gencon 2018 day 1

Day 1 of Gen Con is in the bag for me. Sadly, my wife was feeling poorly, so we didn't get a chance to play any games today. She is better now, but we'll take tomorrow slowly and see how it goes.

Our son had a hilarious story to share from his time in the playtest room for early-in-development games. He loves playtesting and was excited to get to do it again. He couldn't get into the game he wanted to test, so he picked one at random that described itself as a game about gangster wars on the streets of a Chicago-like town, full of violence and lawlessness and greed.

"Oh no, was it too violent and lawless and greedy?" I asked

"Dad. It turned out to be a Monopoly knockoff."

"What?! Why would anyone re-tool Monopoly?!"

"Oh yeah. You had criminal ventures instead of properties, like money laundering. Then, when you past go, you got two gangmembers, which you could send to battle other players gangmembers to take their properties. At that point, it was like Risk.

"What?! Why would anyone take Monopoly and mash it up with Risk-style battles?!"

"Oh yeah. You rolled 6 dice every time you attacked, no matter how many gangmembers you had, and the defender rolled 5 no matter how many gangmembers they had. Whichever side has the least number of gangmembers, that's how many dice both sides keep. So if your 5 guys attacked their 1 guy, you rolled 6 dice, they roll 5, you each keep the highest die, and ties go to the defender. So her 1 guy can destroy all 5 of yours pretty easily."

"That's horrible!"

"Oh yeah. We were all trying to get into fights as soon as we got gangmembers so they would die off. It was against the rules to attack a player if they had no gangmembers. So 6 of us were killing off our own guys as quickly as possible, and the last 2 were trying to duke it out."

I was laughing out loud in the food court.

"Oh, and the chance-card-things? Yeah, 'Drive by: roll a dice and lose that many gangmembers and that many turns.'"

"What?! You could lose 6 turns on a die roll?!"

"Oh yeah. That happened to one of the players, and the designer said, 'don't worry, they go by fast.' But with 8 players, that's 48 turns before you can do anything!"

"The designer was running the game? Did he take feedback?"

"'Take' it? Well, we gave it, but he swatted it all away. One guy said, 'there's a problem with the combat.' the designer said, 'No, there isn't.' It was ugly, and I hated it."

But we were both laughing pretty hard by that point. His story might have been my favorite part of the con today, except for the game of Mars Colony that my wife and I started at lunch.

Oh, and I did all my shopping today. I had a short list, as you can see in the picture.

I hope you all had a great day today too.