accent (not crazy since in the 70,000 attendees, it is likely to get people from all over the world). Not to be outdone, I was playing a Ghost possessing the body of a bartender. This was a guy who lived it up in his original life and so…

A quick aside… during the weekend Egg, Lee, and I pretty much are trying to make each other laugh constantly. For this year the crazy/silly talk settled on the Marvel Comics character Dr. Druid. It’s ok if you’ve never heard of him. He was an Avenger for a hot minute (and betrayed the team) before mostly only appearing in those huge scenes where the artist has to draw 50 characters who have something to do with the plot.

Anyway, during our discussions about this sad sack of a character, I decided that Toad was his buddy and spoke with what can only be described as David Lee Roth’s voice.

End aside…

So that’s the voice I went with during this two-hour session.

Every time I get to play an Onyx Path game (or a White Wolf one), it just seems to deliver. We had a great table of PCs, and our GM was a breath of fresh air as he was very knowledgeable in the system, but also gave us plenty of room to interact with each other and the NPCs within the game.

It took until the last game of the night, but we finally got another good one!

Day 3

This was going to be another full day with only a random hour here or there to fit anything in really. If we were going to make the Dealers’ Room, it would be in short bursts on our way to another game.

Blade Runner

Egg had really wanted to play Blade Runner for a while, so I was happy I could grab us a slot. It leaned very heavily on the investigation aspect of things as our four Blade Runners were investigating the shooting of an anti-replicant journalist. Our task was complicated by a time deadline we needed to hit… find an answer to who was responsible by 5PM or potentially the city would erupt from the news.

One of the interesting ideas was that you could “zoom in” on a crime scene. Trying to evoke a cinematic element to things is a good thing. The problem is that the GM mentioned it once in the rules, and then it wasn’t until one of us (Egg) remembered that we could do it that we managed to get the final piece of the puzzle to lead us to our next potential assassin.

The other “problem” was picking up on cues from the GM. In a lot of games, you can often determine if you should continue down a path by judging the GM’s reaction to your questions. Sometimes they are very direct (“yeah, that’s a dead end”) and other times they can just lead you to believe that something isn’t a true path. We ended up hitting the second of those and without meaning to, the GM basically told us the guy we were going to interrogate wasn’t the bad guy.

This wasn’t a fake out on his part, it was more that we interpreted something one way and then when it turned out this was the Big Bad, it meant the deaths of our characters. Which is fine in a convention game, but later we asked if anyone else had ever figured it out and in the 8-10 sessions he’d run the game only 1 group had managed to not get slaughtered…

Maybe it wasn’t entirely our fault then?

I would have also liked to have seen how the combat actually worked, but we were cut down in a narrative fashion to end the game… so even though that might have been a great opportunity to do so. We still had about 40 minutes left in the session, so it wasn’t a timing issue.

Our Brilliant Ruin

I’m going to go ahead and spoil this… this was by far and away the best session we played this year and likely would go in the top 5 sessions of any of our Gen Con/Origins/Dragon Con gaming.

That said, I’m not sure how much of that was from the game system itself and how much it was due to our GM (I think it probably was 95% the GM), so weirdly I wouldn’t mind playing the system again with someone else just to see how it might hold up.

I wish I could remember the exact description of the game (Downton Abbey meets something with a dash of steampunk thrown in). Regardless, the game really wants the players to embrace their roles (ranging from the Butler to the Aristocrat to the Scholars). The ability to roleplay is by far the most important aspect of the game, with everyone being able to shine.

The GM not only loved the idea of “cool things” but he embraced those moments and tried to make them even bigger. By the end of the adventure, we were leading a procession of villagers against the local aristocrat with a band and doves and an old cannon to prove a point. And while no shots were fired, we made our point to oust the current “ruler” and replace him with one of our own… executing him just as the story faded to black.

Just amazing fun all around.

Planet of the Apes

Another game Egg had requested, though we weren’t exactly sure how it would go. Obviously if you follow the original movies, the idea of either being a human in an ape world didn’t sound very appetizing. Luckily, we not only were playing the apes, but we were on a Human Hunt (the most dangerous game indeed). Using a version of the old West End Games Star Wars system, it was like a old pair of shoes (though the last time I played the system was in the mid-90s).

Again, we were blessed with a good GM, a good mix of players, and one player who must have been waiting for this specific game because he just leaned into his “Lawbringer” character. With such lines as “You know what they say – human see, human do”, he found every great moment to really hit it all home.

My character was the reporter coming along for the hunt, hoping to find corruption among the elites. And that’s how I started playing it, but as I made notes of what pictures she had taken, I started to see something else. Even when we encountered the humans, we never really had to deal much with the idea they could talk (keeping them gagged helped with that). When we reached the end of the session, I had a chance to give my findings (what kind of article did I write) and I went with one that celebrated the hunt and those who participated. It celebrated our leadership along with those poor NPCs who lost their lives to the obvious “radiation sick” humans (RAD Human).

