I might have overdone the walking on Day One of the show. Putting eight and a half miles on my Reeboks while trying to recover from a plantar fasciitis injury suffered while running last fall was probably not one of my better ideas. Don’t feel too badly for me though, for I am still at PAX, and Day Two was still filled with some amazing highlights.
They don’t call it “LineCon” for nothing.
On the show floor, I was able to go hands on with Lightspeed Frontier, an exciting hybrid of spaceship building and open universe sandbox; Semispheres a unique puzzle game where the two analog sticks on a controller each control a separate avatar that combine their skills to solve each puzzle; and got my hands on some KontrolFreek gamepad accessories that promise greater precision of movement and accuracy for gamepads by raising the height of the analog sticks.
The highlight of the day for me, however, was the Acquisitions, Inc. panel. A fixture at every PAX event for ten years now, Acquisitions, Inc. is a live Dungeons and Dragons campaign featuring Mike & Jerry from Penny Arcade, a variety of other players over the years, and DM’d by Chris Perkins, longtime D&D designer for Wizards of the Coast. This year’s PAX South players, in addition to Mike & Jerry were Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicles) and Morgan Webb (former X-Play hostess and current consultant and creative adviser for Activision Blizzard).
Acquisitions, Inc. Live and in progress.
Watching five adults play D&D should be one of the most boring things in the world, but with this cast, led by a DM who’s at the top of his craft, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. For three hours we were practically falling out of our seats laughing as Jim Darkmagic, Omin Dran, Viari, and Morgaen tried (with varying successes based on their D20 rolls) to retrieve an enchanted, talking sword. If you weren’t able to be there in person, I highly recommend the replay on twitch.tv.
Day Two ends with a few pictures of some of the fantastic, dedicated cosplayers that make up a big part of the PAX tableau, and with a BYOC group favorite game: Hard drive Shuffleboard.
