The Forge booth was awesome this year (full disclosure: I worked the Indie Press Revolution chunk of it, running sales). The main draw, as ever, is that half of the booth is taken up by demo space with 10-20 minute tasters of all the games on sale run by the game designers, and the booth is hopping all convention long.

Although alone among exhibitors to publish sales results, the idea that the Forge came in third after WW and WotC is alas, conjecture contested by Paizo and probably Palladium - although who knows for sure? What we can say for sure is that year-on-year, the market for creator-owned independently published roleplaying games is growing, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Also, the games were fucking awesome this year - old and new. New titles like Burning Empires, 1001 Nights and Don't Rest Your Head sat deservedly proudly alongside the stalwarts of new gaming like Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard and Breaking the Ice.

- Alexander