Subject:      Re: Origins '95 - How is it/was it?
From:         lwl@blue.seas.upenn.edu (Lydia Leong)
Date:         1995/07/16
Message-Id:   <3ua0n9$b2j@agate.berkeley.edu>
References:   <3u8v4e$85q@access1.digex.net>
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow
Keywords:     Origins, game convention
Newsgroups:   rec.games.frp.misc

In article <3u8v4e$85q@access1.digex.net>,
James Duncan <duncanj@access1.digex.net> wrote:
>Origins is being held this year in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania
>Convention Center.
>Could someone attending or who attended please let us know how it
>is/was?  A brief review would be very nice. New stuff released,
>interesting company boths, seminars, good tournaments, etc.

Well, the con's still going, and my Final Judgement's not in yet,
but here's a report on my Origins Experience So Far:

One note:  This is the first time I've been to Origins. However,
I've been to six GenCons thus far, as well as some smaller cons,
so I consider myself a reasonably good judge of this sort of thing,
from a casual viewpoint -- but the following is my personal opinion
only. I'm going to make a lot of comparisons to GenCon, which, despite
being several times the size of Origins, is still the only gaming
con that I know of that's larger.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center, where Origins is being held this
year, is a great place -- new, pleasant to walk around, tons and tons
of QUIET space to game. And I mean a LOT of space -- something which
you can quickly grow to value if you've been to the past two years or
so of GenCon (at MECCA in Milwaukee). The one thing that I wish it
had was the same sort of roving foodcarts at GenCon, so you can grab
sodas and snacks without having to leave your game.

Thursday morning, the first day of the con, opened with the usual
expected huge lines. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, the line for
pre-registration was far longer and somewhat slower than the line for
the people who had _not_ registered. On the other hand, Andon (the
folks who manage to con) is to be complemented on its computer system;
if you've ever been to an Andon con or requested mailed info from
them, they have your name and address and such in their computer, as
well as a permanent ID number, which rapidly speeds everything
up. Event tickets are also computerized -- something which GenCon
needs to do BADLY -- so you're always aware of how many places have
been sold in a given game. Refunds for games are prompt and courteous,
and overall, the con seems to be well-managed. (Three Rivers Game
Fest, over Memorial Day weekend in Pittsburgh, was similarly
well-run.)

The vendor presence at Origins this year seems to be surprisingly
small, or at least I find it so. White Wolf, for example, is not
present, save for a single rep and merchandise sold through a local
game store's booth.  Steve Jackson Games is being represented by Crazy
Egor's.  Part of this might be accounted for by Atlanta Fantasy Fair
also being this weekend, though.

Interestingly, there are very few "specials" at the con, particularly
from the larger gaming companies. At GenCon, for example, every gamer
gets, with admission, a pack of coupons which can be redeemed at any
booth in the exhibit hall (restricted by area), thus encouraging one
to shop. At Origins, there have been very very few worthwhile deals,
save for tiny companies that seem desperate to sell _something_, and
notably Steve Jackson Games (because Crazy Egor's normally discounts
gaming products). Gamers don't seem to be buying much, for that
matter, though some (_not_ all) of the places doing trading-card sales
look to be receiving reasonable business. Collectible Card Games
noticeably dominate many areas of the exhibit hall.

Now, on to the events:

Games Magazine is running a neat puzzled-based game, which runs
continuously; a lot of people seem to be spending every free moment
trying to solve crossword puzzles, cryptograms, and a lot of other
similar difficult challenges.

There's a Call of Cthulhu LARP which looks like lots of fun and that
I've been hearing people rave about. LARPs, in fact, look like pretty
popular things this year (there's an enormous weekend-long World of
Darkness one, and an Ars Magica one, to mention two more).

RPGA Network events seem to have turned out to be an amazing disaster.
I will note that in the half-dozen years I've been an RPGA member, over
a large number of cons, that I have _never_ been unable to play in an
RPGA event for which I had bought an event ticket. At Origins, out of
the first four games I signed up to play, exactly ONE judge showed for
the 18 gamers who had event tickets (plus, of course, the people who
had bought generics hoping for an open spot -- usually pretty easy to
do at other cons, particularly GenCon).

By the first evening of the con, I was fed up enough with not being
able to get into RPGA games that I had tickets for, and volunteered
to spend most of the remainder of my con judging.

Since then, I've listened to _dozens_ of people gripe about the lack
of judges; I encountered someone who had been bumped from _seven games
in a row_, from a variety of sponsoring organizations. It's apparently
not just RPGA; other judges, even _dealers_ officially sponsoring
events, have failed to show to their appointed slots.

It does, however, show most obviously with the RPGA; the names of the
judges are _posted_, and they simply aren't showing up. I can almost
understand a judge not showing up to a tournament, but why are
_dealers_ not showing up to their own events? It seems like a
suicidally stupid marketing move.

I personally suspect that part of the problem was allowing people to
volunteer to judge slots, and then not charging those people the $40
convention registration fee. My personal bet is that a lot of people
signed up to judge, didn't pay, and then just didn't bother to show up
to the events they were supposed to judge. I ran into a fellow who was
griping because, get this: he'd signed up to judge for RPGA, thus
didn't pay his con fee, didn't bother to read or even _bring_ the
scenarios he was supposed to judge to the con, and then was upset
because someone grabbed him from something he was doing and reminded
him that he was supposed to be judging that round!

