I was at Origins 2012 from Wednesday through Sunday. I attend A LOT of cons, but Origins is by far my 'vacation con.' I have some pretty diverse gaming tastes, so I played boardgames, RPGs, LARPs, minis, video games, etc. Just about everything. This is my yearly report. You can find last years over at http://rpggeek.com/geeklist/69108/origins-2011-games-experiences. Follow the links to the LARP and SMurf Wars in-depths at The Fortress for some real fun reads.
Wednesday I arrived and promptly had six hours of conference calls for work. I need to remember to not do that next time ... Anyway, I missed my first few games and only got to play the RPG 'When Elf was a Class.' In this adventure you start as a 4E character who gets sucked in to the Dungeons & Dragons ride and transported to BASIC land. You get a new character and there are lots of jokes about classic play elements. The DM went Red Box, not Magenta or Blue. I was a Paladin and got to choose between a cleric or a fighter. I grabbed the fighter and, freed from my code of conduct (Wait! 4E doesn't have that BS anyway!) went on a killing spree. I yelled 'Parlay' in Lawful when we went in to a room and if they didn't answer I hacked them. The party eventually wrapped me in a carpet and yelled 'RELEASE THE KRAKEN' when they needed me. Joke elements were out goblin opponents now being much wimpier, a gelatinous cube, a rust monster, a 10' pit, etc. I think the DM thought he was being clever. The players were all 4E haters, and vocal about it. Jokey games are hard to sustain and this one lasted too long. I played some Battletech VR pods (Damn you closed Indy center!) and switched from Daishi to a Mauler, while moving from 3rd place to consistently winning every time.
Thursday was CoC day. I loves me some Coc. (Ok, its funnier if you say it out loud.) I had three Coc games. The first was so memorable that I remember NOTHING about it. Ok, I sat here for 10 minutes and now remember it was a crime caper. It had no CoC elements and the pacing was off, so we spent four hours planning the crime and 10 minutes at the crime ... the first HALF of the crime that it, which was part one of three parts. So, yeah, the pacing was off. Not very fun, mostly because there was a goal. I love CoC but I hate Delta Green. CoC is a good one shot but Delta Green sucks ... you have a goal. You know right from wrong and there's a correct answer. I think that ruins con Cthulhu games. The second game was CoC/Gilligan's Island. I was Mr Howell. Gilligan sat next to me and all game I had him roll my dice for me, until he got killed. Basically, an island rises in the ocean, there's hypnotizing drums, natives came and kidnapped Ginger, we went to their island, and Gilligan and Skipper died. AGain, it dragged, jokey game syndrome this time. It went from a fun game to a very grim one ... but not fast enough. The last game didn't go off. Mulberry Lane could take 16 at two tables and had 6.
Friday I started with a Paranoia game. The GM was good. Our characters were based on the Venture Brothers, I was Phantom Lib and the Monarch, who became team leader, was next to me. I got him killed several times during the game ... he seemed a bit clueless so it was really too easy. While the DM was good as was the set up (we had to increase happiness and efficiency at a cafeteria) it suffered from jokey game syndrome. I like my Paranoia a little more straight; jokey is just too hard to sustain. I gave Battlestations another try, on the GIANT board. I've owned this twice and want to like it. I do NOT like it. I spent most of the game 'preparing' to 'assist' someone else so they could get a +1 to their roll. It has the co-op game problem of people dominating. I don't feel I did anything or had any impact on anything. I was signed up for House on the Hill after that and was going to play with my wife. Instead she accidentally signed up for Sub Heroes. She was stoked even though it was a mistake; she loves military games. Turns out it's a card game about making submarine sandwiches. House/Hill was full so I bailed to spend time with her. We ended up playing Artimes! Bad ass! This is a starship bridge simulator. Each player has a touchscreen computer display that controls one aspect of the ship: helm, weapons, engineer, comm, (someone else?). There's also a captain, who has no computer display, and a projector that represents the main screen. Everyone works together to fly around, shoot bad buys, and do missions for starbases. This is a BAD ASS game, and the highlight of the day and probably the second best game of the con for me. My wife loved it more than me. You don't need touchscreens, just a set of PC computers.
