I just received the Gencon Oz 3rd newsleter:
THE COUNTDOWN CONTINUES!
Welcome to Gen Con™ Australia’s E-News for
November 2007, your monthly
round-up of the latest Gen Con™ Australia news
and information. With the
Convention only eight months away, things are
really starting to pick up
pace in the Gen Con™ Australia offices. Over the
coming months we’ll
be rolling out announcements regarding the special guests
and events
happening at the inaugural Australian event in 2008, starting with
the
exciting news of our first Guest of Honour – former Wizards of the
Coast
CEO and current head of Gen Con LLC Peter Adkison!
This month’s
newsletter also includes an announcement about the Gen
Con™ Australia open
play area, an update for those of you thinking of
volunteering your time at
the convention, and new instalments in our Gamer
Profile, Shout Out and Game
Review columns. As usual, we’d ask you to
tell your friends about Gen Con™
Australia if you like what you see.
Finally, we’re happy to announce
that our E-News newsletter is now
available in both html and plain text
versions. If you’re receiving
E-News in one format and would prefer the
other, simply head over to the
Gen Con Australia homepage and set your
preference in your Gen Con™
Australia profile.
________________________________________
GEN CON™ AUSTRALIA GUEST OF
HONOR: PETER ADKISON
Gen Con™ Australia is pleased to announce our first
Guest of Honour, the
former CEO of Wizards of the Coast and current head of
Gen Con LLC, Peter
Adkison.
Peter Adkison claims to have lived every
gamers dream, and it’s hard to
argue with him when you look at what he’s
achieved. He formed a small
company named Wizards of the Coast back in 1990
and transformed it into
one of the most powerful hobby game companies in the
world. Some of the
games Wizards produced while Peter was at the helm include
the Magic: The
Gathering and Pokémon card games, as well as the third edition
of the
Dungeons and Dragon’s roleplaying game.
Since leaving Wizards
of the Coast in 2001, Peter has spent his time
managing Gen Con LLC and
overlooking the Indianapolis and SoCal events.
He’s also formed a new game
company, Hidden City Games, to produce the
collectible card game Bella Sara
and a number of other projects that are
still in development. There are
rumors that a few lucky Australian gamers
will even get a sneak peak at one
of these upcoming projects during Gen Con
Australia, in sessions run by
Adkison himself.
For more information about Peter’s latest company, head
on over to
Hidden City Games’ website at www.hiddencitygames.com. To catch
a
glimpse of the gamer behind the game-industry mogul, check out our
Gamer
Profile later in the newsletter.
________________________________________
COMPETITIONS
Winners
for October!
Congratulations to the winners of Octobers Kingdom Quest
giveaway, made
possible thanks to Mind Challenge games. The four E-News
subscribers who
have walked away with a copy of the game are:
•
Kez & Mike Viola - Clayfield QLD
• Garry Wait - Bardon QLD
•
Christine Penco - Morwell VIC
• Kris Hembury - Upper Mt Gravatt QLD
New Years Eve Giveaway
New Years Eve is always a time for
celebration, but for five lucky E-News
subscribers there will be something
extra to party about. On January 1st,
2008, we’re going to be giving away
five four-day Gen Con™ Australia
badges to randomly selected E-News
subscribers. All you have to do to win
is stay subscribed to the Gen Con™
Australia E-News newsletter and
you’re automatically in the running. It’s
that easy!
Terms and conditions do apply, so head to the following
linke for details:
http://admin.crumail.com/em/message/index.php________________________________________
LATEST
NEWS
The Open Play Area
Although Gen Con™ Australia will have
more events on its schedule than
you can roll a d6 at, we’re also aware that
some of the best games at a
convention aren’t the ones you planned on playing
in advance. With that
in mind, we’ve set aside a portion of the convention
centre as an Open
Play area – a place when you can fill in an hour or two by
getting a
couple of gamers together and playing the game of your choice. This
is the
area where you can gather together a few new friends to test out that
board
game you just bought in the exhibitor’s hall, or to play an impromptu
RPG
with those friends you only get to see at conventions.
Gen Con™
Australia Needs You!
Gen Con™ Australia is still looking for volunteers
and Gen Con™
Australia Ambassadors. The full details of our Volunteer Policy
are now
live, including details about some of the benefits on offer. Offering
to
work as little as three hours a day over the course of the convention
can
earn you a free Gen Con™ Australia t-shirt, as well as cover the cost
of
your badge! Further details are available here:
http://www.genconoz.com/?m=168Wanting to run a game,
seminar or workshop at Gen Con™ Australia? Then
why not be a big part of
the first ever Gen Con™ to hit Australia shores
and run an event. We are
currently taking submissions for events, games
and other game-related
activities - all you need to do is complete our
online submission form here:
http://www.genconoz.com/?m=162________________________________________
ON
THE HORIZON
Last month we told you about Gen Con™ Australia’s alliance
with Gamer
Adventures and mourned the loss of both Dungeon and Dragon
magazines.
This month we will touch on a question that’s important to many
Gen Con
attendees –"when will the GM’s policy arrive?"
Gen Con™
Australia GM/Event Organiser’s Guide
One of the first things we were
asked when our volunteer policy went live
was “what about the GMs?” That’s a
good question and it will be
answered very soon – the Event Host Policy
containing those guidelines
is being edited as you read this. Expect to see
the Event Host Policy go
live on the Gen Con ™ Australia site in early
December.