Enough of my ranting: suffice to say that I'm extremely disappointed
with the convention. I'm a Phliadelphia local; had I actually spent
real money to travel here, pay for a hotel, and so forth, I'd be
really, really upset. Yet, it's hard to say who to blame -- can one
really hold Andon responsible, for example? Or the RPGA, whose
tournament coordinators are going nuts trying to find judges for
events and placate ticked-off players? (The RPGA, to its credit, is
now apparently preventing tickets from being sold to events that don't
look like they'll have adequate judges, though that still leaves the
problem of players who pre-registered. Once again -- gotta love the
Andon computer system for being able to do quick accurate tracking of
what tickets are being sold and to whom.)

Demos and so forth:

TSR is demo'ing "Dragon Dice", its new collectible dice game. It's
also introduced a new AD&D campaign setting called "Birthright", where
the characters are rulers of nations. (Side note: the Celtic sourcebook
is being showcased in the RPGA AD&D Special Feature for the con, a
module called "Brenainn's Legacy"; I rather wish the module could
have been done in Pendragon instead...)

Wizards of the Coast seems to be heavily promoting its involvement in
roleplaying games, with a good showcasing of Ars Magica and the upcoming
Everway -- free art promo cards, and an interesting seminar by its
designer, Jonathan Tweet. (The Magic tournament, unsurprisingly, is
the usual zoo, but the collectible cardgames dueling hall is well
separated from the rest of the con.) There was, unfortunately, no
demo of Everway. Nonetheless, the system as described sounds
interesting. One draws from the "Fortune Deck" (the entirety of
which is included with the game) in order to structure characters
and the storyline, and to resolve conflicts; the cards can be
interpreted in varying ways. It seems heavily influenced by the
Amber DRPG, but it is, I think, far more structured, due to the
guidance of the cards, and some limitations are placed on genre
and power level. It looks like it's going to be a great game, IMHO.
WotC also has Ars Magica 4th Edition planned for a fall release.

There's a new magazine out called "d8", evidently intended to be a
magazine of gaming culture. It's a nice glossy professional-looking
black-and-white, with notably good art; unfortunately, its first
issue, at least, seems _heavily_ biased towards a World of Darkness
focus.  (It is somewhat reminiscent of the early White Wolf Magazine --
it's got some of the sorts of content that Inphobia ought to have but
doesn't any longer.)

A company called War College Simulations is playtesting a game called
Lords of Harkanis. Though it purports to remove dice and concentrate
on roleplaying, it is, IMHO, basically an improved AD&D. By this, I
mean that it focuses on the same sorts of things traditional AD&D
focuses on -- the concept of a "party of adventurers" who wander the
land, killing-things-and-grabbing-their-treasure or rescuing-damsels-
in-distress or exploring-the-dangerous-wilderness and so forth. There
is a skill system which shows a heavy Chaosium influence, in its use
of percentages and "checks" to skills after successes. There is a
concept of character classes, though they're much more along the lines
of Palladium OCCs (occuptational character classes), which give
characters an initial package of skills and so forth. Combat is
quick and quite clean, though it does use a jumble of die types.
The world is not overwhelmingly unique, but it's reasonably
imaginative. The magic system's designed around the concept of
mana pools from which one can draw energy and channel; there are
downsides to channeling too much energy or drawing too much mana,
which I find neat. Unfortunately, the magic system, which I think
could work very well in a relatively freeform manner, is tied down
to the concept of individual spells (and no defined way to invent
one's own) in the same way that AD&D is... spells have to be found,
though they're cast with mana rather than having to be memorized.
Nonetheless, I like it -- if I were introducing new players to
roleplaying and wanted to run something along the lines of AD&D
(or Palladium or Earthdawn), I might very well pick up this system
when it's actually published in a few months. It's a combination
of good ideas, rather than anything stunningly new. The real
weakness is the quality of the writing (at least in the playtest
rulebook that was handed out) -- whoever wrote it uses a ton of
short, choppy, awkward sentences which desperately need to be
completely rewritten by a decent copy editor.

West End Games brought out a new Star Wars game called DarkStryder,
a "dark" Star Wars setting, in a boxed set. It's set after the Zahn
novels, and includes pre-gen characters (though one can design one's
own). Players take on the role of the ship's crew, in a manner which
strongly reminds me of Ars Magica's Troupe-style play -- being able
to switch off between varying types and story-importance of characters.
West End also said that a "Star Wars Revised Edition" is likely to
come out -- the 2nd edition rules, with all the Force powers back
in one place, reorganized so the rules are easier to find (with an
index, yay), and with some small changes to tables.

Columbia Games is claiming the next edition of Harnmaster will be
out in the fall, in two books, one for the player (the recent book
Harn Player is _not_ the same as this upcoming book) and one for the
GM.

The dealers were very friendly and talkative -- I suppose part of the
up side of not many gamers shopping is that the exhibitors are not
busy doing anything else and are happy to chat enthusiastically at
you.

>Where will Origins be held in 1996?  Dates it will be held?

It's in Pittsburgh next year.

Overall:

I'm glad I came to the con, particularly since I live in Philly and it'd
have been stupid to miss it. On the other hand, I can't say I'm delighted
to have paid $40 for the privilege. Origins has "traditionally" been a
wargaming con, and I don't really feel RPGs were well-represented; this
is compounded with a problem with enough judges.

My advice: if you're going to travel long distances to do a con, do
GenCon. For all that it's really turned into a zoo given its rapid
expansion in size and the fact that getting hotel space (_any_ hotel
space) in Milwaukee has become next to impossible if you register
after May, it blows Origins out of the water.

        -- Lydia