Sunday, August 08, 2010

Who killed the RPG Star?

With another GenCon over, I find myself how it has changed over the years - and I've ha quite a few years to follow the changes. In the previous century, finding a warrior, wizard, elf, or orc was easy stuff. Stand in one place for a minute or so, and soon a costumed person would pass by. I think for years elves and wizards dominated.






Of course, there has always been a fair number on pop culture icons - Klingons, Darth Vaders, stormtroopers, and "redshirts." After all, GenCon was and still is the largest gaming convention, and the above characters were all part of a role-playing game at some time or another.






But this year something changed. Finding one of the classic RPG classes was difficult. Instead, there was an abundance of anime characters, film costumes (most from dead RPGs), and a plethora of video game characters. Is venture to say "Solid Snake" was one if the most popular ones. At one point, I saw a group of guys asking two bikini-like clad girls to step out of frame with Solid Snake. And Snake seemed to have his own entourage of anime females.






Other video game characters included John Marston (Red Dead), and several Big Daddies and Big Sisters (BioShock).

Sadly, most of my photos are blurry, but you get the point. Where are the traditional RPG characters, and what is the present RPG icon. Or is the RPG hero dead?