The Gen Con Shopping Haul
Aug. 20th, 2009 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theronWhat happens when a middle aged gamer with some disposable income is careful and budgets himself for the first eight months of the year? He goes crazy at the biggest game show of the year and drops serious money on lots of interesting stuff. It's going to take me months to read through all of this stuff, but here's what I've got and my initial impressions.
Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition: A really beautiful book. Technically, I bought this for my wife, as she's the dedicated SR GM, but I'm sure I'll be paging through it as well.
HERO System 6th Edition: Technically, I ordered this, since the books aren't back from the printers yet, but I got the rules on CD. What I've seen so far seems to go a long way towards further cleaning up my favorite generic rules system and make it more of a toolkit, further distancing it from its superheroic roots. It's MASSIVE, but I've come to expect that from Hero.
Lucha Libre Hero: Simply one of the most gloriously fun and epically psychotronic books ever written for the HERO System. It's splendid.
The Day After Ragnarok (HERO System version): Ken Hite gives us a two-fisted world of pulp adventure wherein the Nazis successfully summoned jormungandr, the world serpent, bringing about a nuclear-fueled magical apocalypse that shatters the world. It's crazy and wonderful and absolutely demands to be played.
War of Worldcraft and Foxbat for President: Two third party Champions adventures from Blackwyrm Games. Honestly, neither impressed me much, but Blackwyrm founder Dave Mattingly gave me my only paid work in the gaming industry to date, so I always like to spend a little with his company.
Pathfinder Core Rules: I'm not entirely sure what to think of this or even why I bought it. Probably because it was the hit of the show and I expect a fairly high likelihood of further pre-4th edition games in my future. It's huge and gorgeous and I've basically just flipped through it so far and scanned a few things. I like the alternate origins available for sorcerers.
I bought a fair bit of stuff for Wild Talents. I ended up with a playtest credit for the first edition rulebook and have always felt guilty about that because I really just lurked on the mailing list. My one experience with the One Roll Engine system was great, but not great enough to make us want to take it up full-time. Of course, that was with Godlike, and WT is a bit more of a traditional superhero game. Anyway, I picked up Wild Talents Essential Edition (the current version of the rules, for only ten bucks), The Kerberos Club (a campaign setting for Victorian superheroes) and Grim War, a Greg Stolze/Ken Hite project that pits mutant "good guys" against "evil" sorcerors. Things aren't that cut and dry, though. WTEE is a good revision of the original rules. Grim War is pretty interesting so far, and I've barely looked at The Kerberos Club.
Adamant Entertainment had hard copies of their Mars supplement for Savage Worlds. Think Burroughs' "Barsoom" novels, with the serial numbers filed off. The production values are lovely. It's got white apes and green men and radium rifles and red princesses to rescue. What more could you need?
3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars is a bit of an "indie-darling," one of those neat little games that tends to do one thing and do it incredibly well. In this case, that one things is Starship Troopers/Hammer's Slammers/Forever War style military carnage. Join the Terran Expeditionary Force: Explore strange new worlds. Seek out new life and new civilizations. And obliterate them completely. It's delightfully messed up stuff and another one of those games that just demands to be played.
A.D. 316 is an "ashcan" set of alternate rules that were available at the convention, that take the military carnage of 3:16 and transport it to fighting barbarians in ancient Rome. It's not a complete product, but it was only eight bucks, and with the main rulebook, a good GM has everything he needs to do the job.
Ghost Stories is a cooperative board game out of France. Set in ancient China, it pits a group of Taoist martial artists (the players) against the forces of a great lord of the undead as he invades their village bent on self-resurrection. The game really just have been titled, "Theron, Just Buy This And Get It Over With."
Shard RPG Basic Compendium: This is the first anthropomorphic game I can recall in many years that didn't make me want to take a shower in bleach. The fact that the art is incredible and focused on realistic depictions of anthropomorphic animals is a major factor. Also, the designers (old SCA friends of mine) don't head off in the direction of squick, sticking to a very compelling and very different feel from most fantasy games, inspired by ancient India and south Asia. It's a truly beautiful game, giving us a world as unique as Talislanta or Jorune, and I can't wait to read it in detail.
Warriors & Warlocks: The Mutants & Masterminds sourcebook for comics-style Swords & Sorcery games. I already own the PDF, but I realized I'd gone the entire show without buying anything from Green Ronin, and I like them, so I wanted to buy something.
Adventurer's Vault 2: Because it was available at the show before street date and I hadn't bought anything from Wizards. It's pretty much what one expects if one saw the first volume, though there seems to be a bit more in the way of backstory connected to some of the items, which I like.
So, I've got a lot in the reading pile now. Oddly enough, it looks like the next thing up in my GMing queue will actually be a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. Which means a fair bit of the reading may have to wait while I get things readied on that front.
Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition: A really beautiful book. Technically, I bought this for my wife, as she's the dedicated SR GM, but I'm sure I'll be paging through it as well.
HERO System 6th Edition: Technically, I ordered this, since the books aren't back from the printers yet, but I got the rules on CD. What I've seen so far seems to go a long way towards further cleaning up my favorite generic rules system and make it more of a toolkit, further distancing it from its superheroic roots. It's MASSIVE, but I've come to expect that from Hero.
