My Gen Con 2015 haul

I didn't spend as much time browsing through the Exhibit Hall this year as I would have liked, but I did get to my top priorities -- and a few unexpected pieces.

Blowing Up the Movies by Robin Laws was a stretch goal for the Feng Shui 2 Kickstarter, and although I had the ebook version I wanted the print copy on my shelf.

Sigh Co. offers a ton of Lovecraft-related shirts, and their 1930s Prairie-style Miskatonic University T-Shirt stood out.

Green Ronin had several boxes of older material for $2 each, so I grabbed the Revised Edition True20 rulebook along with the Warrior's and Adept's Handbooks. Fantasy AGE and Titansgrave had already sold out -- I flipped through their display copy of Fantasy AGE and it looks good.

Steve Dempsey generously chatted with us for a bit about Night's Black Agents and Trail of Cthulhu at the Pelgrane Press booth. Shortly after that, I picked up the Trail rulebook in anticipation of a future ongoing Gen Con campaign (along with a 13th Age Escalation Die).

The Goodman Games booth is where I spent most of my dealers' hall time this year, with two separate visits. On the first round I picked up a print copy of Black Sun Deathcrawl, along with  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Crawl #1 and Crawljammer Issue 1. The second time I got a great combo deal on the Wizard Van t-shirt and one of the last skull logo shirts, and the adventures Against the Atomic Overlord and The Rock Awakens. This gave me the chance to roll the giant d20 twice, for which I was rewarded with the 2013 Gen Con Program Book and...

my choice from a stack of foamboard-backed promotional posters, in which I found this poster of the Frozen in Time sketch cover. I had it signed by Joseph Goodman and artist Doug Kovacs, but I missed Michael Curtis (next year!). Also pictured are issues 2 and 5 of The Gongfarmer's Almanac, an in-house zine produced for Gen Con. The picture is missing the swag bag of free Dungeon Crawl Classics goodies, including a pad of blank 0-level character sheets.

Already thinking about next year!

The Basic Tenet of the Call of Cthulhu RPG

The purpose of horror roleplaying is to have fun.

This sentence appears on p.10 of Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition, under the heading "Purpose of Play." It is the most important rule in the book.

"Fun" for your group can be defined many ways. If it's shotguns vs. Cthulhu, great. If it's roleplaying the tortured emotions and madness of artists and poets reading blasphemous tomes with nary a weapon in sight, also great. Both methods of play are valid. Both are possible with the same ruleset.

If the difference in hit damage between an M1 rifle and an elephant gun is important to a player, run with it. The unwritten rule is that all of these rules are optional, and use them as your group wishes. Whatever your group defines as fun is the object of the game.

The strength of a traditional RPG such as Call of Cthulhu is the ability to play anywhere on the continuum between the Most Important Rule and complete Rules As Written. It is not a bug. It is a feature.

Brief Gen Con Report

Now that I'm between semesters I can turn some attention back to games. It's been some time since Gen Con, so rather than going over the show in detail, I'll cut to the bullet points.

The photo above is all of the loot I picked up at the con -- 13th Age, Arkham Detective Tales, The Armitage Files, and Owl Hoot Trail (from the Pelgrane Press 4-for-3 sale), one of the Creature Card Decks from Inkwell Ideas, Gygax Magazine #2 from the OSR Productions booth, Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography from McFarland Publishing, and the Hellfrost Player's Guide from Triple Ace Games and Studio 2 Publishing.

I participated in the 2013 GM's Jam panel on Saturday morning with Zachary Houghton from RPG Blog II, Phil Vecchione from Gnome Stew, and Chris Sniezak from the Misdirected Mark podcast. Chris recorded the panel for the podcast. We had a great time talking with the audience about ways to improve campaigns, and I only lost my train of thought once. My friend Derek was in attendance and picked up the slack for me by telling a story about our Freeport campaign. I was honored to be a part of this event, and the panelists intend to do it again next year.

My friend Lowell was one of 16 finalists for the Tabletop Deathmatch boardgame design competition sponsored by Cards Against Humanity. He was in interviews, meetings and judging panels all weekend. All of this was filmed for a upcoming web video series -- I'll post a link when it begins.

I got a chance to play Night's Black Agents on Saturday afternoon, in a session with D. A good GM and a good group of players made this a fun session.

