PAX Unplugged: How to Cram A Month’s Worth of Gaming Into One Weekend
I write you from the tarmac, my sojourn to the city of brotherly love having reached its end. I have lived half a week among the gamers, abiding by their customs and observing their rituals. As your humble correspondent, you’ve asked me to outline my findings but to keep it snappy, keep it free of overly self-indulgent introductions with little winking jokes. And I’ve never failed you. So here are 7 play reports and other miscellaneous observations straight from the frontlines of the 2025 PAX Unplugged gaming convention in Philadelphia. (For 3 of the 7 and 2 of the 7, respectively, you can find play reports from fellow-player and friends, Derek and Amanda, on their respective blogs, Widdershins Wanderings. As others write their complementary or contrasting reports of these events, I will link them as well so you can determine the level to which my narration is unreliable).
Various acquisitions.
Game 1. Seven Party Pact
I don’t think there are many games for which my excitement to play them is so great that I’d arrive a day early just to try it out (and devote 7 or so hours to doing so). But such is the case for this still WIP game of Asshole Wizards by Jay Dragon. I played the Warlock (“Detroitus”), the King (King Augustinian the 50th)’s court magician who manages the intricate politics of the archipelago nation of the game. Naturally, on the very first turn I assassinated a treacherous noble who was posing a threat to the harmony of the kingdom. Would you believe there were no adverse repercussions to this?
I did not take any fancy photos of the set-up scattered around the room. But you can peep a small corner of the blue wizard’s robe I wore to the game, which is a normal thing to do.
A complete play report of a 7 hour session would be hardly scintillating reading, but to just give a taste of the kind of emergent play that Seven Party Pact is capable, I will briefly outline what happened to this one noble family after my Warlock sauntered into a library with a sword and squadron and killed the patriarch in cold blood. The widow (sister to the manipulative Queen) gained magical arms and armor from the Sage (another wizard) in order to exact her revenge against me, although she was ultimately thwarted purely by the power of patriarchy. Her twin sons, however, continued their studies on heretical magic, and one became the pawn of the devil, a potential future member of the Circle of Seven Wizards, and governor of his island. But all this pales in comparison to his father. The one who died? Isn’t he dead? In a way, yes, but the Necromancer (another wizard) brought him back to the world of the living as a powerful enemy of life, capable of casting his own spells. He lifted his island to be a floating mountain and began to be a meaningful threat to my domain. Had the game continued another hour or so, there is no doubt either he or I (soon to be king, due to a powerful artifact gained from the Faustian via the Sage) would slay the other, perhaps for the 2nd time. It’s kind of a bonkers game (positive).
I give it 5 Star-Shaped Scene Tokens out of 5.
Game 2. Paranoia
This was probably the funniest game I played during PAX, which is quite the claim when my list is composed of a plurality of games intended to elicit chuckles. I played as a secret mutant who wanted everyone else to be a mutant, but also I was a sickly weakling who was bad at everything meaningful, ate pills and already-chewed gum without question, and compulsively unwrapped FoodTyme bars (grey-flavored). Some highlights included getting to fill out a form (in triplicate) to request a pallet of new FoodTyme bars because Chris had the actual props from the original game and the robot NPC, Sparky, whose purpose was to give us advice on how to save electricity for the underground complex we all lived in. Chris also employed a few effective GMing tricks worth stealing: speaking into a paper cup to modulate his voice to play a wonky speaker system and also not giving us our pre-generated character sheets at first to simulate the fact that we all awoke in our bunker bunk beds without our memories intact. In the end, we ended up completing our important mission. That mission: make and deliver a sandwich. Easier said than done when you’ve never seen any food in your life other than grey slop.
The mechanics themselves seemed relatively simple; a dice pool system where you’re counting successes. But there was also always a “Computer Die” among the pool, and if your disloyalty score ever got too high, it threatened the Computer taking particular notice of you. None of our players got too far afield for the Computer to begin suspecting that we were a bunch of seditious mutants, but it was still ominous when the little printout of the Computer was turned to face you. I am certainly looking forward to when Chris eventually does to Paranoia what he’s so far done to all other TTRPGs he sets his sights on with “Paranoiac Bastionland”. I’d ask him when he intends to start writing that, but it is probably above my clearance level.
I give it 5 Suddenly Appearing Sandwiches out of 5.
Game 3. Planet of the Apes
This game was run by the fairly prolific designer behind this (and other big) licensed TTRPG. I knew I had to play purely by virtue of being a lifelong fan of the Apes franchise, in nearly all installments except the ones we don’t talk about. I even recently read the original French sci-fi novel the first 1968 film was loosely based on. The game itself was a relatively traditional adventure where apes of different backgrounds (I was an orangutan lawgiver) went into the wilderness to investigate a threat, navigating deadly beasts and traps along the way. In the end, we encountered the deadliest beast of all: man. The highlight was the lowly gorilla bag-carrier who, by virtue of the dice, continuously displayed breathtaking feats of both strength and genius but at all times genuflected to the higher class apes despite the fact that his capability far outshone theirs (which is to say my character’s as well–I was, politely, a fairly bumbling ape).
