No event placement update this week yet - expect a huge dump next week, though. Big stuff, I hope. I've got my fingers crossed.

This week, though, I figured I'd give a few quick examples of games that caught my attention during the review process. This is hugely slanted towards RPG and is totally influenced by my personal idiosyncratic taste in games, but basically it's a quick list of the games I'd be registering for if I had any free time at the con.

I used to wait until the show itself to figure out what games I would play (mainly because I'd spend most of my time running games and would rarely end up with time for a con game anyway). I'd grab a program book and just go through circling everything that looked interesting, then I'd see if I could fit it into my schedule.

First off, I'm gonna say I'd be most excited about playing Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. I used to be a hard-core D&D hater but my friends eventually got me fully invested in 3E. I've played a brief sample of 4th and everything I've heard about it damn near perfect - so I can't wait for that and I'm glad to see a fair number of people have already submitted 4E games.

There are also a number of other games I'd love to try out in the convention environment:

• Rain of Fire and Catalyst Game Labs are both running a ton of Shadowrun 4th edition games and I still haven't had a chance to really try it out.
• Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy also looks very interesting, though I'm much more into the background and the world than the system. I had an... interesting experience with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
• I've always had a soft spot for Vampire and the World of Darkness so I like it when I come across those submissions too. I'd like to see someone running Wraith or Mage: The Ascension using the new rules set.

As for specific games.. let's see...

•  Infinite Imaginations is running 2 RPGs (RPG00902 and RPG00903) using the Hero System based on the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries The Lost Room. I've never messed around with Hero, but the show was great.
• An independent GM (James Blaze) is running a Dune game (RPG00629) that promises some intrigude: House Olin hosts a planet wide celebration and trade delegation every 10 years. Only 5 major houses are invited to determine which house will be given trading rights with House Olin. House Adici is sending delegates to negotiate in their interest. They bring a gift of a 1200 year old kindjal blade that was used to assassinate an ancestor of Olin's current Viscount. The assassin was from House D'murjzin. A rival house of Adici's at the delegation.
• Ron McClung submitted a game that's short on details (the description is just "Players investigate the disappearance of a Hawkwood noble thought lost to the jaws of a space kraken.") but it's Fading Suns and that's always worth a look.
• Infinite Imagionations is also running an Inspectres game (RPG00884 Things That Go Bump in the Night Thump! Thump! What could be making that noise in old Ms. Richardson's house? It's up to you and your team of investigators to find out. Inspectres is player driven storytelling, rules light, with role playing & fun emphasized. "We fight the forces of darkness, so you don't have to!"), which is something any fan of indie-type games should not miss.
• One of my favorite games of all time is Nobilis, even if I've never been able to get enough people together to finally pull it off. 13 Oak Lane Productions is running 2 sessions of it over the weekend (RPG00593 & RPG00596, Pandora's Key "They say that Pandora's Box contained all the woes and evils of the world, and until they were released, Man lived in a golden age of glory. What if someone simply closed the lid again? Could humanity survive in a perfect world? Betrayal and mystery lurk on every side, and the fate of all the worlds rests in the hands of the Sovereign Powers. (Pre-generated characters only.)"). I can't recommend Nobilis highly enough for anyone who likes their RPGs a bit werid and pseudo-philosophy/metaphysics heavy.
• My other favorite game is probably Unknown Armies and as luck would have it, there are two sessons of that submitted so far by Todd Furler (RPG01341 & RPG01342, A Hole in the World, "Victor Kjeldsen always gets what he wants. Always. Now he wants the only thing you can't do without."). It's an amazing, flexible game - another good game for those who like to idly ponder metaphysical symbolism as much as they like to shoot bad guys.

So those are some of the RPGs that caught my attention, mainly because they happened to be games I already have a knee-jerk pre-disposition to love 'em anyway. I wasted way too much time with my old gaming group pouring through some of those gems and it always warms my heart to see 'em come up again. It can be very hard to find people who have read Nobilis or Blue Planet and even harder to get enough of 'em to play it. One of the things I'd always loved about cons in general and Gen Con in specific was that you could almost always count on at least one session of even the weirdest game.

So gimme more of that, folks - more weird games, and more old games brought back! Let's see some more Planescape and Dark Sun stuff in the new 4th edition rules. Play around with stuff and indulge in those games you never get to play at home, for whatever reason.

That's what Gen Con's for.