Update #02: No Sleep Til GenCon

Black Hats will be at GenCon 2023!
Schedule Here: https://www.gencon.com/events?search=Black+Hats&opt=ta&opt=hh

How we got here:
Something like 6 months ago, we decided to bring Black Hats to Gen Con in August 2023. This has coincided with what I think people with different degrees from me might call a “soft launch”. Along with trying to spread the word of the game and get players running matches on discord, we committed to physicalizing the game for Gen Con.

The game has existed as a tabletop simulator mod for long enough that we didn't want to lose sight of actually printing the game. In retrospect, it sounds reckless, but for over 2 years we never actually played a game of Black Hats within the confines of meat space.

We had taken efforts to only play the game in tabletop simulator, unassisted by newfangled scripting. We had a level of confidence that the game would work on paper that was almost entirely unjustified, given our experience with producing quality game components. Bolstered only by the fact that the game wasn't particularly annoying to play with TTS.

Through the power of human will, money, and thegamecrafter.com we have completed a summoning ritual, bringing forth three copies of Black Hats from the ether...

​After dozens of paper plays of the game, our tabletop simulator testing largely paid off. Along with my years of meme making in photoshop and making painfully mid sprite art, we were able to pull together a really nice set of prototype Black Hats copies.

And those copies are coming to Gen Con with me next week!

It has been a challenge to get here. While I have been to Gen Con numerous times as an attendee, this is my first year running events of my own, making sure everything was ready to bring on time has been stressful but incredibly rewarding as for the first time we held the game in our real hands and are prepared to get into the hands of as many gamers as possible.

We hope you will join us at Gen Con for some exciting games of Black Hats!