August 19, 2024 • 29 mins
This week we're talking about my experience at gencon 2024 running WOD games and playing games on the convention floor
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You know, Oh well my computer has sound to it. Wow.
I meant to come in here very much like professional.
And well, we just got back from gen Con and vacation.
I know we're a week late. That's because I took
a vacation. Uh, that happens. I went camping, I hit
the mountains after gen Con. But you know, I meant
(00:26):
to come in here way more professional than it. Didn't.
Then realized, Ah, I forgot to set up my mic,
didn't I yep, that sounds about right with me. I
didn't set up my mic. And here we go, and
give me just a second. I'm just making sure I
get my audio rate.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Uh yeah, wow, we are not off to a good
start for the show.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh whoa, I just sorry. Yeah. So that was kind
of a functional reset here as I get my brain
back on the topic. It had so a couple of
weeks ago, we had gen Con twenty twenty four, the
big gaming event of the year, not you video gamers,
but for you tabletop gamers are our favorite kind of people.
(01:29):
And I got a chance to go this year, which
is great. Now, I went with the Wrecking Crew. I
was able if you saw me there or ended up
in my games remember Hector is the bad guy and
Alejandro's a snibbling coward. But aside from that inside joke
(01:52):
with the players who actually played in my games, oh sorry,
gen Con was a great experience. I actually had a
blot this year. So if you don't know what gen
Con is, it is the big gaming convention held out
of Indianapolis this year, in which case they show off
the big tabletop games. We have tabletop war games, we
(02:14):
have tabletop RPGs, we have board games, deck builders, card games,
everything under the sun at gen Con. And it is huge.
Now when I'm talking huge, I mean seventy thousand people watching,
(02:36):
not watching, but there and more watching because they did
live events and pre record events. I heard that critical
role was there, that everyone was there, just a massive event,
seventy thousand people. The event was sold out when we
rolled up to When I rolled up to Indianapolis, it
(02:58):
was completely and I mean completely sold out, like downtown
was gridlocked. There was signs posted outside of it that
just said sold out all day. The convention was already
in full swing. I arrived Wednesday at about three pm,
(03:19):
and that's because I want to get there the day early.
We had a meeting that evening with dinner with everybody
from the Riking Crew and Renegade. I need to note
that none of our views are reflective of Renegade or
their companies that their associated, especially not the Riking Crew.
We love those guys, they are fantastic. But yeah, I
(03:39):
went with them. They they paid for the hotel and
the ticket and got me in and in exchange, I
ran some games for them, and I ran World of
Darkness as your gm Isaiah. Now gen Con had so
many games to it, and there's some that we were
excited for, most of them, Like I was not expecting it,
(04:00):
you know. We thought the big ones would be their Magic,
the Gathering, Warhammer forty K. And when I got there
and I saw all the other stuff that came, I'm like, whoa,
I have found my people. Now. I've gone to gaming conventions.
I went to Adeptcon, I went to I went to
the LVO. I've gone to conventions before. I go to
(04:22):
Comic Con every year, and every time I'm like, something
weird about this is the comlumber of people that I'm
not used to. And when I got to gen Conn,
I was like, oh, these that's why the tabletop games
are my people. They're the best. Like I said, they
showed off some amazing games and they had a term
as usual as money and out did their announcements. Everyone
(04:45):
did their announcements. We just want to talk about are
my experience there and I was supposed to have somebody
else here who did it. That's kind of why I'm
still in the framework of we uh instead of just me,
And so if you hear me slip down, that's because
it is. Of course, wow, we're pretty late into the show.
But I'm your I'm your gm Isaiah and your host.
(05:08):
Welcome to locked Loot your place for tabletop war gamings.
If you want to hit that like button, if you
want to subscribe, share with your friends and enemies. We
always love it when the enemies show up. Of course,
leave a comment there, we'll see it. We love talking
with you guys too during it. Let us know about
(05:29):
your gen Con experience. How you felt about twenty twenty four.
I thought it was holy crap, so many people. I'm
not used to this level of people at an event,
especially this size of the event. So for for reference,
gen Con had the Indianapolis Convention Center, it had the stadium,
(05:50):
it had the hotel convention centers next door JW and
I believe there were some stuff at the Hilton too,
Like a bunch of the hotel surrounding the area also
had events. This thing was absolutely massive and it was
a great time. You had the cosplayers come out, you
had the LARPers come out, you had the block parties,
(06:12):
which were amazing. If you have the funds to go
to gen Con, you want to go to at least
experience at once. It is the it's a gaming mecca.
It's a tabletop gaming mecca and tabletop gaming mecca. Oh,
it's beautiful. I thought Adeptacon was cool for the war games.
Adeptacon had enhing on gen Con. Of course, the usual
(06:38):
tournaments happened with with war games forty K, Star Wars, Legion,
Shatter Point. They took Armada off of it, off the signage,
which I was frustrated a bout.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I know.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
They announced no more developmental support, which is weird considering
we also got a report that we would hear something
from from the company AMG this October, so it's weird.
You might notice a dog wander up behind me. I
have to sit down and pet it. I've got no choice.
(07:13):
You'll see a dog wandering. It's nothing, but yeah, gen
Con was amazing getting in there packed. We had dinner
with the Rerecon crew and the Renegade people. Sat next
to the CEO, had a good talk with him, talked
about the gaming experience and just things in general. And
it wasn't like any wasn't an interview. I don't have
(07:37):
things that reports or anything. We just had a chat
which was a lot of fun. And then of course
we had the World of Darkness stuff, which is what
I was running there. I was there. You have the
gen Con stuff, but I was there running World of Darkness,
So I was running Werewolf and Hunter the Reckoning now
(08:00):
primarily Werewolf, but Hunter the Reckoning as well well five V.
