Another fun and successful Midwest GameFest weekend is complete.
Thanks to RPGKC for having me as a guest, with Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo. I took the opportunity to pick up the 50th Anniversary edition of Nuclear War directly from him. His panel was interesting, focusing mostly on the early days of Flying Buffalo. He talked about the origination of play by mail games, the Nuclear War card game, and the Tunnels and Trolls RPG. He was a very early adopter of computers in the early '70s and conveyed some of the weirder and more amusing pitfalls involved in leasing computers or building them from a kit.
As for me, my 30 Years of Star Wars RPG panel one-man-show edition went well. Panels at small cons are always a tough sell. There isn't the critical mass of people with extra time to skip a game for a panel, like you would see at much larger cons. It definitely improved this year over past versions.
Paranoia didn't make, though that's partially because Thursday evenings are hit and miss on attendees and their selection of games. That's especially true of games other than the living style games (D&D AL, PFS, Shadowrun Missions, etc.). Numemera ran well on Saturday evening, which seems to be a good time for it. Saturday is the biggest day, and some are looking for a different game system to play. In the case of Numenera, all but one person was new to the system, though not the setting.
The Sandcrawler Gambit ran well. I need to tweak some things. I keep fiddling with the opening scene, in particular how much of the "deal" between groups of PCs that kicks off the adventure do I want to have arranged at the start, and how much do I want to let the PCs work out among themselves. The problem with the latter is the potential for them to go off in some other direction, though it has mostly worked when I've tried it. I used the Incredible Cross Sections and Complete Locations books for visual reference, and in-game inspiration for players and the GM.
The Delinquent Hutt also ran well, though the twist here is that I ran it on the TV table provided by The Staggering Dragon. I did a few things to take advantage of the table, but not enough. The Staggering Dragon guys have complete adventures written for it, with opening crawl, music, specially recorded video clips, and more. I managed to quickly put together a few images and a couple of new maps. It looks like I will likely be running a game on the table at GamerNation Con (see kickstarter here), so that's more time to get something ready.
In other news, Fantasy Flight Games posted another Genesys preview, this one talking a bit about the different possible settings.