One thing of note was the system, which was based on the old West End Games Star Wars game. The game’s designer went on an interesting aside about how he appreciated how that Star Wars TTRPG ended up being a foundational text that established much of the lore of the universe going forward (and some, I assume, has even survived Disney’s takeover!), and that he wanted for the Planet of the Apes TTRPG do the same for the burgeoning multiverse that I’m sure the IP-owners envision for Apes. That is all well and good, but as a system, I was not impressed. It is a dice pool system where you may be rolling up to 10d6 (possibly more) on a single roll, but rather than simply looking for and counting 6s or some such, you sum the total of the dice, which is both time consuming but also with that many dice being rolled the bell curve becomes much less satisfying as you are ground down by the law of averages. But then again, maybe it just makes sense for a franchise based on pre-D&D era films to have stodgy mechanics from the 1980s. Perhaps it didn’t go far enough–Apes should use THAC0.
I give it 5 d6 out of 5.
Game 4. Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme
I was skeptical of this game when it was funding. Surely it is just another licensed cash grab. I don’t generally go in for licensed games; so many are the sloppiest, laziest paintjobs atop a 5e or PbtA chassis (and for avoiding that, the aforementioned Planet of the Apes should at the very least be commended). Not so for Monty Python! The mechanics are nothing groundbreaking, to be sure, but they were at least their own thing and leaned into the humor of Holy Grail, Flying Circus and the rest of the Monty Python oeuvre. For instance, I played as a monarch who had the ability to summon an army at my leisure, but there was a chance they’d all show up and immediately commit treason (this did eventually happen, but only after my character was actually carried offstage for other reasons) or that a single man wearing a bucket as a helmet would show up.
Collection of character sheet and character-sheet related ephemera that didn’t get lost in the great backpack explosion of 2025. Monty Python’s sheet is the largest and most luxurious.
The thing that piqued my interest about the game and the reason I was keen to play in it was that it is a game operating on two levels of fiction. You are not merely medieval figures going on quests. You are actors portraying those figures for an educational children’s show put on by the BBC. And the game master is not merely the referee, they play one of many pre-set personalities in charge of “Light Entertainment” at the BBC, each with their own likes and dislikes (awarding merits and demerits, respectively, for players to play into either–so part of the fun is figuring out what the new Head of Light Entertainment is looking for in the show). If the H.O.L.E. receives enough complaint letters, they are sacked and the game master now plays as a new figurehead. It is a shame we were only able to get one H.O.L.E. fired during our playthrough, although I assure you it was not for lack of trying.
I give it 5 Trojan Animals out of 5.
Game 5. Break!!
I have wanted to try Break!! basically since the hefty (but gorgeous) tome landed on my doorstep, but to have my first session run by the Break!!master himself was a treat. I’m sure my players and I would have a great time if I ran Break!!, but there is something to be said about someone much more in tune with the tropes of the anime and vidya inspirations running it. The adventure itself was a snappy dungeoncrawl, made all the more snappy by the fact that due to some fortuitous characters we were able to bypass a level of the dungeon. Rey did a great job of rolling with the punches without making it seem like he was rolling with the punches. Like was the pillow in the BBEG’s bedroom an object of supreme importance before my character insisted on taking a nap and made it so central? Possibly, but a part of me doubts it. But was Rey able to incorporate that into the game making for a satisfying ending to the adventure? Absolutely.
Typically, I think pregens are the way to go for a convention game. Just get right into the action, no mess, no fuss. However, Rey encouraged (required! demanded!) that we create our own characters ahead of time, and for a game like Break!!, which is no doubt a product of the OSR but with no amount of OC-style play baked in, is the right call. I had fun creating my character, a Girthsome Rei-Neko Factotum Merchant Scion from the Twilight Meridian (i.e., rich, fat, roguish catperson) named Chuffington P. Tiddlewink. The way I leaned into the OSR+OC (OCR?) aspect was to let the dice decide for my character at first until enough random results (namely the girthsome + catperson results) was enough to conjure the vision of a character in my head, then I began to choose options that fit that character. For instance, I would have been very unlikely to randomly roll a heavy automatic gun that was cleverly disguised as a fancy walking cane.
I give it 5 Pillows out of 5.
Game 6. Barkeep on the Borderlands
For my final TTRPG of the convention, I was in the driver’s seat. And it took some preparation to run a game far away from my ordinary base of operations. First, I had to of course pack my trusty gavel (when running for 8 people, a gavel is a must [see #4 in my TTRPG gift guide for my sound reasoning]). Then, the night before I had to make a pit stop at a local liquor store and purchase 20 Fireball shooters (i.e., approx. 50 mL containers of cinnamon-flavored whiskey, not wizards specializing in flinging that renowned spell). Finally, in the break between Break!! and Barkeep, I went to the UPS that was conveniently located within the convention hall and printed out the pregenerated characters I finished writing the prior morning and a few pamphlets of the rules I wanted to playtest alongside the module. And only then was I prepared to run Barkeep on the Borderlands for a handful of friendly fellows from my discord server.
