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Columns > Unplugged > GenCon 2005 - Day 2
Bored of World of Warcraft? Try a haunted house or a True Dungeon? Just let the chips fall where they may, Dr. Carlson spends Friday at GenCon.  This morning's appointment was with Fantasy Flight Games, so I arrived bright and early to hear about the newest and upcoming titles from the makers of boardgame versions of Doom and Warcraft. In keeping with the computer game gone board game theme, Fantasy Flight hopes to have a board game version of World of Warcraft out by Christmas - more on that later. The first stop on my tour of the booth was the FFG role playing line. Both Fireborn, where you play a character who has the soul of a dragon in a past life, or the darker Midnight setting looked interesting, but I was quite excited about the upcoming Grimm role playing setting. In this setting one plays a young child stuck in a stereotypical Grimm fairy tale – imagine playing as the dorky kid, the smart kid, or the sporty kid, etc... The sourcebook was originally released as a shorter tome, but is being updated and expanded due to its success. While it will have a bit of a darker theme (like real fairy tales) it could be a great hook for stretching children's imaginations. Two older board games have been give a face lift with the classic Through the Desert now packed in a smaller box with the same quality pieces. An excellent 2-player game, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation has been redone in a deluxe version including a larger board and pieces with a few new, but minor, rules changes. I'm a big fan of this mini-stratego like game, and am pleased to see it made into an even prettier edition. The board game world also recognizes the value of sequels and expansions, and Fantasy Flight has quite a number of them recently released and coming down the pipelines. A new expansion of their simple World War I dog fighting game, Wings of War will be released and a follow up title will involve WWII planes. The excellent war game based on Lord of the Rings, War of the Ring, has an upcoming expansion, Battles of the Third Age which includes rules and figures (can you say Ent?) for battling out many of the game's siege battles in more detail. While not an expansion, Descent is a new squad-based combat game that could easily be considered Doom: The Board Game but in a fantasy setting. Players join forces to explore a dungeon and fight monsters controlled by one other player. Unlike Doom, in Descent gives players more opportunities to improve their character over time by buying equipment and skills in the marketplace which can be reached by giving up a turn of movement. Fury of Dracula is a redevelopment of the 80's game of the same name, where players join up to try to defeat the player who plays Dracula. For 2 to 5 players, the game includes some luck elements with a fair bit of deduction thrown into the mix. One of the more unique games displayed was Arkham Horror. While it has a somewhat dark, Cthulhu style theme, it is actually a fully cooperative multiplayer game. While the "ancient ones" are trying to awaken, the players scurry around to try to save the town without going insane through their encounters with the Lovecraftian horrors. However, no one is ever eliminated, players just grab a new character (from the 16 available) and head back in. As a fan of cooperative games where everyone wins or loses together, I'll definitely have to play test Arkham Horror further.
 Next was Beowulf, a strategy game based around players attempting to befriend the great hero and be his successor. Players collect cards and spend them in auctions as Beowulf travels across the game board path. At specific locations, players who bid the most are given first choice of rewards, with second choice awarded to the second highest bidder, on down. This may mean that the low bidder will receive negative rewards. Beowulf should be a game of interest for fans of the classic tale as well as those who tend to shy away from Fantasy Flights other lines of dice and figurine-heavy games. I finished my tour with a look over the upcoming World of Warcraft – the Board Game. In this game, each player controls a character on either the Alliance or Horde side. Players on the same team join forces and level up their characters through adventuring around the board, including combat based off multiple 8-sided dice. Once players have grown enough in power, they can take on the boss monster to win the game. If players take too long to get around to defeating the boss, time runs out and the game ends with a showdown battle between the Alliance and Horde players. Players can choose any class from the popular online game, and it looks like there were plenty of opportunities to improve one's character through experience as well as gathering "phat lewt" (better equipment). With a good portion of my morning shot, I swung by Upper Deck to check out their Vs. System. It debuted last year and seems to be a popular collectible card game (CCG) based on superhero comics. Due to clever licensing, they are able to release games featuring both DC Comics characters as well as other releases featuring Marvel characters. A quick demo of the basics showed me the game had some promise, but not quite enough to pull me into a new collectible game. Fans of Marvel and/or DC superheroes may want to check it out, but if you just like the superhero genre, be sure to tune in for the CCG I came across on Saturday. As lunchtime loomed near I went off in search of food and friends, for I had an afternoon quest to accomplish. Six acquaintances and I were signed up to enter the True Dungeon It is basically a mixture of live action role playing and walking through a haunted house. True Adventures, LTD put together an adventure for the GenCon conventions every year. A party of seven people get together and pretend to be a character and then adventure through a maze (made with black cloth draped over PVC pipe, etc...) containing seven rooms filled with puzzles. The goal is to successfully navigate through the puzzles under the watchful eye of the GM present, and survive. Our team joined up for lunch to discuss strategy. After some initial dialogue, we took a restroom break and headed over to our quest. At that point I realized that, as a character in paper role playing games I rarely ever remembered to use the restroom before entering a dungeon. Either my characters had a much greater constitution than I, or perhaps I should remember to mention that to my GM the next time I play a game. Arriving on-site, we were given an orientation to the way the game was to work and we had a few minutes to prepare. Those players who had to cast spells were assigned to memorize symbols and icons to represent their mental abilities while the rest of us went shopping. As