GenCon Day 3: Star Wars, Paizo, and Sol

Day 3 is over, and all in all it was a much more sedate day. It was also the first time I ran a game at a con, and I felt it went well, especially considering I had no intentions for GMing at all this weekend.

We started the day off trying to get into one of the official FFG Star Wars games. That fizzled, but I opted to run the Force and Destiny Starter Pack for my friend and 4 of the people who had also been hoping to get in on a game. FFG provided the starter pack (not to keep) and was thrilled we were willing to try. THankfully, the booklet pretty much ran the adventure itself so I didn't have to do much aside from know rules, make some rulings, and play the opposition. All in all folks had a good time and by the end of the adventure four new heroes had awoken to the force, gained a holocron, and saved an ancient Jedi temple from a Dark Side force user seeking to corrupt it. Good times.

With that game done, and only a couple hours until the waiting list opened for the next run of Star Wars, we hit the vendor hall. We played a demo of a game called 100 AD with the designer (fun game, though a bit too PVP cut throat for my tastes). The game involves buying influence in the senate of ancient rome and is the kind of thing I could see the Diplomacy crowd really getting into. We also spent some time at the Monte Cook Games booth and talked about The Strange and Numenerra.

After that it was back to FFG's room where we managed to successfully (albeit by extreme luck) get the last two seats in an Edge of the Empire game. We had the same GM we had last year, and it was even more fun. Highlights including a bar fight going from fists to plasma grenades (with proper escalation to blaster pistols and blaster rifles in the middle) in less than 6 seconds of in game time, and a scenario where two PCs tried, and somehow successfully, pulled a "Weekend at Bernies" with a comatose racer pilot to get him past his manager/crew and into his race car.

We left FFG to close up their room and headed upstairs to try Paizo's game room. Last year this was the location of the biggest disappointment I had at GenCon. This year, I have to hand it to them because they fixed the issues. Information Booths were much more readily available, and properly staffed with friendly people who were willing to help. An area was set up for free 30-60 minute beginner games, and they even had some demos on hand for their card game and such. It was probably the most improved experience I had this year. Though, at this point, I may be more invested in D&D. Not that I get to play either much.

Finally, before heading home, we got dragged in to demo a boardgame in development called Sol. This game isn't even up for kickstarter yet and was played with 3d printed pieces. The game is a strange mix of cooperative and pvp where the players try to harvest as much energy from the sun as they can to launch their mother ships before the sun goes super nova. The thing is, you can use anything another player has built (and they can benefit from this as well) and the more you do, the faster the sun approaches super nova. In the end of the game, the player who has moved their mothership the furthest up the board survives. Everyone else dies a fiery, painful death as they are unable to escape. I'll have more on this game when it does kickstart, but it started a bit slow and quickly ramped up to being very fun. The designer who ran the demo was also very open to feedback and ideas, even trying some of our ideas on the spot in the game.

Now, well, it's about time to go to bed. GenCon has one more day, and after that we hit the road to go back home. If things go according to plan it'll be a greater than 24 hour day, though I may see if I can talk my friend into leaving early after checking out the vendor room in the interest of getting home before 9 am on Monday.

Because of that there'll be no update tomorrow, or post on monday. We'll see about catching up on Wednesday. Until then, Happy Gaming.