While I first think of boardgames and RPGs when I think of GenCon, it is actually so much more. Here are a few of the nifty, cool, or downright odd things I came across as I went about my business. Oh, and since we are a video-game centric site after all, I’ve also included a few comments about the video games being shown off in the main dealer hall.

Geek Chic
For the gamer who has everything (including money), look no further than the folks at Geek Chic, purveyors of handcrafted furniture designed specifically for gaming. Not finished with your game? Simply put the slats on top of the table to hide the game in progress underneath and have your formal dinner with no one the wiser. Of course, handcrafted solid wood furniture doesn’t come cheap. Tables start at around $1000, and the top of the line in the photo goes up past $10,000. Pretty and shiny, but well out of my price range.

Mattel Inc.
The most eye-catching item at the show had to be Mattel’s new game/toy, Mind Flex. It was getting some constant use by convention attendees. To begin, you strap on a special headset (and clip it to your earlobes, no less) which measures your brain function somehow (there’s an annoying metal dot that pokes you slightly on your left forehead.) The headset communicates with the base unit which has a fan that can trace the outside of a large circle using a knob. The fan increases in intensity when you concentrate and decreases when you relax. When a small, lightweight ball is placed on top of the fan, it floats in the air and doesn’t fall out of the air column due to the Bernoulli Effect. (Note the small floating blue ball in the background just off the top of the tube in the foreground.) Turning the knob moves the fan, which in turn moves the ball. So you move the ball around in the circle using the knob and you control the height of the ball using your mind. The toy and game side of things kick in when you use the two in combination to maneuver through an obstacle course. There are several game modes (five) built into the machine, most of them are based around racing around the circle as quickly as possible. Multiple players can play, they simply take turns and the base unit serves as a timer to see who does the best at any particular game. I’m simply amazed that the technology is at a point to be able to make something like this at a mass-market level. At $70+ it is a bit pricy, but the science teacher in me still thinks it’s a great deal. That may be a bit much for a typical family, but I could see it squeezed into the budget of a middle or high school science department. I expect to use it in the classroom several times during the year.

Mayday Games
One of my stops during the convention was the Mayday Games booth. I am shipping off a copy of Dominion (that awesome card game of the past year, see my comments in the previous report) to a friend in the south Pacific and I figure I need to do something to help the cards last. Mayday Games has made a name for themselves in the boardgame community by creating plastic card sleeves just for the common card sizes found in boardgames. European card games have cards slightly different sized from the standard American collectible cards, and some games even have extra small cards (like the tiny decks used in some Fantasy Flight games). I bought some of Mayday Games’ industrial-strength card sleeves (I figure in a Dominion vs the Tropics grudge match, the game can use all the help it can get.) They have a great web site selling basic and premium card sleeves to fit nearly any size card you’ll find in a game. I particularly like their downloadable guide that explains the size and number of every sleeve you’ll need for most of the popular boardgames. They also have an upcoming game called Space Junkyard, that I hope to review for this site in the coming months.

Mayfair Games
I know I already talked about Mayfair Games in the last report, but they did have one game that really isn’t a game at all, so I thought I’d put it on this page. Coming out this month or next is Le Boomb. It is less of a game, and more of an activity, but could easily be of interest for this family-centric site. The entire game is simply a bomb-shaped piece of plastic and a special six-sided die. The “rules” are simple enough to fit on the back of the packaging. Players take turns rolling the die and get one of three results. Nothing (and you pass the die on), you take the bomb from wherever it is at (and pass the die on), or the bomb blows up (and knocks whoever has the bomb out of the game.) Yes, there are basically no decisions to be made here, you just roll the die and do what it says. However, just because it plays itself doesn’t mean it is a worthless piece of plastic. I could see it fitting in well in a family setting when everyone is waiting for the food to arrive at the restaurant, waiting for an older brother to finish soccer practice, etc… It isn’t going to turn heads for any diehard boardgamer, but it fits easily in your pocket and provides some mild entertainment for the length of a game (around five minutes.)

Upper Deck
Last year I was able to check out the new collectible miniatures game by Upper Deck based on the World of Warcraft franchise. The WoW Miniatures Game is still going strong this year. Players typically choose 3 related figures for their side and then have a 3v3 battle between two players on a battle mat. Both the figures are collectible and reflect many of the character classes and monsters in the WoW online game, but there are also equipment/item cards as well as special ability cards that can be collected and used. (This is how most of the classes are handled, so if I bring a warlock to the table I might be using different powers than you, even if you bring the same figurine – because we’re both using different power cards.) I’m not typically into collectible gaming because of the price of purchasing enough to make the game playable. Playing at a high level here it is still the case, but the $25 starter game includes 4 figures (2 vs 2) with a full 3v3 deluxe starter set also available. It wouldn’t be a collectible game without boosters, and a booster has 3 figures that are all the same faction and are ready to play as a team right out of the box. The two expansions to the game I discussed were the Spoils of War expansion which introduces equipment cards (they don’t go away when used) and the upcoming Souls of Vengeance expansion which will introduce the Death Knight character class as a figurine.

In addition to board and card games based on computer and video games, there were a number of computer and video games also on display. Knowing the preferences of the crowd, they all tended to lean towards the role-playing end of the spectrum.