So if you were Wolf people are there where there
it's the five V. It's not the twentieth anniversary or
anything like that. Now, I gotta talk about these two
because I was surprised when I was learning these games.
I actually really enjoyed these two games and learning to
play them, and you're running them. I really like the
(08:21):
storyteller system. It fits within the the framework of my
GM experience. I really liked the role play. I liked
the roleplay experience, and so these two games really spoke
to that. They have the mechanics for it where we'll
fits with the rage mechanic entering into it, where people
can get brutal results regardless of where they're at, whether
(08:44):
they're fighting or in a conversation, and a fighting brutal
results are amazing, and when you're not fighting, brutal results
are not amazing because you're unleashing that rage in a
verbal argument or in a verbal discussion. You know, you
never want to persuade somebody and get a brutal result.
The Hunter, of course, is You're the best joke I
heard about Hunter is Hunter. The reckoning is supernatural. The
(09:10):
role playing game you're just to sell of Hunters taking
down monsters pretty simple. I mean, there's more to it, obviously,
there's more lore to it, and there was more to
it in the previous VAT before version five, which is
the version that I ran there and ran intro games
for now. Version five came out in October, so it's
(09:32):
still a very newer game. I've been studying up on
Hunters since probably well since I found out I was going,
which is February, so yeah, the book read it up Hunter, Hunter,
the reckoning was great. Running these games for the Wrecking
Crew was a lot of fun. Again, I don't speak
for the company, nothing like that, but running it for
(09:53):
them was great. Running in there playing their games. You know,
we ran what's called a called rotten home. Now, if
you have not run or been in convention games, they're
very different than home games. Convention games. The module is
pre made a lot of times written by the company.
(10:15):
So for instance, Renegade wrote the modules for Vampire, Werewolf,
Hunter and all of them. I don't think they wrote
the Hunter one. They also made the characters, so Paradox
did that. If you don't know, Yeah, World of Darkness
is owned by Paradox Games. I can get behind Paradox Games.
(10:36):
I like Paradox Games, but I would say there's an
issue that we ran into with these They were okay,
from behind the DM screen, you would never see this.
We were all running our games, and yeah, from behind
the DM screen you wouldn't or the storyteller screen or
(10:59):
whatever you want to call it, GM screen, Hi dog,
you would never see this. But these modules had some
issues written into them, and I can't go on without
talking about it. For instance, the games you played at
gen Con, you had entirely different experiences based on who
(11:22):
you played with, not just the players, but with the storyteller.
And that's because the module was very thin. For Werewolf
Rotten Home, I love Paradox to death. Nothing against them,
I loved working for them. I just think that the
storytelling could have been a little bit better, and I
think criticisms. Criticism is an important aspect to these because
(11:45):
we had a blast. The people at my table had
so much fun, but my game, while we hit the
major story beats and everyone did, our games were so
different because the module was so thin. So the modul
went with a very simple structure. They've visited another werewolf
pack got involved in a ritual, and that ritual turned
(12:09):
out to be practically heresy, trying to turn the werewolves
against their against the Weaver, and in favor of the worm.
If you know anything about werewolf law, you know that
if you don't worry about it. That was one of
the complaints we got is that one the module was
heavily reliant on the lore, and the people playing at
(12:31):
these games were checking out the games. They may have
played a couple times before, but they're not so heavily
invested in World of Darkness, at least not the fifth edition,
that they know a lot about the lore and so
like as my intro when I introduced the characters, I
introduced everything. I had to do a quick rundown of
this lore because I'm like, this will come up, this
(12:54):
is important, and a quick rundown of it, and it's like, okay.
Because I had to do a lord dumb exposition at
the beginning, I didn't like doing that. I never liked
doing that. I like spreading it out through my through
my things. But if you don't understand the issues facing
the werewolves, you're gonna have problems coming later. And because
(13:15):
of that, my game heavily relied on the social dynamic
of what's we know there's there might be something wrong
with this. We need to figure out what's wrong with
it and fix it before they they're they're onto us,
and I'm like, cool, uh yeah, we run with that.
That's how we run it. The group next to me
(13:36):
was very different. Our characters were very different because they
were very thin on characters. For instance, the main characters
of the plot were Hector, Alejandro, Janet, and Farah. Now
Hector and Alejandro, a pack leader and right master Janet.
I'm still not sure where Janet fits into things, because
(13:59):
I actually her out. And that's the thing we had
to do revisions as storytellers. We had to completely design
these characters from the ground up because we got one
sentence for each of these characters, and we're like, you
want us tore in a four hour game, and we
get such a flimsy character as such a social game,
(14:20):
that these characters are so thin. You know. Our description
of Alejandro is he's the pack leader of the North
Rim and he is on the brink, on the brink
of what. And I had problems with that. On the
brink of what is he on the brink of? And
(14:42):
so one of the guys was like, he's on the
brink of falling victim to the right, and other people
with that, and I went, no, he's on the brink
of despair. And it's like they left too much room
for interpretation that the characters were very different. I played
Alejandro as as a pack leader who has been usurped
(15:02):
by his right master, and one of my groups picked
up on that, and I loved it because they played
into that. They played into no, no, you should be
doing something. You're the leader here, why aren't you doing something?
And then one of the groups was like, no, no,
we just want him out of the way so we
can deal with the real problem. I made sure that
there was a clean clean up to it. The issue is,
(15:25):
and this is very much a theme with Werewolf, is
that there's no good victory, there's no good ending to it.
And I'm like, but the endings that they gave us
were so thin that I'm like, I rewrote those two.
