Penny Arcade

People asked us many times how we chose Australia for the next PAX, and we didn’t really; you chose it.  We know how to run shows, that’s it.  “Where they should be” and “who will go to them” is your department, and thus far it’s been an efficient division of labor.

Talking to Scott and Kris after they got back earlier this year, they were positively aglow about the place.  I gotta see how far away the closest Mana Bar is; I always wanted to go, but felt confident that would never happen.  The new danger, I suppose, is never leaving the bar.  There is always danger, it seems; we must be vigilant.

I spent a lot of time playing Card Hunter at PAX, and talking to Card Hunter people, and making a nuisance of myself, and then defeating the artist in Card Hunter multiplayer, which I believe reveals my secret divinity.  But right next to Card Hunter was Mark of the Ninja, which is just as good in a completely ‘nother way.

Ludwig Kietzmann over at Joystiq nailed it: what Mark of the Ninja does reveals are the systems of its stealth gameplay.  We like to talk about how bad The Stealth Mission was in whatever game it happened to be in, but having played through the introduction of Mark of the Ninja I wonder if it’s Stealth we hate, or Bad Stealth - mushy, bad, vaguely executed stealth that won’t fully enunciate what we’ve done wrong.  Psychic foes whose mystical awareness is total, in opaque environments whose simulation of our senses is incomplete.  MotN tries to short circuit the usual failures to communicate by making sound and its position visual cues, and going 2D obviates many of the communication challenges.  The free demo you play will almost certainly be what I played at the show, which means you will be purchasing it shortly thereafter.  Maybe have a few points tucked away.

I asked when it was supposed to come out while I was playing it, and apparently it’s coming out this Friday, which means that the show was very well positioned for them.  It helps that what I saw/felt was excellent, but really, if the core of your marketing strategy is a text adventure I’m probably gonna have your back.

(CW)TB out.

i hope that it finds you

I came away from PAX this year with some pretty cool stuff. Here’s a quick rundown of what I picked up at the show:

-Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures game
I got a great demo of this down at the Fantasy Flight booth. It’s a fun little dog fighting game between Tie Fighters and X-Wings. There is no board or grid so movement is handled with pre-cut pieces that mark the distance you can move and where your ship will end up after a given maneuver. Everyone locks in their movement choice before the round and then they are revealed on your turn. This makes for some fun gameplay as you try and guess where the other ships are going to end up. I pulled a couple moves that I thought would line me up for a great shot only to be looking out at open space.

-Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beta RPG.
Also from Fantasy Flight this book collects the Beta rules for their new Star Wars tabletop RPG. This game uses an interesting Dice Pool mechanic for conflict resolution. From what I’ve read it’s less about number crunching and more about building cool stories and dramatic scenes. I’m keen to see how it plays out at the table and I plan on asking around the office for volunteers to give it a try.

-Iron Kingdoms Core Rules Book
We play a lot of Warmachine here in the office. In fact we loved the game and the world so much that I picked up a bunch of the old Iron Kingdoms RPG supplements and ran a game for my group. These old materials were based on D&D 3.5 and I did some work on my own to modify them and make them work in 4th edition. Privateer Press has just released a new version of the Iron Kingdoms RPG though and this time it uses brand new mechanics specifically designed for the game and heavily inspired by Warmachine and Hordes.  We were fortunate enough to help beta test these new systems and we had a blast. I’m really excited to have the final product in my hands.

-A Burning desire deep in my heart to play 13th Age
I was not able to grab any of the materials they had on hand but I heard about it from a number of people.  After all the glowing reviews I heard at PAX, I have to get my hands on it as soon as it comes out.

-A bunch of fucking dice
I cannot attend a convention that has a Chessex booth without buying a sack full of Dice. 

-Gabe out

One of the things that came out of our Q&A panel at PAX this year was that I’m making my own tabletop game. Someone asked what exactly was in the sketchbook I didn’t want to show Tycho in this strip. I had not planned on talking about it for a while but the answer was notes for my tabletop RPG.

I’ve been a DM for about four years now and I feel very comfortable running games. One of my favorite things to do is cook up my own mechanics and rules for each of our sessions. It was very rare that my players would show up to the table and not find some new system I wanted to try out. I built all of these ideas on the foundation of D&D 4th edition but nearly every game started out with me saying “I want to try something and if it doesn’t work I’m sorry.”

Most of the time it worked though. Or if it didn’t work at the beginning of the night, with the help of my players we made it into something that did work. The more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much I liked coming up with my own game mechanics and so I started making notes for a game of my own. I started off by listing the games that me and my players loved. and then listing out the problems we had with each one of them. I set out to make a game that combined the things we loved and hopefully fixed the things we didn’t.

That was about a month ago and just before PAX I started doing some basic playtests with people here in the office. I have to admit that taking it from doodles and notes in my sketchbook to the game table was scary as hell. But there was simply no substitute for getting it out and playing it with other people. In that first test we discovered and solved so many problems I had not even considered. The notes I got were incredible and they had ideas that I could not wait to get into the game. Most of all though, Having them point out a feature they liked or just smile at a certain mechanic really made my day. At it’s core the game worked, which was way more than I was hoping for from the first test.

Since then I’ve been working and re-working the game based on the feedback I’m getting from folks here in the office.The game is in a good spot right now I think and I’m ready to push it on my D&D group. This Saturday I’m having them over for the first large scale test of the game and I am nervous as hell.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress and share some details about the process once things are a bit further along. I’d say right now it’s still in its larval form but I have high hopes that one day it will be something you guys could all play.

-Gabe out