News: No Soul Left Behind is now available in print! Backers should get their copies soon. Also, Firewall will soon be out in print.
Synopsis: Gen Con is over and what a time we had! Between the games we played, fans we met, and panels we ran or attended, all of us had a blast this year. In this special extra long episode, we discuss our most memorable experiences of the con, and of course, our loot. Hear from Caleb, Tom, Aaron, David, Dan, Bill, Melissa, Michelle, and myself as we go over the con!
Shout Outs (wow so many very links)
- Eclectic Eccentricities: A neat shop of dice jewelery and other crafts.
- Michael Plondaya’s art blog: He made Red Markets fan art! Also, a great artist.
- Drunk and Ugly: They hung out with us and we were on some of their panels.
- Review Cultist’s Art: Gaze upon Lucille in all her glory!
- Feng Shui 2: Hong Kong style action movie gaming, now in print!
- Dreamhounds of Paris: The Surrealist movement meets Cthulhu. A winning combination!
- Cthulhu Apocalypse: 1930s post-apocalyptic Cthulhu survival horror.
- Superfight: A card game about arguing who would win a fight. Quite fun!
- Meow: M E O W.
- Bezier Games: Neat board and card games. David approved.
- Malleus Monstrorum: A compendium of Cthulhu monsters and gods.
- Shotguns vs. Cthulhu: An anthology of stories about fighting the mythos, presumably with shotguns.
- Geek Therapy: Therapy by and for geeks.
- Baby Bestiary: Super kawaii monsters – who could kill a baby owlbear?
- Snake Oil: a fun card game about salesmanship and creativity.
- The Cartel: An Apocalypse World powered game about powerful drug cartels.
- At the Hands of an Angry God: A game about building a Utopia.
- Cthulhu Dark Ages, Second Edition: A new edition for 7th edition Call of Cthulhu! No store page for it yet though.
- Noble Treachery: A card game about becoming king by screwing over the other nobles.
- Night Witches: An Apocalypse World powered game about female pilots in the Russian military during World War 2.
- Misspent Youth: A RPG about fighting the MAN as an angry teenager.
- Q Workshop: Cool dice maker.
- Ashen Stars – Accretion Disk: A supplement for Ashen Stars with new gear and aliens.
- Gadget Guides: Get your gadgets for your Mutants and Masterminds game!
- Adorable Pandaring: Who has the cutest panda?
- Alpha Bandits: A word game about stuff. God so many licks to write up
- Wordariffic: A card game about picking words from random cards.
- Kettle of Fish, Accidental Cyclops, and Lurkers in the Valley: Cool LARP groups that put on great games!
- Pocket belts: Lack pockets? Get a belt of them!
- Lowlife: great counter-culture looking RPG with a unique setting.
- Skirmish Outbreak: A new miniature based skirmish game – survivors fighting zombies and each other.
Music: The Mach Rider by the Encounter.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:11:29 — 109.7MB)
Subscribe: RSS
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I love love love Superfight! Totally replaced Cards against humanity in my heart. And the expansions are way better than CAH expansions, card for card, dollar for dollar.
Glad I pointed it out to Caleb then RJ 😀 Its a great game. Also, I think I won in the RPPR loot this year when I was denied the friendly Caleb Handshake and forced into the Caleb Destinybrohug d( “d)
LISTEN TO ALL THE THINGS. no, there have actually been RPPR podcasts that even I found too audi-awful to get through. if you ever want to drive me away, run a steampunk campaign.
the whole games-as-education thing was, like, stunningly touching. I had feels, just hearing it described. as someone who feels sort of failed by the American education system, any kind of gamification of teaching sounds like a move in the right direction to me. one day we’ll grow up with Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age tutors. until then…educators need to agitate for that direction.
many of the games you picked up sound super cool, I look forward to hearing those oneshots podcast three or four years from now =P
Thought I’d clear up the priority points. You guys have the right idea, just a bit off on details.
Gencon has had a point system for a long time, that part isn’t new. 1 point is approximately $250. You gain points for buying a booth, donating product (in large values), buying advertising, and a few other things. {This info would be available to anyone who applied to be an exhibitor}
The change for this year was “if you had not earned 30 points before the start of 2015 you would not be allowed to preregister again at the end of the convention”. Basically you needed to have already accrued 30 points before 2015 to be able to preregister for 2016 which means only points from cons you have already attended. We were blindsided with this one week before the con.
