GenCon 2023 Report!

What a weekend! GenCon 2023 was a lot of fun but also very tiring. I had to take a sick day from work today because I think I caught Nerd Flu at the con.

I had the opportunity to chat with some Palladium folks, including Kevin Siembieda, Wayne Smith, Glen Evans, Mark Oberle, and, though too briefly, Mike Leonard. While chatting with Kevin, I asked him and Wayne about my Rifts Character Builder. I don’t want to get into the details of the conversation here, but overall it was positive. I’m looking forward to a follow-up discussion with them later.

I also picked up the updated Yin Sloth Jungles book and a few more of those negatives that Palladium sells.

I also ran three events, which I will summarize here:

Zombies 101 (Dead Reign)

A lot of fun! This is my fourth time running it. The first time was a playtest with friends, then I’ve run it at TotalCon, Palladium Open House, and now at GenCon 2023. What’s funny is that I’m not really into zombie movies. I’ve only seen one zombie movie: “Shaun of the Dead,” so most of my zombie knowledge comes from the Dead Reign universe. I do know that zombie movies often focus on the survivors, not the zombies, and that’s what this adventure does. There’s character intrigue built into the pre-gens, and I love when the players run with it.

This adventure has made me want to dive into Dead Reign some more. As is typical with Palladium, the Dead Reign universe is rich and has many adventure opportunities!

I submitted this adventure for consideration for the next Rifter annual, but I don’t think it was accepted. Re-reading the adventure for GenCon, I can understand why. The adventure runs great, but it doesn’t look good on paper. I will try again!

Band of Bothers (Heroes Unlimited)

I’ve run this one many times, and it goes differently every time (as do most RPG one-shots!). This is the adventure I got published in The Rifter a while back (issue #68, if you’re interested). Given the nature of the adventure, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. I had folks on my table who were especially great players, including two teenagers. It was rewarding to expose some younger players to the Palladium Megaverse.
One interesting point about this session was that there was very little combat. In the four-hour session, I think there was only one combat, and it was brief. I apologized to the players for the lack of combat, but they said they liked the role-play-heavy session and that the amount of combat was just right. That made me happy.

Meltdown (Rifts Chaos Earth)

Okay, I struggled with this one a bit. This is my third time running it, and I make the same mistake every time: it’s too easy. It’s meant to be a combat-heavy adventure, but it didn’t challenge the players enough. It was more challenging than my previous runs of this adventure, but it still needs work. It doesn’t help that I am a terrible tactician. The players took down a Baal-Rog and a few minions in less than two rounds, if that gives you an idea.

I also messed up the pre-gens a bit. I put a lot of time and effort into making quality characters, nice character sheets, etc. But a couple of the players were familiar with the Palladium system and, unlike me, passed their Mathematics: Basic skill check and pointed out problems with the pre-gens.

I think they had a good time regardless, which is good. I suffer from Imposter Syndrome and assume it went poorly, even if everyone said they had a great time. I’ll run this adventure again, but it needs work first.

I also think that Rifts Chaos Earth doesn’t get enough love, so I wanted to expose players to that universe.

Lastly….

I think this was my fifth GenCon. Between all of my GenCons, I think I’ve only ever played in two events. I struggle when I’m a player and don’t enjoy it as much as running events. I played in a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure years ago, and this past weekend I played in my first-ever Traveller game. I’ve wanted to try Traveller for a while, so I finally got a chance. It wasn’t bad! I want to learn more about it.

So that was GenCon 2023! I usually attend GenCon every other year, but maybe I will make it next year… we will see!