Mrs. Kaiju and I saw J., a friend and Indy local, for about 15 minutes on Friday, and played Zombicide and AD&D with the usual crew of  D., R. and J. It was fun to see them all.

We didn't arrive in town until Friday afternoon, and then didn't get to the con itself until around 4pm. We barely saw any of the Exhibit Hall until Saturday. By the time I made it to the Pelgrane booth, copies of Double Tap were sold out. This expansion for Night's Black Agents was at the top of my list to buy this year.

I didn't get to the Studio 2 booth until Sunday so I didn't know about their incredible Solomon Kane deal: all the print books for the line (including the rulebook) for $50. By Sunday I had used up most of my gaming loot funds.

Another disappointment: no booths for Media Blasters or Discotek Media, so no obscure kung-fu or monster movie DVDs this time.

We were on the move all weekend and still missed out on seeing people and events. Next year, I think we will look at arriving on Thursday to give us more time to see everything we want to see.

500th post!

C.L. Moore and Arthur Machen

I just realized tonight that I missed the recent birthday anniversaries of two notable fantasy legends, C.L. Moore (102 years ago) and Arthur Machen (150!), whose works have influenced later fantasy and horror writers -- and RPG designers. Taranaich was on the case with the above-linked tributes.

Lynn Willis, RIP

On Friday afternoon the notices began to circulate in gamer social media that designer and publisher Lynn Willis had passed away.

Ken Hite wrote a short yet moving overview of Willis' legacy, including work on BRP, co-designing the Ghostbusters RPG, and the dice pools of Shadowrun and Storyteller. I was struck at this observation:

Every Call of Cthulhu product you've ever loved from the first edition to 1999 exists because Lynn Willis made sure its text was coherent, made sure its gameplay was sound, and made sure it got to print. And there's a strong possibility that the thing you like best about it was added or correctly shaped by Lynn, not by the credited author.

This was a surprise to me. I didn't know. The hows and whys of publishing are still a mystery to me sometimes. If asked about my favorite published role playing game, the most likely answer is "Call of Cthulhu" (with Basic D&D hovering close by). Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition is my own favorite version of almost any RPG, being one of the best examples of great rules, tone, layout and production I know. I did not realize that Lynn Willis was the person to thank for how good it is.

It is a reminder to me that if I love a game/book/song/movie, it is important to thank the creative person behind it before it's too late. As it happens, I'm running a Call of Cthulhu 5th ed. adventure on Saturday, and I can think of no better tribute.

In the new year

An old cliche tells us that something is "better done than perfect." The sentiment behind it is sound -- get something finished rather than try for an impossible state of perfection. In regards to the blog and my other creative pursuits this year, I intend to keep this advice in mind.

My examination of game systems that could be used for Conan/Hyborian Age sword-and-sorcery campaigns fell by the wayside last year. I hope to pick it up again and look at a variety of game systems including OpenQuest2, Barbarians of Lemuria, WaRP and Crypts and Things. I'll run this someday and stop just talking and writing about it -- "better done than perfect". Often gamer ADD takes hold and another completely different idea moves ahead of it in the queue. Speaking of which...

This year I intend to either play or run a short campaign (6-8 sessions) of Night's Black Agents. From the early development of the game and the pre-order campaign of a year ago, I've been very excited about it. While I would like to push forward and get started, that perfectionist quality I try to avoid makes me think I should wait until the expansion book hits the street.

A conversation on G+ among fellow gamers and Star Trek fans about the pulp sci-fi qualities of the Original Series sparked the creation of a Trek RPG community group, and I was invited to play and run over G+ Hangouts using a shared setting and characters. We have had two sessions already (a two-part series pilot episode), and it's been great fun.

This month, I will run a convention scenario for Call of Cthulhu at a local games day. While there I'm also scheduled to play in a Dungeon World session. I'm eager to finally play and see why so many other gamers are excited about it.

Friday Photo-palooza

Grading homework assignments has been keeping me busy the past two weeks. In lieu of something original today, here are some images of interest. Identify them all and win a shiny new No-Prize!

 

 

Money in RPGs: Counting Coppers, or Just Wing It?

“Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.”

I'm not necessarily talking about found treasure and loot, but the cash an adventurer carries on hand. For a bog standard, D&D-style fantasy game, keeping track of money seems like the right thing to do. It fits the model of adventurers who need to scrape together the coin necessary to buy a new sword, spell components, or bundles of crossbow bolts. It also fits the sword-and-sorcery genre, which I'll discuss later.