Breakfast with the wife Saturday morning and then Zombie Containment Rally, a minis' game, a mini's game with a d20-ish mechanism. It was pretty straight forward, with zombies warping in at certain points, sucky initial weapons, and random weapons caches. Five players and 2 hours doesn't work well though; it just got going when it ended. It also suffered from a lack of objectives. In any event, it was clear the guy was working on the game and he wasn't finished, so maybe 2 hours was better. I hooked back up with The Pretty Girl and we rented The Road to Canterbury from the library. Oh boy, resource management game with unclear wordy rules and wooden cubes with a 'Canterbury Tales' pasted on theme. God I hate those games. We were signed up for Frag them, which I was looking forward to. I now only buy games I've played so this was my chance. It. Was. a. BLAST. There were kids at the table, but soon enough people showed up for two tables. We moved with three guys to a new table and spent the next two hours throwing out some SERIOUS smack talk and each other over in a big way. "Rocket Launcher? x2 damage card? 16 dice damage?!?! Hey, how about a fumble card on you even though I'm not involved in the fight ..." Yeah, we had just come back from dinner and a couple of drinks in us, but those other three guys were in it as deep as we were and had no such excuse. If you don't like this game then you don't like Fun. This is soooo my type of game. I LOATHE the modern multiplayer solitaire/spreadsheet simulators and don't consider them either games or fun. Interesting maybe, but not fun. I'll be buying/trading for Frag. I'm thinking of having an Artemis/Frag game day. I finished the day with a giant d20-ish Battle of Hoth miniatures game. I played the rebels with four other guys, against a team of 5 Empires, three of which were kids. We got our ASSES handed to us, mostly because we rolled like , especially me. I think I rolled over a 15 three times and rolled a '1' about a dozen times. We wiped out their recon droids on turn 1 so we always won initiative. They then wiped out our officers the same turn, removing our 'make a second attack' turn. Ouch! We ended up killing most of their guys but they took down the shield generator and won. Highlight: Turn one we launch all of our 20 snowspeeders at the At-At's and fire all of our one-shot tow-cables at their legs. We all miss. ARG! I even convinced a pretty girl (not THE pretty girl) to kiss my d20 before I rolled! It was a '1.' ARG!Eventually they shoot out Luke's snowspeeder and then on the next action, before Luke can use his det charges, Vader force chokes him to death. Ouch! My wife's 'Unsinkable Molly Brown' LARP was canceled so e met up for the Paranoia Mega-Larp at 11:00pm. (Late by old midwestern man reckoning.) And spent a 45 minutes listening to the tools make self-congratulatory statements over the rules. Jesus H Christ! Start the game! Larps seem to attract this sort of thing; people inserting 'clever' comments that aren't, self-congratulatory statements every 5 seconds, etc. "Origins only had one rule in the book before we started running this game.' and 'after 9/11 Origins got nervous about large crowds so we cant walk through the halls playing kazoos anymore!' etc, etc, etc. This nonsense didn't look like it was ever going to end so we bailed.
Sunday morning we skipped out on our games (including the OSR Mount Rotten game at 1pm) and instead played another round of the most excellent Smurf Wars. The Pretty Girl had an all Smurfette team this year that she called 'Team Milkshake' and won again ... we'd been listening to the song all day. I had Grandma Smurf, who was actually Psyco Smurf: she had to move towards a Smurfette and stab her each turn, if she could. Grand-Pa sucked also. My black Smurf got a +1 damage if I yelled "G'NAP" when attacking ... so I did so. I also played Brainy again, since he's BY FAR my favorite, and I taunted in his voice all game till he died.
This con is dying. No ADB this year. No MMP, no Looney Labs, etc. The food places in the convention center all close by 7pm or 8pm, so no chance to get even a soda. That's BS and I don't remember that before. I never remember a line for the Battletech pods or Artemis, and the Cthulhu games seemed to have lots of seats open ... those that went off. The vendor hall was essentially empty every day but Saturday. Not getting bumped in to was nice, but the guys I know who worked the hall were NOT pleased with the lack of crowds. I'm in to OSR D&D these days and found almost nothing to buy. The IPR booth had some LotFP stuff and I picked up the Purple Worm Graveyard from them. I also got a copy of a Barsh module 'The Fog of War', which I didn't know existed. The highlight may be the Welcome to Morristown modern zombie supplement. I'll do a review soonish, but until them let me tell you ... it kicks ass! Very sandboxy! Very social! Very cool! If you have any interest in zombies, post-apoc, or modern then you should buy it. I went in wanting to buy a copy of Axis & Allies ... no one had one for sale. I did get interested in planetary operations though from looking at the Battletech: Strategic Ops, Prefect, and/or Fed/Empire (for the third time.)