Lucha Libre Hero: Simply one of the most gloriously fun and epically psychotronic books ever written for the HERO System. It's splendid.
The Day After Ragnarok (HERO System version): Ken Hite gives us a two-fisted world of pulp adventure wherein the Nazis successfully summoned jormungandr, the world serpent, bringing about a nuclear-fueled magical apocalypse that shatters the world. It's crazy and wonderful and absolutely demands to be played.
War of Worldcraft and Foxbat for President: Two third party Champions adventures from Blackwyrm Games. Honestly, neither impressed me much, but Blackwyrm founder Dave Mattingly gave me my only paid work in the gaming industry to date, so I always like to spend a little with his company.
Pathfinder Core Rules: I'm not entirely sure what to think of this or even why I bought it. Probably because it was the hit of the show and I expect a fairly high likelihood of further pre-4th edition games in my future. It's huge and gorgeous and I've basically just flipped through it so far and scanned a few things. I like the alternate origins available for sorcerers.
I bought a fair bit of stuff for Wild Talents. I ended up with a playtest credit for the first edition rulebook and have always felt guilty about that because I really just lurked on the mailing list. My one experience with the One Roll Engine system was great, but not great enough to make us want to take it up full-time. Of course, that was with Godlike, and WT is a bit more of a traditional superhero game. Anyway, I picked up Wild Talents Essential Edition (the current version of the rules, for only ten bucks), The Kerberos Club (a campaign setting for Victorian superheroes) and Grim War, a Greg Stolze/Ken Hite project that pits mutant "good guys" against "evil" sorcerors. Things aren't that cut and dry, though. WTEE is a good revision of the original rules. Grim War is pretty interesting so far, and I've barely looked at The Kerberos Club.
Adamant Entertainment had hard copies of their Mars supplement for Savage Worlds. Think Burroughs' "Barsoom" novels, with the serial numbers filed off. The production values are lovely. It's got white apes and green men and radium rifles and red princesses to rescue. What more could you need?
3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars is a bit of an "indie-darling," one of those neat little games that tends to do one thing and do it incredibly well. In this case, that one things is Starship Troopers/Hammer's Slammers/Forever War style military carnage. Join the Terran Expeditionary Force: Explore strange new worlds. Seek out new life and new civilizations. And obliterate them completely. It's delightfully messed up stuff and another one of those games that just demands to be played.
A.D. 316 is an "ashcan" set of alternate rules that were available at the convention, that take the military carnage of 3:16 and transport it to fighting barbarians in ancient Rome. It's not a complete product, but it was only eight bucks, and with the main rulebook, a good GM has everything he needs to do the job.
Ghost Stories is a cooperative board game out of France. Set in ancient China, it pits a group of Taoist martial artists (the players) against the forces of a great lord of the undead as he invades their village bent on self-resurrection. The game really just have been titled, "Theron, Just Buy This And Get It Over With."
Shard RPG Basic Compendium: This is the first anthropomorphic game I can recall in many years that didn't make me want to take a shower in bleach. The fact that the art is incredible and focused on realistic depictions of anthropomorphic animals is a major factor. Also, the designers (old SCA friends of mine) don't head off in the direction of squick, sticking to a very compelling and very different feel from most fantasy games, inspired by ancient India and south Asia. It's a truly beautiful game, giving us a world as unique as Talislanta or Jorune, and I can't wait to read it in detail.
Warriors & Warlocks: The Mutants & Masterminds sourcebook for comics-style Swords & Sorcery games. I already own the PDF, but I realized I'd gone the entire show without buying anything from Green Ronin, and I like them, so I wanted to buy something.
Adventurer's Vault 2: Because it was available at the show before street date and I hadn't bought anything from Wizards. It's pretty much what one expects if one saw the first volume, though there seems to be a bit more in the way of backstory connected to some of the items, which I like.
So, I've got a lot in the reading pile now. Oddly enough, it looks like the next thing up in my GMing queue will actually be a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. Which means a fair bit of the reading may have to wait while I get things readied on that front.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 07:20 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to hearing about your Buffy game. That's something I keep finding myself wanting to revisit every time I come up with a campaign premise.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 07:42 pm (UTC)It's interesting coming to grips with the fact that the UMASS-Arkham game is finally moving from the realm of potential to the actual. A little daunting too, since (like so many of my game ideas), I've never committed much about it to writing. So, I've got a few weeks to get my notes and ideas in order so they resemble a campaign setting. Still looking for a good map of modern-day Arkham, but I've come to accept I'll probably have to wing that.
Besides, maps are harsh masters. Fluid geography is generally better, except for small locations.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 09:48 pm (UTC)You actually got three things tied to me, actually. Ragnarok, which Ken was kind enough to dedicate to me; Kerberos Club, which I was an editor on (I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know what, if any, of my contributions made it in); and the Mars supplement, which I wrote some color for.
And next GenCon, ideally, you'll be able to buy my pulp game from EvilHat....
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 09:48 pm (UTC)Jess N.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 10:23 pm (UTC)Looking forward to your pulp game.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-21 04:51 am (UTC)Jess N.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 09:54 pm (UTC)