GenCon 2013

We are less than a week away from GenCon launching, the greatest event of gaming.  I have to say, the anticipation is killing me.  I can’t wait to… oh, wait.  I’m not going this year. 

For a number of reasons, I’ve had to put off my trip to GenCon for a year.  The birth of my son is the major reason.  He’s not even two months old, and as much as I would love to bring him to Indianapolis and cart him around, I know it’s just not feasible at this point.  His mother would be angry with me – either for taking him and exposing him to the con-crud, or for leaving him (and her) behind and not letting them go to the convention at all.  It’s a fight I can’t win whichever way I go, so as a wise man once said, “You can’t lose a battle you don’t show up to.”  Better to put off the plans for another year.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not excited this year.  I’ve already found my ninja-shopper and given him money, and let my friendly LGS-owner know what I would like him to order for me.

So what am I getting?

First, the ninja-ing.

Slaz has been generous enough to not only pick up whatever I give him money for, but also drive by my house on his way back home from GenCon to drop it all off.  The man gets mad props.

From me, he’ll be making a brief stop by three booths: the Wyrd booth, the AEG booth, and the Battlefoam booth.

At Wyrd, he’s grabbing only a few things this year.  Enough to hit what I think I want immediately, and the rest I’m holding until later.  With M2E coming out, there’s plenty to consider.  But in the immediacy, I only asked for the following:

Nightmare Tara

Evidently there’s some controversy about this model which, near as I can tell, stems around people who have decided they’re not going to buy it still complaining that they’re not going to buy it.  It seems to me that’s a central theme of capitalism – if a manufacturer creates something you do not want, you can vote with your dollar and exercise your right NOT to buy something.  Similarly, if you like something, you can vote with your dollar and exercise your right TO buy something.  Personally, I really like the sculpts in the box, the Nothing Beast especially.

I have a suspicion about the Nightmare box.  I honestly believe that the Nothing Beast is probably the only unique sculpt in that box.  Once the actual release hits, everything will look the same except the Nothing Beast.  When I first saw the box, that’s what I thought the case was.  I still believe it is.  And as soon as I saw the box, I decided it was worth it to pick up.  Nightmare Chompy was the only nightmare model in the Dreamer release back several Gencons ago, and that went over fine.  Why should this be such a controversy?

Regardless, I didn’t intend to get into that whole deal.  End result: I like the model, and I’m buying it.

M2E Rules Guide

Kinda need it for the game, or at least you need to have one between yourself and your opponent.  Strategies and Schemes are within.  All the updated rules since the last Open Beta are within.  Plus, lots of art, I’m sure, and a ton of fluff.

Arsenal Pack: Neverborn

The only Arsenal Pack I’m picking up from GenCon is the Neverborn one.  Eventually I’ll be getting five of them, but I’ll hold off on the other four and pick them up from my LGS.  It just means for the short-term, I’ll be playing only Neverborn.  No problem there – I love the new feel for all three masters.  Lilith is fantastic, Pandora’s actually fun to play against (until I figure out how to make her real annoying… I have some ideas), and Zoraida’s got a new feel to her as well.

Miss Step

This is a free goodie that will be stuck in my bag thanks to the fact I’m buying at least $100 from them.  I don’t like Archanists, but it’ll give me something else I can throw into my bin of “cool miniatures” that one day I want to paint up.  Might have to go through that bin at some point and see what all I have in there.  I think I have a Dead Justice box set.  Might open that up finally and paint up the Death Marshals to work with Tara.  Oh, and that would get me a painted Judge too, since I’m missing that guy.  Hmm… sounds like a good idea after all.

Okay, so after hitting Wyrd, Slaz will be checking out the AEG booth to try to grab a limited-run RPG book.  Evidently they’ve got a small book they were going to put in PDF only, but decided to put into print for a limited number at GenCon.  Most of them will be given away to people involved in a particular event, but there are some they said would be sold, if I read them right.

Secrets of the Empire: Naishou Province

It’s been a while since I’ve run L5R for my group.  My son was born at the end of June, and we’ve been on hiatus since then.  Eventually we’ll get back to the game, and I hope getting books like this will spark my enthusiasm to get back to it faster.

Finally, Slaz will head over to the Battlefoam stop.  Wild West Exodus, a miniatures game I backed from Kickstarter, will be released soon and they have a couple of prerelease models available.

US Marshal McClain

He’s an Outlaw and Lawman model (wha??) and looks pretty sweet.  I don’t know how much of WWX I am going to play after all is said and done, but I’ve got a lot on my way and I like this model, so it’ll be another nice piece to have painted up if nothing else.  Since it sounds like he’s a GenCon exclusive, I figured it’d be my one shot to grab this version of him.

