PAX (Penny Arcade) runs a series of gaming conventions (East, West and South), and has for years. They are big shows. Last year (2017) was the first year for PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, a gaming convention geared exclusively to tabletop and roleplaying games, not computer games. I've had an interest in going, but hadn't followed through.
Fast forward to mid-week last week, when I texted Ryan and Josh and said "PAX Unplugged is this weekend...bummer we didn't plan something". Turns out Ryan was available (Josh was not), so I bought two tickets for Saturday.
I elected to drive down to give me flexibility for coming and going as I pleased. Ryan chose to take the train down and meet me. Which we did.
The show was at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Center City Philadelphia, and was pretty huge. Estimates from 2017 had attendance numbers at 45,000 turnstiles, or likely 15-20,000 distinct people (accounting for multi-day attendees). Tickets purchased days before the event would be waiting at the Will Call window. The show opened at 10:00am. So I got there around 9:15. Found the right place to go in this huge place, and had our two passes by about 9:45. Ryan met me soon after, and we waited in the huge lines to get in when the doors opened.
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| The Hordes assemble pre-opening |
The place was even bigger than I had imagined, with an absolutely massive open gaming and dealer area on the second floor, and another huge tournament gaming space on the lower level. A variety of conference rooms and theater rooms for panel discussions were scattered in other places.
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| Philadelphia Convention Center |
The dealer area was impressive. Every imaginable kind of board game and role playing game was represented. My purchases for the day were modest. A few oversized d20 dice on a whim (2 large and 1 huge)...you can never have too many dice, especially odd ones!
Gale Force 9 monster card sets for challenge ratings 1-5 and 6-16 (these are new releases). A half dozen blister packs of unpainted D&D miniatures from
WizKids (including 3 of the hard to find and expensive-on-eBay Beholders). And a second copy of
Dungeon World from the
Burning Wheel booth, but more on that later.
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| Ryan checks out a weird sic-fi Wild West thing |
There were a few things that struck me about the dealer area, the main one being the number of dealers that were selling extremely high end stuff. There were several dealers selling dice made of fancy woods, metal and semi-precious gemstones. Now...I love dice...and own many more than any one person would ever need. But I draw the line, at this point anyway, at buying a set of 6 or 7 polyhedral dice for $25. Or $50. Or $100. Or more. Of which there were many options to do so. There was also a dealer (Wyrmwood?) selling all sorts of beautifully crafted wooden items such as dice trays, dice boxes, etc. Nice stuff for sure. And the people selling $5,000+ custom gaming tables. Beautiful stuff. All of which were getting a lot of traffic, and from what I could tell, a lot of sales.
I have become a fan of several people who are Twitch streamers, primarily via their posting VODs on YouTube, which I can watch/listen to in the background when doing other things around the house. These folks are mainly D&D streamers and/or game designers. My favorite among these is Adam Koebel, the co-author of
Dungeon World, and the Dungeon/Game Master for a number of streaming game series on Twitch/YouTube. I find Adam to be an excellent Game Master and a very insightful voice on game design and game mastering via his series Office Hours. Anyway...Adam was one of three panelists doing an hour on Heavy Metal and Fantasy Role Playing games. Luke Crane, another well-known game designer (
The Burning Wheel,
Mouseguard, etc) was also one of the panelists. The panel was entertaining and funny. And seeing Adam in person was kinda cool.
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| Heavy Metal and RPGs panel (Adam Koebel) |
Another set of Dungeons and Dragons celebrities that I got to see and say "hi" to were the player cast of
Dice, Camera, Action, a streaming show on the official D&D channel.
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| The "Waffle Crew" from Dice Camera Action |
Rounding out the day was a bit of fanboy fun. Adam Koebel was at the
Burning Wheel company booth (distributors of his game) for a part of the afternoon, and I stopped by to get my copy of the book signed. I knew he was scheduled to be there and had brought the book from home. We chatted for a few minutes, and thankfully, he seemed to be a really nice guy. The risk of meeting a celebrity that you like (which he is within the RPG niche) is that they will turn out to be a jerk. Not that you can tell much within a minute or two or three, but a disappointing bad impression only takes a moment. As I said, thankfully that wasn't the case and he seemed really nice. I must admit that it felt a bit weird to have a fanboy moment with someone 20 years my junior, but whatever... I told him that my 14 year old daughter Grace recognizes him on the computer as "the cool pink-haired D&D guy". He laughed and signed another book for her. Nice.
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| Adam Koebel and my signed Dungeon World!! |
Soon after, I headed home. It was a good show. Huge and crowded, but manageable because of the amount of space. As big as it was, I ran into two different people that I knew; something I would not have expected.
One last comment would be regarding the organization of the show. Professional and first class all the way. The volunteers helping to run the convention wore purple t-shirts labelled "Enforcer". They were everywhere, knowledgeable and polite. Very well done. Assuming it's back in Philly next year, I'll be back.
