Con report: Pop-Up Gen Con
Aug. 4th, 2019 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellTo cater to all the people who can't make it to Gen Con, the organizers this year announced Pop-Up Gen Con, where people could go to participating local game stores for a taste of the Gen Con experience. There would be free game demos, maybe some streaming direct from the con.
Well, the streaming didn't happen, so it was more of a local game day with fancy badges (and the collectible pin).
Still, it was a well-attended game day. My friendly local gaming store, Rainy Day Games, the only one in the whole Portland area to participate, had decided it would cap signups at 60 people, and it had 57 pre-registered.
Things kicked off at the store opening at 10am, with several demos already set up. The first I wound up playing was Mental Blocks, where players arrange blocks so that each of their cards shows the arrangement correctly from some angle. The catch is that players aren't allowed to show each other their cards, so there's just a lot of "This works for me" or "That's not what I need to see." Eventually the players vote on whether they think they have the right arrangment, which we did. Not a very replayable game, though, since there are only a few puzzles in it.
Next up was Bargain Quest, where you play a shopkeeper trying to outfit adventurers to survive their quests while still making as much money you can. Some items are highly profitable but do nothing, or actively work against the heroes, and the scoring does depend in part on the heroes actually surviving. Fun, with great art.
After that I got interested in We're Doomed!, a game where the leaders of the world have 15 minutes to build a rocket to escape a global catastrophe. A rocket that not all of them will be able to fit on, that is. I was particularly interested in seeing how this would play out after having read repeated assertions from some people, by which I meanjames_davis_nicoll, that Earth on the brink of a catastrophe could never build the sort of vehicle it would take to escape. (Failing to build the rocket at all is one of the possible outcomes of the game.) Not enough people could be rounded up to play it just then, and later the table had been cleared for something else.
Instead I found myself roped into The Quacks of Quedlinberg, not a demo game but one that someone had brought. Someone had also gotten the $50 upgraded token pack, which provided very nice tokens indeed. The game is a deckbuilder of sorts where you accumulate potion ingredients and try to make something explode. The core mechanic was easy and interesting; the surrounding rules were a bit too fiddly for my taste.
After that, I desperately needed some lunch. After years of going past it, I finally had an excuse to drop by the Turkish place in the next strip mall down the road. One kibbeh, one doner wrap, and one pomegranate-orange San Pellegrino later, I was ready for more gaming action.
I have a goal of teaching at least one person KeyForge at every game day or convention I go to, so I set up my fancy playing mats that I won at the last couple local tournaments and looked for a likely target. The person who wandered up and played turned out to be a hardcore Magic player who's been wanting to try KeyForge out. After a few turns he'd picked it up so well that I realized I didn't need to go easy on him. He wound up just eking out a win.
Next was Curios, a game of looting archaeological sites and trying to guess the market for the spoils. A small, quick game, good for beginners maybe (if they aren't put off by the theme).
This was also the day of the release of Pathfinder's second edition. Occasionally someone would walk up and flip through one of the books, but mostly they sat on a table and looked lonely. (There is a Pathfinder Society chapter which theoretically covers the Portland metro area, but it can't be bothered to run anything west of the Willamette River. For you non-locals, that's basically the whole western half of the metro area.)
For the last game, I tried Hadara, a game of collecting cards and a few auxiliary things to build a civilization. Simple mechanics, but it allows a variety of ways to maximize your points. It's very much the kind of game where you need to play it once just to even get a feel for it. It didn't help that the one person who'd played before screwed up the four-player setup, causing extra confusion. Also he was That Guy who has to re-count all his points every time, usually on his turn, adding to the slowdown from trying to explain everything.
After that, I wandered toward another table, where people were trying to collect a couple more players to try out this new game... Hadara! I was happy to sit down with them, then less happy once I looked at my phone and realized it was time for me to go home and make dinner.
It was fun, and I generally endorse this idea and would be happy to participate next year. I'd just like to see it be a little more Gen Con-y.
Well, the streaming didn't happen, so it was more of a local game day with fancy badges (and the collectible pin).
Still, it was a well-attended game day. My friendly local gaming store, Rainy Day Games, the only one in the whole Portland area to participate, had decided it would cap signups at 60 people, and it had 57 pre-registered.
