Gen Con and the other Amy

[Kevin]

Gen Con and the other Amy

I had the pleasure of being approached by a delightful young lady named Amy Garcia. She came to the Palladium booth specifically to say hello, show me her new, independently produced role-playing game, and to tell me that Palladium Books and I had inspired her and her partner, Clint Krause, to design their own games.

It always means a great deal to me to learn my work in gaming has inspired other creative souls to take the plunge in game design and publishing, so I very much appreciated her making that extra effort to drop by. We had a wonderful chat and I felt honored as I flipped through her game. I loved the cover design (by Amy), and the concept sounds very cool. So, of course, I had Amy take me to her booth so I could buy a copy. I had Amy (the artist and graphic designer) and Clint (the writer) autograph my game, chatted for a while and went back to work at the Palladium booth.

The game is called Empire of Dust and looked fascinating to me. It is science/fantasy (like Rifts®) set on a war torn desert planet engulfed in war. There is tech, psionics, magic and cool sounding character names like Mage of Exodus Tower, Legion War Devil, Dust Walker and Gunknight, among many others. It has its own “action figure” inspired game system and what looks to be a lot of cool ideas.

Amy’s art is not of a polished, slick professional quality, but it is evocative, get’s the job done and gets the ideas across splendidly. Meanwhile, her graphic design throughout the book, on the box, the map and counters, are all top-notch and helps to establish and hold the atmosphere the artist and author want throughout the game. The snippets I’ve read are clean, well written and interesting. Overall quality is excellent and the $40 price seems reasonable, to me, for what you get. Being under the weather, I haven’t had a chance to read it completely, let alone play it, but it looks cool as Hell. So cool that I think Jason Marker went out and bought his own copy. Good luck, Amy and Clint, with Empire of the Dust and all your endeavors.

For more about this game check out their website at http://www.knrpg.com

Starting to peeter out a bit and the doctor wants to see me for another examination. I hope to post more Gen Con stories today and over the weekend . . . feverish or not . . . but it will depend on what the doctor says and how much bed rest I might need.

Sincerely,
Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, Writer, Artist and Fever-Muddled Mind

© Copyright August 22, 2008 Palladium Books Inc. All rights reserved.

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