Origins 2008 recap

I've just returned from Origins 2008 in Columbus. There were a couple of interesting boardgames, one GREAT boardgame, and to pad this post out as long as possible I'm going to make it a general con report.

Origins Proper
Origins ran from Wed-Sun this year. This is the first time I've heard of a major con adding an entire extra day. I hope it works out for them. Origins is one of the big gaming cons in the US. I'd consider it second only to GenCon, although I'm not familiar with WBC or some of the others. Origins claims to have more ticketed events, more days, more LARPs, and more more more than everyone else. Sounds like they are compensating to me. GenCon is still a unique experience, but Origins is a WONDERFUL con. Let me repeat that: WONDERFUL. It has a lot to do, but is not so spread out that it's impossible to get a good handle on things. They run a good mix of games: boardgames, classic games, minis, RPGs, LARPs, seminars, and everything else you can think of. I went in at the last moment and managed to find a room to share. I also only bought generic tickets and just showed up at games I wanted to play. Only once was was the game too full to let me in (Paranoia.) It's casual, it's big, it's fun, there's a decent brewpub across the street and the local city market, one block away, is one of the best I've ever seen. I'd have every meal there if their hours were better.

THE Game.
Oh my God there's an Axe in my head! The game of International Diplomacy. Remember that name; you're going to want to buy it. Each player plays a great power at the first League of Nations meeting. The Swiss have hired a troupe of axe-juggling clowns as entertainment. They go crazy and start throwing axes at the diplomats. You try to get your Ambassador, Translator, and Bodyguard out of the doors at the rear of the hall to score points, while also trying to take control over as many minor territories and sign as many treaties as possible (more points for both.) The game is a Screw Your Neighbor game, and there's a soft spot in my heart for any game which makes you scream 'Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck You!' at a stranger you just met 30 minutes prior. You have four things on at once. First, there's a positional game on the board. You're trying to get your 3 pawns to the back of board and out of the doors there's to score your points for them and to ratify your potential treaties. There are a number of axes thrown at the crowd of diplomats each turn. This is done with 2d6, so there's a bell curve, like in Can't Stop, that you need to be aware of and deal with. IE: the middle of the board is riskier than the edges. The board proper is a grid of (10x11?, with every space filled with a great power pawn or minor diplomat pawn. Thus you have a positional game in which you are managing a bell curve of risk while maneuvering the minor pawns out of your way, to clear a path to back, and in to the other plays way, to deny them the ability to move to the back (you can't move through a minor pawn.) You also play minor territory cards from your hand, to claim them for points, as long as you Ambassador is alive. You can also play treaty card with the other players, for points, if your Ambassador is alive. Thus you have an element of alliance play as well. Finally, you have other action cards you can at various times, like the veto (cosmic zap'ish, for you CE players) and each country has a special power they can use. It all turns out to be some combination of Chess, Can't Stop, Cutthroat Caverns, and Diplomacy (Backstab!) The designers finally got a publisher, Bucephelus. You need to look for this game when it comes out, it's GREAT.

Events & Games
I had intended to buy a Boardgame Room ribbon (the CABS room) and play boardgames all weekend. I bought the ribbon and then found out the room wasn't for me. My idea of a fun boardgame involves social interaction. A little screwage is good also. I'm sure the folks in that room were enjoying themselves, but the games they were playing were not my idea of fun. Lots and lots of heavy/medium euros. This was a problem for me because I came with a plan. Id' use the extensive CABS library to playtest several games I was interested in (CC:E, Runebound, etc) prior to making a Buy decision. I ended up playing almost no boardgames: OMG! being the single exception. Besides CABS there was also GB7 renting games, and the Origins library proper, Mayfair, The Train Game Group, A&A, and several others. These were all game libraries that you could rent boardgames from to play. In addition the libraries generally ran pre-scheduled games as well.

Minis
I like to look at the miniature combat boards/terrain, but I don't think I've ever played a game with a ruler .... until Friday. There were several interesting mini games in addition to the historical, WW2, Battletech, Warhammer, stuff. There was a very cool looking Warlord of Mars set up. There was also a great looking city scenario with zombies & survivors. Finally, there was a really great Egyptian temple complex that grabbed my attention. And then I was sucked in more when I saw TWO Stargates and an Atlantean shuttle! Oooooo! Stargate! And it was using a modified d20 system! I know d20! I showed up with some generics and got in. I played the heroic forces of the god Horus, defending the temple complex from two other alien factions AND SG1. I was doing a great job, having eliminated over half two other two experienced players invading forces (morons! Go prone behind cover & aim instead of running around aimlessly! And then it went to hell for me when SG1 showed up. Oh well. It was a lot of fun.

