Nick Ribera shares his experience at Origins Game Fair, a role-playing board game convention in Columbus, Ohio. He discusses his participation in various events, including playing games, playtesting his own game, and attending speed pitching sessions. Nick also interviews artists and creators at the convention. He highlights some of the games he played and the merchandise he purchased. Overall, he had a positive experience and plans to attend future conventions.
- www.limithron.com
- www.artofdavidwong.com
- www.anadia-chan.com
- www.ancientones.net
- www.savvyjensenart.com
- www.roundtabletcg.com
- www.ianmosscreative.com
- https://tangledeartharts.com
- www.andrew-heath.com
- www.pourovergaming.com
- Music by Old Romans: https://www.instagram.com/old_romans
You can listen to the episode here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or read the transcript below:
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (00:00.846)
Just a quick note about this episode before we get started. There is tons of footage filmed from this event, so I recommend you watch this on YouTube to get the best sense of what me and my guests are describing as they go through these products. Thank you.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (00:44.366)
Hey, Nick here. So let's see, this is me checking in from Origins. Origins Game Fair is a role -playing board game, just general gaming convention in Columbus, Ohio. This is my third time attending this event. First time was on my own, just seeing what it was like. Second time I actually vended. My wife and I had a booth. So that was kind of us on the other side of things.
And this time I'm kind of in the middle. I don't have a booth, but I am attending a lot of events, learning about a lot of games. And I also was here promoting and demoing and play testing Propagation Station, a game that my wife and I developed together. So I got a lot of great feedback during a speed pitch session from some of the developers. But I'm also using this as an opportunity to get some more...
Interviews for my podcast and meet some artists who I'd love to have on the show So let me take a look at what the schedule has been that I've worked on so far and kind of talk about How things have been so I arrived Wednesday the 19th Juneteenth Early ass flight Registered and the first game I played was gas lands. So gas lands is a game that
really just exists as a book. It's a set of rules on how to play the game and it's up to you to make all the components yourself. And the main component is Hot Wheels Cars. So you kind of use the templates and the rules in the game and dice and stuff to figure out if your cars are able to shoot the other cars and drive and you change gears. It's a really fun push your luck mechanic. I've had the book for years and I just haven't opened it. So it was really great to play that game and it was a lot of fun.
After that I was able to check into the hotel where I'm talking to you now at the Sonesta in Columbus Then at night I got to play the Battlestar Galactica board game. So this is a very popular board game It has been around for years and I've also owned a copy of it for years and so it's nice to actually finally get to play it and It was not as fun as I thought it would be
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (03:05.678)
It is a very old game, so things have changed since then. There's a lot of downtime as you wait for your turn. But it has a really cool mechanic of you don't know who's a Cylon, who's not. But I'm glad I got to play it, because now I can confidently sell my copy of the game, which has been out of print for years, so it's worth a good amount of money. So Saturday morning, I then went to the Unpub room. So the Unpub organization is for people who
want to play test their games that have not been published. So the unpubed room, you book time in this room, they give you a table, you have your game out and you just hope people come in wanting to play it. So it was during this session that I got to play my game, Provocation Station, with a very wonderful young lady who was obsessed with plants. She saw that I had posted on Facebook about this and she was really excited to try it out. She had a wonderful time. We did a two player game in one hour.
And my main concern with the game was that I felt like it was taking a little bit long. And it was wonderful that we finished that game in one hour. So that kind of helped assuage that. After that, I got to play Vagrant Song. Again, a game that I bought two years ago at Origins when it first came out and haven't been able to play it yet. Beautiful art style. It is kind of like early 1930s cartoon style.
Everyone plays vagrants who are riding the rails, but you all accidentally end up on a ghost train and you have to kind of use a little map to move around fighting, battling the bosses who are haunting this train. When that ended, I went over to speed pitching. So there is an event I signed up for where people who have developed their games can submit their idea and...
if you get chosen, you get to be in basically like a speed dating scenario. You set up your game at a table. This is all organized by the unpub people and publishers will rotate around the room every 10 minutes and you get to pitch your game to them to see if anyone wants to publish it. Now, I was always planning on bringing this to Kickstarter like all my other projects, but I figured why not? I'll apply to see if any publishers are interested and I got accepted out of 112 games. They picked
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (05:28.493)
12 people to participate in the speed pitching session. And so I was super nervous, but it was a really wild experience. The whole thing was a blur. The number one feedback I got from publishers was that the game seemed too long. For what you're doing, for the level of complexity, because it's not a very complex game, you should be finishing a lot sooner. So that's something that I definitely want to investigate with more play testing and see if ways...