The game itself was quite fun, owing primarily to the good set of players at the table and in part to the drinking rules for the session. Knowing that the rules I was playtesting (there will be some major edits based on my findings) really benefitted from the generous distribution of Advantage as I allowed anyone to reroll any die if they downed a shooter in one go. I typically don’t like re-roll type mechanics, luck point type bullshit, but for a one-shot with a party vibe, it was well-suited. But I also advised the players that for each of the antidote ingredients they found on their crawl, I would down a shot myself. Rarely have I seen a group so motivated on the main “quest” of Barkeep on the Borderlands. Typically they get sidetracked in being elected Prime Minister, or fucking/marrying/killing the Heir, or just trying every drink in town that the fact of the dying Monarch becomes a hazy memory (which, to be clear, is good and means the adventure produces the results I had hoped).
This group, despite having an early player character death from casting a spell the character didn’t even understand the name of so hard that his head exploded and caused epileptic seizures for all the other innocent bar patrons, was able to locate all 4 antidote ingredients over the course of the night. Only two characters “blacked out”, luckily at the same time such that we just had them swap character sheets, and the dwarf character never even got tipsy despite constantly slamming back this or that. They experienced one of the more antagonistic versions of Somnambula, aura-farmed and flirted with an elven unicorn tamer, hung out in Granny’s cottage-core pub without ever seeing Granny herself, and made such a compellingly logical argument to the incarcerated giant that I was surprised no one had done the same in previous Barkeep sessions I’ve run.
I give it 5 Fireball Shots out of 5.
Game 7. Survive: Escape From Atlantis
After a leisurely breakfast on the last day but before I lent my off-putting presence at the Plus One Exp booth for a book signing type ordeal, I had about an hour or so of time to kill. Not enough time to get a solid TTRPG session in, nor to play one of the chunkier board games to which I am but a moth to flames. Instead, we went to the “Unpub” section of the convention hall, where people playtest their unpublished WIP games. Unfortunately, no one was looking for 3 lumbering playtesters at the time, so my compatriots and I just went down to the board game library and Chris, who turns out to be a board game sicko, spied a game that would be perfectly suited to our time limitations and the limitations of not really being in the mood to read the rules for a new game.
The game itself was simple enough that children could play it but engaging enough that I (who am not a child) would enjoy playing it again. The premise is that each player controls a color-coordinated faction on a sinking island surrounded by shark-, whale- and sea monster-infested waters. Your goal is to ferry your little guys to safety in the corners of the map and also to make sure as many of your rivals’ little guys are eaten. Why the antagonism? Maybe their little guys were responsible for the sinking island, or maybe your little guys are and you don’t want their little guys lording it over you as you start a new life on the hopefully unsinkable mainland. Through superior wiles and unbeatable strategy (or perhaps because I got a lot of the tiles that allowed my boat to go extra fast, who knows), I defeated Chris and Derek by leading nearly all my little guys to safety. “A fun little game”, we all concluded.
I give it 5 Boat-Hating Whales out of 5.
“Is PAX Better Than GenCon”
They aren’t that different, honestly. Is that controversial? There are, of course, differences, but they’re marginal. Your enjoyment of one versus the other is more likely to be influenced by how many of your homies will be in attendance (a mathematical formula I’ve concocted but is too involved and impressive to be laid out herein shows that the amount of games with your homies you’re able to play in is directly related to your number of homies that join) and how close your hotel is the convention and other factors including human mood and disposition that aren’t related to whether you’re in Philly around Thanksgiving or Indy around (I was going to look up whatever silly holiday is around the first days of August but Delta’s wifi has decided I actually don’t need it today so just assume I’ve mentioned some whimsical fake holiday that is celebrated by absolutely no one).
PAXU was definitely less crowded, less sweaty, and less dank than GenCon. But also, I prefer the layout of GenCon’s physical architecture: playing some games on an NFL field is cool and also I never got lost in the convention center. I was pretty much always lost (and perhaps still am, perhaps I am still in the Pennsylvania convention center to this day) at PAXU, and I had a few games that started with a slight delay due to people getting lost or forcefully ejected from the building for the capital crime that is using the wrong escalator. However, PAXU definitely wins in the “proximity to good food” category, mostly by virtue of being next to Philly’s Chinatown. Also, I much preferred the bars I crawled in Philly but I had a local guide (thanks, Norn!) so it wasn’t a fair fight (although results would likely be the same regardless).
For my own experience of GenCon 2024 vs PAXU 2025, there was a larger quorum of people who I’ve befriended over the online in the latter, so that took the cake for me. I will put up with far more labyrinthine complexes and colder weather if it means seeing more friendly faces that I’m used to only imagining seeing when throwing text back and forth at each other online. But if the same mix of people met up in any city, we’d probably have a dandy time.
A dandy time was had by all. Gaming with fellow game sickos in person remains undefeated. I give it 5 Exit Only Escalators out of 5.
I stole all of these images. Thank you to my friends with the foresight to photograph!
