We’re back and (mostly) recovered from Gen Con 50, and what a time was had! From the ENnies to the Indie Groundbreakers to the Magpie Game Room to the Booth to everything else that was Gen Con, it was overall an excellent time. Here are some of the highlights:
ENnies
We won an ENnie!
Masks: A New Generation took home the Silver ENnie for Best Family Game, thanks to all of our amazing fans! We were thrilled to accept the award (it stunned Brendan so hard he quoted Hawkeye on a public stage), and we wanted to thank everyone for their continued interest and support! Special congratulations and shout-outs go to the Golden ENnie award winner for the category,
Bubblegumshoe, and to all the other ENnie Award winners of that night!
This is our second ENnie award, with
Urban Shadows winning the Silver ENnie for Best Rules in 2016, and our third nomination, with
Epyllion having been up for the same category as
Masks. We’re excited to keep pushing forward with awesome games and to see what next year’s ENnie Awards bring!
You can check out our win at the 1:43 mark of the ENnies Live Stream video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow09EqSsUhQ
To quote Brendan, “I have no powers and not nearly enough training, but I’m doing this anyway. Being a game designer is amazing.”
https://twitter.com/MagpieOfficial/status/898725459730583552
Indie Groundbreakers
In the Indie Groundbreaker awards,
Epyllion was the runner up for Best Setting and
Masks: A New Generation took home the award for Best Rules! The Indie Groundbreaker awards are hosted by the
Indie Game Developers’ Network and decided by a panel of expert judges. We’re so grateful for
Epyllion’s and
Masks’s recognition alongside such other awesome games as
Seven Wonders,
The Beast, and
Warbirds!
“Attending the social was a lot of fun, and I appreciated a chance to see other game designers that I normally only get to talk to online. I didn’t get to talk to everyone nearly enough, and watching the awards reminded me of the difficult choices the judges had this year.” - Sarah
https://twitter.com/MagpieOfficial/status/897989991573467136
Game Room
We ran our own “game room” for the first time at GenCon! We’ve run games there in coordination with the Indie Game Developers’ Network before, but this was the first time that Magpie Games hosted its own events. We had 4 tables, right alongside 8 tables devoted to
7th Sea, and we ran a game at every table, consistently, for all 10 slots of the convention. 40 games total, ranging from
Bluebeard’s Bride to
Undying to
Masks: A New Generation to
Epyllion and more! All of them awesome! We don’t have the official numbers yet, but we estimate that we ran for something close to 200 players over the course of the weekend!
Special thanks to our game room coordinator, André La Roche, and our amazing crew of GMs—Jahmal Brown, Katherine Fackrell, Will Ke, Mads McDonough, Charles Penn, Justin Rogers, Rich Rogers, Dan Souliere, and Joe Young. You were all awesome! Couldn’t have done it without you!
https://twitter.com/clgrenhart/status/898998083673088001
https://twitter.com/clgrenhart/status/899009662099496960
https://twitter.com/Umbralwalker/status/899000524351168513
“The best part of my GenCon was running Bluebeard's Bride for 6 tables of amazing players. Everyone who played put in a lot of energy and effort to make each game uniquely and deliciously terrifying (there were times they had me shivering from fear)!” - Kat
https://twitter.com/Plus1FWD/status/898947922989121536
“I loved running Bluebeard's Bride, myself, for the first time, with a table of awesome players, none of whom had ever played before, and having it go brilliantly. They sent the drowned bride (who just wanted to give them a horrific makeover, that’s all) to go find and help the guy trapped in the dungeon (who'd had pieces of his face removed and his skin scarred with the names of all the prior brides, like you do). Good times.” - Brendan
https://twitter.com/Daximed/status/898603661680455680
https://twitter.com/amandaesque/status/898388033774526465
Booth
We were a part of the Indie Game Developers’ Network booth, sitting on a corner for the whole convention, greeting fans, pitching games, and having a great time! We loved it every time someone came up to tell us about some awesome game they’d run, or some awesome experience they had—especially when they were coming straight from our game room! And we’re hopeful that so many people who’d never heard of us before will get to have fantastic games with their new books!
“Signing multiple awesome fans' books, hearing their stories about their awesome Masks games, and getting to write ‘You should play the Beacon more’ so it's permanently embedded in their books—priceless.” - Brendan
“Teaming up with the IGDN again this year made the booth a wonderful experience from setup to staffing to teardown. And working the booth gave me the opportunity to meet some fans and professionals who have been making some amazing content, including Nerds and Stuff!” - Marissa
https://twitter.com/ChadERoberts/status/900098945359257601
Everything else
GenCon is always so many things, all at once, for us, and this time it was no different. It was a chance to run and play games; a chance to be with incredible people from all over the world; a chance to have fun conversations and nerdy arguments; a chance to eat, drink, and be merry; a chance to celebrate this hobby that we love so much.
“Sharing meals with some awesome company: IGDN, JWP, Magpie, and all the unscheduled food outings that allowed me to chat, eat, and drink with great folks.” - Marissa
“Meeting all of the wonderful people who came to the We Have Always GM’d panel I did with Michelle Lyons-McFarland and Darcy Ross was pretty amazing - I loved talking to the women who made it over to the booth later.” - Sarah
We had a grand time just being with people, and even just being with each other on the Magpie team. Thank you to everyone who made GenCon an awesome experience for us, whether it was by telling us congratulations, or thanking us for our games, or telling us about your experiences with our games, or being entertaining and brilliant people to talk to.
https://twitter.com/Daximed/status/899487442545377281
*Indie Groundbreaker pic courtesy of Gnome Stew & John Arcadian. Pics of Magpies eating, cuddling, and feeding Tepig courtesy of Morgan Albertson. See more of Tepig's adventures at @DarthPinkHippo.
