Another Origins is behind us. Lots of games, bad food and not much sleep – which is par for the course with a gaming con.

On the whole, I wouldn’t rate it as highly as last years, and apparently there were a lot of technical problems which we managed to elude by pre-registering.

So, what did I play, you ask? Aside from Wednesday night, which I wrote about in the previous post of course…

Thursday

The Dark Eye, which was a pretty standard fantasy RPG from Germany. The system was pretty heavy and class/level based, neither of which I tend to like. I don’t really remember much about it except that that the play group was petty good. Otherwise, it was okay, but unremarkable.

Macho Women With Guns which turned out to be a D20 Modern setting (and I tend to despise D20), which I didn’t know when I registered. It was mostly fun – basically bimbos with guns, sort of like the recent Charlie’s Angels movies. I played a Laura Croft-esque character which proved to be hard to get into since the other characters were very bimbo and Laura Croft is not. The group was so-so, which of course didn’t help.

Next was a Vampire: The Requiem game. It was very fun, we had a great group for it too. The lastest incarnation of the Storyteller system is streamlined a good bit compared to the others, which I liked. Though having played older versions I didn’t find them too heavy, just a bit slow.

Last up was a Call of Cthulhu: Dark Ages adventure. We had pretty stupidly made characters, their skill points were very concentrated, and the adventure itself was a bit weak.

Friday

First was Equat10n which was a very cool scifi game. Small group of 4 all of whom seemed to be solid players. The adventure was so-so it was pretty combat heavy, but I liked the game setting and system a lot.

Next was The Petal Throne which was another Fantasy RPG. It had some very interesting detail in it. It was fun and we had a good group, but we didn’t end up liking it enough to buy it.

After that, we were registered to play the new Army of Darkness game, but the GM never showed. So we wandered over to the White Wolf room and were able to get in another Vampire game, with the same GM from the first one.

We had a great time again. The ending was totally wide open right up until the last 10 minutes or so. We were all.. ‘shit how is this going to play out???’ It was pretty funny how all the characters were either hanging back or hedging our bets.

Last was Dread, which is one of the more unusual games I’ve played in that it uses the Jenga game for task resolution. The Jenga tower adds much more tangible level of tension to play. The genre is horror, but beyond that anything goes: I’ve played it in historical and contemporary settings. This game was in a contemporary setting, and we played characters on a Safari that ended up being caught in a civil war in Africa. Another good group and a fun game – though not my best Dread experience ever.

Saturday

Deliria was first. The game was titled “Miracle Seasons: Scions” and was the first part of a series. The game itself was one I’d been wanting to play for a while. This was the smallest group I played with at 3 people, but all were good and got into the game. It helped that we had a very good GM too.

After that, SLA Industries which is the dark sci-fi, over-the-top, corporate controlled setting where you play genetically engineer (or full on invented) enforcers for the biggest corporation, SLA Industries. It was another game I’d had for a while but hadn’t had a chance to play. The GM was okay, and we had a great time. The system is pretty light and faster.

The next game, which was a West End Games D6 fantasy game, however the GM didn’t show, and nothing else at that time grabbed us. We didn’t want to wait another 4 hours for the next game, so we went home and crashed.

Sunday

Last day of the con, and a half day at that.

The GM from my first scheduled event was MIA, so I joined R’s game of Everway which I’d heard about and was curious to play. It turned out to be great. The system

The last event I want to was another Deliria game, “Miracle Seasons: Vengeance”, which was the sequel (but not the end to yet) of “Miracle Seasons: Scions.” Same GM, which was cool. Good group again, though we ended up sort of rushed so that was a drag.

So, there it is, Origins, part 2.