Gencon 2019 Report Card

My middle daughter returned to Gencon again with me, and that is always a treat. Some really nice Daddy - Daughter time, the two of us heading out on an airplane to a fun place where there's going to be lots of smiles from both of us.

On to the games

Masks
A Powered by the Apocalypse game about teenage superhero. This game focuses not only about the conflicts between heroes and villains, but also the conflict between teenagers. It recognizes the challenges of what it might be like to be a teenager who finds themselves with superhero powers. What it would be like to be REALLY different from everyone else at school. How do you juggle those pressures and stresses. Its a really cool take on the superhero genre.
Grade: A-

The Fleet
A Powered by the Apocalypse game in the vein of Battlestar Galactica. A lot of room in here for interpersonal conflict alongside high stakes adventures. The creator did a good job of modeling the characters and their archetypes. In particular the way that those characters interact with their fighters. The GM takes on the role of the Commander (Commander/Admiral Adama). The players will be (I will definitely butcher the playbook names) the rookie, the CAG, the Chief, the psychic, the XO, etc. Great way of bringing the concepts of the main characters of the show into the forefront.
Grade: C (if the table were better grade would be much higher. Other player was really just not fun for us to play with, and pretty disruptive)

Sentinels of the Multiverse
Another superhero game. This one has its own system that definitely feels like it was born out of Cortex Plus, and some flavor from Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, which itself was a Cortex Plus game. Its not the same, but you can feel the DNA in there. A really interesting twist to the game is the idea of some powers not being accessible until things become dire. The hero being really busted up, or running out of time in the scene. Scenes themselves will also have a turn - the environment. And a scene is given a certain amount of rounds before things will go disastrously wrong. It puts a really nice pressure to act upon the players.
Grade: B+

World Wide Wrestling
The WWE in Powered by the Apocalypse form, with the GM acting as the producer, setting up the fights and making the "who wins" decisions. The matches play out like choreographed series of moves, flowing back and forth as wrestlers take momentum and move back and forth. It's extremely fun. What's more, the wrestlers engage in pre-match smack talk and backstage/locker room interviews.

I played the part of a washed up former olympic wrestling bronze medalist, who is just grinding it out on the pro wrestling circuit as a "jobber". That guy who's purpose is to lose to the stars. Through some absurd sequence of luck, he ends up actually accidentally winning,  giving him his first win.
Grade: A+

Last Will
A boardgames in which players are competing with one another to spend their rich uncle's money to prove they are the most worthy of it. First one to bankrupt themselves is the winner. We both liked this one, and I bought the game.
Grade: A-

Little Fears
Another new game for me. I love getting to try new games at Gencon. Hannah and I played the roles of two kids, age 10 or 12 I think, who were on family trips to Sesame Place. Unbeknownst to us, evil things were afoot. Our friends began to disappear as we encountered monstersed versions of Cookie Monster, Ernie, and more. I have to say the GM found the creepiest Sesame Street art ever created for this -
     
and more. Turns out Mickey Mouse was trying to steal all of the color from our world and be evil and such. We both had a great time, and Hannah figured out what the secret was just in time to save the rest of us.
Grade: A

DemonHunters
I wish for the life of me I could remember what the plot was for this one. Definitely a huge act to follow from the "Harrison" musical plot line from the year before. Suffice it to say that we both love Demonhunters. I hope you check it out and have some fun with it too.
Grade: A

Artemis
Artemis is Artemis. We both love it. We didn't feel like it was very well run or organized this year, and found the physical bridge that was created not really much more inspiring than just the usual laptops on a table. And don't get me wrong, laptops on a table with Artemis is a damned fun experience.
Grade: B

The Exhibit Hall

Meeting up with friends
Not entirely the same when you've got a teenager with you. Your teenager probably doesn't give a crap about any of your nerd friends that you only get to see once a year. Not her fault, and I probably shouldn't have dragged her into it. Was still nice to grab a meal with them and swap stories.
Grade: B

GM101: GMing for Beginners
I feel like I was back into my old form and got a lot of good feedback from people about it. I'm always glad to help a new GM get over their nervousness and go into the game excited, and hopefully with a few pointers and new techniques up their sleeve to help their games feel more natural, less choppy and overall more fun. Its a privilege to be afforded the opportunity to share what I've learned and I continue to be humbled by peoples willingness to listen to me. Different this year was my daughter being old enough to stay at the AirBNB by herself while Dad ran off to blather on about GMing. Went back after to pick her up and off we went to the con.
Grade: A

