Summary
If you are a board gamer you should check out Pax Unplugged. Also, there was a lot of good food in Philadelphia. RPGs were most overbooked by a LOT, and the signup process sucked.
Day -1 – Thursday
The first day was getting our badges. They are not named badges like other conventions, the behavior guide on the back was friendly language. After the badge you had to prove that you are vaccinated against COVID-19. To note you had to wear a mask at all times.
Day 1 – Friday
Booking spots – There is a Mobile App to download for the convention and on it, there are all the bookable events. You can only book at 8am, I tried before and it tells you to wait. Timed it to be on time and watch the screen as 8am arrived, and attempted to book dome RPGs. 8am arrived I pushed the button and I did not get any roleplaying games, as you can see all were fully booked before 8.01am. This was a frustrating start to the Convention
Breakfast – Green Eggs Cafe – Highly recommended there are three locations
What and where
Expo Hall – This was very cool. And took us most of the first day to look through every booth
Meeting friends from Pennsylvania for Dinner – This was of course the best part of the entire trip!
Day 2 – Saturday
Finding Roleplaying Games – So we found a room (RPG HQ), where you could line up and add your name to roleplaying games held that day. You have to get there early as it was first come first served – Games booked with Numenera, and Kids on Bikes
Waiting for open spots in roleplaying games – So we heard through gossip that there were a lot of spots not taken for Free League Publishers (They have published some amazing games such as Coriolis, One Rings, Tales of the Loop, Blade Runner, and Alien). So we hung out and waited, and waited – I suspect because today was Saturday more players fewer spots appeared. We did not get a game, but then someone Offered Mork Borg.
Mork Borg – This game is based in a World which about to end, and has a lot of Death Metal. Each character has some good abilities, interesting character personality traits, and very few hit points i.e. 1 to maybe 5. You will die and have to re-create a character – there is a website that does it all in under a second for you. Most people died several times and had multiple characters. This game was so much fun, probably the highlight of the Convention. Of course, we bought everything we could, except the rulebook because it was not available at the Convention!
Day 3 – Sunday
Today my partner was working for the day and I had multiple work things to do – so we did not get much time to play before we flew home.
Buying Games – Today was about buying Board games and finding RPGs that were not all about the end of the world, or dark and had something called “Hope” in them. Here is our collection of the things we got at Pax Unplugged 2022
Would you go again?
Yes, but we will try a couple other Conventions first. We have gone to five GenCons and a bunch of local Conventions throughout the world. It’s fair to say I had a lot of work requests, so my experience was not fully in the bubble of enjoying the Convention.
Location – Philadelphia had some good food which was hard to get i.e. not the lineups you get at GenCon sometimes in intense heat. The food market nearby was really good. We also got to see some friends we care about.
Convention – Whilst there was lineups to get in to check Masks, COVID and bags – it felt safer
Compared to GenCon – Much smaller and in some ways friendlier, food was much easier to get, the booking of events was much weaker, the security was better, and mostly well organized
Eric Brooke's Blog 