Every now and then I need my creative juices squeezed. LIke an orange on one of those pointy ceramic spears. You know you really need this when you open up the door to your game/anime/comic/<insert geek hobby here> closet and heave out a deep sigh of boredom. Nothing new. Maybe I should sell it all, you think. Geek conventions are my pointy spear, ripping open my peel and letting those juices flow.
Recently, I attended MegaCon in Orlando Florida. This is the biggest convention in the state, a menagerie of geeky goodness. Everything from comics to cosplay can be thrust into your orange for three days. I’m always on the lookout for games or new ideas that spark my gaming imagination. As I walk down the artist rows I look at their work and see if I can put them on my mental list of potential future collaborators. I’m looking for my Jeff Dee.
One of the artists that really stood out was Mike Maihack, a local fellow over from Tampa for the convention, his Cleopatra in Space concept hooked me and I plunked down the modest change to pick up a signed copy of the book. I was laughing at all the right places and having a throughly enjoyable read all the way up to the cliffhanger. My juice meter was at 50% capacity at the end of day one.
Day two arrived and I returned to the convention still on the lookout for the rest of my squeeze. From out of the corner of my eye I spotted what looked like a card game going on in the artist alley. As that pointy eared fellow says, I was intrigued.
What I found was a new species: an RPG Card Game impressively named Dark Legacy – The Rising. After a play through of a couple turns I had a taste of a game that combines classic CCG mechanics with character progression and piece placement. The designer, Bryan “The Kaiser” Tillman, was also the artist for the majority of cards in the two fifty card decks used in the demo. This is a pretty elaborate game design backed up with professional looking artwork and card layout. The whole package conceived and created by one cool cat was enough for me to plop down the precious cash on a deck. My juice meter was reading FULL. Bryan is getting his game ready for its official debut at GenCon this year. If you are going, say hello and check out the game over at his site.
Now where did I put that OJ….
What a great web log. I spend hours on the net reading blogs, about tons of various subjects. I have to first of all give praise to whoever created your theme and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an fabulous article. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only very few posses and honestly you got it. The combining of demonstrative and upper-class content is by all odds super rare with the astronomic amount of blogs on the cyberspace.