a simple-minded Paladin, best suited for standing in the way of harm so the weaker folks would survive, I went shopping. Our preparations made, we entered our first room. We carefully walked down one side of the floor as the other was covered with black to indicate a deep pit. However, on the far side of the hallway were openings with faint runes written beneath. After spying a rune I recognized, I reached in to find an object which the party was able to use to quickly unlock the next door. We had gotten through our first trial! However, things quickly progressed downhill from there. We struggled through a number of rooms until we started to abandon hope of ever reaching the last room. However, we grouped together, got extremely lucky in a few spots, and blew out of the water the last few puzzles to complete our journey without a single player fatality. Rewarded with pins to indicate our survival of the dungeon, we adjourned to the local tavern to debrief. After resting my feet, I braved the tide of people and once again made my way onto the dealer floor of GenCon. My first stop was with Winning Moves, publishers of a number of popular classic games. Having re-released Pente and a revised PayDay, I was intrigued by a few games I hadn't seen before. Their No Stress Chess is a handy chess board labeled to make setup of the game easier. There are also two decks of cards included that show how each chess piece moves. This looks to be a very nice way to introduce the game to young players. New games include Forbidden a sort of cross between gin rummy and mahjong, and Coda a light detective game in the vein of Mastermind. Coda is released as The DiVinci Code in Europe. Scrabble fans may want to check out Super Scrabble designed around a larger board and more letter tiles. With quadruple word score spaces, it isn't uncommon for a game to reach scores of 8 or 9 hundred points! Leaving Winning Moves, I was able to quickly locate Linda Cox of Avalon Hill (an amazing bit of serendipity, for those who didn't read my GenCon Blog from last year.) Avalon Hill has released a number of titles recently: Nexus Ops, RoboRally, and others so there weren't too many upcoming games to discuss. The new Axis and Allies Miniatures were a big hit at the convention. While I'm still not a fan of their collectible nature, I have to admit they look great. I only wish I had toy soldiers as cool as these as a kid. The next Avalon Hill title to be released will probably be Vegas Showdown where players run hotels and casinos on the strip in order to out-manage each other. With a rather large crop of games leaning to the simpler or gateway game genre, I expressed concern that Avalon Hill seemed to be leaving behind their more complex wargame and deep strategy roots. However, I was reassured that Wizards of the Coast plans to "build the Avalon Hill brand for the next 50 years and will not abandon the legacy of the older Avalon Hill complex games." A fine reassurance indeed! A quick detour to the Z-Man Games booth and I once again faced the nifty artwork of Pantheon. Having played it the night before I was curious what else Z-Man games had in store. I had already heard of Fairy Tale a very popular card game developed in Japan. This is a card drafting game where many of the cards give modifiers to the value of other cards. I got to see a mock up of the final art and it had a great Asian feel but maintained an easily understandable set of icons to facilitate game play. There is even a Shadowfist themed version of the game in the works. Sienna is another game to watch. In it, players start as peasants and try to work their way up to banker through production and trading of goods. The board itself will be an elegant painting, with the players interacting with the painting to accomplish their goals. Sounds very pretty, so I can't wait to see what the art will look like.
 With the day nearly done, I had one final interview, with Peter Adkison of Hidden City Games. Yes, this is the same man who helped start Wizards of the Coast and who now runs GenCon itself, but we were meeting to discuss a new game called Clout: Fantasy. We were joined by Jesper Myrfors, the game's designer. Clout is yet another collectible game, but not based on cards. Players play the game with a stack of 15 special poker chips. These are fairly high-quality chips with a nice weight to them. Players take turns tossing the chips onto a playing surface. Most chips that land near other chips can attack and eliminate them. Once both players have tossed all their chips, the remaining chips are counted. Each chip has a point value, with more powerful chips typically being worth more points. The player with the most points remaining on the playing field at the end of the game, wins. While I am always wary of a new collectible game, Clout has a few good things going for it. First, only fifteen chips are needed per person, and a starting package of 30 chips (two 15 chip armies) will retail for about $15. This is entirely reasonable. For $30, a family could get all four current races and play the game comfortably. Future releases will continue to offer starter deck options for races, so slow expansion of the game is possible for those who don't get into buying booster packs. The booster packs are my least favorite part of the game. Coming in at $2.50 for two chips, it seems a bit steep. Of course, booster packs are the only way to find the very rare "chaser" chips which are black and yellow and include very powerful neutral dragon chips which can be used with any army. The booster pack packaging is pretty nifty, although I could do without the standard fantasy genre somewhat immodestly clothed women. It is hard to tell how well the game will sell, but it has a strong distribution system behind it and many folks at the convention were quite enthusiastic about it. I like how it brings a dexterity element into the game, making it an even better game for older elementary or middle school kids. Just changing the playing surface of the game can create a whole new feel to the game. Obstacles become part of the game rather than getting in the way. If it weren't for its strong collectible factor, I would give it high marks. As it is, the starter sets seem to be a good deal, but I would stay away from trying to go after rare chips in booster packs. With common, uncommon, rare, and "chase" (the black and yellow chips) chips available for $2.50 a pair, I don't see it being very financially prudent. With my interview concluded, I swept up my things and headed home as fast as I could. With Saturday my last day at the convention and no major events planned in my schedule, I knew I needed all the sleep I could get to survive a marathon session of checking out the booths. Read the report from GenCon 2005, Day 1!
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