that we can shorten the duration of the game. But everyone I've played with doesn't mind the duration because they have fun doing it. But that being said, fun does not equal to marketable. So people who look at that kind of game when you're describing that kind of game, you want to be able to tell them that they'll be able to finish a two player game in 45 minutes for a player game in an hour and a half. So definitely need to rethink that as far as making it more of a marketable game. So that brings me to this morning, Friday morning.
First game I played was Jewel of the Nile. Now, I signed up for this event because I was really hoping it'd be based on the movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner because I love Jewel of the Nile and I love romancing the stone. Turns out it is not. It is a role playing game that uses a system called Torgue and it is the most complex role playing game system ever. You use tokens, you use dice, you use cards.
You do a ridiculous amount of counting things, so every time you say you want to do an action, it's about three to four minutes before you find out if that thing was successful and to what level. I did not have fun at all playing this game, but I didn't want to be rude, so I sat there for the four hours and kept playing it. So don't come at me if you're a fan of the Torg role -playing game system. And then just kind of just walked around the...
Paul after that. I did a lot of great interviews with artists and creators who are selling things at this convention, so I'll be cutting to that towards the end of this. But I just came back from the Secret Cabal meetup. Secret Cabal is a podcast that I'm a huge fan of, I've been listening to for over 10 years, and they do a meetup at Origins board game convention every year. So I was really excited to be a part of that for the first time.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (07:48.077)
I met the people on the podcast, made a bunch of listeners, had a really good time there. And so tomorrow I have some more things on my list that I'm really excited to check out. So what I'm going to do is cut to some of the interviews I've done with artists so far. And when I come back to you, it will be a few days later letting you know how those events went. So thank you so much for listening and I will see you in a day or two. Thank you.
Hello everyone, my name is Tyler Stratton. I'm part of Limitron. We make pirate role -playing games. My brother is Luke Stratton, the creator and artist and one -stop shop for this lovely game called Pirate Board. It is a rules -like...
A scurvy ridden, undead infested pirate role -playing game set in an undead infested pirate Caribbean. It's got full naval combat rules in it and 100 monsters, 120 roll tables. You can play adventure in the back and these are all the rules you need to play all in one spot. We've got adventures and reference cards and character sheet pads. A lot of stuff is available on our website as well for free and we have fifth edition conversions for our monsters and naval combat rules as well if people want to play.
in this setting, but in the D &D 5E sort of market area. I like to show off our cool ships from tabletop things and different miniatures, show different ways that you can play the game. You can play 100 % theater of the mind, or you can go full miniatures, hex grids, water mats, the whole nine yards. As complicated as you want it to be, or as simple as you want it to be.
David Wong out of Orange County, California. Brick by brick design or art of David Wong. How long have you been doing this? 37 years. Okay. God, I feel old. What's your newest piece? My newest piece is Monster Island. I'm still working on it right now, but it's not finished yet. And what's your favorite piece? My favorite piece? my God.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (09:48.589)
I had fun doing most of the Godzilla's but I'm a big Rodin fan. But the Mecha Godzilla came out better than I expected. And the dragon is my first digital piece ever. And I did that two years ago. And you primarily work with markers? Yes, but now I'm a digital person so I work in conjunction with it. So I paint everything traditionally, I draw everything traditionally, then I scan it and then I put it in Procreate and clean it up. Okay, awesome. And where can people find you? Ardadevalong .com
There's my website, there's my Instagram, and there's my Facebook. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm Anadiah Tahn. I am a professional artist. I've been doing Comic -Cons and other nerdy events for about seven or eight years now. Anything you want to ask? So why do you specifically pick out origins across all the other events? Yeah, so I...
