So, I was invited out to Gen Con back in early August as a Guest of Honor this year in Indy, and despite the Covid, it was pretty darn good.
I will confess I packed a large suitcase, half-empty, just to account for all the things I was intending to bring back. I also sent a copy of Shadowdark to a colleague who asked for it, and it was a good thing, because they sold out of the last of their print run at the con itself.
OK, so what do we have?
Gen Con Program Booklet by Peter Adkison and many diverse and talented hands, 170-page magazine format. This bears out a call-out because of how much it shows the depth and diversity of Gen Con as it celebrated 50 years of D&D. Stuffed with ads from exhibitors but also showing the maps of all the locations, it covers the history of D&D, the guests of honor (I'm on page 91), the writer's symposium, the costume contest (one of my old D&D group from college is on page 125), and all sorts of subcons and special interest groups. An excellent memento of the convention.
Legions of Carcosa by John Harness, Kira Magrann, Sarah Saltiel and Monica Valentinelli, with Daniel Kwan, Pelgrane Press, 200-page hardbound, 2023, Gen Con, and Black Star Magic, by Robin D. Laws, Sarah Saltiel, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and Ruth Tillman, Pelgrane Press, 184-page digest-sized hardbound, 2023 Gen Con . Pelgrane's The Yellow King is one of the more intriguing games I have in my collection and one of the more challenging. Its system is a simplified version of their Gumshoe system, which uses condition cards as opposed to more traditional hit points and the like, yet it remains a bit of a mental climb for me. The setting itself is four settings based on the work of Robert Chambers, who in the 1890s created an alternate 1920s with a dictatorship in America with suicide booths in the major cities. The game itself has four separate time periods to it - Paris in the 1890s, during the Continental Wars, and post-war, post-dictatorship US, and a modern era. So all this is background. Legions of Carcosa is a monster book, Black Star Magic is a book of spells. Nice additions, though I know I'll have to do a bit more digging to see how they can be implemented.
The Fifth Imperative by Robin D. Laws, Pelgrane Press, 192-page softbound digest, 2022, Gen Con Also from the Pelgrane Press and also dealing with the alternate history of The Yellow King. This one is set in the period following the dictatorship, and involves politics and otherworldly conspiracy. I really like the lateral development and fiction books that Robin D. Laws and Pelgrane put out, and usually don't see enough of them through my standard purchasing venues. So this will likely end up as a "plane book" to be read en route to conventions.
Hamlet's Hit Points by Robin D. Laws, Gameplaywright Press, 196-page softbound digest, 2010, 2015, Gen Con. This is the third time I have purchased this book. On the two previous occasions, I have recommended it others, loaned it out, and never saw it again. It is an interesting examination and mapping of beats and pacing within narrative stories. For Laws, such beats are instances with specific purposes, be them - Dramatic, Commentary, Anticipation, and the connective tissue of Pipe, and combine to create Hope and/or Fear in the audience. He then uses this analysis to examine Hamlet, Casablanca, and Dr. No, under this lens. It's an interesting approach, and the only thing I can ding it with is the each beat is considered as a single unit - a particularly positive beat gets the same weight as a negative beat, so that the progress of beats is downward, regardless of resolution. But that's just a quibble. I'm glad I got another copy of this. No, you can't borrow it.
Pendragon Core Rulebook by Greg Stafford, with input from myriad others, Chaosium Inc./Moon Design Publications, 254-page hardback, 2024, Gen Con. I'm a fan of Chaosium's games - I've played a lot of Call of Cthulhu. I've played almost no Runequest (but love the lore). Pendragon falls between those two poles, where I've done a bit as both player and gamemaster. And so a goal of this trip was to pick up the new version (I would have also picked up some Miskatonic Library volumes, if they had any on-hand, just so you know). The latest version is polished and is incredibly readable. The downside is that this is primarily a Player's Guide, with a lot of good information for players. For a GM, it would more of an uphill stroll, and hopefully there is a GM resource in the works. In the mean time, I would still likely spring the Starter Set on my players.
Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Tor Books, 266 page Trade paperback, Gen Con. So what's the deal with including all these books here? Well, they were part of the Gen Con swag I returned from Indy with. This volume was a reward for helping out the Writer's Symposium, spending part of an afternoon stuffing swag bags for the attendees. A good group activity. The book itself deals with a slacker taking on a temp job that takes him to another dimension filled with giant monsters. That's about all I know about it right now. Kate's read it on Kindle (I have a hard time concentrating on devices when I have other options to engage with) and says its pretty good. It becomes another plane-trip book.
Miseries and Misfortunes: Roleplaying in 1648 by Luke Crane, Burning Wheel, six softbound digest volumes for 852-pages total, 2022-2023, Gen Con. This is the sort of thing I love at Gen Con - finding something I had never heard of before, something that is much tougher in this Internet Age. So I was delighted I found the six volumes of this game at the Burning Wheel booth and snapped them up. The gamer takes place in the post-Richelieu, post- Louis XIII era of the Musketeers Cycle, where you had the underaged Louis XIV, the Queen Regent, and a noble revolt known as the Fronde. While it notes its descent from Basic D&D, it has morphed from those early designs into a completely different animal with a lot of different mechanics. The books themselves are 1) a system book for game mechanics, 2) a character creation book (which should be read first so you know what they're talking about in book 1, 3) a book on magic, 4) and expansion to books 1-3, 5) an adventure set in Catalonia, and 6) a MASSIVE book on Paris itself. So yeah, I'm pretty pleased with myself.