But honestly, after all the revisions, I can plain all
I want. But the people had a blast. That is
the most important thing if you are planning on running
(15:47):
convention games. If you are running convention games and you
are either learning the system, you know the system, and
you're just like, you're playing with strangers, so you kind
of my ear. But the most important thing other than like,
you have your module, you hate your big story beats,
But the most important thing is is everybody having fun.
(16:13):
My table was a roar of laughter. Everyone was having
a blast, and that's because that was the goal. My
goal wasn't we're here to play a very serious game.
We're like, we're here to play a serious game. But
we're all gonna have fun doing it. We're gonna laugh,
we're gonna have we're gonna have a great time. We
had our serious moments where people were silenced at my
(16:33):
table and everything, so that we're going there is something
wrong here. And then we had moments where people were like,
I do this, and the scenario changes and we are
laughing and just having fun. Everyone had a blast. That's
what's important if you're running convention games, the players having
fun is the most important thing. And that's the thing
(16:55):
about role playing games in general. I'm gonna get off
this train before I keep going, but the most important
thing is having fun. They talk about the three pillars
of role playing games, and I talked about this on
Tuesday and gen Con is actually what prompted that conversation.
The pillars of tt RPGs are exploration, role playing, in combat,
(17:20):
exploration role playing combat. And then somebody else, Cobald Press,
ticked me off because they said the fourth pillar is fun. No, no, no,
The fun is the foundation upon which these pillars are built.
If you are not having fun, the TTRPG is not
functioning properly. You should be having fun. That is the
most important thing. If you're not, it's not working now.
(17:43):
Of course, Wherewolf had its own issues, Hunter was an intro,
So when I ran Hunter, it was a blast action
whereas Wherewolf was intrigued what's wrong? I played Werewolf very
much as you guys don't know you're going in to
a trap. And I had a wild goose chase in
(18:04):
the first segment trying to figure out the relationship between
Alejandro and Hector, and was like, this wild goose chase
is to throw you off the scent until you realize
we're already trapped. And whereas that was the goal of
the Werewolf, the Hunter was action movie. We are busting out,
guns in hand, going after the vampire, and I played
(18:26):
that on the intro and the intro people had had
a blast too, because you know, we had fun. It
was so much fun for them as they just got
to hunt down the hunt a vampire through a crack house.
That was it. That was It's thin story wise, it's
supposed to be you pop out and you go hunting.
(18:46):
I like Hunter of the Reckoning. I like the idea
of Hunter of the Reckoning. Personally, I think I enjoyed
Hunter of the Reckoning more than I did Werewolf the Apocalypse,
because Hunter is very much the human side, and you
can get the irony of the situation, the weird groups
that working neether Now, everybody was Russian, so that was
a joke that we didn't realize until we were all
(19:07):
reading the character sheets and everyone went, wait, are we
all Russian? And yeah, we're all Russian immigrants. Everyone here
speaks Russian. And so my table, whereas everyone else in
the room who was playing, like g I, Joe and
my little Pony and Werewolf and Vampire, We're all talking
seriously and doing all their things. And then my table
(19:28):
you just had the the bad Russian accent, you know,
we just want to grab the gun. Just the bad
Russian accents all around. It was a lot of fun.
It was a blast. We had fun with it. Of course,
other than these, there were game announcements. Now I haven't
(19:49):
talked about the game announcements because I'm still talking about
my experience. And I talk about these because I ran
these eight hours a day for three days, and I
had a blast doing it. If you get a chance
to run convention games, run convention games. They're so much fun.
The convention games are so much fun. You can't. You
(20:13):
can't get past it. It's just a blast all all
the way around. Of course, other than that, we had
game announcements.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
One of the ones was Sears Catalog, and these are
just games that I got a chance to take a
look at in between my games, I didn't get to
see as much. Honestly, serious Catalog was kind of boring
to me. I mean, it's just another card game one
to thirteen, everybody ascending. So essentially how it works is
(20:45):
everybody they play it as you know, you're trying to
order things to deal with the monsters in the village,
and it's like, okay, no, no, everyone's just trying to
get rid of the cards in their hand. You didn't
need to frame it this way. You framed it in
such a weird way. It could have just been another
Phase ten or Rummy style or generic card game, and
(21:07):
instead they put this filter on it, and I'm like,
I don't approve of that. I wasn't too fond of
that a little bit. So I'm not gonna touch on
Sears Catalog too much. And that's just I wasn't very impressed. Now,
another game that came up, of course, was Let's go
to Japan. This was a big one. If you walked in,
you saw Let's go to Japan. Let's Go to Japan
(21:29):
is a deck building a fun deck building game in
which you're assembling your perfect itinerary. You're trying. It's one
of those table engine building games, kind of like Clank
or something, where you're building your deck, but you're laying
it on the table. So you're like, Okay, today we're
doing this, this, this, this, We're jumping between Tokyo coyotes.
(21:50):
So to have the most fun, the goal is to
build your perfect Japan vacation. And I'm like, okay, that
is a fun idea that the travel mechanic of building
your itin and you're like, I'm doing this, this, this, this,
and then there's mechanical solutions and points that you get
based on it. And then at the end of the
rounds your engine. You get to just see your engine
(22:10):
go off and your itinerary for a week long vacation
is built. Boo. You watch your engine go off and
you get points in decide the winner. Base on that.
Let's Go to Japan was fun. I like the concept
of it, but it also has potential because let's go
to Japan is just the easy one. They also use
(22:31):
traditional Japanese artists in artistry, which was nice to see.