Overall Gencon Grade: A
While I do love and cherish my solo Gencons because of the freedom to just play and run the games I want without having to consider anyone else, there is something so supremely heartwarming about sharing it with one of my girls. Its not totally her thing. She doesn't love it the way I do, and doesn't play during the rest of the year. But the fact that she wants to take this trip and play with me just fills me with such Dad-Joy™ that I can't even begin to express how good it feels.

Gencon 2018 Report Card

Gencon 2018 - The Friend-ening

Gencon 2018 marked the return of me attending Gencon with a group of friends. Some friends joined me this year for the pilgrimage to nerd Mecca. I had rented an AirBnB with 2 bedrooms for the trip. As the organizer, I got one of the rooms, some others had the other room with the bunk beds (BUNK BEDS!!!!!! ZOMG) and the others piled into the living room on the sofa, etc. We shared an Uber/Lyft in and out each day and it worked out pretty well.

I learned from Gencon's past and didn't try to signed up for a whole bunch of events with my group, knowing how restrictive, (not to mention difficult it is) it can be to coordinate things together. So I limited myself to a small number. We planned to do Firefly, the RPG, Kobolds Ate My Baby: Fury Road, and a session of Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator. More on these later on.

GM 101
There's been such demand for intro GMing seminars lately that I decided to run this one twice. Had a great audience for both. A few people even asked me to game with them, so I invited them to come to Games On Demand, where I would be doing my GMing for the con. Lots of questions asked, answers shared, experiences shared among the group, and best of all, people telling me they now felt less anxious about running their first games. Mission Accomplished!

InSpectres
I ran a whole bunch of this at GoD. I love it each and every time. Great groups each time. I had an old man moment in one session though where a younger kid (please remind me to up the age-limits on my games) named his character Hulk - to which I asked, Hogan or Marvel, and he said "who?" Meaning he had no idea who Hulk Hogan was. At least the other players at the table had a laugh with me on it, and didn't leave me feeling completely old in the cold.

A group from the earlier GM101 class showed up for one of these sessions, and they were a joy to game with. Ran into them at Weber Grill the next day, where they sent me over a dessert as a thank you. Thats the biggest compliment I could get I think. Very much appreciated.
I LOVE running this game for people at Cons
Grade: A

Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator
Had been looking forward to this one a lot. Our group was just about large enough to run an entire ship on our own, and we signed up to play on the "jumbo bridge" a full scale setup, with podiums for each station rather than just laptops on a table. But when we got there, there was a huge mixup. On top of it all one of our players had forgotten his ticket at the apartment. Which ended up not being such a huge deal since we weren't able to play on the big bridge anyways, as it had been double booked and already seated for the slot.

To the organizers' credit they handled the situation well - offered to refund our event tickets, and give us 2 hours of play time on one of the laptop-on-a-table bridges to fill our time. Turned out to be a great session. Was nice to play with these guys, as they are my "home crew". When we do Artemis at home, this is who plays. Although we play at home, its still cool to play 'out' together.
Grade: B+

Kobolds Ate My Baby: Fury Road
This event was the highlight of the Con this year. We had a feeling it was going to be epic before we even showed up for it, just on the title alone. Kobolds Ate my Baby + Mad Max Fury Road? YESPLEASE! We were joined by a couple of other players and received our pre-game briefing. We would be kobolds in the vein of warboys from the movie. King Torg (ALL HAIL KING TORG!!!) would be the analog to Immortan Joe. A slimy human was trying to run off and escape with a nice tasty pile of babies, and we must stop them!!!!!

The GM explained to us the variant rules for this session, namely the process of being WITNESSED! Upon taking an action, a player may yell "WITNESS ME!!!" and the other players must respond with "WITNESS!!". This entitles the witnessed kobold to a 3 dice bonus on their skill check, but must immediately make a death save, at an increased difficulty of course.

Oh, and the GM literally had a deep pile of character sheets for us to write up new kobolds in a pinch for when we would inevitably die.