This is my first time here actually. I've never done this show before and I'm actually from Oregon so I flew a long way to get here. But I've heard the name around and I'm actually a huge gamer. I love you know tabletop gaming and video games and all kinds of games. And so this show really stood out to me you know and it seemed like it would be a really fun one to do and check out and so I'm here. Yeah. So which product line would you say has been your most
financially successful? It's really hard to say because every show is different. For this show my fans have been doing really well. They're kind of a newer product for me. I'm trying them out. It makes sense because Columbus seems to be pretty hot and humid this weekend. But overall I think everything is kind of a mixed bag. I do really well with everything I've got out.
And where can people find you? I'm on Instagram. I've got a website. I've got an Etsy store. Instagram is Anadiachan. My website is Anadiachan's creations for Etsy. I've got a shop there. I've got lots of enamel pins. I've got my prints. I've got my fans. A little bit of everything. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. My name is Alan Pannicle. I'm the artist and writer for Ancient Ones, which is my own creator -owned series.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (12:09.613)
How often have you been doing Origins? This is my sixth year doing Origins. Which of your product types would you say have been most profitable for you? Probably the Playmats. Which are all here in front of you. So these down here? Yeah, like these guys. This is a gaming show, right? So people tend to like the Playmats. Do you have minimum order quantities when you get these made that you have to meet? Or do you do them in a smaller batch? No, it depends on the product. Most of my vendors are pretty easy about how many I order.
How's it been so far? It's still pretty early, I guess. It's Thursday. It's fine. It's a little bit steady here. I don't expect much to pick up until tomorrow. And where can people find you? All my stuff's on ancientones .net. That's my website. And all my socials are AlanPanicalArt, except TikTok, because someone's squatting on my name. So there, I'm just the real AlanPanical.
Thank you so much. I'm Savi Judson. I paint landscapes. Okay. So is this your first time vending at Origins? Yeah, this is my first time here. Okay.
How has it, has it met your expectations or been disappointing or? It's been good so far, it's hard to tell because usually the biggest day is Saturday. So we're just starting out Friday now, but it seems like it's doing well so far. And what's your method? Digitalizing? Yeah, I'm digital. So I used to be an oil painter, so I kind of house that. It's a traditional look. Awesome. What's your software? I use Photoshop. Photoshop? Wow. Okay. And your device? So I have a...
Couple of them. I mostly use a Cintiq at home. When I'm traveling I have a Surface. And then I also like to use the iPad. Awesome. I use the Surface Studio. So, I'm a Microsoft kid. I just, I know. I love the processing power you get out of your own build. Yes. And I mean, I use the Surface Studio so I'm drawing right on the screen. And I love that I can do video editing and all that stuff on the same device that I'm drawing on. Yeah, for sure. What's your most recent piece?
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (14:06.093)
I think I finished Charmander and One Piece around the same time. But I think it was Charmander that's the most recent. What percentage of your sales would you say are fan art? I would say the vast majority of them. I think I have numbers on it.
I still have about like three to four found art pieces for every one original. Okay, awesome. Last question, where can people find you? SavvyJensenArt .com or just Savvy Jensen Art on all the things. So S -A -V -B -Y -J -E -N -S -E -N. Thank you so much. So my name is Bill DeVoe. I'm the lead designer president of Nimway Studios Designed Roundtable trading card game based on the Arthurian Legends and Knights of the Roundtable, hence the name. In the game you recruit knights, you give them equipment and titles,
send them on quests and you're trying to conquer different regions of Britain. We do actually have some information here on these little mini maps that shows you where exactly these different regions are in England and Wales. Your goal is to capture the most renowned from up to five regions so it matches five regions. Whoever gets the most renowned which is indicated by the crowns here, wins the game.
The idea is that the game takes place over the course of the seasons of a year and we move around. We have an active player who takes their turn first each season and then the other player takes their turn after that person has completed with their actions. So if we're in spring, for instance, then that's recruiting. That's where we bring cards from our hand into play. We have to pay for everything that is in play all the time. But...
