Hello everyone, Darryl here with help me help me we went from no news to too much news and I don’t know what to do! Gen Con, Diana Jones, ENnies, highly anticipated products released, all new products and licenses announced, it’s just too much!
Let’s start with the convention itself. Gen Con’s 50th anniversary was the first year in the convention’s history that they limited sales. And it also sold out. Of four day passes and single-day passes for every single day. To put this into scale, Gen Con hosted over 19.000 ticketed events – that is events directly managed through Gen Con and doesn’t count side-events. It took over spaces spanning from area hotels to convention centers to ballrooms to even the Lucas Oil Stadium, with game tables filling the field normally occupied by Indianapolis Colts home games. Turnstile attendance (that is each individual entering the convention on a given day) was 207,979. According to the press release, this is a 4% increase over 2016 and, with the sell-out, makes the third year straight that badge sales were over 60,000. Gen Con 51 is moving up a bit in the year and will take place in Indianapolis, IN from August 2-5, 2018.
In fact, the convention itself con this year’s Diana Jones Award for Excellence. From the official Twitter account of the Diana Jones Award announcing the winner, “The DJA Committee said, ‘Gen Con's assertion that it's the Best Four Days In Gaming’ is a refreshing and absolute truth,” Gen Con representative Adrien Swartout accepted the award at the ceremony on the Wednesday evening before the convention’s official start. The other nominees for the award were The Beast, End of the Line, Gloomhaven, The Romance Trilogy, and Terraforming Mars.
The 17th Annual ENnie Award ceremony took place on Friday evening. Chaosium in particular picked up ten awards in different categories for Call of Cthulhu products. Other big winners include John Wick Presents for who received six awards for 7th Sea products including a Silver ENnie for 7th Sea Core Rulebook for Product of the Year and Silver ENnie for Fan’s Choice for Best Publisher. Tales from the Loop: Roleplaying in the 80s that Never Was also took home six awards including the Gold ENnie for Product of the Year, Best Game, and Best Writing.
Starfinder officially launched on Thursday and Paizo stated that they brought more copies of the Starfinder Core Rulebook to Gen Con than they have any other single release ever. The picture above is from the Paizo booth showing the stacks of Starfinder material ready for fans. They even set up a separate booth outside the main dealer hall solely with Starfinder books to ease lines and waiting times for those who only wanted to pick those up. They sold out of the Limited Edition in just a couple of hours, and sold out of the Core Rulebook in four hours. At least one person joked that they ordered a copy off Amazon and had it shipped overnight to their hotel (though I wasn’t able to confirm if this actually happened and, if so, if it worked). Many users also reported issues purchasing or downloading the PDF from Paizo’s website due to server issues from demand on Thursday, but bandwidth issues seems to have stabilized over the weekend.
In addition to Starfinder’s release, several third party books also launched this past week. Starfarer’s Companion by Rogue Genius Games in particular has topped Drive Thru’s sales charts, which isn’t surprising as Rogue Genius Games is co-owned by Starfinder developer Owen K.C. Stephens.
Several new games were announced in the lead-up and days of Gen Con. Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Wrath & Glory from Ulises North America is a completely new game created under license from Games Workshop. Lead designer Ross Watson previewed the new game at the convention, which has a D6 dice pool system unrelated to previous Warhammer 40K roleplaying games. Watson previously served as line editor for the Warhammer 40K roleplaying system and worked on Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy as well as lead designer on Torg Eternity and worked on games like Lankhmar: City of Thieves for Savage Worlds, Accursed, and books in the Savage Rifts system. Watson was also the host for the Gamer’s Tavern podcast for its first 60 episodes…huh, that name sounds familiar…
D&D Beyond officially launched just before Gen Con, with all subscription options open. The official website also has articles and interviews with Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls as well as videos from Acquisitions Incorporated. There’s also a reported 25,000 homebrew creations so far available. There are three subscription tiers, the free level which allows creation and management of up to six characters and displays ads, the Heroic Tier which is $2.99/mo which has unlimited access to all resources and unlimited characters, plus access to shared homebrew material. The Master Tier is $5.99/mo and allows to share official content you’ve purchased to up to three campaigns (each campaign can have up to 12 players each). There’s also 15% discounts for six month purchases and 25% discounts for one year purchases. Digital versions of thirteen different products can also be purchased from D&D Beyond, either as a full “bundle” including a digital copy of the book or you can purchase “parts” of the book like specific magic items, monsters, classes, feats, and more a la carte. Purchased products don’t require a subscription, only if you want to share the content.
