Continuing with goods purchased at ORIGINS, my group has tested the latest edition of Fantasy Flight's RUNEBOUND and made a space on the shelf for Exile Studio's Secrets of the Surface World HEX source book. Given how much we adore the DESCENT line of FF board games, I wasn't sure if the similarities between the two would place the older game at a disadvantage. Fortunately, aside from having to play the same cast of characters, the goals are distinct. In DESCENT, the players are in a co-op group for dungeon delving, whereas in RUNEBOUND, the players strike out on their own, clearing wilderness hexes of encounter nodes. The movement mechanic in the latter is neat, you roll 5 terrain-faced dice to see how you can create a path, less dice if you are wounded or such. Character death is harsher than DESCENT, and you don't get big cards or fancy tiles for anything. I always did like how the World of Warcraft board game included placemat-sized character cards that that regular deck cards could fit on. Below is a picture of our session, which we couldn't finish (kamikaze ending via ultra-hard encounter choices).

Outdated rulebooks and overstocks are often clearance priced at cons, which the frugal spender can appreciate till his backpack is painfully overloaded. For the shockingly low price of 5 dollars each, I bought Zeitgeist Games' printing of Dave Arneson's BlackMoor, and Paizo's edition of Dragon Magazine artwork. The former details a d20 version of BlackMoor, and includes a very nice 16x20" hex map poster. The geography in my opinion is the perfect size for a detailed level 1~9 campaign. RPG developers that feel the need to present vast continents should consider dedicating single books (or Mystara-style Gazettes) to zones no larger than BlackMoor.

As of yesterday, I must say that I prefer ORIGINS to the cluster-frack that is GENCON. From a casual attendee's point of view, the former was much more comfortable, and definitely cheaper for a one day visit. Persons with something to sell or portfolios to show will still gain more from GENCON's industry presence, but my character class this time was "vacationing adventurer". For my purposes, the Columbus event scored higher than the Indianapolis event in the following areas:

After sitting down to draw some atomic robots for Mutant Future, I thought about how I would sort old-skool gaming from new. Lacking an exposure to rare products and decades of GENCON, I've decided to ignore most of the tough questions and make it about required technology. That is something my aging brain cells can recall - when dungeoneering became something that could happen on a RGB monitor. Thus, the "new gaming" sphere started forming when that first token passed from my pocket into a machine with circuit-controlled monsters. Naturally, the game types began to overlap, and suddenly I was playing characters not only with swords and spells, but also jump attacks and health meters. One such "gray zone" game is still a favorite of mine, CAPCOM's Shadow over Mystara. The game is essentially all icing and no cake, filling your need for button mashing and exploring trap-filled lairs. Other hybrids don't manage to generate the same level of appeal. I have no interest in playing a strategy board game on my computer; I want to see my opponent's scowl when I herd my plastic army into his shattered realm. I have no interest in RPGs with 4000 skills and powers that sound as if they should be followed by a joystick direction chart; I have a MMORPG that does all that and makes my PC dance better than I ever could.

I suppose I'm waiting for the day when I can roll a die and have a holographic Elf cast Lightning Bolt at an Orc being controlled by a dance pad in Tokyo.

This past Thursday, one of my gamer group agreed to manage a trial of the Warhammer RPG. On the positive side, he has all the books for reference and can remember weird facts like the name of the Elf that started the magic schools. However, he may crack under the absurdity some of the guys infuse their characterizations with, given that he allowed us to abandon random stat and career selection. Currently, the party structure includes a majority of Halflings who really have no reason to battle the forces of Chaos or wash the dung off their feet. Since I'm curious how the percentile mechanics are going to work in combat, I created a human mercenary adept at skewering enemies with a pike. I was also randomly blessed with the ability to add and subtract really well.