We have an option where in autumn you could actually bring things from the table back to your hand and then stop paying for them. When we are doing them, we have your lands that you're playing with. We call them domains. And the domains have a progressive system adding resource points to your pool. So you start off with a farm that has one point. If you play a manor, you're now adding two points, so three total. You add a large manor, the next turn you're adding four points, which would be seven total.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (16:16.941)
And then when you get up to Castles, you have a full run of 25 points. So even Arthur would be a reasonable knight to bring out with 25 resource points. During the summer campaigns, after everyone's done with their spring, we go to summer. That's when we campaign. And we send our knights to attack individual regions. And that's where we are helping.
our knights are helping defend this region against our opponent's knights, but their knights are also helping that region defend against our knights. So we're competing for capturing these regions. We don't attack each other's knights. We don't attack each other's, so there's no life points or anything, which is, I think, a neat little dynamic in the game. We also have the ability to play quests. So for instance, if you were, like if I was here and I have Arthur attacking Huntington.
and you have Jaleeb attacking there, I could send Jaleeb on a quest to burn the witch. And since knights love nothing more than to go on quests, he's like, absolutely, let's go burn the witch. And then I am then unimpeded in being able to capture this and get eight points of renown. So you might decide then, well wait a second, I don't want him to do that, so I'm gonna play our princesses in another region and cancel that quest and get him back on track.
so that he can come up here and keep me from capturing that particular region. The benefit of completing quests though, because there's a reward when you complete a quest, is that you get to draw a number of cards equal to the points that were spent to play it. So if I had to spend five points to play this card, I could draw, the controller gets to draw five cards when that knight completes the quest. So sometimes it might make sense to actually give up.
a region to get the cards, you replenish your hand. Classroom redirects can be played on either side of the board, so you can play them on your knights to draw cards from your deck, or they can be used to draw cards, or they can be used to disable knights so that they can't participate in campaigning. During autumn, we resolve everything. We figure out, did anybody get captured? If they do, for instance, let's say this one, then we just simply replace that with a new region when all five regions are captured.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (18:37.357)
We figure out who has the most renown. The other end game condition is if one player needs to draw a card and they're unable to, that ends the game. But again, we just figure out who has the most renown and they win. Very cool. How long have you been working on the game? I've been working on the game for about 10 years. And the last two sort of finally got that team coalesced together to bring it to fruition. So it took a while.
It is out now. We just published in March. Okay. Officially. So it's available on our website, available here at Origins and not at GenCon. You don't have to go through this. Okay. People can order from our website or just roundcabletcg .com or square .site. Sorry. So did you do crowdfunding or did you just go directly to a manufacturer? Excellent question. We did crowdfunding. We did a Kickstarter last August during GenCon and then we barely...
We escaped over the line, but we got it. And then spent much of the fall and winter tweaking the game, taking in the feedback that we got from the first exposure play test hall, which I thought was really important. We got some really good feedback from that and made a ton of changes. Sent it to the printers, got it back in the end of February. Awesome. And then fulfilled our backers and then we launched on March 9th. Okay. And then how does it feel to be able to just start selling stock now?
Stressful or a relief? A little of both. I mean, I'm happy that we can. By the same token, it's... I think our main hurdle is awareness. So we just need people to be aware of the game and to know that it's out there and understand the sort of unique mechanics and what makes it different. It's a very balanced game. We're trying to make it so that it's...
It solves some of the traditional TCG problems. The good thing about our decks is that they're playable from the box, which is a huge problem with a lot of TCGs. You get, this is like one box worth of cards. So you get the cards that you need to be able to play the game and you get a good blend of all the different types of cards that you need to be successful with your deck. Would it be a competitive deck? Probably not out of the box. Is it playable?
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (21:02.317)
Absolutely. There's nothing else required for it. Even the metal turnkeeper isn't necessary. The box comes with this card turnkeeper and it comes with a rules card that just kind of goes through the rules for each season like what you can do. And then on the back is just a link, a QR code to the main website that has all of the game rules with a lot more detailed instruction on it. So where can people go to buy a copy? They can go to RoundtableTCG .com
There's a link on that page that'll take them to the square site or it's roundtable tcg .square .site if that's a hard one. And what's the MSRP for the starting deck? Great question. This is $24 .95 for 72 cards. Again, 45 main cards, five regions, 20 domains, and two rules cards. The treasure packs are 18 cards, so 15 main cards in three regions, and that's $6 .95.
Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, appreciate it. Hello there. My name is Ian Moss and this is Ian Moss Creative. So tell me about your technique, I guess process rather. Yeah. So I work in multiple medias. I'm a traditional painter and digital painter. So I have everything from acrylic and oil paintings here to digital hand painted pieces. So I work on a Wacom Cintiq. It's a computer monitor you can draw on.