I’m curious how a campaign would work in the world, though I suspect you could really lean into the exploration of the Forbidden Zones or reclaiming some of the irradiated areas.

Day 4

With Sunday arriving, we made one last quick trip to the Dealers’ Room and then it was time to make our way back to Atlanta. I did end up buying a couple of Button Shy games as well as finally taking a chance on the Final Girl series of solo games (though at the time of this blog, I haven’t had a chance to take it for a spin).

Next year I’ll be skipping Gen Con as the family is going on a cruise that week, but it is very possible that Origins might be the replacement for the guys’ trip. We’ll see as the date gets closer.

Gen Con 2025 Recap – Part One

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Day 0

We did our normal trek from Atlanta to Indianapolis. Through a weird trick of fate, my wife was actually in Indy at the same time for about a day (for work). While we didn’t get to see each other, it was interesting to be in the same general area in such a random way.

As normal, we use Gen Con (or any gaming con) to play those games we’ve either never played before OR haven’t played in a long time. Since our current game is 5E D&D, that leaves pretty much anything and everything else as fair game.

Day 1

Our original first game was cancelled, which probably was a blessing in disguise. It allowed us to not rush through breakfast before heading over to the Dealer’s Room (but after the initial rush of 10AM. We made our way through the various aisles and locked in a couple of potential buys “at some point this weekend”. The theme for most of our Dealer’s Room time was fitting in a hour or two whenever we could between games as our schedule didn’t have a ton of gaps.

Tales from Elsewhere: Clockwork

The Kickstarter Prelaunch Page is located here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/talesfromelsewhere/tales-from-elsewhere-clockworld?ref=profile_saved_projects_prelaunch&category_id=Q2F0ZWdvcnktMzQ=

We lucked out and had the creator of the game GM for us (Peter Lange), which immediately solves any problem of whether or not the person running the game is going to know the rules.

This hadn’t been on anyone’s list since the game isn’t out yet, but I am a sucker for anything Steampunk/Weird West related, so I snagged it on that alone.

As Peter talked about the game a bit, the set up was a weird west/steampunk world but 100 years after the wild west originally ended (due to a calamity). A very clever idea which let him create an area of the world to start your campaigns, but a ton of the map was not occupied for those 100 years. All this sets up some cool discovery-style sessions with wagon trains, outpost/forts trying to help humanity fight back against the monsters.

The character sheet was really well set up with pretty much all the information you needed for your character and some cheat sheet rules related stuff on there as well, which made it incredibly easy to follow along with what your character could or couldn’t do, and what those consequences might mean for the session and potentially for the long haul in ongoing campaigns.

It was a 2-hour game with a very straightforward setup of a wagon train going out to settle on the frontier. Each person had a roleplaying opportunity from interactions with some of the NPCs travelling with you and by helping them, you potentially got a gift or an offer of help later that you would be able to potentially use. The main piece was the battle at the river crossing where one of the players at the table was the same person who had built the terrain pieces for the encounter. Of course, there was an ambush by Bandits and then in the midst of that we also had the misfortune to deal with undead robotic monstrosities.

The battle flowed smoothly, and overall, I thought the system was both simple enough to get started quickly but had enough depth that I could see how building a character and doing a proper campaign could work well.

Great session and really fun game. I’m already planning on backing the Kickstarter when it launches on September 2.

Peter has a Youtube where he talks about this game and the mechanics of other roleplaying games. You can find him here:

https://www.youtube.com/@TalesFromElsewhereGames

Root the RPG

I have the digital version of the game which I’ve played a handful of times, so I am familiar enough with the world. I’m also a fan (if from a distance) of the various settings which feature anamorphic critters running around as the PCs.

As it was a 4-hour session, we spent the first 45 minutes creating characters. I’m not sure that it actually needed to go that long, as I think you could probably get through it in about half the time, but some of that time was spent on showing how some of the weapons were designed, since for the session they only had a very basic set of options.

I do always

During the game, our Vagabonds arrived in a clearing (village) who were dealing with the aftermath of a wolf attack where they had blown a dam to wash them away. Now, I was playing a Beaver, so while that form of attack might be effective, it is probably not the best long-term solution.

As we investigated the problems of the town, we came to realize that it is mostly a Rabbit town with a few Crows, but the ones seemingly in charge were the Foxes. My mind immediately wonders if this is really the problem and the Foxes are up to no good.

No.

OK, well we are all affiliated with the Woodland Alliance, maybe we could get them to come in?

Maybe, but here are the people you need to talk to.

That goes mostly nowhere.

There is a lot of this where we pretty much try everything we can think of AND even want to check out some random side events, but are shut down by the GM. At which point, I basically express my frustration saying, “I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do at this point.”

