The Exhibit Halls were packed with so many gamer’s that you can’t help but feel a bit at home. I was amazed by the amount of fantastic products for sale and how everyone is presenting their new stuff. I couldn’t help but pick up several items myself including Savage Suzerain and Caladon Falls from Savage Mojo, Sorcery & Super Science from Expeditious Retreat Press (Joseph Browning is at the Old School Renaissance booth), Deus Vault from Mongoose Publishing for use with RuneQuest II, Trail of Cthulhu from Pelgrane Press, and a few other little things here and there. But enough with the boring stuff, I got around to most of the RPG publishers and took pictures of what’s available. Please note that the interview I did with George Strayton this morning concerning his new book The Secret Fire will be posted in a subsequent post which will include the Fantasy Flight Games seminars and the D&D Neverwinter gaming session.
My first stop, after checking in with Triple Ace Games, was Green Ronin Publishing. There were plenty of books there including Dragon Age Set 2, Mutants & Masterminds 3E, and Unhallowed Metropolis from Atomic Overmind Press. I spoke with Chris Pramas about Dragon Age and he informed me that instead of the originally planned 4 set release, Dragon Age Set 3 will actually take players from Level 11 all the way through Level 20. In addition, the setting will continue to grow throughout the Dragon Age sets.
My second stop was the combined booths of DriveThruRPG (OneBookShelf) and White Wolf. I spoke to Sean Patrick Fannon who informed me that the books (pictured below) were printed from their print-on-demand system. I was quite impressed. He also informed me that DriveThruRPG is the premier partner of White Wolf for print distribution.
After that I proceeded to the Studio 2 Publishing booth filled with excellent publishers including Visionary Comics, Exile Games, Third Eye Games, Engine Publishing, Nevermet Press, Rogue Games, Pinnacle Entertainment (of course), and much more including painted displays of the new Deadlands miniatures.
After Studio 2 I went walked across the aisle to Cubicle 7 Entertainment who also had numerous publishers represented including Cakebread & Walton, Rite Publishing, Arc Dream Publishing, Adamant Entertainment, Pagan Publishing, and more. I spoke with Scott Glancy from Pagan Publishing and he informed me they were currently taking pre-orders to raise funds for their newest non-mythos Call of Cthulhu adventure compilation Bumps in the Night.
I swung by Fantasy Flight Games with a full inventory of Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and the new Black Crusade. Steve Jackson Games had a nice selection of GURPS hardcover books while Atlas Games had a very interesting selection of out-of-print books, however I was not able to find any of their Ars Magica books.
Triple Ace Games has a beautiful setup with a fantastic Hellfrost demo stand featuring a quite extraordinary tower. This is the demo I’ll be running on Friday and Saturday. Plus the booth is fully stocked with all of Triple Ace Games products including the new All For One: Paris Gothique.
Wizards of the Coast is going with a strictly show booth this year without any product (at least none that I could find). However, their neighbors across the aisle Scrying Eye Games did the exact opposite and brought not only their regularly printed products, but also printed versions of their battlemap PDFs. These things are awesome!
A quick little stroll to Silver Crescent Publishing and you will find all their print products on display and behind them a full-color map of the Realms of Twilight. And when you look down at the table, oh, what is this? An excerpt of a review from Roleplayers Chronicle!? I was floored when I saw that and extremely honored that it was posted there. My only exclamation, “Hey, that’s me!” So check it out and tell them you heard about their booth from Roleplayers Chronicle and want to learn more about Realms of Twilight.
I then proceeded to Entrepreneurs’ Avenue where I found Savage Mojo displaying not only their wonderful print products but also a large collection of their GameMastery Story Maps and a collection of their illustrations. Their battlemaps are even more wonderful when seen in person!
Old School Renaissance Group is right down the path from Savage Mojo featuring a number of publisher’s products including Expeditious Retreat Press, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Necromancer Games (Frog God Games), Goblinoid Games, and more including the hardcover of OSRIC.
I spoke to one of the designers of Paradigm Concepts new Arcanis book and he explained to me how the Arcanis setting is so much different than traditional fantasy. Arcanis breaks down many of the traditional fantasy stereotypes and creates in-depth backgrounds that give the different races a purpose and history. Plus their is a heavy influence of Roman mythology and ancient Roman mentalities.
I wandered around the corner and stopped at the Pelgrane Press booth and spoke with Robin D. Laws and Kenneth Hite about the Gumshoe system. They explained that the Gumshoe system rewards investigation more heavily than other similar systems in that rolling a dice does not simply mean you fail to find the information within the pages of the book you’re reading. The system seems to lend itself quite well to different types of investigative settings including their new Ashen Stars which they called a space opera police investigation where these are the guys that come in after the wars have cleared.
I next went to the Mongoose Publishing booth, found it fully stocked with products from Mongoose, RedBrick, Brutal Games, and Sine Nomine Publishing. I also spoke to Matthew Sprange about the move from RuneQuest II to Legend and here’s the basics:
– Legend will be fully compatible with all currently published RuneQuest II products.
– All core rulebooks will be republished into digest size under the Legend name and with all Glorantha references removed. Price point is a mere $20! That is fantastic!
– There will be some type of OGL associated with Legend, but that has not fully been determined.
– There will be a “Legend Compatible” logo which is prevalent on their latest book Age of Treason.
Those are my big highlights to note. I did swing by several other publishers who all had a full inventory of printed products including Kenzer & Company, Margaret Weis Productions, Adept Press, Catalyst Game Labs, Alderac Entertainment Group, Fat Dragon Games (with some awesome looking terrain setups), Troll Lord Games, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, Palladium Books (including back issues of The Rifter), Posthuman Studios, WildFire, The ENnies with nominees on display, Lone Wolf Development with demos, d20 Pro with demos and a beautiful touch-screen gaming table that made me drool, PCGen demos, and of course Paizo Publishing who was filled with products including the new Ultimate Combat book (it was super crowded so I didn’t walk through there).
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