I mentioned there were other things I was asking my LGS to order too.  I won’t go into as much detail, but I’ll be picking up the Arsenal packs for Outcasts, Guild, Resurrectionsts and 10 Thunders, as well as the new Battlestar Galactica expansion from Fantasy Flight Games.

Also wondering whether I should pick up the new Lilith box.  I don’t have any other way to get Barbaros, and I really like him.  I think the new Cherub is miles better than the old one.  I think the new Terror Tots are better than the old ones.  And the new Lilith sculpt, while not as good as the alternate metal one, is still pretty solid.  It might be one of those things I pick up a month or two down the line once I’m set with everything else.  But I was surprised to see that there was a box set I was tempted by, especially since I own all the metal versions already.

For those off to GenCon, enjoy!  Hope to make it out next year.

L5R Roleplaying: Second City Boxed Set

I finished off my fourth session of my Legend of the Five Rings campaign earlier this week, and so far it’s going pretty well.  Since my players are a mix of people who know Rokugan very well and those who are brand new to it, I’ve tried to build an initial storyline that takes them through a lot of aspects of the setting – court intrigue, duels, skirmishes, and now a full-on battle.

In my work getting the campaign off the ground, I finally convinced myself I should pick up the newest L5R book – the Second City.  I initially decided against it at GenCon since I would be running the game in the pre-Scorpion Clan Coup timeline.  But after playing the game for a while, I decided I should go ahead and pick up the new boxed set.

I have the old first edition boxed sets of City of Lies (Ryoko Owari) and the Otosan Uchi.  Both were great purchases and I’ve enjoyed reading through them.  Second City feels similar to both of them in some parts.  It has been divided into three book, one for the City, one for the Campaign, and one for the Characters.  Mixed within those books are some new rules, but by and large they’re all fluff.  Which is good by me.

After the books, they had a map of the city (which is largely useless since it’s pretty generic).  I was hoping they’d provide a map of the area around the Second City.  They talk a lot in the fluff about Journey’s End Fortress to the north of the city, and they talk about the area surrounding it, but there’s no map to show what is out there.  I guess since a large part of the feel of this campaign setting is the exploration and discovery, they didn’t want to hammer things down like that, but I was more curious about the surrounding area than how the city itself looked.

They also have two small journals written from various NPCs.  They had similar things in the City of Lies boxed set, and they were fun as props for the campaign.  Beyond using them for that, though, I can’t see ever needing the journals.  They’ll make good reading, but that’s about it since I won’t be playing in the setting itself.

There’s a GM screen provided.  I don’t generally use GM screens, but usually because I don’t like to spend money on them separately.  I’ll be taking advantage of this one since I have been struggling to find someplace to put my notes that others can’t see while I’m running.

A fair portion of the boxed set came with character sheets.  Lots of character sheets.  An entire pad filled with empty character sheets.  I was not expecting these at all.  Usually I just print sheets off from the printer, so that’s not a huge deal, but if my playgroup decides to stick with L5R for a while, it might come in handy.  Or if I start killing off characters more often.  L5R is a bit more gritty than other games.

Also, there were six “deluxe” character sheets.  More like character books.  There are about 8 pages of different things you can write down for your character, taking notes about his progress and the like.  They used to sell small books that could be used as character sheets back in the first edition, and I bought a couple for the characters I used most often.  Not sure what I’m going to do with these ones yet.  They may sit looking pretty, or I may pass them out to my players if they want to take advantage of the bigger book-version of their character.  Some may, others may not.

Finally, there was a set of dice with the Otomo flower on one of the pips, and then four decks of cards that give the abilities associated with each rank of each school.  Honestly, I could have done without either of these.  I don’t know that I’d ever use the cards – they’re just not very convenient, and the dice… I just bought a couple sets at GenCon to use for L5R.  But they’re part of the boxed set, so that’s that.

Overall, it was a pretty hefty price-tag (almost $80).  The actual book-part of the boxed set could have fit in a single hardcover book and been a third the price.  The extras that went along with it were hit-or-miss for me.  A lot of them I’ll go ahead and use since I now own them, but if they had been sold separately, I wouldn’t have picked them up.

My verdict: a lot of random stuff packed in the box to bump up the price.  The story and fluff all are worth it and I can’t wait to read through the campaign.  I could have done without the map, journals and cards.  The dice, character sheets and GMs screen, while I probably would not have chosen to get them given the opportunity, will all get used.  And the books are the same high quality as the other 4E books.

L5R Roleplaing Launches

Monday we finally got back into the swing of roleplaying after a few month break since the end of our Scion game.  I host a group of five players who come out to try out new stories.  I try to keep the scope of them small and inevitably fail at every turn.

