Holy shit our feet are killing us. These past two days at PopCon Indy 2019, we have put about thirty miles inside the convention center alone. As we ice our feet down, enjoy some White Castle fried pickles, it’s time to decompress on the day. It’s hilarious actually because we had a discussion with the guys from Swipe Scape and we agreed that when you get to a certain point, you can’t even remember the last thirty seconds. So now it’s time to recount the last twelve hours.
PopCon Indy Highlight: Nights of Yore’s Epic Encounter
We just need to talk some RPG real quick. The team from Nights of Yore have been here at Indy PopCon for the past few years. And they have never disappointed. They’ve been improving and improving and improving their game set up. For those of you who don’t know, Nights of Yore is a an RPG system that completely streamlines the entire system. To quote yesterday’s article:
…It makes your characters for you. It does all your rolls for you. And It does story progression automatically, it’s just the ultimate system for anybody interested. This can turn the several hour processes that can be developing your character for the campaign, to just two presses of the phone. Holy shit.
Let’s take a look at this picture why don’t we? You see that table there? It’s legit a $10,000 table that they hand made a week before the event.
There are two screens inlaid on the table for the players to see, as well as the DM’s personal screen system via a connected tablet. Inside it contains dozens of different pictures and enemies. And in our most recent playthrough, I got to be really social with the enemies of the game in Nights of Yore. In the campaign, we were doing some dungeon crawling for a local rich sorcerer to retrieve a book. (As one normally would.) In it, we needed to decode a dangerous message in a crystal ball. Shaq Daddy (My 8-foot high elf Hunter) decided that the best course of action was to shoot it with my arrow. Upon breaking the crystal ball, the big bad end game boss reared its head. (Think a sphinx, but more assholery).
After a long and drawn out battle that saw a Tiefling proceed to nut-kick the boss for 46 damage, we took home the W. And then we needed to actually, you know find the book. After deciding to not sell the book back to the evil sorcerer, we all could feel the story of the next campaign already bubbling underneath, as we sought to destroy the cursed book. So, needless to say, I’m already absolutely hooked on this game. If you can, be a part of the full release. It is the best instant app for all things RPG and gaming. Seriously, it’s just… amazing.
Panels at PopCon: We Need to Talk
Man… I’m not gonna lie. They were kinda just alright. That isn’t to decry the effort that these people put in, but after a full day of panels, I can say that the ones I attended were only okay at best. And the worst one had to be the one about (*Not going to say which, because that’d be a dick move*) where it was so bad, 7 people left within the first five minutes. The rest had left about ten minutes later. The biggest problem that we saw for the panels (and other unnamed sources agree) was the lack of support.
PopCon Indy has a great community with truly dedicated individuals. You can really tell that the people who are helping make PopCon truly care about their hobbies, and interests. PopCon is their baby. But the organization behind the panels leaves something to be desired. At least, the way in which that panels are selected, prepared, and organized does. How many times are panels going to have people slowly walk out because the panel host didn’t actually prepare? Will we just have to expect half the panels to have no direction? And what about the process for submitting for a panel? Is it really as simple as “We’ll pick the idea we like the best”? Because here’s the thing: ALL the panels SOUNDED awesome. Only about half managed to live up to most of the expectations. The others? Ranged from blegh, to meh.
We get it. It’s hard. Panels are a tough sell that can be super intimidating. But the people coming to these limited events deserve the best panels possible. And here’s my suggestion: Have panel submissions be stricter, with a video example of part of what the panel will look like. Let us SEE what the panel is going to be as a requirement. Alright, that’s enough bitching. Thanks for reading guys! PopCon Indy 2019 has been one hell of a ride!