Fast forward a bit into the session, and my friend Matt decides to jump from our kobold war-mobile onto the tanker truck. Seeing this as a pivotal moment, he yells "WITNESS ME!!" and we all cheer him on "WITNESS!!".  He fails his death save and wipes out, but in a twist of fate his death is described as "False Witness!" and he does not die, and instead lies on in humiliation.

The Next round he again tries, in hopes of redeeming himself - "WITNESS ME!!" and we all rejoice in his madness - "WITNESS!!!". Another failed death save and tragic failure.



AND ANOTHER FALSE WITNESS!. He is again denied a glorious war filled death into Valhalla, shiny and chrome. We're laughing more at him now than we were with him. But the fight goes on. And his turn comes up once more. Seeing no other choice than the path fate had put him onto he yells "WITNESS ME!!!!" - and in response to the plea for witness unto Valhalla erupts the sound of....nothing. Crickets. Not a peep from the table. Alan (another friend) and I look over at Matt, our arms crossed shaking our heads in disappointment at his repeated failures. And then the laughter erupts. Man, that sequence alone was worth twice the price of admission!. What a great session. Havent had that much fun in quite a while.
Grade: A++

Firefly
This one rapidly filled up my "fuck this game" checklist for convention games before it even started. 8 players at the table? NOPE. That exceeds my max quota by 2. GM present and on time? NOPE. Strike two. GM Shows up and doesn't have the materials for their session? BOOM. Bob's out. I apologized to my friends for bailing, but this was too much too soon on my shit-game-o-meter, and I had to skedaddle. Dont recall exactly where I went after that, but it was most likely Games on Demand, to play something. Might have been Axon Punk.

I later heard from that friend that the session did indeed turn out to be a complete shitshow. Maybe I can get a quote from him about it.


Axon Punk
I played the part of a hacker who had become an AI and lived that way so long, they no longer identified as human. Just as an "it" called Corporal Kittens. It taunted "the man" endlessly and used RATM as soundtrack for the crew's exploits against the authority. Not sure how I feel about the system. It seemed a little clunky, but I had fun all the same.
Grade: B


Zoetrope
A very interesting game of Time Cops - using a custom card deck to mark points on the timeline, which can then be moved around as we bounce around, messing with our own timeline, creating save points, redo's, etc. Trying to explain your way out of your own paradoxes is a very entertaining thing. I think everyone had a great time with this, I certainly did.
Grade: A

GenCon 2016 Report Card

Gencon 2016 - The Shit-tacular

For various personal reasons that I won't go into, this was by far the worst Gencon of all time. Take every bad session I've had, add a radioactive turd on top and it still doesn't even come close.  But let me try and salvage some memories from it that don't make me want to eat broken glass.

Bob's GM Seminars
I was in a general funk throughout these, so I can't really fairly assess myself. I would say it was probably a poor performance overall, but who knows. I'll give myself a passing grade but nothing to be proud of.
Grade: C

The Laundry
This is an RPG based on one of my favorite fiction series, informally known as The Laundry. The books follow the tales of Bob Howard - IT Guy and new field agent for the department of Her Majesty's government that handles things that man was not meant to know. Great old ones, vampires, aliens, sinister soul easting spirits living in the body of an unassuming old Englishman. You know, that kind of thing.

System: Its basically Call of Cthulhu 6th. If you like it you already know. Percentages and lots of room for dead ends. Not the best IMHO.

Scenario: Setup was a typical horror-ish  mystery, but things went off the rails quickly when the group came up with a plan that more or less circumvented the entire story plan. I want to give a shout out to the GM, whose name I dont remember, who rolled with this like a pro. 

Notable Moments: Rather than just say "ok we can't do that because it messes up the planned adventure" she instead said - "OK. I did not expect that it really would shortcut our session. Can you guys give me 10-15 minutes so I can adapt, and we can keep playing for the full session?" This is the mark of a great GM.

Grade: B+ (I still have some heartburn with the Call of Cthulhu 6th ed. system this is built on)
Special Evaluation for the GM: A+


Empty Epsilon
An alternative to Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, its kind of the same thing, but open source. Torpedoes are much more realistic and don't exactly home in like perfect guided missiles. I'd say overall its a more challenging game, mechanically, than Artemis. I enjoyed it, but I think the steeper learning curve than Artemis could be a turn off to many people.

