11:12 AM: Mike Sugarbaker says...
Origins 2002: Hating On Nickels

Everything marked $something.95 is actually 5 cents more expensive when you buy at a vendor booth. It's amusing how widespread that is. Are your price guns broken, guys?

The fancy stuff I hooked up to post from my Palm from the show floor has suddenly broken, so I'm back in exile in the Internet cafe. All the news I've been able to scrape up has been RPG news, so here it all is:

• Troll Lord has Gary Gygax's The Canting Crew here at the show. Nice cover, but the innards look a little... fluffy? I dunno, I could be wrong. They're also showing a new double-thick D20 module called The Heart of Glass that includes an 11x17" fold-out city map. Oooooh.
• Citizen has their Western D20 book Sidewinder out. It looks remarkably good. They gave me crap about our reviews of their Hero's Journey line, but they're good sports. Sidewinder looks like a good mix of crunchy bits and flavor, and while the particular wild-west flavor they've chosen is rather vanilla, I think that's a smart choice.
• Atlas has the new edition of Unknown Armies a little early, as I think we forgot to report. It's gorgeous, it's structurally interesting, and they wouldn't give me a free one because no one at the booth knows who the hell we are. A lengthy preview PDF is up at the company's site.
• Misguided Games has released Children of the Sun. Yes, it exists as something other than an ad campaign. It's a thick, two-color book, well laid out, with an original system they say is reminiscent of Earthdawn and Deadlands, to back up their steampunky fantasy setting. 90 pages of material that had to be cut from the book will be available for free online.

That's all I've got for right now. I'm still looking for the cool little card and board games that blindside me out of nowhere at these things. I'm starting to worry.

The Wizards booth is so much cheaper-looking and more poorly attended, not only than the WizKids booth, but than the Fantasy Flight booth. Man. I want to know what third-world government is funding FFG.