It's been a while since I've made a post. After the group broke up due to a move, I didn't much feel like devoting time to thinking or writing about a hobby I may not get to partake of for a while, so I devoted free-time to wiping out a backlog of video games. While playing Red Dead, Assassin's Creed II, and others was a fun distraction, my mind has wandered back to unplugged gaming again. As the talk of Gen Con starting ramping up in June and July, I found myself yearning to chug dice with friends again. In lieu of finding a game with my hectic schedule of mowing lawns, changing diapers, and all other things that keeps a husband and father from his preferred ways of wasting time, I've turned my eye back to creation.
I snagged a copy of ICONS. It's a super-hero RPG from Steve Kenson, the brilliant mind that brought us Mutants and Masterminds and DC Adventures (not to mention a ton of other really great RPG material). ICONS has a light (MUCH lighter than M&M) feel that is reminiscent of the old Marvel Super Heroes game of the 80's and 90's mixed in with the FATE system's Aspect tagging. I like FATE, but Aspect tagging felt like it was weighing the system down needlessly. Really that's my only complaint about ICONS. It's a superb game, go pick it up if you want a great, easy-to-run supers system.
I've been converting MSH characters to ICONS a lot lately. The conversion is a breeze. However, as I churned out character after character I found myself wanting to play MSH more than ICONS. However, my biggest complaint with MSH is the damned color chart. It's easy to deal with, but it's there when simple die mechanics should totally make it unnecessary. The thought of replacing the mechanics of MSH with that of ICONS took root in my head. It would be easy. I could totally tweak the vast amount of MSH powers to the ICONS system with little to no problem, and end up with a supers-game that was both robust and easy to run. So that's become my primary project of late.
In other arenas I got a lot of new boardgame material for my birthday and anniversary. I got All Things Zombies and the Hero Pack and Survival of the Fittest expansions for Last Night on Earth. I haven't gotten around to trying them out yet, but ATZ looks like it would be ripe and easy for expansion with the addition of Left 4 Dead style super zombies and the like.
I'm trading some games and books that aren't seeing any use to Noble Knight Games (NKG is a great company and I highly recommend them). There are a few things that have caught my eye of late and what better way to add to the collection, but to get rid of stuff that just isn't that great in the first place? I definitely want to get the Hero Pack and Something Wicked expansions for A Touch of Evil. The new Castle Ravenloft board game has been getting some great press and has my curiosity piqued. Flying Frog has another horror genre game coming out in the fall called Invaders from Outer Space that I think my wife is looking forward to even more than I am. There is the new edition of Dungeonquest and other boardgames like Claustrophobia and Cadwallon: City of Thieves that I really want to get my hands on.
On the RPG front, I'd love to pick up Alpha Omega and the Encounters book. Eclipse Phase sounds interesting as well. However, I don't know if I'd ever get to play them and I tend to like my Sci-Fi systems to be more generic anyway.
The big thing on the horizon is that I've talked my wife into going to Gen Con next year. We're thinking of take a week and going to Chicago for a couple of days to see some cousins there and take our son to the aquarium and then head into Bloomington, just south of Indy to stay with some other cousins and have that as our "home base" for excursions into GC. It'll be my first GC and I'm really looking forward to it!