So you had a very authentic feel to the game,
and I liked that. I really liked that about this
game is that it had that authentic feel. But when
I was looking at it, I'm going, Okay, you're not no, no, no,
you can do more with this. Let's go to Japan
isn't the end. Sure, you can have the let's go
(22:51):
to Japan expansion of the North part of Japan or
some of the Fukushima or that kind of thing, because
this is Kyoto and Tokyo. But I'm like, no, no, no,
you could expand it more instead of let's go to Japan,
Let's go to Italy, let's go to France, let's go
(23:12):
to let's go to Egypt. And you're like, okay, we're
building our itinerary for these different areas, and the game
is so easy to replicate on a larger scale to go, Okay,
we're not just doing let's go to Japan. We're doing
let's go to America, which would be harder.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It's more like let's go to Utah or let's go
to California because of how big America is. But I'm
not getting on that topic. America is massive. Be aware
of that. America is absolutely huge. Now now, of course,
let's go to Japan. Had its had its issues. You know,
(23:50):
it's not for everybody. This kind of game isn't for everybody.
You know, Jake has problems with deck builders and this
style of game and getting into it. These engine builders,
I enjoy them. I think people will enjoy this game.
I can't. This is a game that I'm like, I
want to go pick up. It's a lot of fun.
I played it there, get back and it's like, okay, yeah,
(24:10):
this is what we're gonna do. But I'm like this,
this game has potential. This game has a ton of
potential to become something bigger if people can buy into
it and get into it. And it's like, okay, you
don't like the Japanese theming. Yeah, like I said before,
let's go to Italy. You know, you're jumping between Venice
and Florence or Rome and Tuscany, and you're building your
(24:32):
itinerary on that, and everyone has that moment where they're like,
what do we want to do on a vacation it's
like this builds it out and you're like, oh cool,
and you might learn things about the different areas, different
things you can do. So it's a little bit informational
about the travel. And I'm like, that is cool. That
is a lot of fun. And I really like the
fun of this. But I can't sit here and talk
(24:54):
about Let's go to Japan forever, because Let's go to
Japan was not the only thing here I want to
talk about. This one was plastered on I don't know
if everybody saw it, but there was this role playing
game released a few years ago called The One Ring.
Now they also did a five E variant, Like we
do a lot of role playing stuff here and RPG
(25:17):
stuff on the channel. And so when I was there
and I saw The One Ring, I'm like, we're reading
The Silmarillion right now, me and my brother, and so
I can't take a look at The One Ring and
go let's pass. I'm like, no, no, I gotta go watch.
I gotta go check it out. And I went to
the booth and saw it, and sadly, by the time
I got there, the core book had sold out. The
(25:39):
core book had sold out, the starter set had sold out,
I could see the five stuff, but I'm like, I
wanted to see the actual game, and I'm like, I'm
kind of disappointed there. It's all right though, but the
One Ring. Talking about the One Ring, it's a very
interesting game, and I love that they're finally getting expansions.
(26:02):
And in the lead up to the end of the
month when Jake's really excited for return to Moria coming
to Xbox, I saw Maria through the Doors of Duran
and I'm like, Oh, where's the Maria expansion. That is
a lot of that is cool too. That is a
lot of fun, and it's like, Okay, reading on it,
(26:25):
I'm like, okay, So, so it's not necessarily a return
to Maria. Because The One Ring is a role playing game,
you can pretty much set it wherever you want in
the timeline of the Lord of the Rings, so you
can be like, Okay, so you guys got to go
through Mariya to get to through Kase of Dune you
get to the mountains, and that's just a part of
your journey, or oh, your dwarf's trying to reclaim Maria
(26:48):
before the Third Age or after the Third Age during
the fourth Age, and it's like it's a fun concept. Now,
the one Ring does a lot of interesting things.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I read.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I went through and read there kor rulebook on the
on five E just because I was trying to look
for a solution to my travel issues with SPID and
they have a very interesting travel travel solution and unlike
the travel mechanics are quick, easy, quick and dirty, very easy.
If you're going to place to place, you know what
you're looking for, you're going from town to town, You're like, okay,
(27:20):
we're going here to hear this is our roots, this
is our routes. And then because this is our route,
this is how many days it'll take. And of course
you go, okay, so you're you're going it's say a
fifteen day journey. Okay, you guys are making a fifteen
day journey. You're going at normal pace. Every when you
(27:41):
guys leave, give me a path finding check, which in
five E is just a survival check for road and
that determines how far out an event happens. And these
events can range from finding a shortcut to somebody almost dies.
And it's like, okay, that is really fun and it
makes travel very fast. You know, as DMS sometimes will
(28:03):
we fast travel, and I'm like, this is a way
for players to fast travel without making it boring. You
spend ten minutes describing this journey where people are falling
off cliffs, people are fighting magical shortcuts, that kind of thing,
and I'm like, the One Ring travel mechanic is really nice.
And then it's like at the end, everybody makes a
fatigue check, which in five year is a constitution saving
throw against exhaustion based on how long your journey was.
(28:26):
Because the journey was long, you get there, you're tired,
you feel the way of all the exhaustion as soon
as you reach your goal, and that creates an interesting
circumstance for players. I'm like, the One Ring has a
lot to it, and I'm really excited for Through the
Doors of Duran And because I got to read it,
i didn't actually pick up a core rule book, but
(28:47):
I'm gonna be picking one up because the One Ring
as a system with darkness checks, people succumbing to despair,
that kind of thing. It's it's a lot of fun
and I'm like, Okay, it fits very thematic with the
Lord of the Rings, and that's what matters. And they
spent a lot of time I can tell that the
people were fans of the Lord of the Rings, which
(29:07):
in the Age of the Rings of Power, we know
the difference between somebody who actually enjoys the Lord of
the Rings and the property and somebody who doesn't. And
I'm like, okay, yes, please enjoy the game. When you
build your game, you're building it on the Lord of
the Rings. You better love it. And first of all,
(29:28):
I love that the Tolkien Estate finally was like RPG,
Lord of the Rings, let's do it. And so it's like, no, yes, perfect.
