June Hobby Gaming News Roundup: Origins Convention Reports and ...

Faithful MTV Geek readers, you may have noticed a lack of hobby gaming news over the past two weeks, as I have been away from work to celebrate the birth of my daughter. Fear not, for you can look forward to periodic news round-ups until I return, as well as a slate of guest reviews throughout the month of July from some of the web?s best board game reviewers. That being said, let?s get on with the first of such news roundups, covering all of the biggest recent developments in hobby gaming:

Gamers, we have a lot to discuss. The Summer convention season is in full swing. Origins Game Fair has come and gone, while Gen Con is right around the corner, and every day brings a flurry of hobby gaming news. New products have been announced, companies have changed business models and in some cases even ownership, and more info has been revealed on some highly anticipated releases.

Role Playing Games:

• Evil Hat Productions, an RPG publisher, has decided to expand into board and card game publishing. Their first two products of this type, the board game Race to Adventure and the card game Zeppelin Armada, will be based on their popular Spirit of the Century RPG property. [Evil Hat Productions]
• Speaking of licensed RPG properties, Green Ronin Publishing has taken their Free RPG Day offering of the Dragon Age RPG Quickstart Guide and provided it on their website as a free download. Fantasy Flight Games has also done the same for their Warhammer 40k inspired Black Crusade RPG. If you haven?t yet checked out these great RPG adaptations, here is your chance.?[Green Ronin Publishing, Fantasy Flight Games]

• Licensed RPGs made their waves at the Origins Games Fair as well. Tracy from the Troll in the Corner gaming blog attended the con and snapped this shot of the upcoming Lord of the Rings RPG, One Ring, set to be published by Cubicle 7 later this year.
• One of the hottest purchases at Origins was the print edition of Jason Morningstar?s?The Fiasco Companion, the first expansion book to an RPG best described as ?a game inspired by cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong.? This book provides discussion on how to improve yourFiasco sessions, as well as offering new playsets and variants rules. A foreward by geek idol Wil Wheaton ties the whole package together. [Bully Pulpit Games]
• The Dresden Files RPG swept the role playing categories for this years Origins Awards. Taking ?Best RPG? for its core book and ?Best RPG Supplement? for Dresden Files: Our World.
  
• Paizo Publishing announced their second Pathfinder Fan Fiction Contest, offering credit to their web store to whoever can write the best original story set in their RPG universe.

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Board and Card Games:

• Some unreleased board games were sighted at Origins, including Days of Wonder?s Small World: Underground and Bandai?s Star Trek deckbuilding game, which the Game On! podcasters Cody and John shared a quick picture of during their play. Clever Mojo Games was also present at the con to show off their upcoming release Sunrise City.
• Gary Games released their first expansion to Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer at Origins. Ascension: Return of the Fallen is a 65-card set retailing for $ 30 that expands play groups up to six players and incorporates a new ?fate? mechanic that adds drastic game-changing card effects. Later in the week, Ascension?s iOS app was approved by Apple. This fully-playable version is the first deckbuilding card game to come to the iPhone and iPad, and it looks beautiful. We?ll be following up with a full review of this app later in the month. [Gary Games]

• There were winners across several board and card game categories for the Origins Awards, most notably including Castle Ravenloft as ?Best Board Game?, Catan Histories: Settlers of America Trails to Rails as ?Best Historical Board Game?, Zombie Dice as ?Best Family, Children?s, or Party Game? and Back to the Future as ?Best Card Game.? [Origins Awards]
• Winners of Germany?s Game of the Year awards (the Spiel des Jahres) were announced. Originally published in the US in 2006, the abstract game?Qwirkle debuted there this year and took top honors, edging out three-time nominee Matt Leacock?s Forbidden Island. A new award, the Kennerspiel des Jahres for strategic games went to fan favorite?7 Wonders.
  
• Zev Schlasinger of Z-Man games has sold his company to French publisher Filosofia, which will keep Zev on a head of the Z-Man imprint. Expanding the Filosofia family allows them an avenue to publish more American-style board games, while also allowing Zev to offload the demanding business workload that comes with running a small business on your own. The folks at Fortress Ameritrash were the first ones to get a one-on-one with Zev himself to explain the details of this acquisition.
• The Magic: The Gathering 2012 Core Set is releasing later this month, and we featured our own exclusive card preview on the site yesterday. Wizards of the Coast is slowly rolling out preview images of the new cards, also revealing the red enchantment ?Warstorm Surge? in a post to Wired?s GeekDad blog.
• Days of Wonder has launched a free-to-play online version of their World War II strategy game Memoir ?44. In addition, they have also released a .pdf download for the physical Memoir ?44 board game called Audie Murphy?s Campaign, which includes eight new scenarios.
• AEG has announced two new games, the first of which is another standalone expansion to the deckbuilding cardgame Nightfall. This set, Nightfall: Blood Country, will be released in time for Gen Con and promises to have new innovative uses for wound cards. AEG?s second game is part of their push to expand their hit Legend of the 5 Rings franchise into board gaming. The game, Ninja, focuses on the story of a lone Scorpion Clan ninja in his attempt to infiltrate the Lion Clan castle. With four players, it becomes a 2v2 team game with one side playing as the castle guards and the other playing as the lone ninja with a traitor accomplice. [AEG]

• The Mythos-themed novel Ghouls of the Miskatonic will include a mail-away offer for an exclusive card that adds the novel?s main character, Professor Oliver Grayson, to games of Arkham Horror. Elsewhere in Mythos board game news, Fantasy Flight Games announced the first print-on-demand expansion to Mansions of Madness, Season of the Witch, a single scenario pack available for $ 15.
  
• The authors of the Dice Hate Me blog and hosts of the State of Games podcast have made the jump from from critics to game designer with the debut of their first title,?Carnival. While still very early in development, a prototype was rapidly produced in time for Origins, where plenty of positive buzz came out of its playtest sessions.

Offbeat News:

• Some clever fellow decided to create a mashup of Foursquare and an area-control board game set in New York City. Titled World of Fourcraft, the website aligns players into factions themed after the five boroughs, and then uses Foursquare check-in counts to see what faction controls smaller segmented areas of the city. [via Mashable]
• The Gary Gygax Memorial Fund, established in honor of the late Dungeons & Dragons creator, has succeeded in its effort to establish a monument in his namesake. The city council of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Mr. Gygax?s hometown, has unanimously approved a motion originally presented by Mayor Jim Connors in January. Set to be built in a 10?10 foot area, plans for the memorial include ?a castle turret with a bust on top and possibly have a dragon wrapped around the turret.?
  
• In one of the oddest Kickstarter game projects we?ve seen, Pong Cano is a cross between been pong and a natural disaster. You should just check out the preview video on the project page to see what is going on here.

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Tags Evil Hat Productions, Foursquare, Origins Games Fair

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Source: http://www.mcgeeks.com/june-hobby-gaming-news-roundup-origins-convention-reports-and-more

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