So everything I do is still completely hand done. I've been doing this 20 years professionally, not necessarily at cons, but I've been a commercial artist for 20 years. But yeah, I'll start with a sketch, then I'll usually move to some kind of under painting. And then from there, I'll finish it out. But it takes anywhere from 20 hours to 120 hours depending on the artwork. So what's your software? So.
That's where it gets sticky, right? We all know Adobe just launched their new TOS PS. Yes. I'm sure we all heard about that on the market. For a long time, for all my career, I've been using Adobe. I am no longer using Adobe because Adobe, you suck. I have moved away. I saw the government just sued them. Yes. I'm so happy. They didn't sue them because of the TOS AI stuff though. They sued them because their cancellation policies. Yeah. So I'm hoping another suit comes along because of the TOS crap they tried to pull.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (23:28.685)
Anyways, outside of that, I now have switched to Rebel, and that's what I am painting in. I'm painting in Rebel 7 Pro, and then I've also switched to the Affinity Suite for all my design software. I'm using Capture One for my photography, and I'll probably move on to DaVinci for my video software. I use Q Image One for photography printing.
I'm still in the Adobe Suite for Lightroom and editing, but I paint with Clip Studio Paint. Okay, yes. And I have tried Clip Studio. I tend to work very, very big because I'm going to do large prints with most of my stuff. So the smallest, most of my paintings are at this point are about 24 by 36 or 36 by 36, but you're talking about go all the way up to 50 inches. What 300 DPI, some programs don't handle that so well and Clip Studio doesn't like...
traditional feeling brushes. So when you go to paint, it's like, dink, dink, dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. Rebel on the other hand, full speed, like as I'm painting and drawing with it, very responsive, feels like traditional media. So I've been very, very happy with that. Well, I've always found that Clip Studio Paint on my machine works way better than Photoshop ever does for painting. Photoshop is slaggy as hell when it comes to digital painting. So from my software, my experience. I have a powerhouse machine. It was a custom built machine.
like it's near maxed out on everything. We got probably 4K in the machine itself. But I found built -in Clip Studio brushes, that's true, they're faster. But when I imported my heavy textured, natural feeling Photoshop brushes into Clip Studio, it shaded them and it would like slow everything way down. But - So I usually work at 1200 DPI. Okay. Because I make tarot decks.
And so I always like to be able to blow them up to 18 by 12. That's kind of my 18 by 12 300, but I'm really doing like four by six 1200 DPI. Gotcha. And I've never had any issues with that. Okay. But I might have to try. I mean, right now I'm in the process of just kind of trying every single program. Plus it's nice to include studio paint. You can create either raster layer or vector layer. So you could paint small with all vector strokes and then blow it up when you're done. That's kind of cool. Yeah.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (25:48.525)
Yeah, I'm gonna have to try that. Like I said, because moving away from Adobe, I'm just doing everything. So what is your, I guess, for lack of a better term, product that sells best at events like this? So I cast a wide net. And I found that wide net is like I have some... The canvases are new. So, I mean, at fine art shows, the canvases do decent. The limited edition G -clays were the ones that were moving a lot.
Do you print these yourself or do you? So I have two different printers I go through for my prints. So I've got limited edition G -clays. These are going to be the fine art museum quality prints. They're not going to fade or yellow over time because it's archival pigment inks on archival paper. This is a 12 head machine process. But then I have another printer who does a cheaper version of a G -clay. So these are going to be my really expensive limited edition fine art ones.
but these new ones I just introduced, which are starting to pop off pretty well, these are still archival G -clays. They're just not as high of a quality as the other one. It's a six head machine and there's a little bit of a Mori pattern. If you're really close to it, you may or may not be able to see it. So these, I get less expensive, so I can sell them for $40 and buy two, get one free.