Next year I plan on running some OSR D&D, some Mega-Mega Mania, Planatary Ops games. IE: Running more than playing.
Quote from: bryce0lynch;545824Friday I started with a Paranoia game. The GM was good. Our characters were based on the Venture Brothers, I was Phantom Lib and the Monarch, who became team leader, was next to me. I got him killed several times during the game ... he seemed a bit clueless so it was really too easy. While the DM was good as was the set up (we had to increase happiness and efficiency at a cafeteria) it suffered from jokey game syndrome. I like my Paranoia a little more straight; jokey is just too hard to sustain. I gave Battlestations another try, on the GIANT board. I've owned this twice and want to like it. I do NOT like it. I spent most of the game 'preparing' to 'assist' someone else so they could get a +1 to their roll. It has the co-op game problem of people dominating. I don't feel I did anything or had any impact on anything. I was signed up for House on the Hill after that and was going to play with my wife. Instead she accidentally signed up for Sub Heroes. She was stoked even though it was a mistake; she loves military games. Turns out it's a card game about making submarine sandwiches. House/Hill was full so I bailed to spend time with her. We ended up playing Artimes! Bad ass! This is a starship bridge simulator. Each player has a touchscreen computer display that controls one aspect of the ship: helm, weapons, engineer, comm, (someone else?). There's also a captain, who has no computer display, and a projector that represents the main screen. Everyone works together to fly around, shoot bad buys, and do missions for starbases. This is a BAD ASS game, and the highlight of the day and probably the second best game of the con for me. My wife loved it more than me. You don't need touchscreens, just a set of PC computers.
Paranoia for Venture Bros.! That's very cool. I'll have to keep that in mind for a try.
I really wanted to go this year (I live within walking distance) but the cost is high and I am a poor student. I also had to work all weekend.
I did meet some European dudes playing Jihad/Vampire at Mac's Cafe down the street from the convention center on Wednesday or Thursday.
I can't believe no one was selling Axis and Allies, since you can get that at any of the game shops around here. Or maybe that's why no one was selling it? huh.
Very cool writeup. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, an excellent on-site report, in the real tradition of past RPGsite convention reports!
Thank you very much, and welcome!
RPGPundit
It is good to see a report - haven't seen many around for Origins, which doesn't bode well either.
Definitely underscores that moving the date earlier in the year this year was a poor move. They've hurried to re-arrange the dates to be mid-June, I believe.
Origins seems to have gotten progressively smaller every year for the last few years, at least from the perspective of the dealers - regardless of what weekend it's held on. Unless something changes, I fully expect more dealers to drop out each year. It's never made sense to me to try and run a convention in the same season and section of the country as another larger convention, anyway. :(
They had to move it up, because in previous years it was getting crushed by Community Festival (the largest non-corporate sponsored festival in the U.S.).
Sadly, it is now getting crushed by disinterest. Gencon is becoming like Comicon (or Wizard's World Comicon for us older geeks). Except no one is buying up intellectual properties, and it doesn't get coverage on major news networks or GTV. Okay, it's nothing like Comicon.
Anyway, Origins has always been my favored convention here in Cbus. Sure, it's thousands of obese, smelly, gaming dorks, but hey! It's a hell of a lot better than Marcon! Although Marcon has the disgusting wanna-be dork orgies on Friday and Saturday night. Hmm. Well, at least with Origins, it's all about gaming.
Anyway, part dos: I can't believe they shut down the food court that early! Sure there are lots of bar/restaurants within a very short distance (read; across the street), but it does seem ridiculous to close up at such an early time, since they know there are lots of hungry and thirsty people in the building. Why make them go elsewhere? Just a bad business decision.