These people have a passion for the game too, and
I love that they do
You know, Oh well my computer has sound to it. Wow.
I meant to come in here very much like professional.
And well, we just got back from gen Con and vacation.
I know we're a week late. That's because I took
a vacation. Uh, that happens. I went camping, I hit
the mountains after gen Con. But you know, I meant
(00:26):
to come in here way more professional than it. Didn't.
Then realized, Ah, I forgot to set up my mic,
didn't I yep, that sounds about right with me. I
didn't set up my mic. And here we go, and
give me just a second. I'm just making sure I
get my audio rate.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Uh yeah, wow, we are not off to a good
start for the show.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh whoa, I just sorry. Yeah. So that was kind
of a functional reset here as I get my brain
back on the topic. It had so a couple of
weeks ago, we had gen Con twenty twenty four, the
big gaming event of the year, not you video gamers,
but for you tabletop gamers are our favorite kind of people.
(01:29):
And I got a chance to go this year, which
is great. Now, I went with the Wrecking Crew. I
was able if you saw me there or ended up
in my games remember Hector is the bad guy and
Alejandro's a snibbling coward. But aside from that inside joke
(01:52):
with the players who actually played in my games, oh sorry,
gen Con was a great experience. I actually had a
blot this year. So if you don't know what gen
Con is, it is the big gaming convention held out
of Indianapolis this year, in which case they show off
the big tabletop games. We have tabletop war games, we
(02:14):
have tabletop RPGs, we have board games, deck builders, card games,
everything under the sun at gen Con. And it is huge.
Now when I'm talking huge, I mean seventy thousand people watching,
(02:36):
not watching, but there and more watching because they did
live events and pre record events. I heard that critical
role was there, that everyone was there, just a massive event,
seventy thousand people. The event was sold out when we
rolled up to When I rolled up to Indianapolis, it
(02:58):
was completely and I mean completely sold out, like downtown
was gridlocked. There was signs posted outside of it that
just said sold out all day. The convention was already
in full swing. I arrived Wednesday at about three pm,
(03:19):
and that's because I want to get there the day early.
We had a meeting that evening with dinner with everybody
from the Riking Crew and Renegade. I need to note
that none of our views are reflective of Renegade or
their companies that their associated, especially not the Riking Crew.
We love those guys, they are fantastic. But yeah, I
(03:39):
went with them. They they paid for the hotel and
the ticket and got me in and in exchange, I
ran some games for them, and I ran World of
Darkness as your gm Isaiah. Now gen Con had so
many games to it, and there's some that we were
excited for, most of them, Like I was not expecting it,
(04:00):
you know. We thought the big ones would be their Magic,
the Gathering, Warhammer forty K. And when I got there
and I saw all the other stuff that came, I'm like, whoa,
I have found my people. Now. I've gone to gaming conventions.
I went to Adeptcon, I went to I went to
the LVO. I've gone to conventions before. I go to
(04:22):
Comic Con every year, and every time I'm like, something
weird about this is the comlumber of people that I'm
not used to. And when I got to gen Conn,
I was like, oh, these that's why the tabletop games
are my people. They're the best. Like I said, they
showed off some amazing games and they had a term
as usual as money and out did their announcements. Everyone
(04:45):
did their announcements. We just want to talk about are
my experience there and I was supposed to have somebody
else here who did it. That's kind of why I'm
still in the framework of we uh instead of just me,
And so if you hear me slip down, that's because
it is. Of course, wow, we're pretty late into the show.
But I'm your I'm your gm Isaiah and your host.
(05:08):
Welcome to locked Loot your place for tabletop war gamings.
If you want to hit that like button, if you
want to subscribe, share with your friends and enemies. We
always love it when the enemies show up. Of course,
leave a comment there, we'll see it. We love talking
with you guys too during it. Let us know about
(05:29):
your gen Con experience. How you felt about twenty twenty four.
I thought it was holy crap, so many people. I'm
not used to this level of people at an event,
especially this size of the event. So for for reference,
gen Con had the Indianapolis Convention Center, it had the stadium,
(05:50):
it had the hotel convention centers next door JW and
I believe there were some stuff at the Hilton too,
Like a bunch of the hotel surrounding the area also
had events. This thing was absolutely massive and it was
a great time. You had the cosplayers come out, you
had the LARPers come out, you had the block parties,
(06:12):
which were amazing. If you have the funds to go
to gen Con, you want to go to at least
experience at once. It is the it's a gaming mecca.
It's a tabletop gaming mecca and tabletop gaming mecca. Oh,
it's beautiful. I thought Adeptacon was cool for the war games.
Adeptacon had enhing on gen Con. Of course, the usual
(06:38):
tournaments happened with with war games forty K, Star Wars, Legion,
Shatter Point. They took Armada off of it, off the signage,
which I was frustrated a bout.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I know.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
They announced no more developmental support, which is weird considering
we also got a report that we would hear something
from from the company AMG this October, so it's weird.
You might notice a dog wander up behind me. I
have to sit down and pet it. I've got no choice.
(07:13):
You'll see a dog wandering. It's nothing, but yeah, gen
Con was amazing getting in there packed. We had dinner
with the Rerecon crew and the Renegade people. Sat next
to the CEO, had a good talk with him, talked
about the gaming experience and just things in general. And
it wasn't like any wasn't an interview. I don't have
(07:37):
things that reports or anything. We just had a chat
which was a lot of fun. And then of course
we had the World of Darkness stuff, which is what
I was running there. I was there. You have the
gen Con stuff, but I was there running World of Darkness,
So I was running Werewolf and Hunter the Reckoning now
(08:00):
primarily Werewolf, but Hunter the Reckoning as well well five V.