And at this show, I've already probably moved more of these than some of my limited editions at this point. It just depends. I've got new... I'm always kind of iterating and trying new products. But honestly, I make a lot more of my living doing commission work than I do on the shows. But that could change. So where can people find you? You can find me at all the socials. It'll be at Ian Moss Creative. I have a website, ianmosscreative .com.
shop .emilescreative .com and you can actually watch me livestream my artwork on Twitch. That's right, I actually do it all by hand and none of this crap right here. So if you want to have a great time, mess with me, hear cool stories and just watch my process. You can ask questions, whatever you want.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (27:59.469)
I want to twitch from time to time, but I've been bad about it because of back -to -back shows. Well, thank you so much Ian, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot, appreciate it. Thanks guys. I'm Addie Nielsen. I'm the owner and artist for Tangled Earth Arts. I've been making jewelry for about 20 years now. And this is what I do. So what's your favorite piece to make? It varies. Right now I'm really loving...
the really fancy chainmail necklaces that I'm making here, but I also love my new rings that I'm making. Are those cast silver? They're actually, I use it, it's called silver metal clay. I love that stuff. Yeah, it's so cool. Yeah, and you bake that in an oven at home, right? In a kiln. In a kiln, yeah. So it has to be in a kiln because the oven doesn't quite get up high enough temperature to fuse the silver particles together.
So what has been your best selling piece this con? Right now it's definitely the earcuffs over here. There's not many to show off anymore because they're almost all gone. But they're a fairly new design and they're just, they're so much fun. They're fun to wear and they make you feel really pretty. And how has this con met or not met your expectations so far? It's been good so far. This is my third year at Origins and we're...
do consistently well here. And where can people find you if they want to follow your stuff or buy your things online? So you can find me on Facebook or Instagram at Tangled Earth Arts and on there I also post my schedule throughout the year. Next up I'll be at Wizardly World in Kent and then later this year I'll be at DragonCon. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. My name's Andrew Heath and I'm a graphic designer and illustrator. Awesome. So looking at your stuff here, what...
What software are you using? How are you starting off? I'm using Adobe Illustrator. So these are all vector -based pieces. Wow. So it's Illustrator from start to finish, all the texturing and everything too? Yep. Sometimes I'll, depending on which piece, like if it's like more organic, I'll draw it out and then put it in Illustrator. But it's stuff that's a little more geometric, shape -based. I'll do it all in Illustrator. Very cool. Do you do, is it like all fan art or do you also have originals you do? I do some original stuff, but the bulk of what I do is...
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (30:20.685)
fan art. I like pop culture art. there you go, pop culture art. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just like super into all the video games and movies, so that's kind of really what I like focus on. So you enjoy doing that stuff rather than feeling obligated to? Yeah, yeah, love it, love it. Okay. And so how many cons or events like this would you say you do per year? I usually do about 25 to 30. Okay. Yeah. What would you say is your newest piece and which one would you say is your favorite piece? My newest piece? My newest piece?
So the way that I release things is I do them in batches. So like when I start off a new year, like a new tour, I'll always have like some new work. So some of my newer ones are like the Totoro, the Baymax, Bob's Burgers, Star Trek. But my favorite piece, my all time favorite piece is this Mayor McChese piece here. Cause I'm really into burgers. That's my logo. It's like a burger skull, but I just, I love how that turned out. And how do you go about ordering prints? Ordering?
You can order my prints from my website which is www .andrew -heath .com Awesome, thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it. I'm Jay, I run 4 Over Gaming and I make handmade resin dice. So tell me about the process, are you using smooth on resin or a different brand? Yeah, I use a bunch of different brands of resin depending on what I'm kind of feeling throughout the day and what might be best suited for the design I'm working.
Do you only do dice or do you do other resin things? Dice is kind of the main thing right now. I do have a couple of things I've been kind of tinkering with, but for right now it's just dice for tabletop role -playing games. How'd you come up with the coffee theme? Coffee has always been a big part of my life. My grandmother is very Finnish and has introduced me to coffee at a very young age.
I've been drinking coffee since I've been about nine or so and it's just been a thing I've grown up with and I've grown to love over the years. How has... is this your first time at Origins? It is my first time at Origins. Has it met your expectations, exceeded, fallen short so far? Or what expectations do you even have going in? So, this is our first really big con. So, we didn't really know what to expect. So, we decided that having...
