OneButtonController.com

After spending 3 days or so at Gencon, I started to see some disturbing trends.

1) Where the hell did all of these collectible mini games come from? I saw what seemed like HUNDREDS of them. I remember when Heroclix came out and was never really impressed with it…..but based on the volume of these games maybe my judgement was a little quick. I got to a couple demos and I really enjoyed Monster Apocalypse by Privateer Games so maybe there is hope for me after all.

2) Collectible Trading card games seem to have died down a bit. In general, I saw MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh and that was about it. I was a massive CTG player back in High School when there were new ones coming out every couple days. The only one that I saw that seemed impressive was “The Spoils”. (Great idea selling starter kits for $5 by-the-way). I have not had a chance to play with it yet but once I do, I will post a full-review.

3) Cthulhu is everywhere. H.P. Lovecraft was always big in the gamins scene but by the end of Gencon, I was sick of seeing all of the Cthulhu based games. The plush toys, the various books and games with Cthulhu shoe-horned in. But hope is not lost, I got to check out Cthulhu Tech published by Catalyst which seemed like an interesting blend of Horror and futuristic game play.

4) Board games……wow…..I do not know where to start. I was blown away by how many different games there was. But I was also blown away by how many were similar. (How many train or travel games do we need?) I actually heard a vendor being asked what the difference was between a couple different games and they stated that they have “no idea…..they are all pretty similar”. There was one game that I checked out that I thought was VERY cool……..War on Terror the board game. I got to watch a bit of a demo and was very impressed. I meant to pick up a copy before I left but ran out of cash before I made it back

Overall, I was completely impressed with the show. I was actually surprised that there were not millions of vampire related games being that is extremely popular in the mainstream media right now. I guess I have something to look forward to next year.

Here are a couple more pics from Saturday! 

More tomorrow! 

I have been geeking out all day today and I just got back from watching District 9. Here is what I thought about the movie:

Plus:

1) The visual style of the movie is awesome. The CGI and live action shots are mixed so well that it is hard to tell what is CGI and what is live. This is probably due to the “documentary” style that this film takes. The gritty look of the film is what I believe Cloverfield should have been like. It looks like it was filmed from a hand-held camera minus all of the motion sickness.

2) The alien weapons are AWESOME! The weapons are believable and crazy. I loved every weapon that they showed in the game. (Why don’t more games have weapons like this?)

3) The overall plot is very good. The movie had its serious overtones but had some pretty light hearted parts to balance the film. This also keeps the story from coming across as too preachy as well.

Minuses

1) I only had one gripe…..but I need to first preffice this with me being a major geek. (Suprise…suprise) I like when my Sci-Fi trys to explain HOW the Sci-Fi equipment should work. The main human character is sprayed with some “fuel” that begins to transform him to an alien. They never explain why that happened which made it seem like a convienent plot device and it hurt the story for me a bit.

Conclusion

I loved it….there were a couple areas that I did not care for but overall the move was amazing. It is one of the best Sci-Fi flicks I have seen in years. It is also probably the best movie I have seen since The Dark Knight…..which the two would be a toss-up. I really hope they revisit this movie with a sequel and I hope to see more from this team.

Being around all of these games made me remember all of the fun I had playing RPG’s back in the days with my friends. But over the last 10 years we have (Me in particular) moved on to jobs, families, and physically moved to other parts of the country. This has made getting together for “gaming” sessions a bit tougher. After some discussions with a couple friends, I started laying out a new Twitter based RPG.

I have a VERY basic character creation and combat system put together. I am working on items and questing (Which is on hold until the end of Gencon). I am looking for some ideas on how you think Twitter (Or Facebook for that matter) could be used to integrate into a web based RPG?

Seeing all of the new ideas for RPG’s and games in general at Gencon has got my creative juices flowing. For that…I would like to thank Gencon!

Post your thoughts in the comments below!

I got down there around 6:00 PM to get registered and I found out that the main exhibition hall closed @ 6:00. 

So my buddy and I decided to do some recon work and here is what we saw! 

Got more pics but I need some sleep!

As a Gencon newbie…..I did not know what to expect on my first venture into the abyss know as Gencon.

I decided to drag my wife along to check out the lines last night. (She was afraid….very afraid)

Suffice to say, I was blown away by the number of people in line. There were hundreds of people waiting for their badges and maybe a thousand more wandering around. The lines looked like they were taking about an hour to process so I decided to grab some dinner and come back later. (I hate waiting)

I came back around 8:00 and saw that the lines were not much shorter and at 9:00 they were shutting down if you had a badge or not…..so much for my plan.

This evening I might try again. Wish me luck!

This weekend will be my first trip to Gencon. I have lived in Indianapolis for 5 years and have yet to make it to the convention. I used to be a big pen-and-paper gamer but I have not played in years so this might be interesting!

What should I expect?

Should I bring a camera?

I plan on checking out the exhibits and maybe some shopping. I will update everyone as it gets closer.

st83faij4b

As you can see I changed the format to a blog from a community site. 

I should have more updates tomorrow but in the mean time. Please excuse the mess while the site is under construction! 

Thanks!