RPC 2012 - Pictures

Yesterday I visited the RPC in Cologne with my Cousin. Weather sucked hard, lot's of light rain and quite cold. Buuuut, have some pictures.

Upon entering we immediately saw a sign pointing to the kids area.

 Lots of LARPing stuff to be had.

We headed through the Hall with the PC games where a loud man with a fake lightsaber was yelling stuff about Star Wars: The Old Republic Online to the tabletop area. We were greeted by a woman with a slightly wooden demeanour.

 The Freebooter's Fate booth was awesome as always. I really need to get into that game. It has no dice, but works with cards, very attractive if your average on 3d6 is a five.

 My Cousin playing a demo game, while I ran around taking pictures.

 Awesome Costumes, awesome tables. I want to build a bay with a ship wreck as a gaming table now. And a sunken Aztek temple. Which fit none of my Wargames factions. *sadpanda* Just means I don't have enough factions. *dangerous thought*

 

Dun dun dun ....

Highlights of the demo game: I. Goblin Pirate climbs up to a Pirate Musketeeress (Is that a word?) and promptly gets pushed down the tower by her, landing squarely on his face. II. Pissed of pirate gal runs at a bunch of goblins to skewer them with her sword, but is beset by Polly the Parrot looking for a cracker, making her flub all her attack rolls/draws(? you can't roll cards...).

After the game we returned to the PC games hall, because Malte had to play Aion. A free to play MMORPG. Why you have to do that at a Con eludes me. The guy with the light saber was now demonstrating some game, where you picked nicely colored symbols from circles to make your guy stab and whack stuff with your sword. Graphic sucked, so I guess it was some Console game. But if you stand behind someone and whack him with a two-handed sword he takes more damage. Wow, Id never guess that!
Seriously, is it so difficult to come up with good sword fighting in a game? Skyrim did it, but in most fantasy first person games I click people dead. Lame!

Soo, Aion. The game with the wings. I have it on good authority (the blond guy in the picture) that it sucks. And though the banner in the background might suggest it, Khorne did not have a booth this year.







Costumes!

I did not expect the Imperial Inqisition. Actually I did. There is always someone with a cool Witchhunter costume. I don't think they found any witches though.

Someone might have misunderstood the roleplaying involved in this con. But then, she was giving out flyers for the Warhammer card game Invasion. Cue Archaon: "I'm going to invade the realms of men by playing a CHILDREN'S CARD GAME!" Ever watched Yugioh: The abbriged series? Well you should!

 If the world ends, I'll stick with these guys. They are cool. I saw their awesome stuff last year already, but this time they had really upped the ante with two vehicles and a tent.

There were also a lot of Airsoft players running around in full combat gear.

 This time its the Empire, not the Imperium. (Distinction only makes sense in English)










Lord Vader. Badassness incarnate. One of the few characters whose voice actor I like more in the german version.
Looks like he is recruiting.

That's how you look cool when fencing.













Back to the tabletop area

 "Stell dir vor es ist Warhammer und keiner geht hin." That's how that would look.

 Still nice gaming tables. Though my Imperial Guard might run into problems with their 9+ tanks and AFVs.

More sucky photos of gorgeous Freebooter miniatures.

 Le sigh. There was a couple dressed up as the Vodoo guy on the left and the creepy rat lady (not shown)

Can't see shit, Captain!

The cats (Oncas) had an espeacially beuatiful paintjob. Spider Amazon? Mantis Amazon? Crocodile Amazon? I think I just found my faction.









Back at the Tabletop testing area I played demogames of Dystopian Wars and Infinity.
Dystopian wars was nice, though my dice kept exploding. (If you roll a 6 you get a succes and roll again. If you get another 6 repeat. Guess what happened.) Now I want a fleet of war Zeppelins.
Infinity was great fun to play. Now I get why it is a shooting game. One of my line troopers blew away my opponent's strongest model in a round of shooting with his rifle. My opponent had problems to wrap his head around the fact, that his miniatures could react to moves made by me. He just tried to shoot back every time and was pasted by superior firepower.
I also watched a game of Mercs. Looked interesting, but I think I understood barely half of the game.

After the games I decided to have alook at the medieval market outside. Luckily I had my raincoat. It was a wash. I was looking to get a horn, not to drink from, but to make noises with. But there were only ones with the annoying plastic things inside that goe "FWEEEEEEE!" to be had. The food however was good. Meat on a stick and bread. Can't go wrong with that.

Speaking of charred meat:

Hang over your fireplace for that unique Dragon Slayer look.

Some more random stuff:

No Creepers to be found, except the one on the Tshirt. Whew!

They are lying! They spoke perfect German! I felt rather dumb adressing them in English and getting answers in German.

They say dress for the job you want. What if I would want this job? No, not mannequin.

After drifting around a little, I went to collect my cousin. We just wanted to leave, when they started a Live Raid on the buffed.de booth in SW: The Old Republic Online, so we had to watch that till the first boss. It looked like World of Warcraft with slightly smaller, glowy swords and a lot smaller shoulderpads.Roleplay seems to be quite good however, as my cousin told me. I might try it out if I should suddenly  have hours upon hours to burn on it.
And apparently the cool guys play the evil side again.

Also played 10 Minutes of Risen 2. Looks nice. Pirates and Voodoo are cool.

Finally we left. My Cousin with a metric ton of dice (won't roll well, everybody knows only dice you get as presents roll well) and me with a hand-and-a-half sword, some Freebooter minis and a boatload of flyers.

Next year, I'll have to buy a ticket for both days.

Fenris