Steve Jackson Games officially announced Munchkin Collectible Card Game, the first collectible card game version of the Munchkin series. The official launch will be on February 2018. The game will launch with three starter sets each containing two curated decks (Wizard/Bard, Ranger/Warrior, and Cleric/Thief), two level counters, forty tokens, a die, and a booster pack. The booster packs will each have twelve cards with one considered “rare” or better per pack. Two expansions are already planned for 2018, The Desolation of Blarg in May and Fashion Furious in August. The starter sets will have an MSRP of $24.95 and booster packs an MSRP of $3.95.
Frank Mentzer announced an upcoming Kickstarter for Empyrea, which is a continent first described in module L12 Egg of the Phoenix by Mentzer and Jennell Jaquays. This project will include work from author Ted Fauster and designers “including Caldwell, Dee, Diesel, Easley, Elmore, Holloway, Jaquays, and Otus”. The license comes from Gary Gygax when he was still in charge of TSR in the 1980s. There’s been no statements as of yet from Wizards of the Coast on the project if they’re disputing this license.
As you may have noticed, EN World has been doing RPGaDay, which is a list of questions for each day to encourage discussion of the hobby. Day 11’s question was “Which ‘dead game’ would you like to see reborn?” I answered that I would love to see two games: The TSR “FASERIP” Marvel system, and West End Games’s Star Wars. I said, “Due to the tangles of copyrights, licenses, trademarks, and other IP rights, I don't think we'll ever get either, unfortunately.” I have never in my life ever been so thrilled to be wrong as Fantasy Flight Games announced that they will be reprinting the original Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game for its 30th Anniversary.
This reprint will contain the same rules, text, graphics, and layout of the original reprinted on higher quality paper in a hardback cover with a slip cover, even including the original West End Games logo. Only two books are currently being reprinted, the core rulebook at The Star Wars Sourcebook, which included new races, equipment, starships, creatures, and more. The set will come out later this year with a MSRP of $59.95.
Also, a new miniature skirmish combat game from Fantasy Flight Games is due out in early 2018. Star Wars: Legion will launch with thirty-three unpainted miniatures which will require assembly. The rules will include character cards similar to X-Wing Miniatures and include rules for easy group unit movement and different equipment. There will also be land-based vehicles such as AT-RTs and speeder bikes at launch. The core set will have an MSRP of $89.95.
“They were sometimes known as the Twelve Peers. Now, historically, they were the foremost members of Charlemagne’s court, although many of their famous exploits are largely fictitious, representing Christian martial superiority over the Saracen hordes.” “What are you dribbling about?” “Well, my friend…That’s a Paladin.” – Noah Antwiler, review of Ultima IX: Ascension. Yes, it’s a joke, but if you want to know more, Nocturnal Media has a new game, Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne on Kickstarter now. Based on the Pendragon rules by Greg Stafford and written by Ruben in ‘t Groen, players take on the roles of squires and knights in the service of one of Charlemagne’s powerful vassals, going on adventures and quests for glory and riches. So if you want 9th century historical roleplaying, this game is right up your alley. The digital version is available for a $15 pledge, while the physical version is available for $60. Okay, this thing is fully funded and several stretch goals left, but it ends on Friday, August 25 at 11:00AM Central so hurry hurry hurry if you want in.
Okay, it’s a fog machine specifically designed for use with tabletop miniatures. What more do you need to know? The Fog Monster is 4” by 4” by 8” and has a small plastic tube to move the fog directly onto the tabletop, while the Dark Crypt Fog Machine is a stale tower that produced fog that comes out of the doors and windows onto the tabletop directly. While the chemicals used won’t harm most components, it does involve humid air so be careful with wooden, paper, or cardboard tokens or props. The Fog Monster is available for $85 while the Dark Crypt is available for $99. This project is fully funded and runs until Thursday, August 31.
While there are many custom playing card Kickstarters constantly being run, this one I feel deserves attention. The card set is based on Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles and features characters and locations from the series. The artwork is from Echo Chernik, who you may know as the artist of the Shadowrun Tarot deck (which also released at Gen Con this year). There are a lot of different options for the decks so you can get just the set you want (some of which will be Kickstarter exclusive) starting at $15 and going up to $215 for all the decks, an uncut card sheet, gilded card sets, and exclusive art prints. This Kickstarter is already ten times over its funding goal and still has until Friday, September 15 to unlock more stretch goals. (Disclosure: I am a moderator for Patrick Rothfuss’s Twitch channel, though I receive no compensation for this.)
