Gen Con Round Up - Part 1

Gen Con is over and I'm back home. We got in on Monday around 3-4 in the morning, and with yesterday something of a delirious haze now in the past I find myself collecting thoughts on what was a pleasant con experience for the most part. As my schedule didn't allow for day 2, 3, and 4 round ups, I figured I'd start with that and move on to other things over the course of the week.

Day 2
Day 2 was a fun 10-12 hours of gaming. I managed to sit in two more 7th Sea sessions, one going from about 10-2 and the other from 6-10. Unfortunately the first game was my first experience with a GM I didn't care for the style of. The man was nice enough, and had the adventure prepped, but ignored certain rules - such as how initiative works - that made a lot of the session feel very chaotic. Even with that, the game was fun so I can't complain too much.

The later game was a blast, and with a GM I'd had last year. For some reason he keeps getting sadled with the political/black mail games, but considering how well he runs them I'm not upset about it. With him we had a wonderful, intrigue filled adventure in the Crescent Empire where subtlety rules all and more PC tendencies have to be.

After the two 7th Sea games I joined my cousin in the First Exposure Booth. If you ever go to GenCon, make sure to spare 2 hours for here. In fact, I liked First Exposure enough I'll have a bigger post dedicated to it later on. For now, we played a fun board game that won't be released for about a year or so, and it was a lot of fun.

Day 3
Day 3 started with my buddy, my cousin, and I playing in one of the first Starfinder games for Paizo's new space faring RPG. The game was a lot of fun, and Paizo has done a good job of bringing D&D into space with futurizing some of the classic classes and adding in more Sci-Fi specific archetypes on top. I played a Technomancer (read: Wizard) and felt like a pretty good cross of what I'd want a Wizard to be in Space and being a utility/skill character such as a mechanic or engineer. It was also neat to see some of the things Paizo took from 5th Edition (cantrips that did 'decent' damage so mages could constantly attack.) My cousin wonders if Starfinder is a precursor to a second edition of Pathfinder, and after the dozen or so years Pathfinder has been going, maybe it's time?

After Starfinder we split up, and my cousin and I managed to find spots in the high level Pathfinder Saturday event. This event was a lot of fun, and I have to hand it to the Pathfinder Society that they do a lot to set things up, complete with voice acted 'radio play' segments inside the adventure that keeps everyone on path and involved in what is going on. That said, watching the high level game play out made me understand a lot of the design decisions in D&D 5e. It's a lot of fun to do 180 damage over 3 attacks in one round, but the amount of slow down caused by the math with all the bonuses and benefits takes forever. Even the people who were super dedicated and knew everything their build did needed calculators to figure out their damage each round and fast as they were it was still a noticably long time before they could get it all out. Like I said, I had fun, but I think I prefer the simpler math in D&D 5e.

Day 4
We didn't play any games on Day 4. The hotel had to be checked out of, and we wanted to hit the road. We did hit the vendors hall before leaving, but the purchases from there will be a different post as well.