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (32:41.805)
lowest expectations possible would probably be best and so far it's exceeded. I've been able to engage with a bunch of people about dice, a bunch of different artists as well as a surprising number of people about coffee. So that's been super fun. And so where can people find you and your stuff online? www .poorovergaming .com should get you to our card with all of our socials. But if on any social platform we're at, at Poor Over Gaming. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
Hi, I'm Jared. I'm Jordan. So what was your favorite game you've played so far? I played Wandering Towers for the first time. Wandering Towers. I really liked it. It was pretty cool. So probably my favorite so far. What about you? We played Keyletar. Scott? Wait, no, I can't remember. The keyboard game.
Why can we not know the name? That was really cool. And a good little twist on trick takes. Any games you didn't like? Not so far. No? Yeah. I think we played Sandbag and I think we just had a rough first play of it. But I wouldn't say it was a bad experience at all. I spent four hours playing a horrible role playing game and I just didn't want to be rude and leave. That happens sometimes. Is this your first time at Origins?
This is my third year. This is my second. What about for the meetup? First time doing this? Yes. First time. My name's Caleb. And I'm Ryan. Is this your, is this your first time at Origins? My fourth time at Origins. Second year. Okay. And how many times have you been to this meetup? First time. This is the first time in a while, so yeah. Well yeah, this is probably my third time. We've been there once before. We went to Gen Con, what was it, like 2018? I went to two Gen Con meetups and this is my first Origin meetup.
So which merch are you playing with? MerchSuit are you working with? Origins. The Origins merch here. Yep. Awesome. So, how would you say... I guess are you employees of Origins? volunteers. Volunteers. Okay. Do you also volunteer at other conventions? I have volunteered for ASMO Day before at Gen Con. Yeah. you haven't volunteered anywhere else. No, no, no. Have you played any games that were new to you that you really liked that got you excited? this year? Yeah.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (35:08.621)
Honestly, the only game I've played is X -Men Insurrection, which I mean, it's an older one, but it's kind of like Elder Sign. Okay. So you enjoyed it? Yeah, yeah, it wasn't bad. All right, so I am now back from Origins, back home in St. Petersburg, Florida. So I'm, hopefully you've enjoyed some of those interviews I've played for you. I'm going to go over what I did for the rest of the scheduled trip and I'll do a little show and tell of some of the things I picked up.
So, let's see, I last left you when I went to the meetup for the Secret Cabal Gaming podcast, which was a lovely time on Friday night. So Saturday morning, I was able to play in the Great British Bake Off Role Playing Game. This was a really, really fun time, probably the most fun I had in a game throughout the whole weekend. It was a homebrew system.
I forgot the creator's name, but I connected with him on Instagram afterwards to try and help him get this into something published. But it was really fun. It was a very simple role playing game. Each person created a character who was competing on the show and we all had three stats. So there was creativity, expertise and experience. No, it was experience. Creativity, experience and Britishness.
And anytime you had three failures in a row, you'd have to roll for Britishness to see how good you are at hiding your emotions. It was really fun, just kind of improving recipes at the top of our mind. After that, I had lunch at the North Market, which if you've ever been to Columbus, you know, it's an amazing food hall with some of the best food. I was very excited to revisit that Polish counter, Hubert's Polish Deli, amazing food.
then around 1 PM I got to play planted, which is a game that's at target and Walmart. It's easy to find game, but I hadn't played it before. And because, my wife and I had been developing our plant themed game, I wanted to see what other plant games were out there. So I signed up for this. It's a very cute game. the theme doesn't really seem like it's actually part of the, like the development of the game. it's almost like we could have rethemed it as anything else, but.
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (37:33.037)
The way it works is you are drafting cards, which you then trade in for tokens like water, sunlight, or plant food, and then those tokens you're matching sets in order to grow your plants. It was a fun game, played very quickly, like 45 minutes, and I think that is kind of the reason why some of the publishers thought that our game felt a little long, because the plant games that are out there are much shorter like that one. So you're...
definitely gonna be comparing it to similar themed games. But that was fun. 3 p I played Fresco over at the Queen games area of the show floor. Fresco has been around for a long time and I'd heard really good things about it so I wanted to give it a try. But one thing that's really fun is the first thing you do each round is choose what time you want your meeple, your character, to wake up. The earlier you wake up, the more choice you have over what your character can do.
but then your character gets sad and if you get too sad, you lose workers. If you wake up later, you get happy and then that can give you extra workers. You also get to pay way less for paint because the game's all about collecting paint from the market, mixing paint and then combining sets of paint to fulfill orders needed to paint a fresco at the local church. Very cute game. After fresco, I...