The strange thing about keeping track of coinage on hand is the problem of large amounts. Thousands of coins can be converted to gems and other high-priced baubles, but then you might run into the issue of paying for smaller daily expenses. Not many taverns would be able (or willing) to make change for that opal you just found in the lich's tomb.

Call of Cthulhu was the first RPG with an abstract money system that I remember. Although equipment and weapons are listed with prices in dollars, money really wasn't an issue -- most likely because treasure hunting wasn't an objective of the game. Unless the characters were going on an expedition or they needed an outlay of cash at that level for some reason, it isn't necessary to keep track of how many dollar bills are in your pocket. At least that's the way we always played.

Additionally, characters have a skill called Credit Rating. This is a measure not of cash and credit reserves, but social status and influence, and the ability to raise cash through loans or even panhandling.

From the 4th. edition (1989):

Money

The players' investigators -- the journalists, authors, professors, and so on -- will need money for their investigations. Their cash can come from (1) wages, royalties, and remittances; (2) from previous savings; and (3) grants, gifts, and loans from various non-governmental sources (government is no granter of largesse in the 1920s).

Money is only a problem if the investigators must perform extended investigations. Incidental investigations can be assumed to take place on weekends, or evenings, or days off.    (p. 14)

From the 5th. edition (1992):

Investigator Income

Income may or may not be important to your play. Take dollar signs with a grain of salt. Many Keepers never mention money or personal property, and rarely do published scenarios raise the subject. Only in campaigns does earning and spending hold much interest or significance; campaigns, however, can be quite detailed. Learn the Keeper's intent. (p. 24)

Savage Worlds has a similar approach to money, at least for starting characters. In the 1st edition rulebook, we find the following at the end of the character creation section:

Gear

Next you need to purchase equipment. Some settings may provide your hero with all the gear he needs. In others, you may be assigned a certain amount of money with which to purchase your starting gear. A list of some common gear and weapons can be found in Chapter Two.

Unless your setting book or GM says otherwise, the standard starting amount is $500. (p. 18)

The only other real mention of money is at the beginning of Chapter Two: Gear.

Cost: Equipment prices are relative both to the starting funds of $500 and to their tech level, so a Springfield musket doesn't really cost $250 in 1862. That's just the "worth" of the weapon relative to the tech level and the typical setting it's intended for. (p. 43)

Monday: Three other approaches.

121 Years of Howard Philips Lovecraft

I am Providence.

As Conan Week 2011 draws to a close, it's fitting to take time to remember another of the "triumvirate" of Weird Tales, H.P. Lovecraft, who was born 121 years ago today. His reputation stands as a close second to Edgar Allan Poe among American writers of horror, the supernatural and the macabre.

Today, his form of "Yog-Sotherey" -- what we today call the Cthulhu Mythos -- has become a prevalent form of horror for books, movies, games, even plush Cthulhus and other toys. It's a well-known fan meme. Ken Hite has suggested that all of this absorption into fan culture proves that Cthulhu and his otherworldly ilk are iconic figures, like Superman.

What is Lovecraft's lasting legacy? Others on the 'net have expressed this in a more erudite form than I could. I believe it is not only his own brand of "cosmic horror", the idea that there are things in the universe so completely strange and alien to us that our fragile minds cannot fathom them, not only the idea that humans are as insignificant to them as an insect might be to us, but the true message is that human beings are fully capable of reaching those same heights of inhumanity. I often wonder what H.P. would have thought had he lived to see the scale of atrocities during the 20th century.

What I'm looking forward to at Gen Con

Following on from Monday's post, I thought I would mention some aspects of this year's Gen Con that I am thinking about the most. Unlike some previous years, there isn't a must-have item for me that is being released for the show. Shadow, Sword and Spell was the big one for me last year. Even so, I am looking forward to:

The OSR booth -- Although there was an small Old School presence among the items at the Tabletop Adventures booth last year, this is the first time we will see an entire booth of OSR publishing at Gen Con. I welcome the chance to browse through some of the items that I wouldn't normally see in the local shops, like OSRIC and some of the modules. I hope someone at the show will have copies of OpenQuest.

