PAX Wrapup

Well, my actual website is now fully operational. I assure you, it is quite deadly. A lot of the content from this blog has been copied over there already, not sure if I'll move the rest or not.

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So PAX has come and gone. And now I’m back to Monday to Friday, in Montreal, unsure of what to blog about in the future. But there’s still this entry. Which is going to be a rapid fire rundown of my personal and first PAX experience… starting NOW!

Zoom!

Thursday: With the MP3 players loaded up with Anamanaguchi, Metroid Metal, Frontalot, Freezepop and a some old timey radio plays, we hit the road around 1:00 pm.

PROTIP FOR ROADTRIP: Old time radio shows are free to download from sites like this one and are some of the best entertainment for a long roadtrip. We listened to the first few chapters of Doc Savage and the Thousand Headed Man, and we learnt several important things. For instance:

1) Doc Savage makes a weird whistling nose when he’s discovered something.
2) Johnny Littlejohn’s (one of Doc’s assistants) catchphrase is “I’ll be super amalgamated!”

As you can imagine… we were super amalgamated for lots of things. The roadtrip also brought some cheap booze into the car, and later that night I would teach my companions that Hendricks is the best gin in the world. Moving along…

Friday: Neither JonJon nor I wanted to risk not having a spot in the Omegathon, so we rolled into Hynes around 10:30 am… and set up in line… we were seated precisely in an area where both Get In Line Game screens were blocked… awesome… I ducked out of line to pick up some T-Mobile sim cards for our Canadian phones and to do a quick supply run because we needed more coffee, then of course back in line (didn’t wanna be gone too long, had to maintain Wheaton’s Law in the lineup.)

JonJon exhibited his remarkable Metroid prowess by speedrunning through the entire NES Metroid in a single sitting with no deaths… I even took a blurry camera phone picture of Samus in her bathing suit… but it didn’t look so good, so whatever. We made it to the keynote and the good Wil Wheaton once again knocked it out of the park. We were not named as Omeganauts, but you can’t be too bummed about that now can you? Moving right along in the first Penny Arcade Panel, it was fun, but I have to say… PA fans need to step up the quality of their questions… ask them something interesting! Seriously! It’s not hard! We get it! They’re awesome! Stop it. Seriously. Oh yeah, there was this terrifying display as well.

We then strolled around the center, had some drinks at some bar near Hynes that was playing video game tunes, played a round of Chez Geek and then foolishly got in line for Friday Night Concert… I say foolishly because it turns out we totally could’ve just walked right in without the hour or so of waiting around… oh well… we learnt that lesson for the Saturday night and Kid E just strolled in about 2 minutes after the Saturday show started… which was a good call. Friday night concert started late, but all the bands killed it… Protomen lived up to my expectations of putting on an over-the-top theatrical live show, Anamanaguchi was just tons of fun and holy crap they’re doing the Scott Pilgrim video game music!? Alllright. Metroid Metal was both of those things in awesome amounts, and even though we were exhausted and didn’t listen to the whole set, Frontalot looked like he was having a lot of fun putting on a great show… off to sleep.

Saturday: JonJon and Kid E woke up early to try and register for a D&D DarkSun adventure, they failed at this or something… meanwhile, I discovered that in Boston it’s ok to drink at breakfast. Guiness? Why yes, thank you I will. After bagel, bacon, eggs and beer with my friend Andrew, it was time to make my way to the convention center to catch about 2/3 of the make a strip panel… ducked out for a few minutes to go find the Mad Catz guy who was giving away sweet little tournament stick keychains. After the panel we played a round of Nanuk which was pretty sweet, I thought about picking it up… but then realized I can make my own deck with two regular sets of playing cards, and then opted to be cheap about the whole thing. After that it was off to Freezepop across the street, who, as I tweeted, killed it. We all went separate ways again, I met up with Andrew and his former WoW guild, bonded with one of the guys inappropriately about Cyanide and Happiness (“Go back to Africa!”) to the chagrin of almost anyone within earshot, had a lambwich for dinner and then opted to fool around at PAX instead of going to see a movie with the guild. We walked into the Classic Arcade freeplay just in time to see some kid beat Dragon’s Lair while Rush’ Tom Sawyer blared in the background… kick ass.

We also played some PowerStone in the Classic Console Freeplay and took on some random challengers… we naturally ripped them up. Andrew and I have both put unheard of amounts of time into PowerStone, so it wasn’t really fair. JonJon explained why us playing against strangers at this game was funny to his non gamer girlfriend: “Trash playing against some guy at PowerStone is like Kasparov playing against your mom at chess.” I’m flattered. We then headed over to the normal Console Freeplay to try some games we didn’t own. I was pulling for Tony Hawk’s ride, since I don’t own it, have no intention of buying it, and know nobody who does, but Andrew had zero interest in it, so I still don’t know the agony of a little plastic skateboard beneath my feet. We settled on Bayonetta, and were actually pleasantly surprised. It’s like a cross between God of War and Devil May Cry, and that’s a good place to be when you’re making a game. Not the most creative place to be, but still a pretty fun place to be. We poked our heads into the Paul and Storm concert and it wasn’t really doing it for us, so we bounced for the day.

Sunday: All the panels that we had interest in had lineups beyond belief… so we swung down to the expo hall floor, played some BlazBlue: Continuum Shift and then decided to head home out of exhaustion, the thought of our own beds was a powerful lure.

All in all, I could have had a better time I think, particularly if the lineups to panels were not broken, but still had an overall good to great time most of the time. Is that vague enough for you?

PAX’d!

