Balticon 40.20 - Interview with Hal Haag
Interview with Hal Haag with Paul Fischer
and Martha Holloway. Recorded Live, in our Vienna, VA studio.
- Hal is the former head of computer gaming, former convention chair, and former gaming czar at Balticon, The Maryland Regional Sci-Fi and Fantasy Convention.
- Paul is also a former head of computer gaming
- In the old days you got a free membership to Balticon if you loaned them a computer for the game room. That may still be true, but you’ll have to ask the current head of computer gaming.
- Hal recalls the first time he attended Balticon. Slave Girls in chain mail bikini!
- Hal used to say he’d run for convention chairman every 10 years, but he’s not sure he has the energy to run Balticon 45.
- When Paul ran computer gaming, during the dot com boom, he could always get vendors to loan computers for the weekend.
- Hal waxes about the old days of the computer gaming room.
- These days computer games are too much like work for Hal. He like board games.
- Podcast warts and all. We can apologize if we want to.
- Ordering Shrimp in Corpus Christi, TX. Steamed vs. Boiled. Fried… All you can eat.
- He who wins, writes the history.
- Board games & card games & face to face contests! Oh my!
- Talisman, like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), but a board game.
- Munchkin, like D&D, but a card game.
- Board games and card games have an end. Role playing games don’t.
- It takes a lot of work to keep a D&D game fun.
- Hal’s favorite D&D character is immortalized on the hood of a car. He won it at a Balticon raffle years ago. Art by D Frechette
- Promo: Brave Men Run
- Promo: Dragon Page
- Promo: Escape Pod
- Paul rips off Dan Klass. Bad Paul.
- Hal almost trashes the hood with the art.
- Back to board games
- You see a lot of European type strategy games at Balticon. Games like:
- Caylus, a resource management game.
- Munchkin, a hack & slash card game.
- Fluxx, a game with changing rules.
- Settlers of Katan, another strategy game
- Frightening Floors, real name Fearsome Floors, a monster chases everyone through a dungeon.
- Puerto Rico, a strategy game
- Carcassonne, a tile laying game
- Anno 1503, a tile laying game.
- That’s Life, a simple yet amazingly fun tile pickup game.
- Car Wars, old game was role playing game. New game is a card game.
- Quiddler, a word game with cards.
- Strategy games are more in tune with adult concepts of competition.
- Join our Frappr map!
- Creative Commons 2.5, non-commercial, attribution required
- Opening music by Bottomland
- Music: DNA, by Jonathan Coulton
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