Origins 2024

Big show, good weekend.

Last week I went to the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, for the first time since 2018. Back then I was still running Cheapass Games, still excited about selling my first casino game, and still hosting an Origins-themed podcast with Mike Selinker every evening from the Hyatt bar.

It has, as you can imagine, been a while.

This year was the 50th anniversary of Origins, and the Origins Awards, and so the Academy invited all the members of the Hall of Fame as guests. My duties included signings and some ad-hoc playtesting, and in exchange for this I received a badge and room. 

It was great to see all my industry friends and to make a few new ones, and I spent a good deal of the weekend playtesting a new board game, codenamed “Candy.”

Wednesday

Alaska Airlines has a direct flight from Seattle to Columbus, and I have enough status that I get free legroom. Alaska has actually been bombarding me recently with this ad where a customer is gobsmacked that he can actually move his legs in premium class, and it seems like nothing but an anti-ad for their own coach seats. Like, maybe you should compare yourself to your competitors instead of reminding me that most of your product sucks?

I have marketing on the brain these days. I’m thinking about spinning up a new line of crowdfunded games, similar to the early games of Cheapass: lightweight, funny, approachable. They can’t be the cheap impulse buys at the local game shop any more, because the world is a different place, but they can at least still be easy to pick up and play, which was always the best thing about Cheapass Games.

So this weekend I was working on a possible new entry in that catalog, a roll-and-move game about candy. I am trying to approach design in the same unfettered way that I did in the early days of Cheapass. For example, everyone knows that roll-and-move is a terrible format. Everyone rolls their eyes when I say I’m making one. So I’m ignoring them all, and making a roll-and-move game, because that’s exactly what I would have done in 1996.

To be honest, I did some of my best work when I didn't know what I was doing

Wednesday was a travel day, so there wasn’t much of note. Someone recognized me on the elevator and asked “so, you’re retired now?” and I said “is that the same as unemployed?”

And then on the way to picking up my badge, I snapped a picture that sums up my feelings about that question.

I feel you, cabinet. I feel you.

Thursday

My first Origins was in 1996, when I was demoing the XXXenophile card game for Studio Foglio. By the next year, I had my very own 10x10 booth with Cheapass, working late hours and sleeping four to a room. 

Back then, there was a late night stealth awards ceremony that roasted the industry’s worst ideas, and Cheapass Games was a topic of derision. Someone said “let’s see if they are still around next year.” Or so I heard; I was not cool enough to get invited to these things. Today that event is long gone, and oh actually so is Cheapass Games, but at least I’m pretty sure we outlasted them.

On the way to the exhibit hall Thursday I passed a couple who said “we love everything you do,” and that more than made up for the “retirement” conversation. Thanks, random strangers.

They assigned the special gaming guests to a small autograph zone in the back of the exhibit hall. There were nine tables with black drapes, blue signs, and not much traffic. Someone had a theory that the fans were scared to come visit with us. They might have thought they had to pay money, since right next door were real celebrities (Adrian Paul, Adrianne Palicki, Jonathan Coulton, you know, “real,”) who were charging for interactions.

But no, I don’t think people were scared. They just weren’t generally interested. So the gaming celebs were just sitting there being bored. I caught up with some friends, played games for an hour, and then went to lunch at the North Market.

The North Market is a farmer’s market one block from the convention center, filled with delightful lunch options. Of course I’m a boring eater, so I just had a hamburger and a kadaif, which is a Turkish dessert that looks like a baklava with hair.

I wandered the hall and played a few games in the UnPub area, which is the official playtest-your-games space across the hall from the hall. I mean, across the pedestrian pathway from the exhibit hall. I didn’t have a scheduled slot in UnPub, but I happily plopped down at any empty table. I got to see some other designers working on their own games, and also pulled out Linos and Papa.

I played Candy once during my 3:00 signing and once again immediately after. This game is super young, so we were changing rules a lot, but it was fun to watch people having fun. The game uses a familiar mechanic of rolling dice and sliding forward to a space of the matching color, but it adds the choice that you must use only one of those moves, and give the other one to a master pawn that represents the title character. That master pawn is a bit like Doctor Lucky, moving around the board in the opposite direction and making trouble for the players.

The early days of Cheapass were all about the master pawns. Doctor Lucky, Huzzah, Parts Unknown, Captain Park. And like I said, I’m trying to harken back to that early-days spirit. So far that seems to be working.

My dinner was boring. I grabbed a sandwich at Subway, and then I hung out a bit in the Hyatt bar. After I had had enough people for one day, I snuck away to my room and watched Anthony Bourdain go to the Congo.

Friday

I had signings at 11:00 and 3:00 every day, like clockwork. Breakfast Friday was the second half of last night’s sandwich, followed by a coffee from the disappointing Starbucks. (No fraps? What Starbucks “isn’t making fraps?”)

I played Candy a few more times, trying to figure out the economy. In short, you collect candy on the outside track, then move into the center and spend it to win carnival games, which are worth points. You roll dice to help you win those games, but whatever you don’t roll, you can spend. This turns out to be a tricky economy to balance, and I’m still working on it. But every playtest teaches me something, often that pushing things in one direction causes them to move in the other.

To compare it to a real-world example, my hotel’s free in-room sugar-and-creamer packets had only one creamer in them, where I’m used to seeing two. My assumption is that they reduced that component to save money, but in the case where a customer like myself wants two creamers, I’m breaking open a second packet and throwing away twice as much sugar. So they might be losing money by being cheap. This is a silly example, but it illustrates how trying to push a system in one direction can end up having the opposite effect (see also: government).

As I said before, people are observably enjoying themselves in this game, and I think that is a good start. Usually at this point in a playtest I see people struggling to figure out what is going on, and I’m struggling to make that easier. Making a game “fun” is usually the hardest part, and balancing the economy is comparatively easy. I have so many ways to adjust it, and so many other games as reference points. 