Pumped for PAX Spotlight: Steve Jackson Games

Well, my actual website is now fully operational. I assure you, it is quite deadly. A lot of the content from this blog has been copied over there already, not sure if I'll move the rest or not.

www.9to5.cc

Right now we have a couple of articles, weekly columns, bi weekly webcomic. Soon we'll have some videos up there too. So go there... go there now. Add it to your favorites. Share with your friends.

Please... I beg of you. For the love of all that is good, visit my site. Now back to the old and out of date blog you've somehow found:

I took a break from updates yesterday since I was shifting to an earlier time slot at work, I also couldn’t think of anything to update since I was tired and busy. How did karma repay me? Someone stole my tickets to the hockey game last night.

Good times.

But here we are on a Tuesday morning, 3 sleeps between now and PAX East, and we’re returning to our regularly scheduled programming. Today’s topic, one of the esteemed PAX East vendors: Steve Jackson Games.

To me, Steve Jackson Games are pure college nostalgia. Back in college, there was a plethora of geeky distractions, table top RPGs a few times a week, an arcade that you could get to without going outside (attached to a bar), laser tag down the street, even a bi-weekly Vampire larp, oh yeah… there was some classes involved too, I wouldn’t know too much about that though, I didn’t go very often. Even with all that going on though, there was still an absurd amount of time that needed to be killed off during any given day (there would probably have been less time to kill if we went to classes). That’s where SJG came in.

Founded in 1980, they specialized in mini-games, often just using cards and a few tokens to track points or character locations. These games were highly portable, originally sold in 4x7 ziploc bags, and later in 4x7 pocket boxes. The gameplay of these microgames fell somewhere in between traditional card and board games, and more complex “German style” games (ala Settlers of Catan). Not overly complex, easy to pick up, but with a little more strategy involved than a game of Sorry!

Oh sure, SJG published some traditional tabletop games, using the very competent self-designed GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) mechanics, which was a universal (duh) system designed to be adapted to any setting. Fun side bar: They even released GURPS versions of existing properties; you could play World of Darkness GURPS, Hellboy GURPS, Deadlands GURPS, etc. I will admit that I never played GURPS myself, but I’m told by reliable sources that it’s a good system. GURPS is not why SJG holds a special place in my heart though.

As I’ve already alluded to, the microgames were the draw. My first SJG was Car Wars. An old beat up deck from a time possibly before I was born, every card dog eared, held together by browned scotch tape would hold a world of car combat, and by the unofficial rules, as the newest player of the game, I was fresh meat. I think I was destroyed in about 10 minutes. This was standard fare amongst my friends; the new guy playing Car Wars was ganged up on by the other 3 players, sort of a Car Wars hazing. However, I was hooked, the next day; I wanted to play Car Wars.

Sooner or later, someone would show up with a new SJG. The Awful Green Things from Outer Space was a favorite (and I’ve since found out it was an old favorite, originally published in Dragon magazine in 1979), followed by awesome games like Illuminati and the still popular Munchkin. You know that jerk that you might’ve gamed with in college? The guy who was all about the loot and occasionally even screwing over other party members (I’m referring specifically to tabletop Munchkins here)? Well, even though you’d be a dick if you played like that in a tabletop, in the card game it was the whole point. It was tons of fun, tweaking the rules to equip a great-axe and a chainsaw at the same time against an unstoppable gazebo? Hells yes. Behavior that was frowned upon became ok, just for this one game. There was also the entertaining Ninja Burger, where you played burger delivering ninjas! Did it make sense? No! Was it fun? Yes! And who can forget 4 hour long games of Knightmare Chess?

Steve Jackson was even kind enough to publish a set of rules for the sure-to-get-you-in-trouble-with-school-administration game Killer (or Assassination by any other name). In my extended group of friends a game of Killer could start off with 20-30 people, and sign ups were done anonymously, so you never knew who was even in the game, let alone who might be after you, add into the mix that we were all going to school, gaming, drinking and generally hanging out with each other? A healthy dose of paranoia was injected into our daily lives (“Oliver never comes out drinking with us, what gives? Oh my God he’s gonna kill one of us!”).

But of all the SJGs that we played, there is a game that holds an even more special place in my heart, a sub-chamber within the previously mentioned special place already reserved for SJGs: Chez Geek. A game where you played a group of geeky friends living in an apartment building, trying to slack off as much as possible by: hanging out at cafés, playing video games, playing RPGs, sleeping in the middle of the day, watching B movies, getting drunk… THIS GAME WAS MY LIFE!! There was not a single character in the game that didn’t have a real world counterpart (even negative status characters like the Chode Warrior… we knew that guy! He could eat your girlfriend if he hung around too long!). It was a little strange, as we grew up and graduated or otherwise moved on from college, and we all started getting our own places instead of living in overcrowded apartments, the game’s popularity sort of dwindled amongst the crew. Did we grow out of it? Or does it just remind us of better, simpler times? Or maybe it reminds us of how shitty living below the poverty line with roommates you used to be friends with but now can’t stand because their goddamned cat wrecked you new coat and they stole your booze and their friend has been on the couch for 3 days!?

Maybe it’s that one.

No matter what though, Steve Jackson and his (relatively) humble gaming company has provided me with countless hours of entertainment, and even though I played most of them in another time in my life, I will definitely swing by their booth to see what sort of new stuff they’re pumping out these days that is just as entertaining as the stuff that I was into back in college (that Nanuk game looks pretty cool!). Seeing them on the list of merch guys also made me toss my old basic deck of Chez Geek into my bag too.