Aside from some birthday presents for my wife, and some pokemon stuff for my son, I did a good job of sticking to my pledge to only by stuff from Indie Press Revolution and Pinnacle Games.

My haul:

1) With Great Power...
A superhero RPG inspired by silver-age Marvel, where the heroes must suffer before they succeed.

2) RunePunk
A dark steam-punk fantasy setting book for Savage Worlds

3) 50 Fathoms
A fantasy pirate setting for Savage Worlds. Very "Pirates of Dark Water."

4) The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach
A Lovecraftian dark comedy about back-stabbing college professors and a telepathic cockroach

5) Humans!!!
A sequel to the Zombies!!! boardgame. For my wife's Birthday.

6) A couple of space girl pinup stickers form the art show.

7) Some freebie demo games for Tunnels & Trols and Hunter: the Vigil.

I normally don't buy any games at cons. All the games I run are QAGS, and I already have all the QAGS books, so there's usually not much temptation. But Josh has been telling me stories about all these great new indie games, and he intrigued me. Apparently there's an indie game revolution going on, and I didn't know about it. I needed to get informed, and keep myself from becoming an obsolete old gamer who only talks about the "good old days," so I decided to buy something from the Indie Press Revolution table.

When I got to their booth, I found a number of attractive, intriguing books. It was a difficult choice, but Josh had been telling me about the great demo of With Great Power . . . that he played in, and it seemed right up my alley, so I was leaning toward it. The creator of the game was at the booth, so I asked him to pitch it to me, and that sold me on it.

I haven't read it yet, but it looks like this may very well be the super-hero RPG I've been waiting for all these years. I'll write more about it once I've read the book.

about indie games, if you havent checked it out yet, play "last night on earth". i think it's the beast zombie game out there right now. it's from a small company called flyingfrog, but the game is very cool, simply because its a perfect emulation of every zombie flick i've seen. the whole "murphy's law/ dear god why does it always happen to me" stick that is apparent in zombie films is definately present in the game. plus they have an expansion out for it.

as for galaxikhan, alas i do not have one, for i cannot find it, and i dont trust my computer enough to pdf it. i have even tried to play the game several origins in a row, but either it coincides with another game im playing, or either me or the game isn't there. it still remains elusive...much like the omnipotent platypus i keep hearing about...

MK

I'm kind of zombied out, but "Last Night on Earth" sounds interesting. I like the way games seem to be focusing on creating rules that recreate specific genre conventions.

We have plenty of extra copies of Galaxikhan, and we'd be happy to give you one. Are you going to be at GenCon?

Paul Tevis was gushing about "Last Night on Earth" on his last podcast of "Have Games Will Travel." I usually trust his opinions, so I wanted to check it out, but didn't get a chance this weekend. My wife is a HUGE fan of he "Zombies!!!" series of boardgames, and I wanted to see how differently "Last Night on Earth" played. I liked the fact that LNOE has a scenario style of play.

LNOE plays team style, some players are humans and some are zombies. a scenario is picked, lets say "the pickup" is being played. there is a number of turns that the game will last, tracked by a sun tracker. there are specific goals that each side has to find. in this scenario, humans have to find the gas can, the keys, and another something or other, while the zombies have to kill every one. ( as you can see it's the night of the living dead scenario).

each team has specific decks of cards they can use.
there's a lot of cruel twists of fate, such as the "this could be out last night on earth" card which is basically if a male and female character occupy the same square at the beginnig of the turn, they "get it on" and lose their turn.

other than that, there is a lot of customization with the board, because it can be interchanged a lot.

as for gencon, i wont be there. this weekend is pretty much the last for my gaming vacation.

MK