Role-Playing Games

The big difference between going to a big con before and after  having kids is that before your sleep deprived when leaving the con, after kids, you’re sleep deprived from day one.

I woke up Thursday looking forward to gaming, but nursing a headache from too little sleep and too much beer. Nothing a lot of coffee couldn’t fix though. We headed north for coffee and free wifi at Cup o’Joe. Great coffee but unfortunately the wireless network wouldn’t work with our iPod touches.

Coffee in hand and headache tamed, three of the Blackrazors headed to Hackmaster Basic tutorial session.

The first stop on Day 2 was the convention hall and customer service to get a refund on one of my Thursday events, which freed up my afternoon to wander the exhibit  hall.

My first event was Hackmaster Basic, which was an introductory event. It got off to a slow start – our table leader was still learning the rules himself, and we had several false starts. That said, character creation was a fun mix of random rolls and point building, and once we were done we got to run thriuh a scenario with one of the games designers. It’s very crunchy, but I’m looking forward to my own group’s playtest.

Origins 2009 is off to a good start. After navigating some flight snufus, we checked into the Hyatt Regency without any problems and snagged a late lunch at Barley’s Brew Pub.

Then we headed over to the convention center proper, wandered around a bit looking for the pre-reg counter, found it and managed to get our badges and events in under 5 minutes. That alone was a huge improvement over GenCon.

We’ve sneaked peaks at some of the gaming areas, which are downright cavernous. It’s cool to see all the tables consolidated in one place, unlike GenCon’s scattered approuch. I’m curious to see how it plays out noise-wise tomorrow.

After registering we chatted with David Moore, his wife Erin and various members of the Gamemasters Show while we waited for the rest of our group to arrive. 

When we go to GenCon, we usually spend Wednesday night eating good food, drinking good beer and playing old favorites like Illuminati or Munchkin.

Except this time we forgot the games.

Fortunately Game Base 7 was around to save our Wednesdau They run a boards game library: give them your driver’s license, they go give you a game.

Confident we had a game solution, we headed out to Elevator, a brewpub on High Street, where we drove the bartenders slightly crazy by ordering four 12 beer samplers. The best one? Three Frog.

The Origins Game Fair 2009 is here. Since my non-gamer friends and family (as well as folks on Twitter) are probably wondering what the heck that is, so I thought I’d explain. Origins is a game convention held in Columbus, Ohio from June 24-28. It’s an event where geeks and gamers (often, but not always, … Read more

After years of talking about it, I’m finally going to the Origins Game Fair. The reason is two fold: 1) I’ve never been to the convention, having always chosen to go to GenCon instead and 2) I have a bunch of friends who will be a Origins whom I’ve never had a chance to game … Read more