This time around we are going to be playing Legend of the Five Rings.  Three of my players know the world well and the other two are pretty new to it.  Personally, I know little of the new storylines, but I used to love playing in the old stories back in the day.  When 2E, d20, and 3E were out for Legend of the Five Rings, I really did not like the system that much.  Second changed needlessly.  There’s nothing more to be said about d20 other than the fact it was d20 which doesn’t fit the feel of Rokugan I like to go for.  Third edition was a step back in the right direction, but was far too complicated.  Fourth was the best edition I’ve seen since the original one, taking a lot of cues from what made the first edition work and adding in the few changes I really liked from other editions.  So far in reading through it, the only thing I dislike about it is the dueling system, which was better in first edition.  As such I’ll be using the old version for my game for that particular piece.

Legend of the Five Rings also launches a first for our gaming group: the first time I have run a game for them where I knew the rules better than they do.  My past two games, Alpha/Omega and Scion, ended up with my players telling me how the game worked while I ran the story.  This time I have a lot more experience roleplaying in this world and with this system than they do.  As a GM, it’s a liberating experience.  I no longer feel like my players are pulling one over on me, or are going to get the better of me based on knowing the rules more than I do.  I can match what they do without having to rely on them telling me how to do it.

So for the story I’m starting everyone out in the time period I know best: pre-Scorpion Clan Coup.  The characters are all coming from the Crane clan and make quite an eclectic group.  I have a courtier-turned-bushi when he was pulled out of training to be a courtier at the behest of a powerful Crane samurai for unknown reasons.  I have a Mantis who was hostaged to the Crane after a failed war almost a decade prior who now finds himself without a true home in either place.  I have his yojimbo, a peasant who did the nigh-impossible of being raised from peasantry to the samurai caste and is finding it far different than the idealistic way he used to see it.  I have a fourth, yet unknown character (one of my players was called into work at the last minute and missed the session).  And I have a duelist/philosopher whose family all committed seppuku to erase a stain they had caused, and the stain itself has been stricken from all records.  She was spared as her influential sensei spoke for her and now wonders what happened to her family.

The story starts with the characters all sent to Toshi Ranbo to meet with a Dragon delegation.  The Crane and Lion are at war, and it is heating up.  The Crane have been trying to economically strangle the Lion by imposing prohibitive tariffs on Lion goods traveling through their lands.  The Dragon had a poor harvest the previous year and a harsh winter, and now are within months of having the peasantry starve.  They need food, and the Lion have a surplus to sell.  The influx of koku would give the Lion an edge in the war.  The Crane have no food of their own to part with, at least not in the quantity that the Dragon need.  If the Dragon do not get their food from the Lion, they may well enter the war on the side of the Lion to force the Crane to let the food cross their borders.

Going from a much more action/adventure type game to a high political one is making a nice change.  Already one of the characters has had some minor dealings with a Scorpion courtier, another has managed to gather some potential minor blackmail material on a few people in the court, and a third has gotten into a sparring match and impressed the general of the Crane military in the city.

In the end, it’s great to be back in roleplaying again.  Looking forward to where the story takes us.

A Better 4th Edition

My feelings on 4E aren't really hidden. I don't like it as much as 3.x. Which is a shame, since 4E sounded like such a good idea at the time.

But this isn't a post about Dungeons and Dragons or anything, so I should stop talking about them. This is a post about a better 4th Edition that's coming out soon. Legend of the Five Rings 4E. Adam was kind enough to send me this link to a bunch of creator diaries about the game. The most recent one's at the top and the others are further down the chain.

They're a little lengthy - I've only read the first one so far - but it sounds pretty good. My biggest concern with their third edition was that it made things far more complicated than they needed to be. First edition was simple and straight forward (most people complained about the magic system being odd, but I didn't mind it so much). Second edition was a trash heap and third actually started cleaning it up a bit, but there were so many things to remember. For example, defense was no longer Reflexes times five plus armor. Now it was Reflexes times five plus armor plus this chart based on your attack value if you're using a sword of a particular style plus this bonus from terrain minus your opponent's skill in a particular weapon plus and minus any schools either of you might have. Times three quarters. Probably not quite that complicated, but it felt that way.

I think my biggest downer about the new edition will be that it's taking place in the current timeline. For my money, there's nothing better than the original pre-Scorpion Clan Coup timeline. There wasn't the 50 years of absolute turmoil and chaos where everything that the clans did went contrary to the previous 1000 years. The card game's good as a card game, but it shouldn't impact the storyline. It really screws things up.

Would I switch to 4th when it comes out? Perhaps. It's got a tough hill to climb to replace 1st edition, but it could do it. Either way, I'm excited to see what happens.

Now if only I could hear what's going on with Iron Kingdoms too...