That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming crowdfunding news at the EN World RPG Kickstarter News website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse as I grumble about trying to get Adobe Premiere to cooperate with me, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
Let’s start with the convention itself. Gen Con’s 50th anniversary was the first year in the convention’s history that they limited sales. And it also sold out. Of four day passes and single-day passes for every single day. To put this into scale, Gen Con hosted over 19.000 ticketed events – that is events directly managed through Gen Con and doesn’t count side-events. It took over spaces spanning from area hotels to convention centers to ballrooms to even the Lucas Oil Stadium, with game tables filling the field normally occupied by Indianapolis Colts home games. Turnstile attendance (that is each individual entering the convention on a given day) was 207,979. According to the press release, this is a 4% increase over 2016 and, with the sell-out, makes the third year straight that badge sales were over 60,000. Gen Con 51 is moving up a bit in the year and will take place in Indianapolis, IN from August 2-5, 2018.
In fact, the convention itself con this year’s Diana Jones Award for Excellence. From the official Twitter account of the Diana Jones Award announcing the winner, “The DJA Committee said, ‘Gen Con's assertion that it's the Best Four Days In Gaming’ is a refreshing and absolute truth,” Gen Con representative Adrien Swartout accepted the award at the ceremony on the Wednesday evening before the convention’s official start. The other nominees for the award were The Beast, End of the Line, Gloomhaven, The Romance Trilogy, and Terraforming Mars.
The 17th Annual ENnie Award ceremony took place on Friday evening. Chaosium in particular picked up ten awards in different categories for Call of Cthulhu products. Other big winners include John Wick Presents for who received six awards for 7th Sea products including a Silver ENnie for 7th Sea Core Rulebook for Product of the Year and Silver ENnie for Fan’s Choice for Best Publisher. Tales from the Loop: Roleplaying in the 80s that Never Was also took home six awards including the Gold ENnie for Product of the Year, Best Game, and Best Writing.
Starfinder officially launched on Thursday and Paizo stated that they brought more copies of the Starfinder Core Rulebook to Gen Con than they have any other single release ever. The picture above is from the Paizo booth showing the stacks of Starfinder material ready for fans. They even set up a separate booth outside the main dealer hall solely with Starfinder books to ease lines and waiting times for those who only wanted to pick those up. They sold out of the Limited Edition in just a couple of hours, and sold out of the Core Rulebook in four hours. At least one person joked that they ordered a copy off Amazon and had it shipped overnight to their hotel (though I wasn’t able to confirm if this actually happened and, if so, if it worked). Many users also reported issues purchasing or downloading the PDF from Paizo’s website due to server issues from demand on Thursday, but bandwidth issues seems to have stabilized over the weekend.
In addition to Starfinder’s release, several third party books also launched this past week. Starfarer’s Companion by Rogue Genius Games in particular has topped Drive Thru’s sales charts, which isn’t surprising as Rogue Genius Games is co-owned by Starfinder developer Owen K.C. Stephens.
Several new games were announced in the lead-up and days of Gen Con. Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Wrath & Glory from Ulises North America is a completely new game created under license from Games Workshop. Lead designer Ross Watson previewed the new game at the convention, which has a D6 dice pool system unrelated to previous Warhammer 40K roleplaying games. Watson previously served as line editor for the Warhammer 40K roleplaying system and worked on Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy as well as lead designer on Torg Eternity and worked on games like Lankhmar: City of Thieves for Savage Worlds, Accursed, and books in the Savage Rifts system. Watson was also the host for the Gamer’s Tavern podcast for its first 60 episodes…huh, that name sounds familiar…
D&D Beyond officially launched just before Gen Con, with all subscription options open. The official website also has articles and interviews with Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls as well as videos from Acquisitions Incorporated. There’s also a reported 25,000 homebrew creations so far available. There are three subscription tiers, the free level which allows creation and management of up to six characters and displays ads, the Heroic Tier which is $2.99/mo which has unlimited access to all resources and unlimited characters, plus access to shared homebrew material. The Master Tier is $5.99/mo and allows to share official content you’ve purchased to up to three campaigns (each campaign can have up to 12 players each). There’s also 15% discounts for six month purchases and 25% discounts for one year purchases. Digital versions of thirteen different products can also be purchased from D&D Beyond, either as a full “bundle” including a digital copy of the book or you can purchase “parts” of the book like specific magic items, monsters, classes, feats, and more a la carte. Purchased products don’t require a subscription, only if you want to share the content.
Steve Jackson Games officially announced Munchkin Collectible Card Game, the first collectible card game version of the Munchkin series. The official launch will be on February 2018. The game will launch with three starter sets each containing two curated decks (Wizard/Bard, Ranger/Warrior, and Cleric/Thief), two level counters, forty tokens, a die, and a booster pack. The booster packs will each have twelve cards with one considered “rare” or better per pack. Two expansions are already planned for 2018, The Desolation of Blarg in May and Fashion Furious in August. The starter sets will have an MSRP of $24.95 and booster packs an MSRP of $3.95.
