[Gen Con 2015] Self-Indulgence

It's been two weeks since Gen Con, and since getting back life's been pretty busy with family stuff (yay), work stuff (yay), and one of my kids going back to school (YAAAAAAAY!!!). I'm rapidly running out of time to crow about this -- arguably, I already have -- but I can't just let it go without comment.

You're probably already aware, but Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game won a Silver ENnie for Best Family Game at Gen Con a few weeks ago! I dunno, I think this is pretty cool.

Friends kept telling me Robo was going to win this very ENnie (it was also nominated for Best Game, as you may recall, but the competition there involved D&D, The Strange, Firefly, and Mutant: Year Zero, so we all agreed even Silver was highly unlikely), but I steadfastly went in with zero expectations, so when the award was announced I was genuinely surprised. Not the least of which because there was serious competition in the Family Game category as well -- I wouldn't have been shocked if any of the other nominees had gotten the Silver instead.

I don't know how much sense I made during my brief acceptance speech. I'd been thinking of and rejecting jokes for it for a couple weeks, so fortunately I didn't step onto the stage with a bunch of material that just had to be heard. But I thanked the judges, the voters, Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, my wife and kids, everyone on stage with me (Morgan Ellis, Brian Engard, and Sean Nittner, though I honestly thought John Adamus was standing behind me too), and Adam Jury, but I bet I forgot to thank Evil Hat as an entity, or Fred Hicks for bringing me on board as a freelancer in the first place, or others who helped and whom I forgot in the moment. So I'm doing that now. Thanks!

Morgan then told everyone that they oughtta check out Atomic Robo the comic, especially if they want to introduce their kids to comics, then I chimed in to agree, then we got into a brief bit of "Sorry I never told you about Atomic Robo, Mike!" and "Yeah, this guy, he never even told me about Atomic Robo!" and I bet everyone in the audience was like "WTF are these two clowns talking about?" but fortunately we got off the stage right after. Regardless, I'm glad Morgan spoke up.

Then afterwards I went and played an 11:00pm game of D&D. Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford were there, so I congratulated them on their many (many, many) wins, and Jeremy says, "Hey, this guy over here" -- here he jerked a thumb in Mearls' direction -- "he's got the Atomic Robo RPG on his shelf at work!" And Mearls says, "Hey, whatta you gotta go and tell him a thing like that for, ya rube!" Then he went to poke Jeremy in the eyes with two fingers, but Jeremy put his hand up in front of his face to block him, so Mearls just slapped him on the back of the head. I dunno, some of that may not have happened -- it was a crazy night -- but the bit about Mearls having a copy of ARRPG in is office is true, that I rememeber for sure.

The next day, when I was back there playing D&D again (I played a lot of D&D at Gen Con...), they both signed my PHB, thusly:

I don't know how well you can read it there, but Mearls wrote "Thanks for playing the #2 best RPG of 2014," implying that ARRPG was the best, which is nice. Then he told Jeremy to write "Atomic Robo is better than D&D," to which Jeremy reacted with genuine doubt. I told him to just write whatever (or just sign his name, which was, y'know, what I thought was going to happen), so he wrote "Isn't D&D kind of OK?" And to think, he was so well-spoken at the ENnies when he accepted all those awards.

What else happened at Gen Con? I ran two fun games of Majestic 12, one off-books game Wednesday night when we were all too tired to see it through, and another Friday morning that had plenty of energy to the end. Oh, and I went to a fantastic baseball game, probably the funnest thing I did all weekend, but I've found that most Gen Con attendees are surprisingly disinterested in minor-league baseball, so I'll just leave that there.

Anyway. No joke, the real honor was that ARRPG was nominated for something at all. The medal's icing on the cake. The most important part to me is that people are playing and liking the game. So if you're one of those people and you voted for Atomic Robo, thanks! If you're one of those people but you didn't vote, then you missed an easy opportunity for me to owe you one. If you don't like Atomic Robo in the first place, you seem to have stumbled upon the wrong blog, but take a look around and maybe you'll see something you like.