________________________________________
Well that's all the
news we have for this issue of Gen Con™ Australia
E-News. Check our Gamer
Profile, Game Review and “Shout-Outs”
sections below. Thanks for reading and
we hope you've enjoyed this
month’s Gen Con™ Australia E-News. Join us next
time for more hot
gossip, competitions, and lots more
fun.
________________________________________
GEN CON™ AUSTRALIA
SHOUT-OUTS!
The Gen Con Australia Shout-Outs promote gaming events and
fan events with
game-related components occurring around Australia. If you
have an event
you’d like us to add to our Shout Out database, send us the
details
along with a brief description of the event (including the website
and any
contact details for the event) to
shoutouts@genconoz.comSPOTLIGHT
CanCon
When:
Saturday 26th January 2008 to Monday 28th January 2008 (Monday is
a
holiday)
Where: Pavilion B, Exhibition Park, Flemington Road, Mitchell,
Canberra,
Australia.
CanCon runs in Canberra over the Australia Day
long weekend, from January
26th until January 28. Now in its thirtieth year,
the convention offers a
wide array of wargames, board games, card games,
trade stalls, roleplaying
events and painting completions. It also offers the
special Comfy Chair
Zone, where tired gamers can take a break between
sessions and relax.
Gen Con Australia attendees may be interested in several
of the
tournaments running at CanCon, including the Australian Blood
Bowl
Nationals, the Australian Open Board Games Championship, a
qualifying
tournament for the Magic: The Gathering pro-tour and the Yu-Gi-Oh
CanCon
Championship 2008.
Website:
http://www.cgs.asn.au/cancon2008.htmlOTHER
EVENTS
Arcanacon
When: 25 January to 29 January, 2008
Where:
Collingwood College, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Gaming: Roleplaying
games, Freeforms, RPGA and Miniatures.
Website:
http://www.arcanacon.org________________________________________
GAMER
PROFILE
Name: Peter Adkison
Background: Peter can be described as
a serial entrepreneur. He’s has
lived the dream of every gamer. He started
his own game publishing
company, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) in 1990 and was
the company’s CEO
until 2001. During this time WotC published Magic: The
Gathering, acquired
TSR and re-launched Dungeons and Dragons, and published
Pokémon. Peter
sold WotC to Hasbro in 1999 and in 2002 acquired the Gen Con
gamefair from
Hasrbo, which he currently owns and manages. Recently, Peter
started a new
game company, Hidden City Games, with Jesper Myrfors, to
publish Bella
Sara.
Day Job: CEO, Hidden City Games and Gen Con
LLC
Interests: Gaming, rock climbing, snowboarding, travel,
dance
Favourite Food: Feojada (Editors note: We didn’t know what it was,
so we
went looking – it’s a south American bean dish served with beef
and
smoked sausage).
Favourite Game: FreeMarket (under
development)
If you could invite any one famous person (dead or alive) to
dinner and a
game, who would it be?
Robin Williams, ‘cause I knew
he’s a gamer, so he might actually be
really good at it and we know he’s
incredibly funny. I think a game with
him has the best chance of being one of
the funniest games ever.
What do you look forward to most about Gen Con™
Australia in 2008?
Getting to meet Australian Gamers .
Peter
Adkison will be guest of honour at Gen Con Australia 2008. His
latest
projects can be found at www. hiddencitygames.com.
________________________________________
GAME REVIEW
Product:
InSpectres
Company: Memento Mori Theatricks
This is a roleplaying
game chock-full of goofy fun. The setting is a kind
of quirky cross between
Ghostbusters and The Office, with the players
taking on the role of
investigators for a new InSpectres occult
investigation franchise, solving
mysteries with a reality TV crew in tow
recording their every move. The
players are encouraged to deliver
Confessional asides to the camera,
commenting on the action and their
fellow investigators, while the characters
to do everything they can to
fight the forces of darkness and keep their
Franchise from going into
debt. There’s a lot of comic potential in the
concept and it’s
complimented by an elegant system that makes game play fast
and smooth.
The real strength of the game isn’t in its setting, though.
Instead, the
real strength lies in the way it structures the investigation.
It’s no secret that roleplaying games have always had issues
replicating
the feeling of a good mystery or investigative television show.
Players are
rarely as deductive as the detectives and private investigators
they play
in such games and GMs don’t have the same level of control that
a
scriptwriter has over the investigating characters. This
combination
frequently means an investigation becomes frustrating, tiresome
or simply
unsatisfying as clues are missed, odd tangents are followed, or
the
players are simply lead through the adventure by the dreaded rail-road.
Rather than leaving the players to follow the pre-generated clues
set-up
by the GM, InSpectres changes the dynamic and gives the players
control
over the resolution. They literally get to make the mystery up as
they
solve it, responding to the situations the GM presents them with
and
telling everyone what the clue they’ve just uncovered means. If a
player
makes a successful skill check while researching supernatural
phenomena in
the library, it’s that player who gets to decide what they found
and how
it’s relevant. If they succeed in breaking open the creepy chest in
the
haunted attic, it’s the player that determines what’s hidden
inside
and how it can be used.
In short, solving an InSpectres mystery
doesn’t revolve around guessing
what the GM had planned. Instead the players
are always right, solving the
mystery once they reach a predetermined number
of successful skill checks
and coming up with the resolution that makes sense
from the details
available. There are no frustrating tangents and no
irrelevant clues
because the players drive the solution to the mystery, not
the GM.
InSpectres is fast and effective, and a perfect game to play
on
short-notice when prep-time is an issue.
For more information on
this product, visit the Memento Mori Theatrick’s
webpage at
http://www.memento-mori.com/Send us a review of your
favourite game to
enews@genconoz.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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