Unless the committee running Origins gets its head out of its collective ass, this is a Dead Con Walking. PAX and PAX East have considerable Tabletop Gaming programming and events, tables which get filled with noobs and vets alike and feature damn near everything you can play on a tabletop that ain't a vidgame. I'd dump Origins for the PAX cons if I could afford either them and GenCon; if I could afford either both of them, or one and one of the big ComicCons (San Diego, Chicago Wizard World, etc.) and had stuff to sell that appealed, I'd be there.
Ah, you're right. Pax is the new "cool" con.
Quote from: Mark Plemmons;546647Origins seems to have gotten progressively smaller every year for the last few years, at least from the perspective of the dealers - regardless of what weekend it's held on.
Part of that is the economy. Many gamers no longer make as much money as they used to.
Quote from: everloss;546764They had to move it up, because in previous years it was getting crushed by Community Festival (the largest non-corporate sponsored festival in the U.S.).
Half of the fun of Origins was that I could take an afternoon and go watch bands play.
Quote from: danbuter;546867Half of the fun of Origins was that I could take an afternoon and go watch bands play.
Not to mention the chicks going topless.
Quote from: everloss;546865Ah, you're right. Pax is the new "cool" con.
I wonder how long that will last.
Quote from: jcfiala;546585It is good to see a report - haven't seen many around for Origins, which doesn't bode well either.
Definitely underscores that moving the date earlier in the year this year was a poor move. They've hurried to re-arrange the dates to be mid-June, I believe.
Actually it might be the Hotel & convention center that 'forced' the move in dates. They did something similiar to the long-running Sci Fi con MARCON - for years it had been on Memorial Weekend - until this year. last year the Hotel locked them into a contract that puts them on Easter weekenmd for three straight years - starting this past one , 2012. I heard their attendance suffered because of the date change.
The first ORIGINS that I went to was July 4th weekend of 2002.
- Ed C.
To the OP: There seem to be a high ratio of "jokey" games in your report. Was this representative of the con as a whole, or do you personally tend to gravitate towards this style of game?
Quote from: daniel_ream;547090To the OP: There seem to be a high ratio of "jokey" games in your report. Was this representative of the con as a whole, or do you personally tend to gravitate towards this style of game?
Hmmmm, good observation. No, I don't lean that way ... and I'm not sure the con did either. In any event, I now have another criteria to add to my 'dont play' list: jokey games.
I'd say that it was inexperience with the groups. Elf/Class didn't have to be jokey, but in retrospect I should have expected it. Smurf Wars was not jokey; it's just tactical minis with Smurfs, some of whom have strange powers.
Cthulhu suffered most at the con, I think. Gillians wasn't necessarily a jokey game, but several Cthulhu groups were not there who usually are. Shoggoth and You Too.
Paranoia ... idk, it doesn't have to be jokey but does tend to degenerate in to that. I wonder if its possible to run it straight at a con?
LARPs suffered also. The only group I really like, PST Productions (GOOD Cthulhu larps) wasn't there and that forced me in to the Paranoia LARP, but honestly I've wanted to try it previously and just didn't know what to expect.
I ask because the perennial Xenogenesis question popped up again on another board relating to SF lit cons, and while I've never seen the kind of insane, vicious behaviour that Ellison describes, my experience at most SF and gaming cons has been that the overall atmosphere and tenor of the cons themselves and the attendants is - I'm going to try and be charitable - juvenile and puerile.
I expect this and level no criticisms at cons like Anime North et al because they are intentionally targeted at a tween/adolescent demographic. I've stopped going to cons like Dragon*Con, Arisia, T.O Trek (or whatever it's called this week) &c. though, and the way you've described Origins 2012 makes me think I wouldn't enjoy it for the same reason.
Quote from: daniel_ream;547136I ask because the perennial Xenogenesis question popped up again on another board relating to SF lit cons, and while I've never seen the kind of insane, vicious behaviour that Ellison describes,
Link?
If you mean a link to Ellison's original Xenogenesis essay, I'm not sure you can find that anywhere. Ellison's been quite diligent about scrubbing it from the web. This (http://everything2.com/title/Xenogenesis) may help though.
Quote from: daniel_ream;547136I ask because the perennial Xenogenesis question popped up again on another board relating to SF lit cons...
Which board is this? I'm curious and want to take a peek.
Thanks!