Indie/Story Games -- Whatever term you want to use, I would like to (eventually) pick some of the games that I've missed out on so far -- Fiasco, My Life with Master, Microscope, Spirit of the Century, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, just to name a few. I didn't see IPR on the exhibitor list this year, however.

Chaosium -- This venerable publisher is back at Gen Con after some years. I'd like to take a peek at the 30th Anniversary Edition of Call of Cthulhu, check out any generic BRP books and, with luck, they will have their scratch-and-dent Mythos fiction sale.

Demo games -- I generally do not sign up for games in advance, preferring to keep my schedule open for pick-up games. It also gives me time to check out demonstrations from publishers. One in particular that I'm eager to try is the new Star Trek deck-building card game from Bandai... even if it isn't the Original Series.

Getting books signed --  I enjoy having the chance to talk to some of my favorite game creators and have my books signed. I still need to check the lists of artists and other special guests.

Finding some out-of-print treasures -- You never know what you might find in a dusty, forgotten bin at one of the booths.

Sales on older overstock/warehouse deals -- I'll miss Titan's "Buy One, Get Three Free" sale, but Chimera Hobby Shop always has some great hidden treasures.

Late night gaming in the hotel bar -- Last year we found a booth to play Descent, it was Munchkin the year before... this year we're thinking Castle Ravenloft.

Whatever it is that you enjoy about Gen Con, make the most of it, and have fun!

Upcoming books of interest

Tom Stewart's highly anticipated but often delayed book, Robert E. Howard: The Battle for the Legacy of Conan, was due this month. It appears to be delayed yet again as Diamond Comics Distributors cancelled orders for the book. This is the first book-length work on Howard's literary rights after his death and the course that his work followed through various editors and rights-holders.

The novel adaptation of the Solomon Kane movie was released at the end of June by Titan Books. I still haven't seen the movie yet--I'm holding out hope for a US theatrical release. My interest in the novel is because the author is Ramsey Campbell, who finished some of the Kane fragments for publication in the Bantam paperbacks in the 1970s.

Still no official word on the contents of Conan the Barbarian: The Stories That Inspired the Movie, the paperback collection of original Howard stories. Comments from associate editor David Pomerico indicate that there will be five stories, printed in publication order. A marketing blurb from the Borders website was re-posted on the Conan.com message board and suggests that "Shadows in the Moonlight" and "A Witch Shall Be Born" are two of the five stories. Update: a review of the UK edition was posted on 7/21 at the Conan Movie Blog, although the page count and story list seem to be different.

It appears that at least the first volume of the H.P. Lovecraft omnibus editions is getting a new cover in September. This one seems to be listed as a "Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition", as compared to the previous 1999 black-band Penguin Classics edition, although the page count is exactly the same.

ENnies vote suggestion: Old School Hack

I believe that the ENnies Awards are important for the hobby, perhaps more so now than the Origins Awards because the votes are made by the general gaming public.

With that in mind, I'd like to take a cue from Risus Monkey and The Free RPG Blog and ask that you consider Old School Hack in the Best Free Product category. Not only because it is a great free game (not a quickstart, the full complete rules), but it is the only product from the OSR community eligible for an award this year. Vornheim is an Honorable Mention for Best Aid/Accessory and Stars Without Number is an Honorable Mention for Best New Game.

If you have never voted for the ENnies before, it isn't necessary to vote in every category if you don't know those products. Take a look, however, because one of your favorites from this past year just might be listed. I'm rather partial to Bookhounds of London and The Unspeakable Oath, myself.

True20 Freeport campaign wrap-up, part 2

For the next few campaign wrap-up postings, I'd like to show some photos taken during the game. I'll also include scans of some maps and my notes. See the first part of my Shadows over Freeport wrap-up here.

 

 

March 2008: My gaming area after the character creation session and before the "official" first session. I added a four-foor table to the end where I sit to allow more room for the players and my notes and other items.

May 2009: The party fights their way through degenerate serpent people on the fourth level of the sunken Temple of Yig, buried under the volcanic rock of Mount A'Val. This location was taken from the module Madness in Freeport, the final chapter of The Freeport Trilogy.

Down to the fifth level of the Temple of Yig.

At the base of the temple, the sixth level, the group splits up to fight more degenerate serpent people in the corridor while others take on the awakened Avatar of Yig who had been sleeping in the sacrificial pit.