Religion in the American West: Belief, Violence, and Resilience from 1800 to Today. Edited by Jessica Lauren Nelson, University of New Mexico Press, 196-page hardbound, 2023. So at Gen Con, my hosts put me up at the Fairfield, which was one of a collection of interconnected Marriot-branded lodgings. My room faced the Eiteljorg Museum of American Museums and Western Art. And since I had arrived a day early, I actually had the chance to see something in the city where I was. And it is an excellent museum of Native American and European Western art, and I would recommend it just on the basis of that. But the special exhibit was on Religion in the American West, and covered both the stuff most folk know about (The Mormons, the Spanish missions), as well as lot of things that tended to get pushed to the back (Presbyterians and their influence on the Erie Canal, the rivalry between Catholic priests and Protestant ministers among the Native Americans). It was a good exhibit, and I went back on Sunday to get the book (which was half-price since that was the last day of the exhibit). Look forward to reading it.
Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, Edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and Jose P. Zagal, the MIT Press, 372-page Trade paperback, 2024, Gen Con. Purchased at the MIT press booth, no less. The 50th anniversary of D&D has encouraged a spurt of commentary and analysis. This volume is a collection of essays from a number of talented individuals. I've been reading this is bits and pieces, and there are parts I find engaging, and those that I give the hairy eyeball and raised eyebrow at. The final collection probably should have had one more pass through it by a well-intentioned grognard or two to catch the nits. One obvious nit? For a document that pushes cultural accuracy in many of its essays, the cover shows two Viking-types fighting what I would guess to be a Lindwyrm. And the Vikings have wings on their helmets. Its a minor thing, but triggers that eye-roll thing.
The Egg of the World: A Guide to Gaming in the World of Tekumel by Victor Raymond, 256 page ringbound draft, 2022. Gift of the Author. It is well known that I am a fan of Empire of the Petal Throne, but recognize that the very alienness and completeness of the world is a major stumbling block for new players. There's a lot to grok - no only all the strange names and alien creatures, but the non-Western-European concepts of rigid class and clan. The original EPT had 11 pages of backstory for the world at the start, before digging into it properly. So this volume sorts out a lot of this for the referee, hitting the important points of what makes a Tekumel campaign, as well a host of scenarios, adventures, factions and patrons that can be grist for your mill. This is a referee's source material to get your players into EPT without overloading them, and allow them to experience the world as opposed to confronting them with a big data dump. I'm looking forward to seeing this in its final form.
Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques, TopatoCo Books, 592 page trade paperback, Gen Con. Look to the blogroll to the right, and you'll see QC listed. And I check it out on weekdays. At Gen Con, I hunted down Jacques among the teaming thousands and myriad booths. He had already sold out of Volumes 1 and 2, but I bought Vol 3 and he included a drawing of Hannalore (I have friends who are artists, but it still lifts my heart when someone does that). Anyway, Questionable Content has been around for twenty+ years, and deals with the relationships of Marten and Faye, who were a couple back at the beginning, then broke up and dated others, then broke up with those others a few more times and now are in pretty stable relationships. This is of the era when Hannalore, who grew up on a space station, shows up more, Marten still has a band, and has such things a whether Penelope, the new employee, is really the superhero Pizza Girl and the threat of the the VespAvenger and her transforming robot scooter. The writing is smart, the characters are intelligent, and the strip remains excellent. The strip has evolved as it deals more with robots and SF elements, and there are a host of characters that rotate in and out, sort of like Doonesbury. I really like the strip, and you can rabbit hole through the archives if you don't want a physical copy. So check it out.
Neoclassical Geek Revival Second Edition Acidic Rulebook (it is acidic instead of basic, get it?), by Zzarchov Kowolski, Neoclassical Games, 170 page hardback digest, Gen Con. I'd seen mentions of this product elsewhere, and was delighted to see it with a booth (low-tech and high pressure), so I picked up the core book and a couple support products. I expected another OSR-clone hewing close to the original little booklets, but instead discovered that they took the core concepts and headed for the exits, changing them over time to produce something completely unique. The tone of the books are that same jaunty in-your-face attitude of the guy across the gaming table explaining his house rules, but everything has changed dramatically, such that you're learning a completely new game. The part that is most like original D&D is the presence of a GM (mentioned briefly) and the 1st edition tendency to create a new system whenever confronted with a new challenge. It's really impressive. I also picked up Havenvale (16 pages), a tidy little starting area in a mountain valley, and The Price of Evil (32 pages), a way to create haunted houses with a deck of cards.
Whew! And that's the lot. And more have shown up, but we'll deal with them later. So, more. Later.
