Gen Con SoCal ‘04: Day 3 – Bits and Pieces

Here are a few interesting bits and pieces from today.

Yeah, I got a better look at Noir, from Green Ronin, today. It’s kind of an interesting mixture of the hard boiled detective story and superheroes. Picture, if you will, the 1930’s Sam Spade era of gritty urban adventure. Now add superheroes. That’s Noir. It’s Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler and superheroes. I think you get the idea. Go get it.

I was hanging out with Your Move Games today. Talking and um, playing their games. I tried their scripted demo of Succession, which was fun. It’s a long game – sometimes taking up to three hours to play. The scripted demo easily ate up fifteen minutes. What I like about Succession is the potential for role play in what essentially is a boardgame. I got to talking to Chad Ellis, Co-President of Your Move Games and designer of Succession. Apparently, they are working on a wargame that will allow non-wargamers to experience the fun of wargaming without the ponderous rules or great expense. They couldn’t say too much about how it works but they did say that they had come up with some interesting game mechanics that will make the wargaming experience available to anyone.

After that we sat down and played a game of Space Station Assault – magnificent non collectible card game. I am going to write a more extensive review on this game, but I can say right now that it is fast, easy to play, and strategically very challenging. The rules are very tighter than a paymaster’s fist and well written.

Social Games had fourteen, or so, actual pre press pages of the new Cyberpunk 203x from R Talsorian Games. Don’t get too excited. There wasn’t that much to look at. But this is the first tangible proof in probably over a decade that there is another edition of the Cyberpunk RPG out there.