Things kicked off at the store opening at 10am, with several demos already set up. The first I wound up playing was Mental Blocks, where players arrange blocks so that each of their cards shows the arrangement correctly from some angle. The catch is that players aren't allowed to show each other their cards, so there's just a lot of "This works for me" or "That's not what I need to see." Eventually the players vote on whether they think they have the right arrangment, which we did. Not a very replayable game, though, since there are only a few puzzles in it.
Next up was Bargain Quest, where you play a shopkeeper trying to outfit adventurers to survive their quests while still making as much money you can. Some items are highly profitable but do nothing, or actively work against the heroes, and the scoring does depend in part on the heroes actually surviving. Fun, with great art.
After that I got interested in We're Doomed!, a game where the leaders of the world have 15 minutes to build a rocket to escape a global catastrophe. A rocket that not all of them will be able to fit on, that is. I was particularly interested in seeing how this would play out after having read repeated assertions from some people, by which I mean
james_davis_nicoll, that Earth on the brink of a catastrophe could never build the sort of vehicle it would take to escape. (Failing to build the rocket at all is one of the possible outcomes of the game.) Not enough people could be rounded up to play it just then, and later the table had been cleared for something else.
Instead I found myself roped into The Quacks of Quedlinberg, not a demo game but one that someone had brought. Someone had also gotten the $50 upgraded token pack, which provided very nice tokens indeed. The game is a deckbuilder of sorts where you accumulate potion ingredients and try to make something explode. The core mechanic was easy and interesting; the surrounding rules were a bit too fiddly for my taste.
After that, I desperately needed some lunch. After years of going past it, I finally had an excuse to drop by the Turkish place in the next strip mall down the road. One kibbeh, one doner wrap, and one pomegranate-orange San Pellegrino later, I was ready for more gaming action.
I have a goal of teaching at least one person KeyForge at every game day or convention I go to, so I set up my fancy playing mats that I won at the last couple local tournaments and looked for a likely target. The person who wandered up and played turned out to be a hardcore Magic player who's been wanting to try KeyForge out. After a few turns he'd picked it up so well that I realized I didn't need to go easy on him. He wound up just eking out a win.
Next was Curios, a game of looting archaeological sites and trying to guess the market for the spoils. A small, quick game, good for beginners maybe (if they aren't put off by the theme).
This was also the day of the release of Pathfinder's second edition. Occasionally someone would walk up and flip through one of the books, but mostly they sat on a table and looked lonely. (There is a Pathfinder Society chapter which theoretically covers the Portland metro area, but it can't be bothered to run anything west of the Willamette River. For you non-locals, that's basically the whole western half of the metro area.)
For the last game, I tried Hadara, a game of collecting cards and a few auxiliary things to build a civilization. Simple mechanics, but it allows a variety of ways to maximize your points. It's very much the kind of game where you need to play it once just to even get a feel for it. It didn't help that the one person who'd played before screwed up the four-player setup, causing extra confusion. Also he was That Guy who has to re-count all his points every time, usually on his turn, adding to the slowdown from trying to explain everything.
After that, I wandered toward another table, where people were trying to collect a couple more players to try out this new game... Hadara! I was happy to sit down with them, then less happy once I looked at my phone and realized it was time for me to go home and make dinner.
It was fun, and I generally endorse this idea and would be happy to participate next year. I'd just like to see it be a little more Gen Con-y.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 03:29 pm (UTC)tunaFico da India is a bit sickly-sweet. Pompelmo might be my favourite.If you're talking "escape arks", realistically, you're talking Orion. The most difficult part of building such things is the thousands of atom bombs required. Conveniently(?), those are already in existence — it's just a matter of getting control of them…
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 05:51 pm (UTC)I gather that San Pellgrino is very popular in the Middle East, since the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean food carts at Alder Street usually had at least a couple flavors, and here it was again at the Turkish place.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 11:47 pm (UTC)When I was in Germany this spring, the beverage I got in a döner place one day was the Legendary Uludağ Gazoz. I guess it's one of those specialities like "Lemon & Paeroa".