Another view of the battle. The worm miniature shown here is far below scale (so is the map); the Avatar was closer to 70 feet long. The d10 in the background marked the location of the only intact egg found in the hatchery.

del Toro closes down "Mountains of Madness"

Just read on The Digital Bits this evening that Guillermo del Toro has withdrawn from negotiations with Universal Pictures over his production of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness". Check the article for details; the short answer is that they didn't want the likely "R" rating.

GDT and Peter Jackson are probably the two A-list director/producers who have the vision and the clout to do justice to "Madness", or any Lovecraft stories. Hopefully he gets another studio to greenlight the project.

Like Bill Hunt at the 'Bits, I'll wish Universal well with their big-budget adaptation of Battleship...

Jazz Age Culture for Call of Cthulhu players

Jazz Age Culture, parts I, II, and the Writers page, is a scholarly resource on 1920s popular culture, focused specifically on the United States. Aside from a few short articles, most of the site is a collection of links to other 1920s resources on the web loosely grouped by subject. Much of the information linked here would be of interest to Cthulhu 1920s players, including fashion, movies, gangsters, music, technology and inventions of the time. Where else would you find The Unofficial Tommy Gun Page? It is an excellent resource for historical research for both Keepers and players.

Update: The Jazz Age Culture pages have been moved to another site.

Warner Archive Collection and The Green Slime

On Tuesday I was looking at Glenn Erickson's DVD Savant site when I saw his note about the email he received from George Feltenstein, VP of Warner Brothers' classic film catalog:

The Warner VP has hinted lately that many of the WB/MGM films on my Savant DVD Wish List will be popping up in the Warner Archive Collection, and five or six more desired titles did indeed surface this week: Atlantis the Lost Continent, The Power, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold and the Italian-American They Came to Rob Las Vegas. I wonder what hidden gems will be popping up for Halloween?

That last line had me curious. What other gems, indeed? I held out hope for some of the other great pre-1986 MGM films that are owned by WB, especially one I've been waiting on for quite a while.

That night I checked DVD Drive-In and found a confirmation. Listed at the top of the news, they announced that two '60s Italian sci-fi films, War of the Planets and Wild, Wild Planet, are due from the Warner Archive Collection in October, along with Kinji Fukasaku's Gamma dai sango--Uchu dai sakusen (Gamma III--Operation Outer Space), better known by the title The Green Slime.

A quick aside about the Warner Archive Collection -- various representatives from Warner Brothers Home Video have insinuated that they wish to release everything they have from their catalog titles, in some fashion. Last year they started the Archive Collection, a method of releasing catalog titles on DVD that may not have the commercial appeal to support pressed discs sold at retail. The Archive makes these lesser-known catalog titles available by direct download or on-demand DVD-Rs which are sold on their site and also through Amazon.com.













The first releases used a generic blue background package with a still or publicity photo on the covers. Sometime this year they started using the original poster art on most new offerings, and it appears that they have changed to this for some of the older releases as well. I'll write more about on-demand discs in a future posting.


The highlight of this for me is that The Green Slime will finally be available on a legal Region 1 DVD. On the Classic Horror Film Board, film historian Tom Weaver mentioned that he was told the disc source is a brand new anamorphic 2.35:1 scope master, scanned in HD from a "beautiful" inter-positive print.

Fukasaku, who would later become world-famous for his Yakuza films and Battle Royale, directed this at Toei Studios in a contentious collaboration with Italian and American (MGM Studios) producers. The shrinking budget and the shortened shooting schedule might show on screen, but this is still one of the great Japanese science-fiction films of the 60s, a psychedelic trip of bizarre aliens and outer space action.

"...struggle for survival in the infected remains of a diseased universe...Rated G."

The trailer makes a good mini-movie all by itself. I get a sense of Lovecraftian nihilism from it, but that suits the movie just fine. Also check out the commentary for the trailer by director John Landis over at Trailers From Hell.

Gen Con 2010 Report

The semester is over, which means I have a chance to write a post-Gen Con report.

The Good

Attendance appeared to be up, from the crowds I saw. All of the publisher reports that I have read said that sales were good, and the con officially broke the 30,000 attendees mark. Very good news, indeed.

I was able to see just about everything that I wanted to and pick up the items I was most interested in. I also found a few surprises.

