[ GenCon Report, originally written to Penn Gaming Guild and Legion of Silversheen folks, 8/13/96. ] First, GenCon this year looked, to my eye, significantly less well-attended than it has been in the past two years. I think this can be attributed to the slow death of the collectible cardgame frenzy; the small munchkins with parents in tow were much less in evidence this year. Similarly, there weren't nearly as many CCG players lining the halls; you could wander around without tripping over a Magic geek every two feet. On the other hand, the space available to the convention has also increased, with the gaming spilling out to Marquette University, and taking up all of the conference rooms in the Hyatt. So overall the entire thing felt less crowded, whatever the attendance figures ended up being. Due to a heavy gaming schedule, I spent considerably less time in the exhibit hall than I would have liked. The computer game companies were out in force this year, though I didn't see anything incredibly remarkable. CCG dealing was considerably more subdued this year. The most prominent example of this was Wizards of the Coast, now relegated to an average-size booth, though they did have a real sales counter -- and charged sales tax on all items, which very few other companies were doing. They were doing brisk business, but weren't, say, any more busy than anyone else. Certainly the jam-packed lines of the past few years were completely gone. No more big round structure. Just another company. Rumors around the con were that WotC was about to start another round of layoffs. Things of note (or at least, things of personal interest): 1. ARIA and ARIA Worlds are back, in their second printing, and looked to be selling decently; they'll be available in stores soon. Last Unicorn Games is now working on a CCG of Dune; an RPG should be available afterwards. Projected release date: next GenCon or thereabouts. 2. Harnmaster 2nd Edition is finally out. It's divided into multiple books; the core rules contain only basic character generation, combat, treasure, and a few sample monsters. It's full color on every page. The pages are three-ring punched, and are available either in a plastic report-cover sort of thing, or in a three-ring binder ($30 or $35, respectively). I like this, as Harnmaster is a game which lends itself well to this; what I _don't_ like is how quickly this contributes to wear and tear. Just getting this stuff home in my luggage has already wrecked my binder and bent the front pages. I'd have preferred an option to get the thing perfect-bound. Magic, religion, and a bestiary for Harn are all coming out, theoretically by Christmas. Columbia Games, thanks to decent sales of DIXIE, apparently now has the money to start reprinting old Harn stuff. They also had a fair amount of out-of-print things available this year; I picked up a copy of Lionheart, still in its shrinkwrap. Harnmaster 2nd Edition is fairly similar to the first, in terms of rules. The text has been rewritten. Many parts of the core rules are now presented as options, however, neatly placed in sidebars. It is a well-thought-out, well-presented rulebook; I'm particularly pleased by the generosity with which page references are given when one rule refers to another rule. I'm unfortunately not sufficiently familiar with 1st edition to give a detailed breakdown of what's changed -- the Harn designer told me an exact list, which I can't recall. He noted that they believed that a game of Harn's original complexity simply would not sell in the current RPG market. 3. Star Wars Revised Edition is out. It's a hardcover book, full color on every page. It's basically the 2nd edition rules, rewritten. There will be a "Rules Upgrade" made available in November detailing the exact changes; West End Games has said that permission will be given to freely duplicate the upgrade list for friends. Again, I haven't had time to read through this, so I'm not sure what has changed. The art is unfortunately not outstanding, despite the fact that it's in color. The design looks to be done to attract new RPGers. One nice thing is the addition of better summary charts. Supposedly there are some minor rules changes which encourage the cinematic play that was the emphasis of the First Edition. We'll see. There will be, definitively, no Jedi Force rules supplement, due to LucasFilm. What you've got now for Force Powers is what you're going to get, so hang on to those First Edition books... 4. FRUP, from Hogshead Press, is now indefinitely on hold, since James Wallis feels that the market is wrong for it. Furthermore, Bugtown is also not coming out. 5. Phage Press now has the rights to the Bugtown game. There are two products of note which will be out at "Christmas" -- Phage Press code for "sometime in the next few years". One is the Rebma supplement for the Amber Diceless RPG; the cover art for this is _gorgeous_, and I hope the supplement will be as good. The other is an Amber tarot/Trump deck, done by Michael Kucharski and CJ Anastasio. One sour little note in this: The RPGA Network was running three rounds of the Amber DRPG, a scenario called "The Trump Gallery" that was supposed to have been written by Erick Wujcik. Now, GenCon scenarios are normally due in by February. Wujcik kept promising to get it in by con time; the RPGA was going to FedEx it out to the judges so it could still be run at the con. He never finished it; Phage Press' comment was, "Erick had this TV show that he really wanted to watch." That was somewhat frustrating, to say the least... (I was supposed to be judging.) 6. Steve Jackson Games has an interesting little game out called Knightmare Chess. It's not an RPG; rather, it's a chess variant sort of game. This sold out before I got a chance to take a good look at it. 7. White Wolf had a rather large booth this year, and looked to be doing well. Wraith 2nd Edition has been out in stores for a week at least, but copies of it were selling well anyway; I didn't buy one, myself, but I'm told the rewrite is excellent. White Wolf was also offering previews of its new RPG, called "Exile". It's a dark science fiction RPG; the characters were once part of an "ideal world" (if a rather totalitarian one) and have just been exiled into the outer colony worlds. The background is interesting, and the system is simple. Skills are done on a percentage system. To check a skill, you roll percentile dice. The amount by which you exceed the difficulty by is the number of Successes you get. Rolling a 00 is a Null, and is a "wild" effect, which can be good or bad, depending on the Narrator's judgement (yeah, it's got another set of terms for Players and GameMasters). 8. There's a new "weird west" RPG out called Deadlands. I didn't get a chance to try it myself, but I heard many good things about it. RPGA Network Things: Unfortunately, I didn't get into Milwaukee until Thursday morning and thus missed the members' meeting. Furthermore, there was no Network Breakfast this year. Things seemed to run very smoothly this year; several people commented to me that it seems like the Network has gotten the art of running games at GenCon down to a science. I didn't hear anything particularly good or bad about any of the games that the Network was running, save that the Ravenloft game was excellent. I ran two rounds of the Ars Magica Feature, myself; my present opinion is that it's a good adventure which has several flaws that prevent it from being truly excellent. This was the first GenCon I've attended that I didn't play any Network events at all. I did have a terrific time at other stuff, though -- Chaosium's Pendragon game, Karen Wells' "Shadow Tour '96" Amber game, two of Rae Williams' Amber games ("Out of Time, Out of Sight" and "Time is Relative"), in particular. This, overall, was the best GenCon I've been to.