My budget wasn’t what I would normally like this year, but I still made a few purchases from a few of the hundreds of vendors on the floor. I’m pretty excited about what I managed to get. Gencon has become the time when I tend to make pretty much my entire year’s gaming purchases, so even though this might look like quite a pile of stuff, it’s pretty much all I’ll get until next Gencon, barring a few things here and there.
Shadowrun
Sixth World Almanac
This book is basically a timeline of all of the major events of the Shadowrun world timeline. While I’ve found that as they put out new material, they tend to adjust events to suit newer situations and stories, so far it looks like this book covers the basics in pretty good detail without changing too much. I’ve only been able to skim it so far, but I feel like this is a great addition to the Shadowrun Fourth Edition lineup, because it provides that player that is getting into the game and wants to learn more a single, go-to place to learn more about the world, the history, and the meta-plot of the game.
Corporate Guide
I haven’t even opened this yet, but it’s the update to what the corps are doing these days. Awesome.
Shadowrun dice
Awesome. They have the big Shadowrun “dragon S” as the 6 side. Although I would love to see a set with the dragon S as the five and the six (both are successes in the game mechanic), I guess between the cost of having a side custom engraved and some gamers’ desire to use the dice for other games, I can see why they didn’t do it.
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| From Gencon 2010 Shwag |
Eclipse Phase
I’m very excited about this game, even though I haven’t gotten to play it yet. As an added bonus, it’s the pet project of one of my favorite people, Adam Jury. The game is out of Posthuman Studios which is headed up by another cool dude, Rob Boyle, who was a recent line developer of Shadowrun. So really, how the heck could you go wrong?
Oh, it also doesn’t hurt that the game is pretty damn awesome. This isn’t a game review though, so for more info on Eclipse Phase you can hit up the Eclipse Phase website.
The book I picked up for the game is Sunward, which is the first supplement book. Sunward details our solar system as it appears in the Eclipse Phase game universe. I can’t freaking wait to read this book. I’ve flipped through it, and it’s gorgeous (much like the core rulebook is).
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| From Gencon 2010 Shwag |
Pretty inside is pretty:
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| From Gencon 2010 Shwag |
Colonial Gothic
I’ve been eyeing this game for three years now, and I finally dropped the hammer and picked it up. It’s an RPG set in colonial America and steeped in historical reference and feel. What’s different? Oh yeah, magic is real, the occult is real, and the supernatural is real. Super awesome concept, and I can’t wait to run or play a game of this. It helped that he offered the core book and all supplements for $50 with a free pack of dice (it uses d12s solely). More exciting is that this year, the official campaign begins with Boston Besieged, and will follow the American Revolution, so it will be easier for me to run a game without having to dump way, way too much time into making a good game with it. This will significantly up the chances that I can fit this game into my schedule. Awesome.
Since I was at the booth, I picked up the developer’s friend’s breakout, system-agnostic stand alone adventure The Cursed Chateau.
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| From Gencon 2010 Shwag |
Freemarket
I was fortunate enough to get this when it was available as a beta PDF, so I was excited to see it available for purchase in physical form at Gencon. Although the PDF was enough to get excited about the game, playing it requires several decks of cards specific to the game. You could have printed them out yourself, and I’m sure a lot of folks did, but it would have been a big pain. It’s from Jared Sorenson and Luke Crane.
Again, not a game review, so check out the Freemarket website for more information.
Production value on this game is awesome! Six decks of cards in their own boxes, a pad of character sheets (always fun even in this age of PDFs), four glossy pre-made character sheets, the main book, and a host of punch out tokens for use during the game.
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| From Gencon 2010 Shwag |
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| From Gencon 2010 Shwag |
SOAP!
It was awesome to meet Jess from Geeky Clean in person at Gencon this year. I had to buy some MOAR of her awesome soap. I had to. Because it’s totally awesome. Go buy some of her soap.
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| From Gencon 2010 Shwag |
Tags: Colonial Gothic, Eclipse Phase, Gaming, GenCon, Gencon 2010, Shadowrun