So if you were Wolf people are there where there
it's the five V. It's not the twentieth anniversary or
anything like that. Now, I gotta talk about these two
because I was surprised when I was learning these games.
I actually really enjoyed these two games and learning to
play them, and you're running them. I really like the
(08:21):
storyteller system. It fits within the the framework of my
GM experience. I really liked the role play. I liked
the roleplay experience, and so these two games really spoke
to that. They have the mechanics for it where we'll
fits with the rage mechanic entering into it, where people
can get brutal results regardless of where they're at, whether
(08:44):
they're fighting or in a conversation, and a fighting brutal
results are amazing, and when you're not fighting, brutal results
are not amazing because you're unleashing that rage in a
verbal argument or in a verbal discussion. You know, you
never want to persuade somebody and get a brutal result.
The Hunter, of course, is You're the best joke I
heard about Hunter is Hunter. The reckoning is supernatural. The
(09:10):
role playing game you're just to sell of Hunters taking
down monsters pretty simple. I mean, there's more to it, obviously,
there's more lore to it, and there was more to
it in the previous VAT before version five, which is
the version that I ran there and ran intro games
for now. Version five came out in October, so it's
(09:32):
still a very newer game. I've been studying up on
Hunters since probably well since I found out I was going,
which is February, so yeah, the book read it up Hunter, Hunter,
the reckoning was great. Running these games for the Wrecking
Crew was a lot of fun. Again, I don't speak
for the company, nothing like that, but running it for
(09:53):
them was great. Running in there playing their games. You know,
we ran what's called a called rotten home. Now, if
you have not run or been in convention games, they're
very different than home games. Convention games. The module is
pre made a lot of times written by the company.
(10:15):
So for instance, Renegade wrote the modules for Vampire, Werewolf,
Hunter and all of them. I don't think they wrote
the Hunter one. They also made the characters, so Paradox
did that. If you don't know, Yeah, World of Darkness
is owned by Paradox Games. I can get behind Paradox Games.
(10:36):
I like Paradox Games, but I would say there's an
issue that we ran into with these They were okay,
from behind the DM screen, you would never see this.
We were all running our games, and yeah, from behind
the DM screen you wouldn't or the storyteller screen or
(10:59):
whatever you want to call it, GM screen, Hi dog,
you would never see this. But these modules had some
issues written into them, and I can't go on without
talking about it. For instance, the games you played at
gen Con, you had entirely different experiences based on who
(11:22):
you played with, not just the players, but with the storyteller.
And that's because the module was very thin. For Werewolf
Rotten Home, I love Paradox to death. Nothing against them,
I loved working for them. I just think that the
storytelling could have been a little bit better, and I
think criticisms. Criticism is an important aspect to these because
(11:45):
we had a blast. The people at my table had
so much fun, but my game, while we hit the
major story beats and everyone did, our games were so
different because the module was so thin. So the modul
went with a very simple structure. They've visited another werewolf
pack got involved in a ritual, and that ritual turned
(12:09):
out to be practically heresy, trying to turn the werewolves
against their against the Weaver, and in favor of the worm.
If you know anything about werewolf law, you know that
if you don't worry about it. That was one of
the complaints we got is that one the module was
heavily reliant on the lore, and the people playing at
(12:31):
these games were checking out the games. They may have
played a couple times before, but they're not so heavily
invested in World of Darkness, at least not the fifth edition,
that they know a lot about the lore and so
like as my intro when I introduced the characters, I
introduced everything. I had to do a quick rundown of
this lore because I'm like, this will come up, this
(12:54):
is important, and a quick rundown of it, and it's like, okay.
Because I had to do a lord dumb exposition at
the beginning, I didn't like doing that. I never liked
doing that. I like spreading it out through my through
my things. But if you don't understand the issues facing
the werewolves, you're gonna have problems coming later. And because
(13:15):
of that, my game heavily relied on the social dynamic
of what's we know there's there might be something wrong
with this. We need to figure out what's wrong with
it and fix it before they they're they're onto us,
and I'm like, cool, uh yeah, we run with that.
That's how we run it. The group next to me
(13:36):
was very different. Our characters were very different because they
were very thin on characters. For instance, the main characters
of the plot were Hector, Alejandro, Janet, and Farah. Now
Hector and Alejandro, a pack leader and right master Janet.
I'm still not sure where Janet fits into things, because
(13:59):
I actually her out. And that's the thing we had
to do revisions as storytellers. We had to completely design
these characters from the ground up because we got one
sentence for each of these characters, and we're like, you
want us tore in a four hour game, and we
get such a flimsy character as such a social game,
(14:20):
that these characters are so thin. You know. Our description
of Alejandro is he's the pack leader of the North
Rim and he is on the brink, on the brink
of what. And I had problems with that. On the
brink of what is he on the brink of? And
(14:42):
so one of the guys was like, he's on the
brink of falling victim to the right, and other people
with that, and I went, no, he's on the brink
of despair. And it's like they left too much room
for interpretation that the characters were very different. I played
Alejandro as as a pack leader who has been usurped
(15:02):
by his right master, and one of my groups picked
up on that, and I loved it because they played
into that. They played into no, no, you should be
doing something. You're the leader here, why aren't you doing something?
And then one of the groups was like, no, no,
we just want him out of the way so we
can deal with the real problem. I made sure that
there was a clean clean up to it. The issue is,
(15:25):
and this is very much a theme with Werewolf, is
that there's no good victory, there's no good ending to it.
And I'm like, but the endings that they gave us
were so thin that I'm like, I rewrote those two.
But honestly, after all the revisions, I can plain all
I want. But the people had a blast. That is
the most important thing if you are planning on running
(15:47):
convention games. If you are running convention games and you
are either learning the system, you know the system, and
you're just like, you're playing with strangers, so you kind
of my ear. But the most important thing other than like,
you have your module, you hate your big story beats,
But the most important thing is is everybody having fun.