[GenCon 2015] State of the Hat!

Just a reminder that this is what GenCon looks like.
Those people in the front there in the bright light are about to be taken up. 
DISCLAIMER: NOT INTENDED AS AN ACCURATE DEPICTION OF GENCON.

Didja see that this year's State of the Hat panel is Thursday at 10:00am GenCon-time, and also at GenCon? Well, it is. Will you be there? I'll be there. On the panel, I mean. And if I weren't, I'd be there in the audience -- just like you should be! Full circle!

Anyway, what is this thing? It's a panel where Sean Nittner gets a bunch of Evil Hat people together to talk about how great the past year has been and how great the coming year's going to be.

Guests scheduled to appear include:

• Me!
• Sean Nittner, like I said!
• Morgan Ellis!
• Brian Engard!
• Sophie Legace via Skype or something, maybe!
• Rob Wieland, I think!
• Woosh!
• Pamela Walker should be able to make it!
• Bill White!
• Pretty sure Ken Hite said he'd be there!
• Others! I dunno, it's fluid!

See you there?

UPDATE: A couple of readers have pointed out that the picture above is only indicative of what the main concourse at the convention center looks like when everyone's waiting for the dealer hall to open in the morning, and not what it looks like at any other hour of the day. I've amended the picture's caption accordingly, lest anyone get the incorrect impression that the crowds at GenCon are routinely that large. I apologize for any confusion or distress the image and accompanying caption may have caused you or your loved ones, and trust that now that the matter has been fully explained, and thus drained of any humor the image and its caption may have held, that you'll be able to plan for GenCon accordingly.

[Atomic Robo] ENnie Noms!

Just saw that Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game has been nominated for ENnie Awards in two categories: Best Family Game and Best Game!

Both are surprises, honestly, but I'm especially surprised (pleasantly!) at the Best Family Game nom. I don't necessarily think of ARRPG as a "family" game, but then again we are talking about a game for which I've occasionally used pictures of action figures as character portraits.

Anyway, last year, Fate Accelerated Edition won a Gold ENnie for Best Family Game -- and Fate Core won Gold for Best Game -- but to be honest it's just an honor to be nominated. I know that's a cliche, but it's true. There are a lot of great games out there.

Speaking of which, congrats to all the other nominees! Special biased congrats to the other Fate nominees, Mindjammer and Mass Effect: Fate. And Evil Hat's edition of Monster of the Week is nominated for Best Rules, and Designers & Dragons is up for Best Writing and Product of the Year!

Look, I could go on all day enthusing about this stuff, but I got kids here who demand my attention. It took me like two hours to write this! See you at GenCon.

[GenCon 2014] It's Over, Go Home

This is funny, trust me.

Well. GenCon 2014 was one for the books. Yup. Some high points:

