One of the biggest draws of any big game convention is the exhibit hall, and Origins is no exception. This year saw a return to using the entirety of the exhibit hall for booths. There’s always plenty for gamers to spend their hard earned cash on, and this year saw a number of new releases, as well as some hidden gems recommended to me by other show-goers that may have been around previously.
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The winners of the One Page Dungeon contest have been announced over at ChattyDM and Old Guy RPG Blog. I was honored to serve on the judging panel, and I’m glad to give a hearty congratulations to the winners.
You can read Alex’s recap of why he voted the way he did on individual entries. I can tell you that I evaluated the entries primarily on a strong core concept, with a healthy dose of “would I want to run or play in this?” The details of what was in each individual room were mostly lost to me, as a lot of it blended together. (This differed from most of my fellow judges, I’m sure). The ones I enjoyed the most were the ones that jumped out as “wow, this idea is cool” and then followed up with a solid execution. Even just evaluating on those two factors, there was still a lot of work to cut the list down to just a few winners.
To those who didn’t win anything, don’t despair… there were plenty of favorites among the judges that we just didn’t have enough prizes to award everything we liked. Hopefully some of you will take your one page idea and run with it, whether it’s just for your own campaign, or make a full adventure out of it.
At Origins 2009, Rodney Thompson and Robert Schwab hosted a seminar (courtesy of the RPGA) about designing villains for your 4e game. The seminar described the process of doing the villain design, from role in the campaign to touching on some of the mechanics you might use. Here’s my notes from the session.
A few weeks back, I spotted on Twitter a new D&D event that would be held at Origins. It was the Ultimate Dungeon Delve, a timed test of our ability to get through 6 combat encounters with a 6th level team of 5 adventurers that we bring to the table. I immediately recruited Krog the spreadsheet barbarian and Geek’s Dream Girl to help me put together a team.
Say what you will about the man, he did give us dancing zombies, which lead to the above.
Only a short Inquisition this week, since I have lots more Origins goodness to send your way soon, including an epic recounting of our journey to victory over the Ultimate Dungeon Delve, another seminar by Monte Cook (this one about designing dungeons), a seminar about 4e villain design, and my recap of the show’s exhibit hall, along with a few very short podcasts that describe some of the cooler games from the show floor.
I reported live from the 35th Annual Origins Awards via the Critical Hits twitter feed, but here’s the results, with all the nominees and winners:
Next D&D Minis Set “Legendary Evils” spoilers posted
DDI: Class Acts The Bard Paragon Paths for Bardic Multiclassers, including a Daring Blade (Order of the Stick reference?)
Details on the Doctor Who RPG
D&D appearances in webcomics this …
BSG board game getting Pegasus expansion
So You Think You Can Dragonlance
DDI: Revenant (DDI Exclsuive) The race so nice you’ll live your life twice. Revenant neatly fixes the problem with DDI exclusive content by using …
I think you could take 4e and remove the powers system for a “rules-lighter” experience. Here’s roughly how it would go:
No matter how much Mountain Dew Game Fuel you drink, this may not happen to you. Also, anybody think it’s kind of weird that the woman changes into a male orc? (Via Extralife)
“The cumulative effect of bad design…is nothing less than a slow erosion of the human spirit.” (via Boardgamenews)
Excuse Me, Miss. Didn’t I See You In The Monster Manual 2?
High Fantasy vs. Sword & …
A little over a week ago we celebrated my birthday with raucous partying and the like, it’s always good to get a large group of friends together for communal debauchery. However, what really made the …
A whole pile of bloggers and podcasters, including the likes of At-Will, Dungeonmastering, ChattyDM, Gamer’s Haven, Sly Flourish, and yours truly, got together to ask James Wyatt and Chris Perkins of Wizards of the Coast about various topics related to 4e. This all was hosted and put together by Jeff of The Tome Show (who had some questions to ask himself). The end result is quite informative, ranging from game design topics to community topics.
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