At least, that’s how I feel today. Three months from now, this thing may have become an unplayable monster. But I’m sanguine at the moment.

Friday night I went to the Origins Awards. You had to look pretty hard to find this event on the schedule (I’m being generous here; I never found it, but people told me it was there). So it was a fairly sparse affair, with an audience of nominees and nominators, plus the occasional lookie-loo like myself. 

In times past I’ve been a presenter, an emcee, and a nominee, sometimes all three. In ‘98 someone had to trick me into showing up for the first time, because I won two awards that I wasn’t expecting. By the next year (I think) they had conscripted me into being the host. And some time later (they think it was ‘02, I think it was ‘04) they decided to add me to the Hall of Fame at the last minute, and never wrote it down.

These days I sometimes lament that I’m not the host, and then I tell the kind of joke that suggests why I’m not. But I did have fun spooking Stephen Buonocore, who was this year’s emcee, by telling him that when I did that job I had a crew of joke writers in the front row. (It’s true). Different show, different time.

It was great to see some of my friends and their products inducted into the Hall of Fame. But as for this year’s new games, it was clear that I spend very little time in game stores, because I had not heard of any of them. It’s great that so many new games come out every year, but maybe I am indeed retired after all.

They inducted Labyrinth (AKA The Amazeing Labyrinth) into the Hall of Fame this year, and its 80 year-old inventor Max J. Kobbert was on hand to accept. That was pretty special; long before I was a game inventor, I worked in the games section of a Seattle toy store, and I remember Labyrinth from those days. Kobbert read his acceptance speech in German, and his translator stood next to him reading the same speech in English. I figured, why not just hand the English translation to Max, and he can read that himself?

See, this is probably why I’m not the host any more.

Saturday

This morning I ate another leftover Subway half-sandwich, and then bought a latte at the Hilton, a brand new hotel located halfway between the Hyatt and the convention center. This hotel is so new that I had trouble registering it as real. The last time I was at Origins, there was nothing at all in this space, not even a hole in the ground. As far as I remember, there was not even space for a hotel. It’s like the Hilton added more space to a block that was already full.

I messaged a friend who had been looking for me on Friday night, only to find out that his borrowed car had caught fire on the way home, and he probably would not be coming back. He sent me a video of his car on fire. I imagined it went something like “Well, the check engine light was on, but I could hear the engine, so it was definitely still there. In fact it was making so much noise it was almost like there was TOO MUCH engine…” And then fire.

Playing Candy at the morning signing hour, we came up with the idea of limiting the resource bank, so that when the bank ran out we could start stealing candy from each other. This is like what we just did to Linos, which now has a shared scoring bank, and it turned out to be good for Candy as well. In theory, players will steal from the richest player, or the point leader, and in theory that helps to balance the economy. But it is only one piece of a complicated puzzle, and there are many more pieces yet to find.

I like to say that it’s the game designer’s job to do the math so that the players don’t have to. I want someone to be able to play this game and just assume that the economy is balanced, and so that’s the work we have to put in.

Midday I strolled through the exhibit hall, extremely happy that I was not responsible for shipping, building, staffing, running, and breaking down a booth. You can’t really enjoy this sense of relief until you’ve done it.

In the evening I sat with Jeff Morrow at the Hyatt bar, and worked out a better set of two-player rules for Whispers. We played with the Papa deck, a new deck (and new game) just added to the Whispers page. There were some issues with the two red suits not seeming to be the same color, but luckily it was just my crappy home printer and not the original art.

There was a Jonathan Coulton concert Saturday night, but I decided not to go. I couldn’t tell if I needed a ticket, and also it was very late, and also also I get to see that same show stretched out over a seven-day cruise every Spring. So instead I played games and talked shop with the folks in the bar. Saturday is a “last chance” evening for a lot of people, and we all stayed up late.

I played another game about candy that someone had recently bought, and it was so bad that we ended up making a completely new game with the same parts. Because that’s what we do. (Actually it basically became Pirate’s Bluff, because of course it did.) And I played a new trick-taker that was still in development. It needed a few, shall we say, complete overhauls.

Someone tried to spirit me away to the bar at the top of the Hilton, but I stayed in the familiar place. I’m still really not sure if the new hotel is real.

Sunday

I had no signings and no official schedule on Sunday, so my plan was to take over a table in the bar and play games all day. I got through a few tests of Candy, one test of Tomb of the Ancients, and a few other games. I stole away for a pizza at lunchtime: Jet Pizza makes lovely cheap crunchy thick-crust pizza and sells two slices and a soda for $6.50.

The hotel staff broke down all the other gaming tables in the early afternoon, but we stayed planted and they worked around us. By the time I had a chance to grab dinner, the only food left in the food court was Jet Pizza again, and since they were also about to close, they gave me twice as much as I asked for, which meant I had pie for breakfast. So yeah I ate kinda junky on this trip.

I played and chatted late into the night again, with the skeleton crew of folks who stuck around until Monday. I was delighted that later in the evening, an RPG broke out on our gaming table, meaning that the hotel staff still hadn’t managed to break it down. 

Monday

I rolled out slowly the next morning, ate my last slices of crunchy cold pizza, and spent four hours waiting at the food court outside security at the airport because I forgot that Alaska doesn’t open their front desk until two hours before the flight leaves, and they only have one flight.

I spent some quality time with other folks who had the same problem, and then flew home with more legroom than in those lousy coach seats.

You’ll hear more about Candy soon, as I figure it out more, and decide what other games might belong in this line of “New Cheapass-Style Games,.” I also need to figure out what I’m going to call that brand, because everything I think of is already taken.

Stay tuned!

Lego bricks and a game about candy.