• The State of the Hat panel on Thursday. Fun way to kick off the convention. (I like doing panels. Are you doing a panel for a thing? Maybe you want me on it!) Some cool stuff on display there, including the Campaign Coins fate point tokens and a spiral-bound copy of the War of Ashes playtest rules. Finally got to meet Fred, Rob, and Sean in person. At least, I'm pretty positive Sean and I have never met. Anyway, also got to meet my personal savior, Adam Jury. Plus, the panelists didn't outnumber the audience this year, which was nice.
• Three very successful and fun playtests of The Sparks Nevada Thrilling Adventure Game, including one for a table of four superfans and one for aforementioned Evil Hat project manager Sean Nittner. Good feedback all around. This new version really feels like the show, and it's faster-playing to boot. One of these had the best aspect I've ever come up with (pictured above).
• An equally successful and fun game of Atomic Robo that let me playstorm ideas for training and planning montages for Shadow of the Century -- plus my players included Dave and Liz of Nearly Enough Dice, all the way from Scotland, which was very cool. Great to meet you guys in person! Wish we could've found time to do an interview face-to-face, but oh well. Hangout it is.
• The fastest ARRPG game of my or anyone's life at Games on Demand -- about 90 minutes, after introducing the PCs and explaining the basics of Fate -- but still managed to squeeze in two fun fights, a brainstorm, and, y'know, general roleplaying and farting around. Felt like a sprint from start to finish, but we did it, and everyone had a great time. I really enjoyed conceding on behalf of those last two NPCs.
• Playing in a Tunnels & Trolls game run by childhood idol Ken St. Andre. I told him later at the Flying Buffalo booth that T&T was a formative game for me, and that I was now a famous game designer. I don't think he believed me on either count. But it was still nice to tell him anyway, even if only one of those things is true.
• A drum corps fan I met Thursday morning while making our D&D characters for the convention. Most of the rest of the gamers at the table were fairly unpleasant, demeanor-wise, so it was cool to be able to talk drum corps with this guy (marched Cadets '92, son marched SCV in... 2011, I want to say), let him look up stuff in my PHB, and ignore those other people entirely.
• My first D&D game of the convention, when the DM had everyone go around the table and call out their race and class. After "Fighter, fighter, fighter, wizard, cleric," it was a pleasure to say "Bard!" The looks on their faces... priceless. But they changed their tunes the first time I handed out an Inspiration Die. Take that, unbelievers.
• My second (and, unfortunately, last) D&D game of the convention, when the tweenaged girl at the table got to strike the killing blow against the monster with her magic missile. I just like it when first-time players get to do cool stuff, especially if they're kids.
• Seeing ARRPG on the rack at the IPR booth and hearing that it was selling like hotcakes.
• Getting interviewed (on video!) about ARRPG, and suggesting questions to the interviewer, who was -- admit it, Spencer! -- more enthusiastic than prepared. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It was flattering. Cool guys, those guys.
• Played a demo of D&D Attack Wing. Like X-Wing, but with dragons. I... may be in trouble.

• Signing books! I feel like I signed a lot of books, including one copy of Jadepunk. No Fate Core, though. I guess that was a 2013 thing.
• Meeting a few industry-types who either wanted to meet me or felt they had no other option once I had been introduced. Regardless, hey, meeting new people.
• Talkin' business! Business business business! Numbers!
• Every single time someone told me they liked/loved/were excited about ARRPG.
• You! That time I saw you there and we talked about, I dunno, some gaming thing, probably.
• Going to the ENnie Awards the night that Fate Core, Fate Accelerated, the Fate System Toolkit, Fate Dice, the Fate SRD, and Evil Hat itself won ALL THE ENNIES. And also John Adamus and Ericka Skirpan got engaged on stage, which was a thing only one of them knew was going to happen. I'd never been to the ENnies before -- never really felt like I had a reason to go -- so I can only assume they're all like that.

Low points!

• Only getting to play games for 3 hours. Boo.
• That T&T game wasn't actually, like... good.
• D&D DMs being stingy with Inspiration. I'm roleplayin' my face off over here! Gimme the Inspiration already! Sheesh.
• Staying at a hotel out by the airport and having to take a 40-minute shuttle there and back every day. This was a bigger hassle than just the time lost. The shuttle only ran once and hour, and at night there was just a 10:00 and a 1:00 -- so if you didn't get the former, you had to wait around for three hours for the latter. Say, if you're at the ENnies and the thing lasts until 10:30.
• Being constantly aware the whole four days (five, including traveling Wednesday) that Gateway's in two weeks.
• Not getting around to meeting you. Yeah, you! I meant to meet you, honest.

Looking forward to next year, when I will make good on my promise to myself to not schedule so much stuff. See you there.

[Atomic Robo] Coming This Spring!

Yes.

I get a lot of people asking me questions all the time. A lot. Mostly they want to know "Who let you in here?" But a close runner-up is "When is Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game coming out?"

June. Early June. This spring.

