After seven years away, I’m going back to GenCon. It’s been far too long since I was last there, and even longer since the late 1990s when GenCon was an annual pilgrimage for my gaming group. I’m looking forward to going back.
I love science fiction, but I’ve come to love baseball almost as much. As long time readers know, I came to the Church of Baseball late in life, so I don’t know all the rituals and I haven’t memorized all the stats … but I do enjoy the game. This summer my friends and I … Read more
The Blackrazor Guild held its semi-annual homegrown convention in late February 2012. About 18 people attended Nuke(m)Con 2012, some long-time members of the gaming group, others friends who join us from time to time. Nuke(m)Cons have become a standard part of our gaming group; we first started holding them because we missed our annual pilgrimages … Read more
MEPACon Spring 2011 is being held Friday, April 8 through Sunday, April 10. It’s the 10th anniversary of the convention, and they’re going to be having a special reception Friday night. As always I’m looking forward to the convention, but this time around I’m taking my own advice and only running two RPGs. Given that … Read more
Another MEPACon has come and gone, taking with it two weeks of frantic game preparation and 12 hours of actual play. The convention was held in Clarks Summit, near Scranton Pa. on November 12-14 and looked to have the typical attendance of 100 gamers playing a mix of board games, organized play, and one-shot RPGs. … Read more
My events for MEPACon Fall 2010 are up and ready for registration on Warhorn. The convention is being held Friday, 11/12/10 through Sunday, 11/14/10 at the Ramada Clarks Summit in Clarks Summit, PA. I’ll be running three events — “Catch and Release” (Star Wars: Saga Edition), “The Champions of New York” (The Day After Ragnarok), … Read more
After a few years away, the Blackazor Guild and I returned to MEPACon last weekend, our local gaming convention held near Scranton, Pa. every spring and fall. We used to be regulars at the local convention scene, but over the last few years we been running our own homegrown Nuke(m)Con instead. We decided to return … Read more
As I mentioned earlier, my gaming group’s planning on attending MEPACon Fall 2009 in force and true to my word I’ve volunteered to run three events at the con: The Antares Run (Star Wars: Saga Edition), The Ruins of New York (Savage Worlds/The Day After Ragnorak), and Risk 2210. The convention is being held Nov. … Read more
One of my favorite parts of hitting the big gaming conventions is spending a few hours (or rather, a few days) browsing and shopping in the exhibit hall. Origins 2009 was no different, and while I’m happy to say I didn’t break the bank, I did come back with a goodly pile of product purchased at the show.
I didn’t go into the show expecting to pick up any Savage Worlds books, as our Weird Pulp campaign never really got off the ground, and we haven’t played the game in months. But then I went to the Studio 2 booth, and found the brand new Fantasy Companion supplement for Savage Worlds. Published in the same folio format as the Savage Worlds: Explorers Edition, this book repackages the fantasy species information from the previous hardcover release of the game and folds in a bunch of edges, magic items, and monsters from the various fantasy toolkit PDFs.
I like PDFs, but I’d been hoping that Pinnacle would release the toolkits in a dead tree edition. when I saw the Fantasy Companion on the shelf, I instantly picked it up.
The whirlwind of gaming known as Origins 2009 has come and gone. I had little time bask in the gaming afterglow; after I left the con I flew directly to Vermont to meet with my family so we could spend a week on an island on Lake Champlain.
Going from 24 hour gaming to an island with no indoor plumbing, no net access, and minimal power was a huge shift, but at least the lake does have a wandering monster…
So how was Origins? Good. Great even. It didn’t have the same maniac energy that GenCon has, nor did it have the same crush of people all trying to get somewhere at the same time. All of the events were in the convention center, which made navigating the con far, far easier than GenCon.
Going into Origins I’d heard that it had a great gamer vibe — meaning it was a place that people went to play games, rather than being more of an event-style, vendor-oriented show like GenCon. After going, I can agree with that sentiment. It’s a gamer’s con, with a heavy focus on board, card and miniature games. Indeed, while there was a serious RPG contingent, they didn’t have the same sort of sprawling setup that they have at GenCon.