The flood of games, aka PAX.

I haven't posted in the past several weeks - too busy.

First, the Penny Arcade Expo. Crazy busy. 3 days of games and gamers. Friday: everyone walks around and sees things. That must have been where Richard Garfield was, because he didn't make it to the Game Design 101 panel. James Ernest filled in, and he's fun. Steve Jackson was there, and wasn't a king-high know-it-all this time...he was actually pretty cool. James Portnow was a good moderator, keeping the topics moving. Nichole Lazzaro presented a strong "emotion" emphasis to game design - lots of focus testing. I left early to go sightsee, and the panel wasn't exciting me. (I still need to check out Lazzaro's master-powerpoint slide. Too dense for a normal slide though.)

I wandered. A lot. Exhibition Hall, trying to catch up with friends, canvassing for guests in Dragon Quest 9...I did get a half hour of multiplayer in with a new player. We tried tackling a grotto in his game, but he didn't bring along companions...he wasn't quite strong enough, and in the end we had to let him die, while I battled it out mano a mano with the end boss. (Finished with 5 of 700 hp, and dregs of my magic pool.) But we won, and it was kind of thrilling for the first run.

There were board games day and night - some Race (practicing for the tournament the next day), and some Dominion-clone that Dan Tibbles tricked us into playing. (Slow game.) The Race tournament the next day turned out weak - the organizer wasn't familiar with scoring for it...we did base set, 3 rounds for 24 players - no finals. Match points were 3/2/1/1 and tiebreaker was total points. 5 of us tied at 7 points, top 3 got medals. (I finished 1st, 1st, 3rd. 3rd place overall finished 1st, 1st, 4th.) I either finished 4th or 5th, because the two games I won - players closed out the game when they were losing. There's only one way to score big points in base set, and that means you have to be a consumer, every time. Even if you win with military, you lose on tiebreakers. (As a recommendation, go 4/2/1/0. Winning is the most important thing. You can weight the tiebreakers in different ways, depending on how you want to encourage play. And a final table.) BUT! One of the cardinal rules, is to talk about scoring and number of rounds before the tournament with all of the players. I'm looking at you, Mr. Organizer from Games & Gizmos. :)

Saturday was much like Friday...more games. More DQIX. I played a painfully long game of Settlers of America: Trails to Rails at the Uncle's Games section (they did demos for Mayfair). Demo person: you didn't relate to the table, instead focusing on winning the game. SA is a mix of Settlers and a train game where you deliver goods. It's one of those awkward things to see - Settlers (let's also include Seafarers and Cities & Knights) is a great game. But repeating the mechanic over and over is beating a long-dead horse. If I'm going to play a train game, I'll fit in a train game. I missed a panel on Saturday night because of it, so I made plans to see the same (GeekNight podcast) people on Sunday. After the missed panel let out, I met up with friends and played more board games - Tigris and Euphrates, as well as Galaxy Trucker.

Sunday was the winding down day. I checked out a little more of the exhibition hall, chatted with some of my friends at their less-busy booths, went out to a relaxed lunch with my friend Chris to talk about game design...and played some more games. Dragon Quest IX has a bunch of event-only maps that players could trade, so I tracked more of those down, as well as exchanging contact information with my new friend Keegan.

Late Sunday afternoon was the second GeekNight panel, Egregiously Unrealized Potential...basically a panel talking about how sequels to video games generally suck, and how game companies don't take advantage of all the material available to them. Board games and RPG were fine (as long as it wasn't D&D, Shadowrun, or GURPS). I disagree with board games being exempt, and they singled out Nintendo as the most grievous offender. (I loved Zelda Four Swords and FF: Crystal Chronicles too, as a disclaimer.) I'm trying some of their podcasts, but not sure for how long. Egos aren't always practical things.

I think some of the side discussions were the best part of PAX. A how-to for *organized* organized play? Practical game design. How players can lock themselves into playing a game just one way.

Every year is better, without making the previous years look bad. In the end, I was glad to wrap things up at PAX...Labor Day has become the relaxation day, post-PAX. You definitely need it.