Grade: B

Eclipse Phase

As I said in the introduction to this report card, the year was a general shitburger for me personally, and memories are not particularly consistent. If I remember correctly, we played some kind of espionage heist type thing in a tall domed facility on the surface of Mars maybe? I do remember having a good time though. Had consistently good experiences with the sessions and GMs that have run Eclipse Phase at Gencon

Assumed Grade: A

Trail of Cthulhu
One I'd been wanting to play with another GM for years. I'd run it myself for a bit, and find it to be a very cool way of doing mystery games. Add in Lovecraftian mysteries and I'm in. No dead ends like CoC. Characters always feel useful and don't flat out fail to learn things because of bad dice and incompetent skill levels. It's more than just being "better" though. Its how the game works. The general idea is that if you're a doctor, and you investigate a body, you WILL find a medical clue if it's there. Because you should. You're a damned doctor, and this is a medical mystery. If you want to spend even more effort on it and use your precious investigation points, you might get a 'bonus' or bigger info from the clue.

This scenario had us all as guests at a bar, in which I think, we were all transforming into fish men. I could be misremembering this a bunch. But the part of the game that stood out was the completely unbearable player at the table who just HAD to make sure that every one of us knew that at nearly every turn, her character was getting drunk. Beyond obnoxious, and really wrecked the game for us. We left shortly thereafter. Our "fuck this game" - o - meter got pegged.

Sorry folks, but when your got a precious few 80 hours or so at the con, please don't waste them on a game you aren't enjoying. I probably could have handled it more tactfully and the better idea would have been to address the player and GM about it, but like I said. It was so bad I went from 0 to fuck it quite quickly.

Grade: B+ (GM and execution), F (general experience)

Through the Breach
Don't remember the scenario here, but I do remember the system. It was card based, and what I liked about it was that you would have a hand full of cards, and those would be your dice rolls. You got to pick what cards you would play, so in essence you could see a bit into the future, and plan accordingly because YOU decided when you were going to have shit luck. And you'd know when it's coming too. I liked that quite a bit. 

It's based in the Wyrd Miniatures' Malifaux world, and was fairly focused on the tactical aspect of it, but plenty of room to role play if you want it. I don't think the system provides a whole lot of mechanical incentive for it, but either way I enjoyed myself a good bit.

Grade: A-

RealmWorks 101

Not a game but rather a seminar on the features of RealmWorks by Lone Wolf Studios. It was (and technically still is, though its rather dead) a very rich campaign manager, with nearly endless ways to organize data, maps, plot points, help to track whats been revealed and what's still a secret, relationships between characters, npc, locations, storylines, etc. Its like a wiki but not. Like Obsidian but not. 

I believe that some clunkiness on its part lead to its downfall, but its still out there, and I use it from time to time. Its a tough decision whether to use it, or Obsidian. Realmworks is a heavy client though, and only runs on windows. I'm a Mac guy. (Judge me/Sue me/Fight me!)

Theres things about RW that I like more than Obsidian, and vice versa.

Grade: A 

DemonHunters
Its DEMONHUNTERS!!!! This was the first time I'd ever played what was to become one of my favorite convention games of all time. I run it at every convention I go to in which I GM. The game system for Demonhunters is an incredibly well done and elegant blend of Cortex and Fate. Two of my most favorite game systems for getting out of the way while enhancing and encouraging narrative play. Its hard to say exactly why this particular blend works so well, it just does. If Fate Core and the Cortex Hacker's Guide had a baby inside of the Emergency Room of a Dark Comedy Hospital, Demonhunters is what you would have. Just trust me, its that good.

As far as the scenario goes, I only recall that we were fighting the ghosts of a pirate ship, captained by the infamous "Arr MeHearties". That was the ghosts name. Brilliant. I love the tongue in cheek dark humor of this game.  You should go immediately find and play this game. Its an absolute treasure.

Summary

As I mentioned, this year was a steaming dumpster fire. I want to sincerely thank my friend who went with me to this year's con for his friendship and support. I haven't got a fucking clue how I'd have made it back home without him. You know who you are.

Gen Con 2015 Report Card

This was my first year ever bringing the kids to GenCon. I have to say it was a very enjoyable experience. It was me and my two oldest daughters, on our own for some Daddy-Daughter bonding and game time.