(In all fairness, Evil Hat's last projection was spring 2014, and early June still qualifies as spring 2014, so in a way this is just confirming something you probably already know.)

In the meantime, what's going on with ARRPG these days? It's in the tail end of layout. Next is proofing, the indexing, then I dunno, maybe another round of proofing? And then off to the printer? Yeah, that sounds pretty likely.

So there you go! Say it with me:

ARRPG is coming out in June.

ARRPG is coming out in June.

ARRPG is coming out in June.

I Wanted to BELIEVE!! (sob)

In the "Serves me right for believing the Internet" category, I geeked out yesterday about a possible purchase of West End Game (WEG) by another company that would hopefully lead to a re-juvenation of their properties (most importantly to me, Torg).

Come to find out that was not the case.

Turns out the post (dubiously dated 1/1/2010 as Mike pointed out), was reporting something that actually appeared to happen back in 2003. So I don't know the provenance of that link above.

Even more damning (and by that, I really mean "damn-damn-damn!"), is this link here, from a Feb 9 interview with Eric Gibson (owner of WEG) posted at a more reputable source wherein we have the following quotes:

"West End Games is currently in a holding pattern right now and my motivations are elsewhere at this point. I am in school right now and that occupies most of my attention at this point."

"School has kept me so busy right now and I don’t have enough time to sleep, let alone get everything else I need to get done completed. I do not have the time I used to have to visit message forums and answer questions. I would love to be able to answer the fan’s questions, but right now my attention is on other matters."

(sigh)

Since my mother told me not to say anything if I couldn't say anything nice, I'll just say this:

...

Game Industry Stuff

My buddy Bill gave me a tidbit of industry news was too good not to go all "OMGPonies!" over.

RPG News: West End Games Sold | Echoes #16

I'll skip to (for me) the really cool part:

“Plans include...the continued development of Torg 2.0"

Oh yeah. Gimme some sugar, baby.

Historically West End Games' "games" represents for me some of the watershed moments in my gaming resume':

• Stars Wars RPG (1st edition, thank you very much)
• Ghostbusters (one of the most publicly-underrated mechanics in gaming and I believe one of the influences that lead to the FATE system we all know and love)
• Torg (How to REALLY do cross-genre role-playing and make everyone happy. Not since the D&D "blue box" had a box game ever blown my mind the way TORG 1.0 did.)

Without the above list, early Champions, and R. Talsorian's original Cyberpunk (the "2013" version), I wouldn't be the person I am today.

Ahhh, memories. I ran a 2 year TORG campaign off-and-on where the players (all in their early 20's by this time) actually played themselves as PCs and all had their "history" together (talk about a great reason why the party was together and all trusted each other!) As DM, the backstory was that "I" had died during the attacks and that's why I wasn't in the campaign.

(At least until they met a doppelganger "me" as a recurring NPC from the "Nippon Tech" realm and turned out to be not quite the same person as they remembered from their "Core Earth"!)

Good times.

--------
Addendum from Mike:

I talk about "industry stuff"? Well, I will today with this addendum, just to make this post FATE-relevant (although the prospect of Torg's return is worth posting about, FATE or no).

Evil Hat's struck a deal with Alliance to distribute the Dresden Files RPG. "So what?" you ask. I'll tell you what: Alliance is the leading (I believe) comic and game distributor in the country. This means you should be able to walk into your FLGS and just find the thing on the shelf along with everything else they get from Alliance (which is, like, everything). And if it's not on the shelf, they can easily get it through their usual channels. No special orders through IPR necessary.

That's kinda huge news for Evil Hat (and for us FATE fans). So is this:

In addition to the Dresden Files RPG, Alliance will also be offering Evil Hat’s backlist of products – including the award-winning Spirit of the Century RPG

Now that's pretty awesome -- maybe even more awesome. How awesome? Go look at Evil Hat's catalogue. That awesome.

So are these covers to DFRPG:

And I say all of this never having read a word of Jim Butcher.