The big reason to prereg at the con is it saves you $400 and secures your spot. if you wait to prereg until after the con it’s more expensive and there’s no guarantee you’ll get in again.
TLDR: They changed the rules last minute, made it more expensive, and more difficult for someone like us to get back in. They also made no guarantee they wont do it again next year.
So we’ve decided we’re just going to show up to do Gencon for fun. It’ll give us time to play games and just hang out more which will be awesome.
Sounds like it was a lot of fun 😀
Not ever having been at Gencon I’m guessing the “nazi guy” was a seller of memorabilia and the “hentai place” sold porn? Seems really weird to allow them in the first place.
Yay, Snake Oil! That’s a fun game. One fun variation that I’ve played: instead of choosing two cards from your hand, you choose one card and pass it left, and one card and pass it right. Then you have to make your pitch using the two cards that were passed to you by your neighbors. Really makes you think on your feet. 🙂
i experience Gen Con vicariously through you guys. What with the Atlantic being in the way and all.
FunEmployed is also a great game i hear.
MANNNNN I need a recording of that rolling for change panel. A friend of mine that is a social worker actually did her final presentation at uni on the subject.
It sounds like an awesome but exhausting GenCon all around.
What was the minis co-op zombie game that Ross mentioned? I didn’t catch the name or see it in that ocean of shout-outs.
I can vouch for just how good the education, Scary Parrots, GDW Live, and Beyond Lawful Good and Evil panels were. Great job with those. I’m looking forward to the rest.
I’m exhausted just listening to this; SO MANY THINGS.
Looking forward to hearing the panels that were recorded. Also, it is nice to hear some positive coverage for LARPS. I’m not a LARPER myself, but it is a bit unfair that the term LARP has developed such a strong negative connotation and is being left behind in the transition from “geek” as a subculture into an infused cultural norm.
Ninjaguiden: “nazi guy” would be Belle & Blade, they’ve been at GenCon forever. They sell, amongst other things, t-shirts & hats emblazoned with the symbols of WWII waffen-ss units. Last time I was at GenCon (2003), they were selling DVDs of “Triumph of the Will”. A local gamer I know bought a copy from them for research (he’s a crown attorney who prosecutes neo-nazis).
@Ken R – Skirmish Outbreak is now added to the links.
Thousands of years ago I trapped ten people around a table to explain convoluted anime concepts! It was great playing Channel A with you guys, Caleb especially. I need to step up my game for next year: the one time I didn’t go back in time a few centuries to explain my plot Caleb expressed disbelief. So, clearly, he wants way more backstory. Next year I’ll run a ten part Hillfolk campaign to provide proper background on each of my proposed animes.
Thank you to anybody who picked up a copy of Boiling Point, it means a lot to me that people enjoy the book.
I’m proposing that for next year we get as many RPPR fans as we can to cosplay as their Taker PCs from Red Markets.
Don’t get Q workshop dice btw, they’re hard to read and badly cady.
Is No Soul Left Behind only available to the Kickstarter backers, or will the pdf be up on DriveThruRPG or somewhere? I didn’t have the money to spare during the pledge. 🙁
@Ross thanks for the link on Skirmish Outbreak.
@Jace911 – the pdfs and books for KS backers went out through RPGNow, so I’d guess that’s the site to watch.
I can’t help but notice – with Caleb and Ross taking the image of two other prominent podcaster writer/game-designers and an army of listeners speaking with one (announcer) voice – the plans for next year’s GenCon sound rather Unknown Armies.
Great show everyone & can’t wait to see some of the loot being put to fun RPPR projects. Heard a lot of good things on Snake Oil & the Baby Bestiary, it almost sounds like the writer spent a lot of time playing the board game Dungeon Petz (and maybe Dungeon Lords).
Waiting for the local game store to be getting in Feng Shui2 in print, (as the Secret Cabal board game podcast puts it) I’ve been chomping at the bits to get my hands on the print version of it as I missed out on the kickstarter & the game looks wickedly fun & very curious on the RPPR spins as favorite earlier character plus new ones have epic martial art carnage against the evil forces of Hastur, Cthulhu & Sparkles.
Also good choice on music at the end Ross, not heard that one before & liking it a lot.
–
Dungeon Petz link on Board game geek (guy who made this also did Dungeon Lords which is like the PC game Dungeon Keeper but in board game form)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/97207/dungeon-petz