Intro to D&D
Meh, thats about all I can say about this session. The 5th edition is a solid traditional hack and slash RPG. More technically focused and regimented, and that has its place and is its own kind of fun. And I know some of you (if there actually are any readers out there) are saying to yourselves, "but you can ROLE play anything. It doesn't have to be all ROLL play!", I know that already. Now stop being obtuse and admit you know exactly what I am talking about. The story for the adventure was not compelling in any way, and the GM did little to give it the help it needed. GM was a rookie, and really shouldn't have been doing a convention, especially teaching new players. I don't fault him, but rather Baldman Games, who coordinate these events, and shoulder responsibility for their quality. My overall experience with D&D at Gencon is pretty consistent. Not Good. As in the quality is not good. At least its consistent.
Grade: D

Kobolds Ate My Baby
This turned out to be a completely impromptu thing. We popped by with generics on our way in, knowing it was sold out, but luckily there were 3 open seats. Awesome luck. Silly fun eating babies and getting killed. Poor unfortunate Kobolds. ALL HAIL KING TORG!

Grade: A

Artemis
We like this game and have played together at home Decent setup at the con, but nothing special.
Grade: B+

Extra Extra
Didn't play - no real instruction, just dropped a board game in our laps and expected us to teach ourselves. Disappointing.
Grade: F

Damage Report
Here was a fun, fast paced game of surviving and fixing a spaceship. A realtime board game. Each player has an hourglass to measure when they can act again. Lots of moving around, juggling resources, and prioritizing the repairs. Of course never knowing when or where the ship is going to get hit again is a problem. Also, try not to open an airlock with a shipmate in the room! A fun game, enough fun that we bought it
Grad: A-

Grow
Game was fun, rules explained by the designer, engaging, cute. I had backed their kickstarter, but its been years without a finished game :( - Update on this one, I finally got in touch with someone on Etsy who is selling the game. I told him about my kickstarter pledge, he asked me for my pledge number, and said he'd send me the game. This is notable because this person is NOT the people who did the kickstarter. They somehow and for some reason decided to sell all our shit to another person? I'm pissed at the creators, but grateful for the person running this Etsy for being accommodating.
Grade: A for gameplay and an interesting concept. F----- for execution and business follow through

The Whispering Road
This is an interesting story game, written by my friend, Brent Newhall. Its hard to explain so I'll let his website do the talking. I'm not an anime guy, so a lot of the background or style was lost on me, but the game was fun. It provided room to create for my girls in ways that a more rigid structured game like D&D does not. http://brentnewhall.com/games/doku.php?id=games:whispering_road
Grade: A

Gen Con with Kids
Its definitely a completely different experience. Right off the bat, I'm looking at more limited hours. You cant keep a 10yo up until midnight and up at 6am for 4 days in a row. They are a puddle of tears by the end of the first day. It's just too much. So it was 8am start, and 9pm to bed each night. But all in all it was a great experience because I got to share it with my daughters. Just the three of us, memories that are special and ours.
Grade:   A+

Cosplaying
Outside of halloween, this was my very first time since becoming an adult that I wore a costume for something. We wanted to do some kind of theme and settled on Firefly. I went as Wash, my oldest as Kaylee, and my middle daughter as River. We did it the same day that I had gotten a ticket for an autograph/picture with Summer Glau. Ellie (Kaylee) got a lot of attention, many people complimenting her and some asking to pose for pictures. I think she enjoyed that. Sadly most people did not recognize Hannah as River, who doesn't have such a distinctive costume. Which made her sad, and you could tell by the look on her face.

So we get to the line for the meet with Summer, and I'm managing kid emotions. They are both being good sports about it and getting along nicely. Not an easy thing for a 10 and 12yo to do all the time. We get to the front and immediately upon seeing my Hannah, Summer exclaims "oh my god, you're dressed like River!", and gave her a hug. Summer looked up making eye contact with me and I put my hands in the prayer position, and mouthed the words "thank you" to her. She was a lovely young lady, who cheered up my daughter at absolutely the perfect moment. I'll probably remember that one forever.

Summer, if for some insane coincidence of the universe you're reading this, thank you again, from the bottom of my heart
Grade: A+++