KantCon: Playtested, Gamer Approved!
By Cape Rust
After spending the morning watching other people game, window shopping with the vendors and conversing with some of my new friends, it came time for the 2 – 6 P.M. (I wish people would use the 24 hour clock over here, it is so much easier!) Ingenium game slot. You already know what I think of Silver Gryphon Games as a company so there is no need for me to sing the praises of their player-centric approach and love of gaming for the sake of the game, wait a second…
Our game was actually held at one of the open gaming tables. Earlier in the day I found out that Nick Salestron was going to be in the Ingenium game. I had the honor of gaming with Nick during the 7th Sea game. Actually, his character and mine went on a side mission during our 7th Sea adventure the previous day and as players we worked really well together. Personality wise we are different, but made a dangerous combo at the table. Nick is in Grad school for creative writing and I would come to find out later that day that he is quite the artist as well.
We sat down and were joined by the rest of our group and ended up with 5 players. Ben Overmyer was running our game and our pre-game table talk was lively. Ben let us talk for a few minutes to get to know each other, then he went into explaining the mechanics of Ingenium. After learning a bit about the game we learned that we would be playing/testing the adventure called Dawn at Fortress Fairling. I was surprised at how bare bones the mechanics really were: roll a D10 and add a number based on your attribute or skill. OK things were a little more complex than that but not much. Ben then proceeded to lay out 10 or 11 different character sheets and gave a brief description of each character. One of our players without hesitation went for the Merchant type and the rest of us proceeded to choose.
Ingenium doesn’t really have character classes, but it does have character types that give you some Idea of how a particular character might play. As we went around the horn one of our players chose a roguish type character then it came to Nick, he went for the not-so-nice magic user. Well not-so-nice is a poor choice of words, if I had to give him an alignment, I would call it likeable evil. I passed as I wanted Ben to choose the character he thought would be best for me. I wasn’t trying to suck up, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t fall into that rut of playing the same old character. Our last player chose the Dwarf Inquisitor. Ben scanned the table and chose the winged folk bard type character for me.
Ben went on to explain a little more about the game and exactly what our stats meant then he asked for the descriptions of our characters. I was surprised at the depths that all of the players at the table went to with all of about 30 seconds to prepare. I have been in plenty of gaming groups where people didn’t think their characters out that well after months of play. I had this feeling that this was the perfect storm when it comes to Con gaming groups. I was impressed with my 7th Sea group, based on the folks I had already met at KantCon the quality of this group shouldn’t have surprised me, but it still did. When we next meet I’ll let you know just how the rest of this game turned out.
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