In Austin, we have some good news and some bad news…
The good news is that allergy season has ended.
The bad news is now the new allergy season has begun.
Ugh! I got to feel right during the build up to the Steve Martin concert too. All the cough drops I was downing didn’t help much. Or I may have been experiencing a relapse from what my recent classmate contracted during training.
At least I’m feeling functional again and I’m receiving those pleasant alerts in my e-mail about what the pollen levels for the day are expected to be…7+, hooray!
Now to do something with my right heel. After the first annual Coleman Scavenger Hunt, it intermittently hurts like a mother-fo! Here’s the funny part, it smarts more after I’ve been sleeping. Exercise seems to stretch it out which seems to weaken the broken-bone theory or a nasty uber-bruise. I’m taking Somara’s advice on going to bed with my running brace on it and stretching first thing in the morning, see if it matters.
August receives another nod to GenCon when it didn’t suck. I know Milwaukee couldn’t accommodate the growth yet India-noplace remains a terrible replacement after like what, 12 years? Chicago is out of the running since Take-the-Money-and-Rahm Emmanuel and 30 years of Daley mismanagement have made the sit of Big Shoulders a complete ripoff. Maybe Milwaukee will get it back as computer-based stuff continues to pick away at tabletop. Minneapolis-St. Paul is another good place. Co-creator Dave Arneson originated from the area and if it hosted the GOP’s convention in 2008, a bunch of geeks, nerds, gamers and cosplayers would be more civil and easier.
On to the header art.
Twenty-five years ago I got to attend my first full-fledged GenCon. The year before was an accident I wandered into, it had slipped my mind in 1988 despite Neal gearing up. My best college summer (ever) proved to be more prepared. Although I didn’t get a four-day badge or learned about volunteering, I had money and time put away to go. Plus I registered for a couple events. Sadly, they were miserable experiences. The one I was really stoked to attend was a huge mess. It’s why you never let gamers bring their own PCs. You can count on several of them to cheat; rather pathetic and it strengthens the general public’s negative perception of the hobby while fantasy sports leagues remain socially acceptable. I blame myself for being too sleepy at another. No wait, Neal and I did have a good time breaking Leading Edge’s Aliens demo board game. We figured out how to get the Colonial Marines across the room by keeping them close together while only firing at the closest xenomorphs. It wasn’t a bullish success but we were the only team to have any survivors on our first try.
The other element spoiling the fun was Marquette’s ORL politics. Through my growing friendship and better work habits impressing Doc (then hall director of Schroeder), I had a chance to land an opening for RA, something I had tried for twice and never got. (It’s one reason why Marquette can suck it when they beg for donations.) I was screwed over again by Annie Aversa and her shit-talk, she didn’t like employees who followed the rules if it busted her pet residents or staffers. Matters worked out in the end. The dean in charge of ORL resigned before being fired for sexual harassment and it spoiled Annie the Hutt’s return to a higher position at Marquette. I got to enjoy apartment life without all the petty dorm rules.
Above though were the big stars I remember from GenCon thanks to everything being old is new again given all the hype over D&D’s Fifth Edition.
- AD&D 2nd Edition: The PHB and DMG had already hit the shelves in June and July respectively. D&D needed a huge overhaul by 1989. It had been mostly unchanged since 1978 when the first PHB was published and now 1985’s Unearthed Arcana broke the game with Gygax’s farewell campaign-busting addenda. With Gygax ousted in 1985 and the competition eroding TSR’s market share, the new regime finally went forward. They really failed to deliver anything beyond the minimum to get a legal definition of second edition. What was considered simplifying was actually removing anything to appease the BADD (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons) holy rollers, never mind the insurance industry defeating them years earlier. The controversial classes, names and monsters were removed to make D&D more sanitary. For example, demons were now called tanar’ri; the assassin class disappeared; half-orcs weren’t a PC race anymore; so on. How the design team convinced themselves into believing THAC0 was an easier mechanic remains comical. It wasn’t all terrible. Bard was now playable, Psionics made sense and Gygax’s pretentious magic-user class was finally called mage/wizard. If I were given a choice between first and second edition though, I would reluctantly go with second. However, I had defected to RoleMaster in 1988 and D&D remained rather crude.
- DC Heroes Second Edition: Thanks to the losers who ruined the Villians & Vigilantes tournament I wanted to enjoy, Mayfair had swayed me back into the DC camp with this pending update. Their first edition in 1985 was pretty solid yet hampered by a couple flaws: the gadget-building rules made little sense which made heroes like Batman and Green Arrow rather useless; and all super powers had the same cost regardless of their versatility. Mayfair had taken note plus in 1989 Batman, Justice League and Sandman were hot titles at comic-book stores. Tim Burton’s movie helped too. The downside was this new boxed set wouldn’t hit shelves until late Fall. After sitting through the Mayfair Q&A panel, I scored a used copy of the first edition to get more comfortable with the games Action Point (AP) system. It remains my favorite way to run a superhero campaign because if Mayfair could make Superman a tangible character, then you can do anything.
- Shadowrun: FASA’s newest game stole a good chunk of TSR’s thunder by taking Fantasy and turning the genre on its head 90 degrees when FASA incorporated the Cyberpunk genre. Throwing in a box of free minis while supplies lasted didn’t hurt. Years later, my sensei Lester hypothesized Shadowrun’s success pretty well…many experienced gamers were getting bored with straightforward Fantasy, FASA shook up the trope. Hard to believe they’d also predict Seattle would be the it city in the next decade. Mechanically, the game was rather clumsy but Shadowrun’s style proved to be its selling point, a lesson often missed by rivals Steve Jackson, GDW, ICE and Hero. The computer hacking elements from then are comical today.
- Champions Fourth Edition: As D&D is to Fantasy, Champions is to Superheroes and this first ever hardback, comprehensive set of rules became the bible for Champions for many years. Hero Games pulled out all the stops too by hiring George Perez to provide the cover art. Its completeness compelled me into parting with the $25 it cost ($47 today) only to disappoint as a game; to this day I will always ridicule the defenders of ED/PD. The book still had cool ideas for villains, story backgrounds, plots, etc. My biggest gripe was proven by the primary authors’ full-time careers, computer programmers. It was small wonder they offered software or MS Excel macros for character building. The other realization I came to was why Champions was popular. It was the superhero genre from the perspective of gamers, hence excessive hair-splitting on martial arts, many characters being D&D versions of heroes/villains and numerous knockoffs of Marvel/DC characters: Mechanon = Ultron; Dr. Destroyer = Dr. Doom/Darkseid.