(16:13):
My table was a roar of laughter. Everyone was having
a blast, and that's because that was the goal. My
goal wasn't we're here to play a very serious game.
We're like, we're here to play a serious game. But
we're all gonna have fun doing it. We're gonna laugh,
we're gonna have we're gonna have a great time. We
had our serious moments where people were silenced at my
(16:33):
table and everything, so that we're going there is something
wrong here. And then we had moments where people were like,
I do this, and the scenario changes and we are
laughing and just having fun. Everyone had a blast. That's
what's important if you're running convention games, the players having
fun is the most important thing. And that's the thing
(16:55):
about role playing games in general. I'm gonna get off
this train before I keep going, but the most important
thing is having fun. They talk about the three pillars
of role playing games, and I talked about this on
Tuesday and gen Con is actually what prompted that conversation.
The pillars of tt RPGs are exploration, role playing, in combat,
(17:20):
exploration role playing combat. And then somebody else, Cobald Press,
ticked me off because they said the fourth pillar is fun. No, no, no,
The fun is the foundation upon which these pillars are built.
If you are not having fun, the TTRPG is not
functioning properly. You should be having fun. That is the
most important thing. If you're not, it's not working now.
(17:43):
Of course, Wherewolf had its own issues, Hunter was an intro,
So when I ran Hunter, it was a blast action
whereas Wherewolf was intrigued what's wrong? I played Werewolf very
much as you guys don't know you're going in to
a trap. And I had a wild goose chase in
(18:04):
the first segment trying to figure out the relationship between
Alejandro and Hector, and was like, this wild goose chase
is to throw you off the scent until you realize
we're already trapped. And whereas that was the goal of
the Werewolf, the Hunter was action movie. We are busting out,
guns in hand, going after the vampire, and I played
(18:26):
that on the intro and the intro people had had
a blast too, because you know, we had fun. It
was so much fun for them as they just got
to hunt down the hunt a vampire through a crack house.
That was it. That was It's thin story wise, it's
supposed to be you pop out and you go hunting.
(18:46):
I like Hunter of the Reckoning. I like the idea
of Hunter of the Reckoning. Personally, I think I enjoyed
Hunter of the Reckoning more than I did Werewolf the Apocalypse,
because Hunter is very much the human side, and you
can get the irony of the situation, the weird groups
that working neether Now, everybody was Russian, so that was
a joke that we didn't realize until we were all
(19:07):
reading the character sheets and everyone went, wait, are we
all Russian? And yeah, we're all Russian immigrants. Everyone here
speaks Russian. And so my table, whereas everyone else in
the room who was playing, like g I, Joe and
my little Pony and Werewolf and Vampire, We're all talking
seriously and doing all their things. And then my table
(19:28):
you just had the the bad Russian accent, you know,
we just want to grab the gun. Just the bad
Russian accents all around. It was a lot of fun.
It was a blast. We had fun with it. Of course,
other than these, there were game announcements. Now I haven't
(19:49):
talked about the game announcements because I'm still talking about
my experience. And I talk about these because I ran
these eight hours a day for three days, and I
had a blast doing it. If you get a chance
to run convention games, run convention games. They're so much fun.
The convention games are so much fun. You can't. You
(20:13):
can't get past it. It's just a blast all all
the way around. Of course, other than that, we had
game announcements.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
One of the ones was Sears Catalog, and these are
just games that I got a chance to take a
look at in between my games, I didn't get to
see as much. Honestly, serious Catalog was kind of boring
to me. I mean, it's just another card game one
to thirteen, everybody ascending. So essentially how it works is
(20:45):
everybody they play it as you know, you're trying to
order things to deal with the monsters in the village,
and it's like, okay, no, no, everyone's just trying to
get rid of the cards in their hand. You didn't
need to frame it this way. You framed it in
such a weird way. It could have just been another
Phase ten or Rummy style or generic card game, and
(21:07):
instead they put this filter on it, and I'm like,
I don't approve of that. I wasn't too fond of
that a little bit. So I'm not gonna touch on
Sears Catalog too much. And that's just I wasn't very impressed. Now,
another game that came up, of course, was Let's go
to Japan. This was a big one. If you walked in,
you saw Let's go to Japan. Let's Go to Japan
(21:29):
is a deck building a fun deck building game in
which you're assembling your perfect itinerary. You're trying. It's one
of those table engine building games, kind of like Clank
or something, where you're building your deck, but you're laying
it on the table. So you're like, Okay, today we're
doing this, this, this, this, We're jumping between Tokyo coyotes.
(21:50):
So to have the most fun, the goal is to
build your perfect Japan vacation. And I'm like, okay, that
is a fun idea that the travel mechanic of building
your itin and you're like, I'm doing this, this, this, this,
and then there's mechanical solutions and points that you get
based on it. And then at the end of the
rounds your engine. You get to just see your engine
(22:10):
go off and your itinerary for a week long vacation
is built. Boo. You watch your engine go off and
you get points in decide the winner. Base on that.
Let's Go to Japan was fun. I like the concept
of it, but it also has potential because let's go
to Japan is just the easy one. They also use
(22:31):
traditional Japanese artists in artistry, which was nice to see.