Odd 1 Incorporated
At first, I totally ignored the signs for Odd Society, as it clearly was a sort of massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that caters to the younger set. Instead, I found out it is actually a single-player downloadable game! It has some nice cute, colorful graphics and characters so I was drawn in to checking it out in more detail. The premise revolves around a young creature who helps to rebuild his village. In many ways it has a sort of single-player MMORPG feel to it, particularly the crafting sort of gameplay. To start out, you visit your relatives and learn how to gather items in the game. You then go out and gather different kinds of wood, fruit, metal, etc… Through quests and puzzles, you progress through the game as a point and click adventure. While I obviously didn’t have time to check out the game to much depth, it looked to me to be a great game that younger kids could play while their parents or older siblings were playing actual online RPGs. The price is right, a digital download (on their main site) is only $10.

Wizards of the Coast
In addition to their 4th edition D&D hoopla, Wizards was also out in force for their collectible card game, Magic: the Gathering. I was a huge fan of the game when it first came out as it really set the bar high for the genre. However, keeping current with the game soon became far too costly (buying booster packs, etc…) I was pleased to find out recently about the Xbox Live version of the game. Duel of the Planeswalkers has turned out to be very popular. Over 500,000 people have downloaded the demo of the game and over 200,000 copies of the game have sold. I enjoy the game enough to have completed it, even though there are some artificial restrictions that annoy me. (They are primarily there to make things easier for new players, like the very harsh limitations they have on deck building, etc…) In addition to the online presence, the actual card game is also doing well. This year they have put together a brand new release of the game to try to bring it back to its roots, calling it Magic 2010. Plans are in place to release one major basic release a year to make a friendly environment for new players. (This is in addition to the smaller, more frequent expansions targeted at the hardcore players.) The new strategy has turned out well, and is selling out as soon as they can print it. One final new item at the convention is the new Planechase format game. This is a special way to play multiplayer Magic (ie. 3 to 6 players, rather than just 1 on 1) in a more casual setting. Players have their deck of cards, but also have a small deck of large planar cards that represent various planar locations at which the duel is occurring. On a player’s turn, they can spend mana (energy/effort) to roll a die. That will either allow them to use a special planar power, or remove the current location from play and substitute in a location from their own deck of planar locations. Since the locations usually have advantages for a specific style of play, it is always nice to be able to have home field advantage, as it were. It looks pretty fun, almost enough to draw me back into the game on a casual basis, we’ll have to see. It definitely aims to recapture some of the fun that I enjoy in multiplayer game of Magic.

Atari
In a nice blend of RPGs and computer games, Atari was on hand showing off their soon to go live Champions Online, which is based off of my favorite RPG ruleset of all time, the Hero System (now in its 5th edition.) The superhero version of the rules are actually called Champions and are also the setting for the new online game. In watching the game at the show and playing a few hours of the open beta, the game could easily be considered a superhero-themed World of Warcraft. It has a similar bright-cartoony feel (no surprise here, it is a very four-color comics sort of superhero setting) with plenty of what people would expect in an online RPG: quests, zones, guilds, item drops, even crafting. What this game has in spades, however, is character customization. Rather than depending on questing for cool looking armor or clothes, players are encouraged to design themselves AND their uniforms. The tools for designing are quite robust but also easy to use. It is estimated that players will spend about 40 minutes or so just designing the outfit and build of their first character (and probably subsequent ones as well.) While demoing the game, the developer showed how you could take a typical ice-blasting superhero and change the special effects of the blasts to come from his fists, his head (eyes) or his chest as well as change the colors all on the fly WHILE he was fighting another monster. So not only are outfits and bodies very customizable, so are the way powers appear. For examples, in the beta, there are even a half-dozen ways or so you can fly! (Via flames, ice, standard flight, rocket boots, even a flying disc!) Hero is a point-buy RPG where characters don’t get more powerful by level, but Champions Online preserves the level progression to which people are used. However, characters do gain points with which to buy powers as they increase in level. There are a dozen or more standard power sets (fire/ice/strength/one-handed weapons/claws, etc…) players can pick, but you are not ever restricted to just those powers. By specializing, you will tend to get access to some of the more advanced powers of that power set sooner, but players looking to dabble in two or more different sorts of powers can do so and remain quite effective. The game is just now finishing up its open beta so should be up and running before the end of the month.

Electronic Arts
EA was showing off their upcoming single player RPG, Dragon Age which is coming out for the PC and the Xbox 360. The two versions are the same, but the PC version will also include a toolset for gamers to create their own content, along the lines of the popular NeverWinter Nights series. The game’s story is based around has a single main character, and lands squarely in the North American style of RPG with flexible character builds and progressions to let every player really make the main character their own. The magic system and effects seemed to be pretty spiffy. I’m looking forward to the game, as I’m a big fan of the genre (Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc…). The game is played in near real-time rather than a turn-based old-school RPG (more my preference) but I think I’ll be able to look past that. The main strike against it for me personally will be its “M” rating for violence, etc… We’ll have to take a look at the final game to give the official Gaming With Children recommendation for age-appropriateness.

And on that final note, I will wrap up my GenCon reports for anther year. As I mentioned in previous articles, it is a great event to attend if you are a fan of boardgames or role playing games. The convention is moderately family-friendly and continues to become more so every year that I attend. My kids (both under 3) are far too young to get much out of the show (although I saw plenty there that were about that age) but give them another half-dozen years and they will both be soaking up the entire event. Until next year, always smile at the table, but never let anyone else touch your dice!

Tags: Misc, Unplugged