Frank Mentzer announced an upcoming Kickstarter for Empyrea, which is a continent first described in module L12 Egg of the Phoenix by Mentzer and Jennell Jaquays. This project will include work from author Ted Fauster and designers “including Caldwell, Dee, Diesel, Easley, Elmore, Holloway, Jaquays, and Otus”. The license comes from Gary Gygax when he was still in charge of TSR in the 1980s. There’s been no statements as of yet from Wizards of the Coast on the project if they’re disputing this license.
As you may have noticed, EN World has been doing RPGaDay, which is a list of questions for each day to encourage discussion of the hobby. Day 11’s question was “Which ‘dead game’ would you like to see reborn?” I answered that I would love to see two games: The TSR “FASERIP” Marvel system, and West End Games’s Star Wars. I said, “Due to the tangles of copyrights, licenses, trademarks, and other IP rights, I don't think we'll ever get either, unfortunately.” I have never in my life ever been so thrilled to be wrong as Fantasy Flight Games announced that they will be reprinting the original Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game for its 30th Anniversary.
This reprint will contain the same rules, text, graphics, and layout of the original reprinted on higher quality paper in a hardback cover with a slip cover, even including the original West End Games logo. Only two books are currently being reprinted, the core rulebook at The Star Wars Sourcebook, which included new races, equipment, starships, creatures, and more. The set will come out later this year with a MSRP of $59.95.
Also, a new miniature skirmish combat game from Fantasy Flight Games is due out in early 2018. Star Wars: Legion will launch with thirty-three unpainted miniatures which will require assembly. The rules will include character cards similar to X-Wing Miniatures and include rules for easy group unit movement and different equipment. There will also be land-based vehicles such as AT-RTs and speeder bikes at launch. The core set will have an MSRP of $89.95.
“They were sometimes known as the Twelve Peers. Now, historically, they were the foremost members of Charlemagne’s court, although many of their famous exploits are largely fictitious, representing Christian martial superiority over the Saracen hordes.” “What are you dribbling about?” “Well, my friend…That’s a Paladin.” – Noah Antwiler, review of Ultima IX: Ascension. Yes, it’s a joke, but if you want to know more, Nocturnal Media has a new game, Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne on Kickstarter now. Based on the Pendragon rules by Greg Stafford and written by Ruben in ‘t Groen, players take on the roles of squires and knights in the service of one of Charlemagne’s powerful vassals, going on adventures and quests for glory and riches. So if you want 9th century historical roleplaying, this game is right up your alley. The digital version is available for a $15 pledge, while the physical version is available for $60. Okay, this thing is fully funded and several stretch goals left, but it ends on Friday, August 25 at 11:00AM Central so hurry hurry hurry if you want in.
Okay, it’s a fog machine specifically designed for use with tabletop miniatures. What more do you need to know? The Fog Monster is 4” by 4” by 8” and has a small plastic tube to move the fog directly onto the tabletop, while the Dark Crypt Fog Machine is a stale tower that produced fog that comes out of the doors and windows onto the tabletop directly. While the chemicals used won’t harm most components, it does involve humid air so be careful with wooden, paper, or cardboard tokens or props. The Fog Monster is available for $85 while the Dark Crypt is available for $99. This project is fully funded and runs until Thursday, August 31.
While there are many custom playing card Kickstarters constantly being run, this one I feel deserves attention. The card set is based on Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles and features characters and locations from the series. The artwork is from Echo Chernik, who you may know as the artist of the Shadowrun Tarot deck (which also released at Gen Con this year). There are a lot of different options for the decks so you can get just the set you want (some of which will be Kickstarter exclusive) starting at $15 and going up to $215 for all the decks, an uncut card sheet, gilded card sets, and exclusive art prints. This Kickstarter is already ten times over its funding goal and still has until Friday, September 15 to unlock more stretch goals. (Disclosure: I am a moderator for Patrick Rothfuss’s Twitch channel, though I receive no compensation for this.)
That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming crowdfunding news at the EN World RPG Kickstarter News website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse as I grumble about trying to get Adobe Premiere to cooperate with me, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
For example, currently only about 5 articles on the home page are of interest to me, but I don't have a strong need to go into the other 15 threads and start debating why those are newsworthy just because they aren't newsworthy to me. EN World is big enough to have news articles and discussions about things that I think are complete wastes of time but others are passionately excited about. *shrug*
