PhilCon 2023, Games Notes
Nov. 19th, 2023 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroPhilcon 2023! It remains a fairly sleepy con, though there were maybe half a dozen other kids around ARR’s age and he got to play games with them, which was nice. (The primary attendees still skewed older, though. My generation was mostly represented by guests and pros.)
Speaking of which, Jethrien was a guest and did a signing, a reading and five panels, all of which seemed pretty successful! ARR and I spent a lot of time in the game room. There was a Saturday morning Cartoons panel that entertained me and a couple of author panels that were okay; I spent half an hour in the filk room and that was apparently the amount I wanted; ARR greatly enjoyed the one Pokemon panel; and the masquerade presentation (half an hour, nine contestants, and a lot of Dad Jokes from the MC) was just right for our tastes. Like last year, we got Wawa sandwiches in the morning so we could just eat lunch during panels, and we went to King of Pizza for dinner.
I bought a bunch of books from indie authors and dealers, which I’ll hopefully get to review soon.
And I was remined that the cartoon show Galaxy Rangers was a thing, and in fact the source of a set of nightmares I had in elementary school (it had an episode where a character’s bionic arm was taken over and attacked him, and for whatever reason it freaked me out; I recognized the arm in the opening credits they showed in the panel).
I had a chat with one of the organizers late Sunday and encouraged them to bring back the kid’s track with building toys and crafting demos. Really, they need to do something to pull in more people under 50 so the con doesn’t fold when they “regulars” start dying off, but that’s not my place to manage.
The games room reviews:
• Zombie Fluxx – I’m pretty sure we’ve played this before; it relies on a large number of creepers, some of which are hard to remove, and has “ungoals” where everybody loses.
• Jumamji Fluxx – Definitely better for big group, this has a new set of Danger! cards and a lot of mechanics for players getting knocked out of the game, but with the ability for them to jump back in with a fresh hand the next time their turn comes around. (With only two players, that mechanic just leads to short games.)
• Martian Fluxx – Fairly similar to Zombie Fluxx but with less distinct character and different Creeper variants.
• Pirate Fluxx - Decently balanced, in this one the creepers matter less but getting the Captain’s Hat and being Captain carries big benefits.
• Adventure Time Fluxx – I didn’t actually play this one; ARR played this and Batman Fluxx with the other kids who were in attendance. If you’re a fan of the show it apparently references specific plotlines. I have vaguely memories of trying it years ago, but because I haven’t seen that much of the original material, it didn’t stick in my head.
• I Feel Attacked – The most likely game for us to end up acquiring at some point, it’s a “judging game” with the gimmick that the judge puts out a type of terrible person (such as “someone who vapes”) and then each player tries to put out a category that most overlaps with the judge’s (such as “thinks Elon Musk is a genius”).
• Everything Ever – A group game of naming things in categories without repeating, with bonuses if you can name someone or something that meets every category on the table and collecting “penalty cards” if you fail. This was entertaining as a family game but it becomes really hard to remember who has already been named as the game goes on.
• Scandinavia and the World: A Heap of Trouble – A bidding game where you collect personified countries (that carry benefits or penalties) and then try to “satisfy” them with items that they want. Apparently it’s based on webcomic I’d never heard of; and fortunately it clearly marks the “adult” cards to make them easy to remove when playing with kids. Not a bad concept but not entertaining enough to return to.
• Say Anything – We didn’t actually play this because it’s clearly a big group game; it's a party game of making ridiculous answers to prompts and then trying to guess the judge's favorite for points; similar to several Jackbox entries. The prompts lists were actually pretty decent, so this is worth considering getting for our game night collection.
• And ARR was introduced to the larger world of miniatures wargaming, and discovered that assembling and (to a lesser degree) painting the figures is great fun. He doesn’t seem to care overmuch about the actual games, mind you, but we brought home eight figures in an empty pizza box.
Overall: We had a good time, it was an easy trip, Jethrien probably made a couple of pre-sales and earned a bunch of goodwill. That’s all we really need.
Speaking of which, Jethrien was a guest and did a signing, a reading and five panels, all of which seemed pretty successful! ARR and I spent a lot of time in the game room. There was a Saturday morning Cartoons panel that entertained me and a couple of author panels that were okay; I spent half an hour in the filk room and that was apparently the amount I wanted; ARR greatly enjoyed the one Pokemon panel; and the masquerade presentation (half an hour, nine contestants, and a lot of Dad Jokes from the MC) was just right for our tastes. Like last year, we got Wawa sandwiches in the morning so we could just eat lunch during panels, and we went to King of Pizza for dinner.
I bought a bunch of books from indie authors and dealers, which I’ll hopefully get to review soon.
And I was remined that the cartoon show Galaxy Rangers was a thing, and in fact the source of a set of nightmares I had in elementary school (it had an episode where a character’s bionic arm was taken over and attacked him, and for whatever reason it freaked me out; I recognized the arm in the opening credits they showed in the panel).
I had a chat with one of the organizers late Sunday and encouraged them to bring back the kid’s track with building toys and crafting demos. Really, they need to do something to pull in more people under 50 so the con doesn’t fold when they “regulars” start dying off, but that’s not my place to manage.
The games room reviews:
• Zombie Fluxx – I’m pretty sure we’ve played this before; it relies on a large number of creepers, some of which are hard to remove, and has “ungoals” where everybody loses.
• Jumamji Fluxx – Definitely better for big group, this has a new set of Danger! cards and a lot of mechanics for players getting knocked out of the game, but with the ability for them to jump back in with a fresh hand the next time their turn comes around. (With only two players, that mechanic just leads to short games.)
• Martian Fluxx – Fairly similar to Zombie Fluxx but with less distinct character and different Creeper variants.
• Pirate Fluxx - Decently balanced, in this one the creepers matter less but getting the Captain’s Hat and being Captain carries big benefits.
• Adventure Time Fluxx – I didn’t actually play this one; ARR played this and Batman Fluxx with the other kids who were in attendance. If you’re a fan of the show it apparently references specific plotlines. I have vaguely memories of trying it years ago, but because I haven’t seen that much of the original material, it didn’t stick in my head.
• I Feel Attacked – The most likely game for us to end up acquiring at some point, it’s a “judging game” with the gimmick that the judge puts out a type of terrible person (such as “someone who vapes”) and then each player tries to put out a category that most overlaps with the judge’s (such as “thinks Elon Musk is a genius”).
• Everything Ever – A group game of naming things in categories without repeating, with bonuses if you can name someone or something that meets every category on the table and collecting “penalty cards” if you fail. This was entertaining as a family game but it becomes really hard to remember who has already been named as the game goes on.
• Scandinavia and the World: A Heap of Trouble – A bidding game where you collect personified countries (that carry benefits or penalties) and then try to “satisfy” them with items that they want. Apparently it’s based on webcomic I’d never heard of; and fortunately it clearly marks the “adult” cards to make them easy to remove when playing with kids. Not a bad concept but not entertaining enough to return to.
• Say Anything – We didn’t actually play this because it’s clearly a big group game; it's a party game of making ridiculous answers to prompts and then trying to guess the judge's favorite for points; similar to several Jackbox entries. The prompts lists were actually pretty decent, so this is worth considering getting for our game night collection.
• And ARR was introduced to the larger world of miniatures wargaming, and discovered that assembling and (to a lesser degree) painting the figures is great fun. He doesn’t seem to care overmuch about the actual games, mind you, but we brought home eight figures in an empty pizza box.
Overall: We had a good time, it was an easy trip, Jethrien probably made a couple of pre-sales and earned a bunch of goodwill. That’s all we really need.
