PAX East: Day 1, The RPG Hub SHOPS!
Well here we are on day two of our trip. We are tired after only an evening and half day. Our feet are worn and smell of foul things that man should not know of. Our arrival to the expo was delayed due to an emergency. I had run into a potential allergic reaction so we rushed to the local medial center. It’s not a way to visit your first location but we did end up eating at a shady place called The Tavern in a basement of an old home. Soooo yeahhh!
The Boston medical system is very good but this is from a Quebecer perspective. Apparently the rest of Canada is treated as good. Hrmpfh! Treated fast and efficiently and very polite. It ended up it was simply a anxiety attack but they provided me an emergency anxiety medication to take and gave me allergy meds to help just in case. As Canadians we were very entertaining to the staff and were endlessly joking around with them. They even mentioned we were one of the best patients to go through. So score one for the RPG Hub.
So after our medical visit we collected the meds at a local store and looted on american cereal we could not have here. Always a must!
Finally we were on the road to PAX. The rest of the trip went very smooth except the weaving through traffic at the end but we’re from Quebec so it’s normal for us. We also got sweet parking in the dark depths of the hotel parking. It took us awhile to find our way back to the hotel via hidden elevators. I say hidden just because we could not find it.
After dropping all our items off in our room we headed to the convention center. Ahhh the sweaty sweet smell of geeks! It was pretty quiet by the time we go there but we got our swag bags and started looking around the floor. Oh note are a lot of card and board games. Randy over at Steve Jackson Games gave us a very nice demonstration of a game called Zombie Dice. It is VERY pick up and play. We had a game completed in roughly ten minutes but we laughed and had a great time. Essentially you have a cardboard can filled with dice. The objet is to collect as many brains as possible without 3 shot gun blast. You can keep rolling till you cumulate the 3 shot gun blast however if you reach it, you loose all your brains you collected by rolling. You essentially have to gamble as much as you can and then bank your brains till your next turn.
We also played another game called Cthulu Dice which was also another very simplistic game. You all start with three green beads. You are to each take turns rolling the Cthulhu Die. You roll and select an opponent to attack. They roll as well to defend and can potentially stop you or they loose a sanity. The object is to each take a turn, attack whomever you please and eliminate your opponents. It’s very fast and ended in roughly 10 minutes as well. Excellent games and will be very affordable.
We then hit one of the local stores in the area to peruse. I had bought myself Munchkin as it was fun silly little boardgame for the family. I then did the unthinkable….I bought the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Oh yes I have been rough on it as you noticed in the previews however I am going to objectively give it a shot. Initial unpacking thoughts are that it’s extremely well put together and we are pleased.
Neil purchased a board game called Androids which he was very content. The bearded man at the counter was very amusing and always seemed to have a story to tell. His kid looked so drugged up but hey he was there.
We ventured on the two other floors checking things out. Some companies were closing up while others setting up for the next day. We were hoping the following day would be much more shop filled but also have more interesting content. We noticed Dark Sun Previews the following day so we were psyched to try it out. Oh yes we wanted to try it out.
Finally after checking the initial sights out we headed for food…and NOTHING WAS OPEN. You would think convention plus internal mall = money for staying open extra late soooo we headed back to the hotel and ordered in since we were beat. The food was pricey but damn was it good. Very good! And then we went to sleep for day 2 excitements to come.