RPGs
I've had an on-again off-again relationship with RPG's. I've had extensive RPG collections at least 3 times, and sold them all off 3 times. Lately I've been more interested in the collaborative storytelling stuff, and have been leaning towards the Indy games because they tend to encourage that. Of course, you can do the same thing in D&D, you just have to do it and no one does. Several times I heard people poo-poo D&D, or mentioned the natural progression to 'better' games. And several times I corrected them, nicely, that perhaps maybe it was the other way around. As you grew older you had experienced many other games and migrated towards those with styles & systems that appeal to you more. There's nothing wrong with D&D(1, 2, 3, 4.0) or the RPGA, or furry systems, or any other game, it just may be that you may have been expecting a different set of experiences that you received. This is what's great about a con: you can sample a wide variety of systems that are being run by people who are passionate about the game. Having said that, I played the crap out of Call of Cthulhu all con long. I intended to play a couple of Indy games, but they were few & far between (8:00am WED AGON game! Ug!) I tried to play Paranoia, but there were no seats open. I ended up in the CoC rooms run by Rogue Cthulhu and Shoggoth.net. Both groups do a hell of a job, have great keepers and adventurers, and even organized pick-up games for those who couldn't get in to a real game. Cthulhu is a great game for a con. You get a wide variety of play types in a single game and there's lots of room for RP. I have decided that the best CoC games are Victorian and 20's/20's games in which ordinary people stumble on things. Modern era and 'experienced' characters have to do the right thing during play, normal joes can do stupid things like run around screaming, which makes for lots more fun. Yes, that means that Delta Green sux. I got best roleplayer in all of my CoC games except the DG game; I was in a bad mood and it took me almost 2 hours to find a hook for character. Notable CoC moments: 30's rich frat boy/Man of Leisure Duke Masterson hitting on everything that moved and buying people off, Johnny the DG recruiter & cell leader endlessly needling the other DG cell leader, Piotr the 60-something drunk Russian tour guide volunteering for a cult rite so he could get a wooden necklace, which he then promptly forgot to pick up after freaking out over the procedure, photography student writing stories about Father Andrew the perv and Willy the criminal during a 20's game (other pc's, unrelated to the plot) and my 20-something anthropology professor who was stabbed twice in the chest and fell out of a 3rd floor window, only to have the other two PC's fall on him also and break his neck ... 2 hours in to a 4 hour game. Great times. I ended up breaking down and buying the latest CoC rulebook, bringing my rulesbook total to 3 (D&D4, Hollow Earth, CoC.)

LARPs
I hate LARPs. I played WoD a couple of times when it first came out ... 15 years ago? And never again since. I like goth & punk girls as much as the next guy, but I can't stand the plots. During a CoC game some other people I respected mentioned a CoC LARP later that night. I ended up buying a ticket and hastily constructing a costume. The hook was a flight on a German zeppelin from NY to Hanburg, with lots of Nazis's, US military, celebrities, and scientists on board. OK kids, follow along: Nazis, CoC, and a ZEPPELIN! I figured I could do one of two costumes: either a bi Berlin cabaret boy or an engineer. There was someone at the con who could help with the cabaret boy, but I couldn't reach them so I went with the engineer, and quickly constructed a pocket protector & slide rule prop from cardboard in the hotel room and turned a work ID badge in to a company DID badge. Many people had pre-reg'd and had very elaborate costumers with major characters. I slicked down my blond hair and wore a black mock turtleneck. They organizers licked it enough to assign me Jan Metzger, the man who built the Zeppelin! Awesome! I could write about 19 pages on what happened, but let it suffice to say it was AWESOME. It may have been one of the best times I've ever had gaming. Flight of the Valkyrie, by PST Productions. (I hear all of their LARPs are very good.)


More later ...

OMGTAAIMH looks and sounds _great_. It's too bad that a tiny company with pretty much no wherewithal to publish it beyond a Cheapass Games level got a hold of it, it's definitely the kind of game that looks like it could be a big hit. Hell, maybe it'll be the game that puts Bucephalus Games on the map.

LARPing is the devil. I played in the very first ever VAMPIRE/WORLD OF DARKNESS game. The less said about it the better.

Thanks for the report- let's hear more!

That sounds like tons of fun. I was tempted to go this year. Some gamers I know caravaned up there and they all rent a hotle off site so it ends up being pretty cheap.

"There's an axe in head" is soo my kind of game. Light treacherous and a little bit random. I'll definately be looking for it when it emerges.

What I really want to know about though is the Larp. I used to love playing games of Killer in college and really enjoy RPG's. I've never tried a LARP and am a little old to be wandering around in a big wizards hat but would definately do something low key like CoC (or perhaps a spycraft kinda thing)

Tell us all about it.

Oh and Mike...You'd better not knock "World of Darkness" or Frank with send a blood sucking death mutant vampire bat after you...

Steve"Fear_the_T"Avery

One of these years I'm going to troop 120 miles NE to Origins, but it'd probably have to be coupled with the rest of the family going to COSI. (To be honest, I'd not mind checking COSI out myself...)

--Mike L.

The Axe game sounds awesome!

I've posted a review of OMG! There's an axe in my head, to the front page. Next I'l be writing up a report on my COC LARP, in this thread.

LARPS are a pretty mixed bag.

With a few exceptions (Mike Tinney stopped running LARPS when he took a job with White Wolf.), the WoD LARPS are invariably the lamest. The writing is usually very sloppy, the rules system is entirely too cumbersome, and the people.....dear god, the people.

The stuff from these folks:
www.larpaweb.org/

has always been good. I've been to a couple of their cons, and the games were infinitely better than my time in WoD land.

And if your are near Chicago, desperately try to wheedle your way into anything these two run. The writing is amazing, and their games are peerless.
www.fetefatale.com/
(One of their longest running series of games is actually based on a LARP I wrote and posted to the net millennia ago--The Curse of Whately Manor. They ran with it and completely owned it, especially when they brought in the Mystery Machine Gang in their last installment. I'd kill to play in one of these.)