The GM does give us a little bit of a lifeline (emphasis on little) which gets us to a point where we try and change the big Story of the Clearing with their storyteller. I make what I thought was a decent argument through roleplaying, but then the dice say otherwise.

Which brings me to one of those things… if your players are roleplaying a decision out in an encounter with the NPCs, it’s ok just to go with whether it swayed you or not. It doesn’t mean you have to go with a dice roll. Sometimes, just go with your gut.

Eventually, we convince them, there is another wolf attack which we fend off, and that’s it.

Sadly, this session really left a bit of a bad taste in all our mouths to the point that it ended early… the character creation took too long, and the reputation portion of the adventure really felt underused. I feel like the adventure might have gone better if there was already a Faction in the Clearing and we were working against them to eventually pull the clearing toward someone else. As it was, the reputation mechanic never really came into play.

Day 2

Gangbusters B/X Edition

Egg had really wanted to play Gangbusters B/X Edition. For anyone familiar with any early D&D system with a couple of small twists mostly in terms of naming (Moxie, Wooden Nickles, etc). It’s been a long time since I played 2nd Edition AD&D, so seeing THACO after all these years was strange.

The adventure itself was initially set up pretty well. Every character (we had pregenerated characters) had a small backstory and the GM gave us an idea of why we were either in the Speakeasy or in the parking lot nearby. However, the problem was a gunfight broke out in the parking lot and two of the PCs were out there while the other 4 had absolutely no reason for going out and getting shot at. Which led to PVP with the two on the outside while the rest of us wandered through some overly complicated bag exchange.

The GM did a decent job of making sure the camera turned on each character quickly, so most of the time you weren’t sitting idle for too long. It is a little bit odd to do that with combat happening on one side and talking happening on another.

I think this could have worked a little better if the characters had some additional connections with one another. Maybe even if it was just a quick – you know X guy from your days back in prison. You and Y have run jobs together.

As it was, we all struggled with how to connect to one another and how really propel the story forward. When we finally got to the point where about 3 of us could move a portion of the “plot” forward, I wasn’t sure how or if the other PCs would be included. It didn’t matter as we ended about an hour early with the GM telling us that the second half of the adventure would have taken 2 hours.

So far, one for three in our enjoyment of the sessions.

Broken Tales

This was one of those I’d been very interested in (and still am in light of what transpired). I really like the story behind this game, which is the good fairy tales have all become corrupt and it is up to the very flawed villains to save the day (maybe).

Our group of four was comprised of Baba Yaga, The Big Bad Wolf, The Pied Piper, and the Queen of Hearts. Our adversaries, as we’d come to discover, were the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy. Pretty cool, right?

This game started off on the wrong foot and kind of spiraled from there. Only the three of us were on time, but sometimes when you have players book back-to-back games you never quite know how long it is going to take you to get there. And sometimes you must walk like half a mile between the stadium and one of the hotels. Which really means, a 10-minute grace period is no big deal. Many GMs will use that to start talking about the game or the world or just interact with the players.

We waited for 15 minutes before our 4th player arrived and then waited another 15 minutes for a fourth player who never appeared. The GM even mentioned waiting for a little while longer because this was supposed to be a full session.

We convinced him to begin.

Then he really didn’t go into how the system worked (I ended up having to explain it from one of the rules cards on the table). Then when one of the players was trying to explain that this is how they saw their character, he challenged them on that (eventually letting the issue go). He apparently had never heard of the rule of cool, because he shut down any flourishes to a player’s description of how an action went (when it would have no mechanical advantage anyway).

The best part is when Lee had to step away from the table to go to the restroom. The GM was ready to swing the camera back on him and realized he was gone… which clearly upset him. He then turned to me and said:

“Does your friend often walk away from the table?”

“Well he had to run to the bathroom.”

“Does he do that often?”

Not knowing what answer would appease him, I opted for a stun instead. “No, I don’t think he urinates more than normal.”

That response seemed to do a number on him.

About an hour and forty minutes into the session (four hour scheduled), we had defeated a couple of our adversaries, had figured out Dorothy was on her way to kill the last witch, and now we needed to spring into action to save them. Instead, he declared that was the end of things and to find out more we’d need to read the adventure.

So we basically got a little over an hour of play time, were finished 2+ hours early, and that was that.

You know how the rule of GMing is mostly to say “Yes, And?” to situations? A character wants to climb a wall, yes and. I want to go punch the King. Yes and…

This GM introduced us to the new flavor:

No, And.

Can I do-

No… And?

Well, then could I maybe?

No…And…

Here we were, at the midpoint of our Gen Con experience and somehow the cancelled session was the 2nd best one. Not a good average at all. Next week I wrap up the weekend and see if things could possibly turn around…