Tabletop Gaming News Backlog

Well, Origins is over, and, I'm sad to say, I missed it.

Then again, when I'm mostly broke and a day and a half of driving away from Ohio, my inability to travel there probably isn't surprising. 15,061 other people, however, did manage to show up, setting a new attendance record - and, of course, the con will be happening again next year.

Another convention I missed was Connecticon - which, by all reports, was a wonderful event. Unfortunately, a sudden change of venue and some related complications, the organizers were left over $34,000 dollars in debt. A huge number of their webcomic friends have started a fundraising drive to get them back in the black. Several of them have even put up various bonus gifts, such as the one to the right - Ctrl+Alt+Del, 8-Bit Theater, VG Cats, Mac Hall, and several other webcomics have contributed various bits of content to reward donators.

On the upcoming con news front, GenCon Indy is coming up, and, even if you're not attending, you can have some impact on the goings on there. Voting is open for the ENnies, the annual GenCon awards ceremony.

During the actual convention, among a myriad other things, there will be sessions of A Game of Thrones RPG running - a game that is on my short list for next year's ENnies, if it lives up to the previews. (Disclaimer: I'm obsessed with the Song of Ice and Fire world, and couldn't help but be excited about this setting. I'm about as biased as it's possible to be when it comes to this particular topic.)

On the non-con related news front, White Wolf recently made a bit of a blunder. They decided to insist that certain groups of their players - both tabletop and live action - would have to pay an annual fee to game. The policy would have applied primarily to GMs who wanted to charge a fee to players, but in some cases, such as ongoing campaigns, the players would also have had to pay White Wolf a $20 annual fee. Each. The outcry over this policy was truly amazing - in fact, it reached a level sufficient to cause White Wolf to withdraw the policy - at least until they manage to find a way to word it so that they won't offend quite as many people.