When I looked up, GenCon was over. “You should go,” said the custodian, prodding me gently with his broom. “And take your dice with you.”
Okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic. But GenCon 2012 was such a whirlwind of gaming, playtesting, and meeting up with old friends that it’s left me feeling like the Best Four Days in Gaming (as they call it) actually had about 30 or 40 hours packed into each day.
I spent most of my time at the show running playtests of the new Anointed roleplaying game that I’m writing for Dark Skull Studios. (It’s a bronze-age fantasy game in which the player characters are tribal heroes, blessed of the gods, in a world where humans are the newest, weakest kids on the block.)
I wasn’t sure what to expect of the playtests. I’ve run RPGs at conventions before. It’s been my experience that each session is a coin flip: the players and the adventure might sync up to provide an transcendent moment of gaming nirvana, but it’s just as likely to be a flaming train wreck ending in bitter tears of game master anguish.
I ran the adventure six times, with six different groups of players. And every session was awesome. It was a blast to see how different groups handled the adventure. Some were brutally efficient killing machines. Others tried to minimize the bloodshed, and talk their way through as best they could. Most importantly, they all provided valuable feedback, and I’ll be making changes to the game based on their suggestions.
My other job at GenCon was to help promote Dark Skull Studios’ newest product, the turn-based New Gods of Raanon strategy video game. I designed the game (currently in super-secret alpha on Facebook) and we’ve got a Kickstarter campaign underway to help give it the love it needs from programmers and animators to take it to the next level.
Check out the link. Dark Skull is a small indie studio. It’s no Zynga, Kabam, or Kixeye, who sneeze cash (and stock options, in Zynga’s case), and they can use your help to make New Gods of Raanon all it can be.
