I went to PAX East this year, and I thought I’d go over some of the things I’ve come across.
Wild Bill’s Soda:
These guys seemed pretty popular, and I saw two stands from them. You buy a tankard from them, and you get free refills of their drinks for the day. You can bring the tankard back on a different day or a different event, and pay for another tag for a day of free refills.
Graffiti Games:
These guys were demoing a couple of their games, the one that grabbed my attention being Cyber Hook, where you play as a decker navigating past obstacles in the matrix. It caught my eye mostly from the aesthetic, didn’t see enough of the game to know whether there is much story to provide staying power. It’s supposed to come out in Q2 2020, so I’ll keep an eye out for it.
(Btw, if you guys are reading this, you should remember to include your url on your handouts)
Rainway:
I was looking for the badge-in portals that PAX East had for achievements, and found one at this booth. This particular one spins a virtual slot machine, and I ended up winning a tiny flashlight.
Anyway, Rainway appears to be a system that allows you to access your games that are on your PC on any device you own, anywhere. I’d think there’s likely a lag problem, but I haven’t gotten around to testing that. Seems to be a neat concept, anyway.
CritSuccess:
These guys make spinny dice rings, where you spin the outer section of the ring and get a result. I’ve heard of them for a while, and finally decided to get d20 ring, just to amuse myself.
Norse Foundry:
These guys make a lot of dice, minis, and game accessories. I ended up picking up one thing I found interesting. They made a game map compass rose that you place on the map to define the orientation of the map. I know you can just draw an arrow and write an N next to it, but the coin looks cooler.
Elderwood Academy:
These guys are known for dice towers and dice boxes. I didn’t pick up anything here since it doesn’t fit my particular needs at the moment. They make some really cool stuff, though.
Ayopa Games:
These guys gave me a free product code for a game called Dungeon Crawlers on Steam. Don’t know much about it yet, but eh, free game.
(Again, people need to list their URLs on their handouts)
Prints by the Bard:
This guy was our DM for organized play. Apparently he also does 3D printing himself, resin printing in his case, and shared his card.
And I totally called that a slime was hiding in the rubble. Too bad I didn’t roll high enough on initiative, and could only watch in horror as it came out. Oh well, Drocan Disorderly was able to fight them off with a torch (didn’t want to damage my heirloom weapon).
Geekify:
These guys make a lot of cool custom stuff for people. I didn’t get any of their samples (I’m a bit skittish of carrying around a summoning scroll for Cthulhu, and the other scrolls weren’t from my particular fandoms), but they make really cool stuff.
Chessex:
If you are a tabletop gamer who goes to cons, you probably already know these guys. You’ve just gotta stop by and look at their assortment of dice. I picked up a few this time.
Arenanet:
They had a Guild Wars 2 booth. Also, got a code for a free in-game outfit. Yay.
Spaceteam VR:
I’ve played the regular app, and I’ve seen that there is a card game. You are on a spaceship that is constantly in peril and blowing up. And you receive instructions… for everyone else’s consoles! You have to yell and listen for instructions to cooperatively survive all the disasters befalling your ship. Asteroids, wormholes, slime, shorting panels, etc. It’s awesome.
Now… VR is in the works! Some of my friends tested it out, and it was hilarious! I still think it was extremely satisfying that the devs were confused at how one of my friends was doubling the highest previous score.
“Oh, didn’t you know? He’s an aerospace engineer.”
“WHAAAT?”
Megacat Studios:
These guys make new games for old consoles, complete with custom cartridges that fit in the old consoles. I’m gonna have to keep an eye on these guys for some possible collab.
Dice Dungeons:
This group is where I got my D&D character coins from. They had a booth, and while I was looking I saw that they had some cloth maps. I decided to pick up their tavern battlemap. I think if I start DMing homebrew again I’ll just have to make taverns a franchise business to explain the common layout!
I also found a deck of quest notices. This will definitely help when I need to populate a quest board at the adventurer’s guild in homebrew!
Widget Ridge:
This is a steampunk deckbuilding game of some kind. It looked somewhat interesting at a glance, but I haven’t really looked too much into it yet.
Greater Than Games:
I meant to spend more time at this booth, but we never timed it out right. These guys make the game Kill Doctor Lucky, a sort of inverse version of Clue. Instead of trying to find out who murdered Mr. Boddy, you are trying to kill Dr. Lucky without being seen by the other characters.
(I’d include a link, but this one is flagged as a security risk by my antivirus, so I won’t).
Acq Inc. Documancer:
I didn’t catch her name, but there was a lady dressed as a documancer from Acquisitions Incorporated who had an awesome wooden backpack filled with all the essentials for documancy. Prewritten contracts, paper, quills, ink, etc. She gave me a contract for intern employment at Acquisitions Incorporated. I’m still periodically checking to make sure I didn’t accept the terms by touching the contract. You never can be too careful with those guys!
Miscellaneous:
There were a few other purchases where I forgot to grab business cards, but here is some stuff I picked up.
Crystal caste style dice, for my fireballs and healing potions. I can never seem to find these online.
Obligatory set of new dice. I liked the Tolkienien script on parchment style of these.
Dice bag for all the dice:
From the Desperados 3 demo booth:
My friend and I demoed the game “Who’s Your Daddy,” and won a shirt.
Technomancer's Sanctum 