GenCon is over.

Well, another GenCon has ended. I didn't go, of course. Karen and I went once, during the second year of our marriage. That was over ten years ago, and every year we talk about going and nothing ever comes of it. I wanted to go during its last year in Milwaukee, just for "old time's sake"... I mean, even if I'd only been once before, Milwaukee was the home of GenCon back when I started playing D&D, and Milwaukee was some kind of dreamed-of mecca of gaming back when under-traveled me couldn't imagine how I'd ever get to go.

So I figure we'll let GenCon get good and settled into Indianapolis, and maybe we'll go next year. I'll be out of school and we might be able to look far enough ahead to make reservations. At least Indy seems better suited to hosting such a large convention than Milwaukee. I didn't want to go to GenCon again if I couldn't get a hotel within walking distance of the convention center, and there just weren't many of those, and they all filled up very quickly.

Superheroic Update

We had our initial, "let's talk about just what kind of supers campaign we're going to play," meeting on Sunday. It was nice to see Bill again... I haven't seen much of him in the last year or so. Nobody had a solid character idea, so we didn't get as deep into talking about characters as I'd have liked.

I've been waffling over digging out the old Champions stuff verses starting out with the new Freedom City stuff. Well, the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that neither setting is especially distinctive... they're what I call "classic" superhero settings, emulating the worlds of Marvel and DC comics. There's really no difference in saying I'm using the Champions Universe and importing characters from Freedom City, or using Freedom City and importing characters from the Champions Universe. And I've got tons of Champs stuff in the basement. Not to mention how well I know much of the world.

In the end, it was nostalgia that tipped the scales. That and the fact that there just isn't much material out for Mutants & Masterminds, even though the system came out nearly two years ago. They just got around to publishing their first adventure.

Mostly what this means is that I'll go with the defaults of VIPER, UNTIL, and all the distinctive organizations of the Champions Universe. M&M just came out with their first adventure, while I can get entire books about VIPER and UNTIL (and have some of them... I think Hero Fifth has more new support material for it than M&M does. I think they may have put out more adventures than all the M&M sourcebooks combined.)

So I'll buy the M&M stuff to steal stuff from, but I think I'm going to be solidly in the Champions Universe camp. Time to go dig some books out of the basement.