GenCon 1996

New releases

There weren’t a lot of new releases of RP games at GenCon. Partly, I think, is that the RP gaming industry is still feeling the effects of the CCG boom of the past few years, but another reason is that a lot of the genres are already being played out.

One genre that apparently had been overlooked until this year is the horror western. Dead Lands is an excellent and simple production of an alternate history Wild West, where manitous (spirits) have been released to cause supernatural havoc through the West. The Civil War is still going on in 1876, Los Angeles is now a cavernous canyon system flooded by the Pacific, supernatural  horrors roam freely in the darkness, and the newly-discovered “ghost coal” is making such things as personal jetpacks, flame throwers, and steam automatons possible. Picture The Wild, Wild West crossed with Tales from the Crypt.

The flavor of the Old West is well maintained: the slang is used throughout (but not enough so that the book is unreadable) so skills are named “shootin’ ” and “horse ridin’ ”, spells can be cast using combinations of poker hands, and there is a system where poker chips can be used to reward and buy Fate. A 220+ page book, it is laid out cleanly and uses B&W and color artwork effectively.

Another RP that was released earlier but that I picked up was Feng Shui. This is based on the same source material as the Shadowfist CCG and owes a great debt to the genre of kung-fu action movies that is epitomized by Jackie Chan. This is a template-based character generation system, mixing sorcery, time-travel, alternate histories, secret societies, and some head-bangin’, *ss-kicking martial arts in the Hong Kong movie style.

Another game I picked up is Don’t Look Back, a contemporary horror RP. I got it primarily for the supplement “Giant Psychic Insects from Outer Space” but the game system itself is eminently playable. Its about midpoint between Conspiracy X and Bureau 13, and definitely profitable.

Finally I picked up the latest supplements for Castle Falkenstein and Immortal.

I really like Castle Falkenstein: this Victorian / European era game is a favorite of mine, and now with “Sixguns & Sorcery” they’ve expanded it to include the America West; if only they could have gotten the rights to The Wild, Wild West, but alas they’ve had to simulate the major characters.

Immortal is an especially difficult system to master and the game books are hard to understand, but they have some interesting writing and production and are worth checking out.

About the only other game I indulged in buying was a couple of decks from the Arcadia CCG from White Wolf. I have a long-standing interest in the Fae and I was wondering just how this game was set up. I won’t bore you with details; it appears good but I have some troubles with its idea of character development as a part of continuing play, primarily because of the obvious possibility for cheating. Otherwise it is substantially different from other CCGs on the market.

And one game I did NOT pick up although I was seriously tempted was the Monty Python and the Holy Grail CCG. This is the first CCG with customizable cards: you can paste pictures of castles and people on specially prepared blank cards. It has all of the sketches and classic bits from the movie, too.

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