Roleplaying at Gen Con Online 2023

For those of us living outside the US – and for anyone who isn’t able to travel to Indianapolis each year – Gen Con Online offers a wide selection of RPGs to play with gamers from all over the world.

Gen Con Online started in 2020 when Covid prevented an in-person convention taking place and has carried on ever since. At conventions I always like to play games I don’t usually get to play (so not D&D or Cthulhu) and Gen Con Online has a wide variety available. The tricky thing is finding the right games in the right time zone, so I don’t fall asleep at my keyboard! In previous years I’ve played Pathfinder 2e, Swords of the Serpentine, The Dee Sanction (run by creator Paul Baldowski), The Yellow King, Spire, Numenera, and Pirate Borg. Sometimes, it’s just me; other times Kate has joined me.

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This year, I signed up for three games. The first was Murder Most Foul, a Swords of the Serpentine adventure run by Lisa Padol. This was the third time I’ve played SotS and each time I’m always struck by how cool the pregens are. My PC was a member of the Triskadane’s secret police, the Cobs, and had a fun secret involving one of the other characters that was revealed in the epilogue. I love the setting of Eversink (which deservedly won an ENnie this year) and the feel of the game is very different from D&D despite being medieval fantasy, helped by the Gumshoe rules and the focus on mysteries. We had a murder to investigate and a VERY annoying famous NPC sleuth to take down a peg or ten. Great fun! This adventure and the two I’ve played previously – Ragamuffins and Takedown – are included in an upcoming anthology from Pelgrane Press called Brought to Light, which is well worth looking out for.

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Kate joined me for the second game, The Bookshop, an intro adventure for Chaosium’s Rivers of London RPG, based on the urban fantasy novels by Ben Aaronovitch. The adventure was run by Shoggoth Pete from Sydney, Australia, so it was evening for him and morning for us. Kate and I both played police officers based at the Folly in London, called upon to investigate a mysterious incident at Stonewaters bookshop in Covent Garden. This was particularly fun as I knew the real bookshop well from my time working at Waterstones, and was the shop where Ben worked before becoming a novelist. We really enjoyed the game – the story was fun, and the game does a great job of capturing the feel and tone of the books. The rules system is very close to the current edition of Call of Cthulhu so easy for us to get our heads round, and we got to cast a spell or two as we solved the mystery.

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Finally, I got to try The One Ring for the first time on Sunday evening. I played a lot of MERP back in the day and always felt that the “Rolemaster Lite” rules didn’t fit that well with Tolkien, despite the cool supplements and maps produced for the game. I played Durandir, an elf of Mirkwood, on a quest to deal with some feral orcs who had been bitten by giant spiders known as the Sisters of the Purple Bite. This was the only game this weekend on Roll20 rather than just theatre of the mind, but there was a fair bit of combat involved, and the Roll20 character sheets helped with the more complex dice rolling. As well as battling orcs, two cave trolls and some goblins, we got to experience the journey and counsel rules which worked well. The game definitely captured the feel of Tolkien’s books for me and we got to meet Legolas too!

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Overall, I had a great time at Gen Con Online. We last went to Gen Con in Indianapolis nine years ago for the 40th anniversary of D&D, so we’re long overdue another visit and are hoping to make it next year for D&D’s 50th. Whether we do or not, I really hope Gen Con Online continues to thrive.

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