One of the well known gaming conventions in the country, Origins Game Fair takes place at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Ohio. Organized by GAMA, Origins Game Fair brings over 19,000 attendees with over 400 vendors, artists, and publishers present.

What I Played

Overall, my experience at the convention was positive. I got to try out new tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) that I’ve never played before, such as Marvel Multiverse RPG and Pirate Borg, played a new adventure from the latest Dragonbane book, “Arkand: City of Waves and Flames,” played in a couple of games in the Legends Of Greyhawk organized play, and finally got to learn how to play the board game Builders Of Baldur’s Gate.

The Marvel Multiverse RPG was a lot more fun than I was expecting. When it first came out, I didn’t have a lot of interest in it just because I didn’t know how I would feel about mixing my love for comics with a TTRPG. But the system is really unique, using a d616 system that has interesting modifiers and multipliers whenever you roll. I got to play Forge, which is one of my favorite characters, and we had to try to hold back the army of Genosha from invading the Xavier Institute of Learning.

Pirate Borg was one I’ve been wanting to try out because I’ve heard so many good things about the game, and it did not disappoint. We had a great GM, Bob, who did a marvelous job with narrating our adventure. It is a very straightforward system, using a lighter approach of a d20 system. I played a necromancer sorcerer so it was a lot of fun trying out that theme for a game full of skeleton enemies trying to attack you. We also got to try out the ship battle rules as well.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a huge fan of Dragonbane. I was excited to try out one of the latest adventures from “Arkand: City of Waves and Flames,” which I just recently received from backing their Kickstarter for it. I’m usually not one that’s big on pirate or seaside locations for my TTRPGs, but this was actually pretty exciting. We had to think of ways to infiltrate the ship, investigate what’s going on, and of course, combat!

Finally, learning how to play Builders Of Baldur’s Gate from WizKids was a great experience. It’s a resource & hand management game as well as worker placement. At first, it was a bit of a struggle understanding what to do, but after a few rounds, it made a lot more sense and that the game was more straightforward than I realized. It’s definitely one I wouldn’t mind playing again!

Vendor Floor Interviews

As always, I try to spotlight some great vendors and publishers that I see in the exhibitor hall. Below are this year’s interviews.

GameHead Games

Band Of Idiots

Worn Wanderers

Critical Crafting

Fatherfog from Tuesday Knight Games

Wrap Up

This was a fun convention that I hope to go to again in the future. Special thank you to Lindsay France from GAMA for her wonderful assistance in helping the media that were covering the convention. I hope to see everyone else there again next year!