Three New Games from Gen Con 2024
Featuring the Cosmere, Good Time Society, and a B&B with room for everyone
Another week, another chance to talk about Gen Con! Here are three new games I got to try first-hand.
Good Time Society’s New Year’s Revolution Was Messy, Fun, and a Little Disappointing
Good Time Society, the popular actual play* and tabletop game review company, hosted an exclusive gaming experience this year. Put on in collaboration with Chaosium, publisher of the popular Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game (RPG), New Year’s Revolution was a three-hour social-deduction game** set in the Cthulhu mythos.
*Actual play: A recorded play session of a tabletop roleplaying game made to entertain and/or to demonstrate a game to potential players.
**Social-deduction game: A game where players are each given a secret role and objective. Players must achieve their objective without revealing their identity. Famous examples include Mafia, Werewolf, and Blood on the Clocktower.
Fifty six players were divided into groups of eight, with each group representing a city. We took on the role of city council members alerted to a growing cultist threat and tasked with making decisions that would protect our city and, maybe, even the world.
Confession: I hate social-deduction games. Chalk it up to bad youth group experiences. Too often they devolve into shouting matches where only the loudest opinions matter and quiet players are accused of lying regardless of their actual role (I was accused a lot in Mafia). As someone with a history of social anxiety, social-deduction games can be torture.
Unfortunately, New Year’s Revolution did not challenge my biases.
The setup was cool. We each had a secret role that gave us a once-per-game special ability, between one and four secret facts, a “sanity” score, and a stack of voting ballots labelled “yes” or “no.” Every round we would vote on a social problem: do we enforce a curfew to handle the rash of late-night murders, do we cancel the Thanksgiving day parade due to threat of cultist activity, etc. Depending on the council’s vote, our city would be pushed towards either “chaos” or “order".”
The game was supposedly based on the Call of Cthulhu RPG, but the only connection outside of the obvious theme was a tacked-on “sanity” mechanic. When a player used their special ability, they would have to roll percentile dice*. If they rolled over their sanity score, they went insane for the round and the Matriarch (Good Time Society’s Becca Scott, acting as game master for the evening) would cast their vote for them, pushing the city toward chaos.
*Percentile dice: Two ten-sided dice rolled to generate a number from one to one hundred. One die represents the tens place, the other represents the ones place.
The questions we voted on were well-crafted, and made for some thought-provoking discussion amongst the players, but the experience overall was sub-par. Part of if was the presentation. There were no microphones, so the noise level often overpowered the room and made it impossible to listen to instructions. Another problem was that the presenters fumbled the rules more than once. They referred to the game as a playtest, which indicated that some things had not been ironed out or clarified.
I was also disappointed by the lack of role-playing elements. I had somehow convinced myself that this event would be a kind of live action roleplaying game (LARP), with everyone taking on a character role, but opportunities for role-playing were almost non-existent.
This three-hour experience would not have been half so disappointing if it had not cost me $120 to attend. For an untested game (that was not marketed as a playtest), this was too steep a price. I could have played a game of Blood on the Clocktower and an actual Call of Cthulhu LARP and saved money. In a better environment with polished rules, this could be a fun game for social-deduction fans. As it was presented to me, however, it left a lot to be desired.
Stormlight RPG is D&D for Brandon Sanderson Fanatics
Based on the popular fantasy novel series by author Brandon Sanderson, the Stormlight RPG is the first in a series of RPGs based on Sanderson’s books. Each game is a part of the Cosmere RPG system and will use similar mechanics. For more information on the Cosmere RPG, read last week’s announcements section.
As someone with a fantasy novel podcast and book club (link below), a new reader of the Stormlight Archive, and someone with many friends inducted into the cult of Brandon, I knew I had a duty to try out the Stormlight RPG.
Brotherwise Games, creators of the Cosmere RPGs, hosted one-hour demos at Gen Con showcasing the combat system. Combat, as it turns out, is identical to Dungeons and Dragons, with a bonus “plot die” and flexible initiative.
When a player attempts something challenging, the game master may ask them to “raise the stakes,” prompting them to roll the plot die, a six-sided dice with special symbols on each face. The result of the plot die changes the tone of what happens next. In its simplest form, a successful plot die roll grants the player a bonus to their action, but it also gives them the option to “influence the narrative,” changing how the action plays out in a narrative sense.
The initiative system also differs from other RPGs. At the start of a battle round, players may choose to act fast or slow. Acting fast ensures they get to act before their enemy, but only allows them two actions. Acting slow, on the other hand, risks allowing the enemy to make the first move, but allows three full actions to be made. It’s a simple system to remember and cuts down on the amount of dice rolls.
The heart of this game, of course, lies in its setting. The Stormlight RPG is great for die-hard Stormlight fans, but may be difficult for people who have not read at least the first book, Way of Kings. Brotherwise Games claim they designed the RPG to be accessible to non-fans, but while anyone could learn the rules easily enough, there is a lot of context that will be hard to grasp for newcomers.
As someone 700 pages in to the first book, I might as well be reading the prologue. The RPG centers around action that takes place after certain world-shattering events. I don’t think you have to read all FOUR released books to appreciate this game, but the first one may be required reading.
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast Kicks Butt, Sells Out
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast by author Jay Dragon of Possum Creek Games has a delightful Saturday morning slice-of-life cartoon vibe that not only oozes with personality, but pushes the definition of what an RPG is. It is a game about found family, a bed & breakfast run by a witch where it is always September 15, and the many interesting people who live there.
There is no character creation (though there’s nothing stopping you from making your own wacky house-guest). You play one of many, MANY pre-written characters, each with their own quirks, dreams, and weaknesses. You are allowed to choose any available character for a given chapter, of which there are ninety-nine in total.
Every chapter has its own set of rules. One may see you collecting and flipping “chaos coins” to represent your progress in a hair-brained scheme, while another will see you flipping cards to reveal a maze with secrets hidden around every corner. Many chapters share similar mechanics, but every one adds a twist that gives it its own flavor.
The more you play, the more points you can spend to unlock more content, including new characters, new chapters, new rooms in the B&B, or new developments for certain characters.
In our one-hour Gen Con demo, we were able to play through two chapters and unlock a new character. One chapter had us competing to pick the most raspberries in the garden, while the other chapter had us attempting to escape a haunted corn maze.
The characters were easy to jump into due to the excellent writing, and the gameplay was cozy and fun. Our GM was fantastic and narrated the action like a grade school teacher reading from a children’s book. That may sound patronizing, but it was actually very relaxing. The whole experience made me feel like a kid again, appreciating the simple things in life in a way I haven’t in a long time.
I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the book before I left the con and good thing too. Due to warehouse issues, they had limited copies and were sold out before the end of Saturday. Fortunately, Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast will soon be available for purchase through Possum Creek Games.
Next Time…
It’s been a year and a half since Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast started the Open Game License (OGL) scandal. Let’s talk about it, and how the industry has changed in the time since.
I backed Yazeba's and got the deluxe edition and even if I never get to play it, it is SUCH a lovely piece. But hopefully I can get some friends to the table for it. I am hoping that the lack of character creation will make it easier for some of my new to rpg players to jump in. I played once on One More Multiverse and even that was just so chill and fun.