Seriously. I said it before, and I’ll say it again.

Your awesome games are simply too much for me to continue to bear. They are costing a lot of money, but more than that, they are simply too much to even consider playing all of them.

Jason M hooked me up with the games I asked him to pick me up fron GenCon, and I’ve got a small pile of fully-playable, gorgeous (in either layout/graphics, or design/purpose) games. And from hearing folks’ playtest reports, I have to now buy even more, to basically buy all the games I didn’t buy at GenCon.

I thought it had finally come to the point where the indie game crowd was making such a variety of games where I would say, “OK, I have to stop buying Everything. I have to instead carefully look at what’s out there, and decide if this game is absolutely something that I’d be interested in trying. The games are too varied to pick up everything and hope that I’d be interested in them all.”

Unfortunately, I’m interested in them all. Well, most of them anyway. From the trad play with indie sprinkles of “Cold City” to the groovy hippiness of Shooting the Moon, there’s maybe like 3-5 Forge Booth/indie games that came out out that I’m just plain not interested in.

This is the golden age of gaming.  It’s too golden, though. I’m suffering under its gorgeous weight.

Here’s what Jason got for me (among other doo-dads):

Burning Empires. The Brick. It is not only a gorgeous RPG, it is also a handheld weapon. I’m really not too into the crunchy stuff, but I’m clearing my plate to dig into some crunchy prime rib here.

Contenders. This is one that Jason picked up for me (I asked him to “nab anything that really jumped out at you”). It’s a game about boxing and hope. Basically what the boxers fight for: family, love etc. Looking forward to throwing down this one, maybe with my dad.

Mortal Coil. A gorgeous game, diceless, about magic (and how it works). As Jason pointed out, it is one of the two games in the set that features “man-junk”, which will be the new standard of an RPG’s worthiness.

AGON. Agon is about Greek Warriors who fight stuff. The book stabbed me in the neck with a Javelin when I picked it up. It looks like some serious awesome.

The Dictionary of Mu. Judd’s Sorcerer supplement, the second game featuring “man-junk”. It totally blew away my expectations in terms of layout and presentation. It looks like TRIBE 8 got in a fistfight with HOL and this game emerged. It’s very non-linear, though. The game itself is described almost entirely in this random-setting style which is kinda hard to get used to (mainly because the fonts aren’t as easy to read at a glance). Because of the planned disorganization, which is cool on its own, it makes it a little harder to get the main points of the setting down.

However. I used to be a setting junkie back in high school and college, but these days I get bored soooo quickly when reading setting pieces.  Like, almost immediately. Tell me how many people live in Town X, and I’ll skip ten pages ahead. Dictionary of Mu doesn’t do any of that crap. It takes a little bit to get through, but I think the crazy moon-setting underneath is worth it.

Panty Explosion. This is the only game I got on a whim. I am iffy on the ideas behind the game itself, but it features Japan (namely Japanese schoolgirls, who are bitchy and psychic) so I had to pick it up. This is probably the lowest on the “must play” scale of the above, but I will if I have a chance.

Mob Justice. This is the game that Iain McAllister came up with last year. He had in his mind a game about brotherhood, betrayal, and justice. But last year, the rules were all about shooting things and chasing things in cars. Then a couple of designers got to him and got him to rethink his game: “If the game is about brotherhood and betrayal, why isn’t that in the rules instead of this car chase crap?” So Iain redid the game completely, and I’m interested in giving it a shot. There are rules for a Yakuza setting, I might roll with that.

QIN: The Warring States. “Oh great”, I thought, “another trad game set in China”. I decided to pick it up anyway, as my success with other recent China-themed games hasn’t pulled through. Turns out that Qin is pretty impressive in its simplicity. The rules are evocative without being too complicated. There’s a lot of setting stuff so you don’t have to go, “OK, you go to a tavern. Uh… hmmm… what would an ancient Chinese tavern be like, anyway? Hmmm…” It’s solid, and the production value is high, so it’s going on my must play list for this year.

That’s all, but not for long. Tomorrow I’m sending Keith S a check for his work untitled, which I’ve been excited about for months, and this week I’m putting in an excessive order at IPR to pick up, effectively, every other new Forge Booth game that I didn’t happen to buy.
Exciting gaming lies ahead.