Gamer Goggles

This was a different kind of a Gen Con for me this year. It had several highs and a few lows. As usual I filmed several interviews, This was the first year I was reporting for both Through Gamer Goggles and Through Wargaming Goggles, which did seem a bit odd at first, but I am glad I split the channels on YouTube. Over the last three years Gen Con has felt different in regards to news and media coverage, this made me start to think long and hard about what I am doing and why. I will come back to that in a bit. On to the experiences and lessons.

Everyone that knows me knows I am a foodie. My wife calls me a food snob and that may be true. While I am willing to explore a lot of tastes and I love things like ethnic fusion, the food at the block party is loosing its steam for me. I have been talking about it for a few years now and every year it’s one of my low points. Why is that? The food isn’t bad it’s not that at all. The sirloin burger that St Elmo’s used is excellent, but the burning beast wasn’t for me. I couldn’t taste the Cheetos. I would much rather have had a hot sauce inspired Flaming Hot Cheetos, or their world famous cocktail sauce; not that would have been one hell of hot burger. Hot box is in the same boat, I have been eating their concoctions every year since the gold dust pizza. I have only really liked one since the first and I didn’t the pizza this year. With that said I will eat their pepperoni pizza any day of the week. It’s not bad food it’s just a little too weird for me. I will continue to check it the specialty foods, but I think I will be taking a longer look at the food trucks and exploring more restaurants from now on.

The worst thing that happened was I botched an interview session with SFG. It would have been on a top secret project that is embargoed until later in the year. The real bummer was that it was all my fault. A lesson I learned last year was to put my email on my phone, I did. I thought it was working great. I was receiving emails just fine, but when it came to sending the message were listed as sent, but they never reached their destination. When the request was made to change the time the attempts to communicate all failed. Next time I put my email on my phone I will test it.

The good news is it only gets better from here. As I mentioned I had some great interviews, here are the play lists.

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One of my most unexpected moments was running into Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford at the Free League booth. Unfortunately, I did not get to talk to them very long.

I did play in the Pathfinder 2e Battlecry event. If you don’t know what Battlecry is you can check out my overview here

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Basically, the Battlecry rules allow PC’s to join the troop type so you can use the action economy to fight heroic skirmishes. The full rules set wasn’t used at Gen Con, but every player was given a troop type on the battlefield spread across three tables. Each table had up to 4 players and a G.M. The tams of players used their troop types to out flank and maneuver the enemy which was a lot of fun. I find Battlecry to be a refreshing rules set that has been missing from the #ttrpg scene for far too long.

Lisa and I started two traditions this year. The First is to eat at 2 restaurants every year; we normally eat in our room. Eating in our room has saved us a lot of money over the years and we are very good at that – that will be an article at another time. The second was really started last year when we went to Marc Gunn’s Hobbit drinking songs concert. We had a blast!!. This year we went to the Firefly drinking songs with Marc and Mikey Mason. We had so much fun that we will attend at least one every year from now on. I am a terrible singer and I had a blast.

I didn’t bring back that much swag this year and I will be putting that video up soon on YouTube @gamergoggles

Remember that part where I said I was reflecting a lot at the show? Here is what I learned.

Stay focused: Earlier this year I split Through Gamer Goggles into two channels Gen Con revealed to me that if I want to write, and create YouTube content I have to pivot. I can no longer film 350 unboxings in a year, for a couple of reasons. One, it doesn’t build an audience or a community. Two, it’s a lot of work that interferes with creating content focused on narrower topics. Three, between writing, working full time and filming content I can’t keep up with a pace like that. I thought making the split was going to be a mistake. After this Gen Con I believe it was the right one. It will allow the two channels to focus on their niche while I retrain the YouTube algorithm who they are. Heck, I haven’t even taught myself that yet; there is just too much RPG and wargame candy out there. There is just no way t o taste it all. There is certainly no way to do it all. None the less, you will see a lot more focus and direction.

Schedule: There is so much to do at Gen Con and I miss a lot of it. Every year I wait to buy tickets and I miss on a lot of the events I want to participate in. This means I miss sharing those experiences with you. Fortunately, by focusing on a few directions instead of a thousand I will be able to buy tickets and make interviews happen around that. I still won’t play as many events as I want to because so many are 4 hours or longer and I really need to spend more time in the exhibit hall. I always feel like I rush through it. Balance is always the hardest thing at a show like Gen Con.

Thank you for reading this far. I look forward to sharing the direction for both channels and the blog in the near future. I have so many thing I want to do, like cooking get togethers made easy for gaming or terrain building. Life has limits on the time that I have for every pursuit again balance is hard.

Thanks

Matt

Free League Publishing’s New Game Releases and Live Events at Gen Con 2025  Coriolis: The Great Dark, The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Starter Set, and more! Let the games begin!

Free League Publishing is returning to Indianapolis this year, bringing a varied collection of its award-winning tabletop RPGs to Gen Con 2025 from July 31 to August 3, 2025. Their headline titles this year are Coriolis: The Great Dark, the brand new edition of Free League’s original sci-fi RPG Coriolis, and new starter sets for The One Ring RPG and The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying 5E.

Attendees can meet Free League at Gen Con in booth #2449 in the main trade hall and in their very own game room in ICC #137!

PLAY
Free League has two rooms for games this year. You can find them in ICC #137 and at the JW Marriott in the White River Ballroom E. They will be running over 175 games with friends from Lurking Fears, including Dragonbane, Alien RPG, The One Ring, Vaesen, Blade Runner RPG and more! 

To find Free League’s events, search for Free League Publishing in the Gen Con event system. See you there!

SHOWCASE
On Thursday, July 31 at 3:00 PM EDT in room ICC:244, Free League invites press and the public to a reveal of exciting news for the coming year and the chance to ask their game designers about the brand new game Coriolis: The Great Dark – being officially released at Gen Con – or anything else! Attendees will get to meet Free League’s designers, including: Tomas Härenstam — lead designer of Dragonbane, ALIEN RPG, Blade Runner RPG, Twilight: 2000, Forbidden Lands, and Mutant: Year Zero Nils Karlen & Kosta Kostulas — lead designers of Coriolis: The Great Dark Martin Grip — lead artist of ALIEN RPG, Blade Runner RPG, Symbaroum, Coriolis, and more Kiku Pukk Härenstam — co-writer for Seasons of Mystery, A Wicked Secret, and The City of My Nightmares for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying Surprise Guests — to be revealed at the event, along with some exciting news! Note: The showcase is free, but attendees need to get a ticket in the Gen Con event system – you can find the showcase event here. If you cannot get a ticket, please contact pr@uberstrategist.com and we’ll help you out.

CREATORS
Attendees may be able to meet some of Free League’s game creators and get games signed throughout the show at the Free League booth, #2449.
If you’d like to find time to speak with any of the Free League team in attendance, please respond to this email, and we would be happy to accommodate.