Monday, September 25, 2006
My weekend was filled with gaming. On Saturday, the first TABS SuburbaCon was held in Whitby. Although I didn't get a final count, I know the expected number of attendees was up around sixteen. I don't think there were any no-shows, so that's probably how many we had.
SuburbaCon was essentially a mini-con held at someone's house in Whitby. Although we tried to give it a bit of a formal structure, we're just not a formal crowd. Scheduled events fell apart right after the bright and early 9:00 games. Over the course of the day, I played a couple of games I had played before -- Thurn and Taxis and La Citta -- and a few games I'd never played before -- Mexica, Winner's Circle and four games of Ca$h'n Gun$.
Of them all, Cash'n Guns was by far the most fun. Although it really is little more than a party game, you just gotta love a game where you point toy guns at your friends. For the most part, it's simply a game of bluffing, but the gameplay is perfectly suited to the theme. I honestly started to feel like I was in the middle of a Reservoir Dogs-esque movie.
However, Winner's Circle was probably the game I enjoyed the most after Cash'n Guns. I've been eyeing a copy of the game in Worlds Collide for a few weeks. Now that I've had a chance to play it and find out how much fun it can be, I have to seriously consider adding it to my ever-growing collection.
One final note: Now that I've given Mexica a try, I've played all three games in Wolfgang Kramer's so-called "mask series." Prior to this, my preference was Tikal over Java, but now that I know what Mexica is like, I'm re-evaluating my favourite of the series. Once a few scoring misunderstandings were cleared up, I really took a liking to Mexica.
On Sunday, I met up with The Law for a Pendragon character creation session. Law's plan is to run all of The Great Pendragon Campaign over the next few years, so we were making up characters to start in 485 A.D. While I'm skeptical about our chances of getting through the entire ninety-year campaign (the last time we tried The Boy King, the campaign died after one session), I'm hoping we can at least get through the first part of the overall story.
Something occurred to me while we were making up characters: I enjoyed making up my Pendragon character. Usually I hate the mechanics of character generation. I think I know what was enjoyable, though. Pendragon has a lifepath built into its chargen system. It was fun to find out what my character's grandfather and father did. It'll really help me shape the character's personality. Another game with a lifepath system is Cyberpunk 2020, and although it's been years since I made a CP2020 character, I seem to recall enjoying that element of chargen.
I think if more games had a formal lifepath element to chargen, I'd only making characters more.
Anyway, before the Pendragon chargen session started, Law gave me two games I asked him to pick up for me -- Monsters Menace America and Betrayal At House on the Hill. 401 Games on Yonge St. is selling off a bunch of the new Avalon Hill games for $20 apiece, and these two piqued my interest. Before the other Pendragon players arrived, we cracked open Monsters, punched it and got set up to play. Craig arrived just before we got started, so we had him choose a monster and a branch of the military to control, and he jumped in. The last of the Pendragon players, Sean, arrived after we had already got going, so he ended up reading a book while Konk, Tomanagi and Megaclaw destroyed the U.S.
I am proud to say that the mighty Konk was crowned King of the Monsters at the end.
SuburbaCon was essentially a mini-con held at someone's house in Whitby. Although we tried to give it a bit of a formal structure, we're just not a formal crowd. Scheduled events fell apart right after the bright and early 9:00 games. Over the course of the day, I played a couple of games I had played before -- Thurn and Taxis and La Citta -- and a few games I'd never played before -- Mexica, Winner's Circle and four games of Ca$h'n Gun$.
Of them all, Cash'n Guns was by far the most fun. Although it really is little more than a party game, you just gotta love a game where you point toy guns at your friends. For the most part, it's simply a game of bluffing, but the gameplay is perfectly suited to the theme. I honestly started to feel like I was in the middle of a Reservoir Dogs-esque movie.
However, Winner's Circle was probably the game I enjoyed the most after Cash'n Guns. I've been eyeing a copy of the game in Worlds Collide for a few weeks. Now that I've had a chance to play it and find out how much fun it can be, I have to seriously consider adding it to my ever-growing collection.
One final note: Now that I've given Mexica a try, I've played all three games in Wolfgang Kramer's so-called "mask series." Prior to this, my preference was Tikal over Java, but now that I know what Mexica is like, I'm re-evaluating my favourite of the series. Once a few scoring misunderstandings were cleared up, I really took a liking to Mexica.
On Sunday, I met up with The Law for a Pendragon character creation session. Law's plan is to run all of The Great Pendragon Campaign over the next few years, so we were making up characters to start in 485 A.D. While I'm skeptical about our chances of getting through the entire ninety-year campaign (the last time we tried The Boy King, the campaign died after one session), I'm hoping we can at least get through the first part of the overall story.
Something occurred to me while we were making up characters: I enjoyed making up my Pendragon character. Usually I hate the mechanics of character generation. I think I know what was enjoyable, though. Pendragon has a lifepath built into its chargen system. It was fun to find out what my character's grandfather and father did. It'll really help me shape the character's personality. Another game with a lifepath system is Cyberpunk 2020, and although it's been years since I made a CP2020 character, I seem to recall enjoying that element of chargen.
I think if more games had a formal lifepath element to chargen, I'd only making characters more.
Anyway, before the Pendragon chargen session started, Law gave me two games I asked him to pick up for me -- Monsters Menace America and Betrayal At House on the Hill. 401 Games on Yonge St. is selling off a bunch of the new Avalon Hill games for $20 apiece, and these two piqued my interest. Before the other Pendragon players arrived, we cracked open Monsters, punched it and got set up to play. Craig arrived just before we got started, so we had him choose a monster and a branch of the military to control, and he jumped in. The last of the Pendragon players, Sean, arrived after we had already got going, so he ended up reading a book while Konk, Tomanagi and Megaclaw destroyed the U.S.
I am proud to say that the mighty Konk was crowned King of the Monsters at the end.
// posted by Chris @ 9:15 AM 
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