Just walked around for a bit, revisited some of the booths that I was curious about from the first time I was walking around, picked up some more games. I got to play Croconol. There's a beautiful Croconol display of some company that makes Croconol boards. Just had tons of tables out for people to play. I'd never played it before, but it's a really cute little game where you're flicking pucks to try and get them in holes. So that was super fun. Then...
8 p I went to the stand -up comedy show saw three amazing comics all telling jokes about board games and being a nerd nerd culture So that was really cool. And then finally Sunday is very late start just relaxed in the hotel and then Went over to the airport pretty early to work on editing videos So I've got like the full first half of this thing video at this edited at this point So let's go ahead and show you what I picked up so
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (39:59.149)
First off, Pore Over Gaming is a company that makes their own dice and I just loved the whole coffee theme for these dice. So I bought some beautiful ones. This here is a 20 -sided die. Just love the coffee theme on all of it. Then I bought another set of dice from them too, also in this pouch. There was a creator named
Tyler Crumring had these really cool mini role -playing games. I bought these three tiny little books. I'm excited to give these things a try. Then I spent a couple of bucks over at the, what's it called? Indie Toys and Games. I don't remember exactly. It's a small independent role -playing game publisher.
They don't actually do the publishing themselves. It seems like they just represent people at convention spaces to help get sales. So I'm going to reach out to them, see if I can get my games in their repertoire. But there are some really cool products there. One of them is a role playing game called Here We Used to Fly, where you play children visiting a theme park. And then you also play those same characters as adults revisiting the ruins of that theme park.
I also got a game from there called Viva La Queer Bar, where you and the other players are creating a queer bar. Moonlight on Roseville Beach, a queer -themed horror game in the 70s, kind of inspired by Fire Island. I picked up Deathmatch Island, which seems to be a role -playing game similar to the idea of... The Katniss Everdeen.
things. I can't remember. It's weird that I can remember her name, but not the names of the books. And then also, series seven or a battle Royale. let's see. I picked up into the odd, which is a, trippy, fantasy, weird, surreal role playing game from free league publishing creators of more board. there was also a creator,
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (42:18.221)
I don't remember his name or the name of his company, but he has this horror themed role playing game that's designed to look like an old horror magazine like Fangoria and this cool expansion called The Diner, which is all horror adventures that take place in a 50s diner.
And I also picked up from wet ink publishing pecking good doggo is a role -playing game where you play dogs who are have little adventures around the neighborhood So that is the role -playing game section board game wise I picked up witchy cakes where you play witches trying to make the tallest cake and This one was designed by Michael Holick and it was from
I don't know. Mage Hand Press. I think they only had two games, so it was a really small business. I picked up Outrun the Bear, which seems to be about, it's from a company called Around the Stump Games. I just saw it set up in the demo. I'm like, I don't have to ask any questions. I need to buy that. It looks like you're just trying to outrun a big cardboard bear that gets closer and closer each round.
some escape room games called escape from the asylum. This was on sale as parts one and two, multiple different characters, all trying to escape from the asylums in different way. And from Imperial Publishing, I picked up Elf Creek Games reprint of Santa's Workshop, a fun Christmas themed worker placement game, little elf placement game. And I was excited to get the expansion.
for one of my favorite games, Honey Buzz. So I had a really fun time. And every time I go to Origins, I feel like I need to take notes on what I should do the same or different next time I'm there. So I think that's gonna bring us to the end of this episode. So thank you all so much for taking a few minutes to see what my adventure was at Origins. And I guess next...
Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (44:34.157)
big event that I'll be checking in on is probably going to be QuestCon in Orlando. So after this, we're going to move on to our regular scheduled programming of interviews. I met some really cool people that I definitely want to have back on the show and talk to them more in depth about their journeys and getting their games published. All right. Thank you very much. And I'm signing off.
Outro
Chain Assembly: Art for profit sake is recorded through Riverside FM, distributed through Spotify for podcasters, and edited on Adobe Audition. The music is provided by Old Romans. If you learned anything useful or found this podcast helpful, please rate and review us five stars. If you want to learn more about me or my art, head over to ChainAssembly.com.