My main goal was to get a copy of Shadow, Sword & Spell at the show. Their booth was my first stop, and I had my copy signed by one of the authors. They took my name and email address and I got the PDF of the book by email two days later. $12 for print and PDF -- bonus! Rogue Games is building more online support for the game and really pushing customer service.

I found a copy of Villainy Amok for half-price at Chimera Hobby Shop's booth. This is Hero Games' sourcebook of seven classic superhero scenarios, packed with dozens of variations on each. I've wanted this book for quite a while. The plots and story ideas can be lifted and dropped into almost any genre of RPG. I've had a certain one of these in mind since the start of the Freeport campaign, so the book will be used!

BoardGameGeek wins the Diana Jones Award! Very well-deserved!

In all my years of gaming, I've never owned any Gamescience dice. I could hardly call myself a goober without owning some of Col. Zocchi's precision-edge dice. I found a good deal on one of their "Color Explosion" sets. It includes 12 different dice -- translucent, opaque, glow-in-the-dark, all different colors and sizes -- the usual seven, plus some odd ones, including a d20 marked 1-10 twice and a d16. I think these are overstock and/or seconds. Two of the colors are discontinued, and a couple have gouges where the usual mold flash would be. They will all need some sanding, but it's still a good deal for $6.

The booth that is alternately labeled "Adventure Gaming Retail" and "Cthulhiana Corner", Steve Jackson Games and Atlas Games' Gen Con presence, had all of the usual good stuff. DV and I think that they moved last year's regular-priced GURPS books into the 3-For-$10 section this year. It sure seemed that way to us. We went in together on the 3-For-$10 deal and I walked away with GURPS 3rd. Ed. Compendium II and Suppressed Transmission 2, two more books I've wanted for a long time.

On Sunday we finally got to the Paizo booth, and I looked around for any of the Planet Stories series. The selection was sparse (they needed the room for Pathfinder, of course), with the latest in the series and...several copies of Robert E. Howard's Almuric, one of the first books they published. I hadn't picked it up yet (I'm far behind), so now, finally, I have a reading copy of this novel. And I love that cover.

As I mentioned to D., based on the booths at the show and the attendees in costume, I'm calling it: Steampunk is the new Goth. Not that I mind...

The Bad

Another book on my list was Hamlet's Hit Points, Robin Laws' new book on story beat analysis in RPGs, using the plots of Hamlet, Dr. No and Casablanca. I saw it on the table at Adventure Gaming Retail once, Friday afternoon, but then copies were scarce. I missed out on the book and getting it signed. Next year...

When I got back home, I discovered that I didn't get the commemorative d6 in the free swag bag. DVO and Mrs. Kaiju didn't get one either. It appears to have been a widespread problem. I emailed Crystal Caste but they were completely out. Not a big thing, but I do like collecting the dice.

White Wolf's "booth". Really?

It wasn't until after I already purchased Villainy Amok that I spotted it on Chimera's Buy-One-Get-Three-Free shelf, along with various Freeport books that I could have used and the reprint Judges Guild d20 books.

I spent more on food than on gaming goodies, and that includes Mrs. Kaiju's blue anime wig.

I don't mind the cos-players, the more con attendees the better -- they are helping to subsidize the stuff that I like. However, I don't know if it's necessary to wear a costume that takes up a lot of space for the entire weekend. I usually enjoy walking through the con center, but this is the first time I found myself walking outside so that I could move from one end to the other at a standard walking pace.

Speaking of space... the convention center expansion looks nearly finished. This is going into the area where the RCA Dome sat. I'm hoping that having this extra floorspace available will help to spread out the con in a more reasonable way. Many of the events have been farmed out to the hotels. It would be nice to have more of the con held under the convention center roof, yet also giving us room for everyone and their massive cos-play props.

Soon, some photos.

Free RPG Day 2010 this Saturday

A quick reminder that this Saturday is Free RPG Day, an industry-wide event for local game stores to get players to stop in -- hopefully new players, or regulars playing a new game.

Some highlights this year include the 40K Deathwatch RPG quickstart adventure, a Cthulhu scenario from Goodman Games, the quickstart for Prime Directive (the Star Fleet Battles RPG), and a Dark Sun 4e module.

You can find participating retailers here. Go to your local shop and try something new!

RPG setting ideas -- Freeport in space

File this under "Why didn't I think of this before?": Freemoon

This would be especially effective if you set it in our own solar system with Pluto standing in as "Freemoon".