As we all know, the popular perception is that there are different levels of nerds. The progression generally starts with anyone working in the gaming industry (and gets paid to do it), Star Wars nerds, and works its way down to the junior high kids playing D&D in their parents basement before you get to the bottom rung of the ladder, Star Trek nerds. Anyways, I was one of those D&D kids growing up, and now I’m somewhere near the middle probably. But for a day, I climbed back down the ladder and scouted my way around the show at Origins 2008.
For anyone who has never heard of Origins, it’s one of the premier table top gaming conventions in the country, and is held annually in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus just so happens to be the home base for Gaming Nexus, which of course is why I’ve never attended Origins prior to this year. Well and the idea of having to climb back the ladder and be reminded of sitting at the dining room table, being yelled at by my dad for rolling the d20 on the new table.
I started my day on the show floor, working my way from booth to booth. I saw a lot of familiar names in terms of the board games, RPG’s and model based games. While GN’s obvious emphasis is on electronic gaming, I took my time to see as much of the show as possible before focusing in on the two electronic games that seemed to be the most likely candidates to be of interest to our readers.
It’s safe to say my favorite part of the show floor was the miniatures gaming area. There seemed to be a large number of games based on similar rules of movement (usually determined by measuring with a ruler), attack, and defense (mostly done with the traditional groups of d6’s). What I think was the most interesting part of this area was the sheer number of unique genres. A plethora of genres including, but not limited to: American Civil War, Ancient Rome, WWII, space marines, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and even an interesting battle between some rather ugly goblins and Santa Claus and his elves. I can only hope for the sake of Christmas that Santa emerged victorious.
There seemed to be games of every sort going on throughout the entire show, ranging teaching tables where the game vendor was providing instruction to new players. If you ever get invited to join a game of either Puerto Rico or Cuba both brought to the US by Rio Grande Games, I highly recommend a class from someone. In the tournament hall, any CCG you can think of (and some you’ve probably never even heard of) were being played for glory, and sometimes for prizes.
The main hall was of course the exhibit hall where all types of games, gaming supplies, T-Shirts, and even sharp, pointy weaponry could be purchased. As a veteran of E3, CES, PAX, and even a Star Trek convention year ago, I thought I’d seen just about everything. But a battle arena for weapons (both real and imaginary) stationed between a Red Cross Blood Drive and woman in her 50’s dressed in a chain mail bikini hawking rare Magic: The Gathering cards.
The exhibit hall brings me back to the two electronic games I mentioned previously: Beyond Protocol and Saga. Both games are MMORTS, but the similarities begin and end there.
Beyond Protocol is like EVE Online, but with PvP, colonization, and empire building. A persistent universe, with fully customizable units, an enormous resource system (the guide to resources is a 5MB PDF just by itself) with each having unique properties making it more or less conducive to use in shipbuilding. Each unit is comprised of multiple components, and the minerals chosen for these components can have dramatic effects on the quality of the components. The open beta for Beyond Protocol is ongoing and you can register to join the beta at beyondprotocol.com. One of the interesting things they’re doing is that they’re designing the graphics to be able to be handled by even 56k modems, so nearly anyone with a functioning PC and internet access will be able to play this game.
Saga is an RTS with a twist. It’s got no monthly fee, and you can even download the game for free from playsaga.com (although registering it, or purchasing a retail copy for $19.99 does provide additional features). How the company intends to make money on the game is that Saga is also a CCG. You purchase troops through buying either online or retail booster packs at $2.95 each. Each pack contains 1 card with a code redeemed online. The code translates into 10 cards which each represent a single unit or spell. The original game (whether downloaded or retail) includes 3 booster packs to start building your army. When redeemed, each booster pack contains at least one rare unit, with the retail boosters providing the added advantage of randomly having a second rare unit. Not only is the game powered by boosters, but players are encouraged to trade for what they need for their armies through an in-game market, as well as promoting the sale of units in game. Two sites already exist that sell the individual units to players in game, and the games developers have even encouraged this. Look for an upcoming review of this game in the near future.
In the end, I walked out with a couple of new PC games to play, some Star Wars miniatures to decorate my desk with, and a greater appreciation for the table top gaming industry.
