We explore our favorite game conventions, from the chill vibes of CinCityCon to the dynamic events of Gamehole Con, to the cozy fun of MEPACon. We also look ahead to Philadelphia Area Game Expo, a new-ish convention happening in January 2025.
After the convention stories, we dive into our RPG experiments, including David’s mechanical torchlight for ShadowDark, the crunchy mechanics and destroyable hexcrawl map of Forbidden Lands, and Dragonbane as the sweet spot of complex vs. simple game rules.
Chapter List
0:00 Intro
0:36 Convention Recap: CinCityCon and Gamehole Con
3:12 Super Nintendo Escape Room Highlight
5:45 Upcoming Events: MEPACON and Philly Area Game Expo
7:10 Exploring ShadowDark’s Torch Timer Mechanic
10:29 Forbidden Lands: Hex Crawls and Crunchy Dice Mechanics
14:12 Open Table Games and RPG Planning
16:45 RPG Innovations: ShadowDark vs. Dragonbane
19:30 Wrapping Up: Balancing Gaming with Life
30:02 Outro and Lair Warnings
Show Notes
Conventions We Attended
- CincityCon
- Hamilton, OH
- October 11-13, 2024
- Played lots of Sparks
- It’s a Star Wars Living Campaign based on West End Games original Star Wars RPG.
- Gamehole Con
- Madison, WI
- October 17-20, 2024
- Played in an Escape Room
- Met Seth Skorkowski in person
- Played a lot of Sparks
- Saw friends who I don’t normally see
- Digression: Easton’s Escape Room
- Off Center Escape Rooms in Easton, PA.
- Easton was a hive of scum and villainy back during Prohibtion (or at least, a good place for illegal alcohol).
Conventions We Plan To Attend
- Mepacon
- Bethlehem, PA
- November 8-10, 2024
- Philadelphia Area Game Expo
- Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo (aka PAGE 2)
- January 16-19, 2025
Banter
- Forbidden Lands
- Ken’s reading through the Player’s Handbook.
- Dice-pool based fantasy RPG built around a hex crawl.
- Bunch of d6s, a d8, a d10, and a d12.
- These represent base dice (from attributes), skill dice (from skills), gear dice (from your stuff).
- 1s are called banes. They represent damage, exhaustion, fear, or degraded gear (but only hurt you if you push your luck). When you fail, you fail forward.
- 6s are successes; multiple 6s trigger special effects.
- Great art, great setting, but is the dice mechanic too crunchy for beginners?
- Thinking of playing a solo game with this as a way to try out the rules and relax.
- David ran ShadowDark in person and used Foundry VTT
- Ran The Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur from the Shadowdark Quickstart
- Used Foundry VTT on the television to show the player view of the map. Sans UI
- Had the Shadowdark module installed
- The torch timer was fun
- The timer on the first torch ran out an almost inconvenient time
- David made physical torch prop as a clue to the players, which they liked due to it’s obvious changes
- Ken’s been playing with TorchLightTimer.com
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