So you had a very authentic feel to the game,
and I liked that. I really liked that about this
game is that it had that authentic feel. But when
I was looking at it, I'm going, Okay, you're not no, no, no,
you can do more with this. Let's go to Japan
isn't the end. Sure, you can have the let's go
(22:51):
to Japan expansion of the North part of Japan or
some of the Fukushima or that kind of thing, because
this is Kyoto and Tokyo. But I'm like, no, no, no,
you could expand it more instead of let's go to Japan,
Let's go to Italy, let's go to France, let's go
(23:12):
to let's go to Egypt. And you're like, okay, we're
building our itinerary for these different areas, and the game
is so easy to replicate on a larger scale to go, Okay,
we're not just doing let's go to Japan. We're doing
let's go to America, which would be harder.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It's more like let's go to Utah or let's go
to California because of how big America is. But I'm
not getting on that topic. America is massive. Be aware
of that. America is absolutely huge. Now now, of course,
let's go to Japan. Had its had its issues. You know,
(23:50):
it's not for everybody. This kind of game isn't for everybody.
You know, Jake has problems with deck builders and this
style of game and getting into it. These engine builders,
I enjoy them. I think people will enjoy this game.
I can't. This is a game that I'm like, I
want to go pick up. It's a lot of fun.
I played it there, get back and it's like, okay, yeah,
(24:10):
this is what we're gonna do. But I'm like this,
this game has potential. This game has a ton of
potential to become something bigger if people can buy into
it and get into it. And it's like, okay, you
don't like the Japanese theming. Yeah, like I said before,
let's go to Italy. You know, you're jumping between Venice
and Florence or Rome and Tuscany, and you're building your
(24:32):
itinerary on that, and everyone has that moment where they're like,
what do we want to do on a vacation it's
like this builds it out and you're like, oh cool,
and you might learn things about the different areas, different
things you can do. So it's a little bit informational
about the travel. And I'm like, that is cool. That
is a lot of fun. And I really like the
fun of this. But I can't sit here and talk
(24:54):
about Let's go to Japan forever, because Let's go to
Japan was not the only thing here I want to
talk about. This one was plastered on I don't know
if everybody saw it, but there was this role playing
game released a few years ago called The One Ring.
Now they also did a five E variant, Like we
do a lot of role playing stuff here and RPG
(25:17):
stuff on the channel. And so when I was there
and I saw The One Ring, I'm like, we're reading
The Silmarillion right now, me and my brother, and so
I can't take a look at The One Ring and
go let's pass. I'm like, no, no, I gotta go watch.
I gotta go check it out. And I went to
the booth and saw it, and sadly, by the time
I got there, the core book had sold out. The
(25:39):
core book had sold out, the starter set had sold out,
I could see the five stuff, but I'm like, I
wanted to see the actual game, and I'm like, I'm
kind of disappointed there. It's all right though, but the
One Ring. Talking about the One Ring, it's a very
interesting game, and I love that they're finally getting expansions.
(26:02):
And in the lead up to the end of the
month when Jake's really excited for return to Moria coming
to Xbox, I saw Maria through the Doors of Duran
and I'm like, Oh, where's the Maria expansion. That is
a lot of that is cool too. That is a
lot of fun, and it's like, Okay, reading on it,
(26:25):
I'm like, okay, So, so it's not necessarily a return
to Maria. Because The One Ring is a role playing game,
you can pretty much set it wherever you want in
the timeline of the Lord of the Rings, so you
can be like, Okay, so you guys got to go
through Mariya to get to through Kase of Dune you
get to the mountains, and that's just a part of
your journey, or oh, your dwarf's trying to reclaim Maria
(26:48):
before the Third Age or after the Third Age during
the fourth Age, and it's like it's a fun concept. Now,
the one Ring does a lot of interesting things.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I read.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I went through and read there kor rulebook on the
on five E just because I was trying to look
for a solution to my travel issues with SPID and
they have a very interesting travel travel solution and unlike
the travel mechanics are quick, easy, quick and dirty, very easy.
If you're going to place to place, you know what
you're looking for, you're going from town to town, You're like, okay,
(27:20):
we're going here to hear this is our roots, this
is our routes. And then because this is our route,
this is how many days it'll take. And of course
you go, okay, so you're you're going it's say a
fifteen day journey. Okay, you guys are making a fifteen
day journey. You're going at normal pace. Every when you
(27:41):
guys leave, give me a path finding check, which in
five E is just a survival check for road and
that determines how far out an event happens. And these
events can range from finding a shortcut to somebody almost dies.
And it's like, okay, that is really fun and it
makes travel very fast. You know, as DMS sometimes will
(28:03):
we fast travel, and I'm like, this is a way
for players to fast travel without making it boring. You
spend ten minutes describing this journey where people are falling
off cliffs, people are fighting magical shortcuts, that kind of thing,
and I'm like, the One Ring travel mechanic is really nice.
And then it's like at the end, everybody makes a
fatigue check, which in five year is a constitution saving
throw against exhaustion based on how long your journey was.
(28:26):
Because the journey was long, you get there, you're tired,
you feel the way of all the exhaustion as soon
as you reach your goal, and that creates an interesting
circumstance for players. I'm like, the One Ring has a
lot to it, and I'm really excited for Through the
Doors of Duran And because I got to read it,
i didn't actually pick up a core rule book, but
(28:47):
I'm gonna be picking one up because the One Ring
as a system with darkness checks, people succumbing to despair,
that kind of thing. It's it's a lot of fun
and I'm like, Okay, it fits very thematic with the
Lord of the Rings, and that's what matters. And they
spent a lot of time I can tell that the
people were fans of the Lord of the Rings, which
(29:07):
in the Age of the Rings of Power, we know
the difference between somebody who actually enjoys the Lord of
the Rings and the property and somebody who doesn't. And
I'm like, okay, yes, please enjoy the game. When you
build your game, you're building it on the Lord of
the Rings. You better love it. And first of all,
(29:28):
I love that the Tolkien Estate finally was like RPG,
Lord of the Rings, let's do it. And so it's like, no, yes, perfect.
These people have a passion for the game too, and
I love that they do
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