I was on a couple of panels at PAX East 2013 with my fellow Gamer Assembly members (join us in the webchat if you have any questions or comments). We filmed both panels and they're up on YouTube!
All of the games mentioned in this panel are linked in the video description on YouTube, but I thought I'd link to ways to purchase these games directly (Full Disclosure: These are affiliate links where possible - please consider kicking a few cents my way if you're going to purchase them anyway). And if you want a standard resource, I'm adding a link to that system's page on RPGGeek as well.
Worldbuilding 101
Filmed at PAX East 2013 in the Tabletop Theatre Friday 3/22/13 at 3:30PM.
The next thing you know, we're in the chat talking about what Marvel heroes each of us would be. Natalya started grabbing pictures and mashing them together, then took those images and mashed up a wallpaper image. In the span of only a few days, we have this little slice of awesomeness:
Gamers, Assemble!
Image heavy lifting and assembly by Natalya Waye. Thanks, Natalya!
Dr. Strange? I'll take that gladly, thankyouverymuch.
Two things of note here:
1) I am astounded at the speed of online community rivaling the speed of thought itself. Ever since the Winter Is Coming blogfest went from idle chatter to advertised event in about an hour in September 2011, this speed shouldn't surprise me. And yet, here I sit, groping my cubicle floor in a vain attempt to find my jaw.
2) I have never met about a third of the people pictured in meatspace, but this image crystallized in my mind that we share a community. Period. Full stop. "Online" modifier label be damned. This is my tribe, one of many to which I belong. We don't always agree, but we continually decide to keep putting effort into the relationship, to understand what lies outside the realm of our personal experiences because we matter to each other.
We're more than avatars and username headers tied to bits of text scrolling by on a screen. People come up with all those bits of text and every idea you read, and people choose to shape ideas into words and share them. Why? The ideas mean something; they're important on some level to the person giving them form.
We can all use an occasional reminder that we're all people, whether the words you read make you angry or happy or sad or whatever. A person sits on the other end of the conversation whether you agree with them or not, and maybe their life experiences have been very different from yours.
Minor edit: we're all people until Skynet builds the Turing Horde and corrupts humanity through social media. But hopefully that day is a ways off yet. I'm not touching AI rights and the rewrite of the Constitution that would require.
Back on point: I think communities rock. What about you?
I want to write something, but I keep staring out the window of the train this morning. This happens fairly often lately. So I decided to write about it.
I'm starting a column called Wombat's Window over at The Gamer Effect. I only have the intro post up at the moment, but I've got 2 articles in the works and another half dozen ideas for topics. I'll be writing about what I see while staring out the window of the train. Exciting, yes?
My usual morning view in context.
Specifically I'll explore ideas based on what I see from the train, and I'll expand them into hooks for games in four genres: Fantasy, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, and Interstellar. I plan to include at least one photo with every article so you can see what I see. I don't know how often articles will appear, but I'll keep you updated.
Yes, this effort is inspired by Reality Makes the Best Fantasy over at Troll In The Corner. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I can't say enough good things about that series. Taking everyday ideas to expand fantasy worlds adds depth to storytelling. If I can make you ask yourself questions that will improve your game, then I'm happy.
In unrelated news, I'm working through another round of links covering what we talked about during the Gamer Assembly PAX East Panel videos. I'll publish those as articles here in the Gaming Den of Iniquity, probably next week at this rate. In the meantime, you can watch the Worldbuilding 101 and Tabletop System Wars videos on YouTube. Don't forget to check out the list of links in both doobly-doos, and feel free to Like them if you, y'know, actually like them. And, as always, come join us in the Gamer Assembly webchat.
Please stay tuned and let me know what you think. Thanks!
So PAX East happened this past weekend. I wasn't around as much as I could have been, but I decided that discretion was the better part of health this year. I've been sick off and on since Christmas, and the latest cough/sinus thing has been with me for the past 4 weeks. I think it's finally clearing up, but I didn't want to push my luck by staying at PAX until all hours.
Abbreviated though my pilgrimage was, PAX never ceases to amaze me. The amount of things to see, panels to hear and participate in, and people to talk with creates an embarrassment of creative riches and collaboration opportunities for game players and game industry folk alike. For those who have never been, I made a few crappy cell phone vids to give you an idea of the scope. You can go see all three videos on YouTube, but I've embedded the top-of-the-escalator view of the Tabletop Area below because in my mind it's the most impressive: thousands of gamers in a single hall talking and playing tabletop games for 15 hours straight. In the words of Rob Donoghue, "This is not a fringe. This is a THING."
PAX East's Tabletop Area is the largest high school cafeteria you can think of, crammed with people playing games and a pile of retailers to buy from. The game library is impressive, if slow to use. I heard 30 minute wait times to sign out a game were common at peak times, and almost the entire con is one big peak time. For me it's about the tables: a blank canvas on which to paint the world of your chosen game.
"But Wombat," you ask, "what did you do at PAX East other than gawk at the Tabletop Area?" I'm glad you asked.
Friday
Thanks to crap traffic on the Pike, I ended up arriving around 11, about an hour later than I expected to. I parked in the Overflow Lot down by the drydock, and half-walked, half-shuttled up to the hall. I had a bag of food for the hotel room that I bummed a key to deliver even though I wasn't staying the night this year. I needed dice to choose which of the many bathrooms in the suite to use. I also got a picture of the BCEC from the Commodore Suite high atop the Seaport Hotel. Swanky.
PAX East lies within. Do you dare enter?
(Correct answer: YES.)
I headed back, bumped elbows with Storm of Paul & Storm, walked the expo hall (overwhelming!), and hung out in the Tabletop Area for a bit. Pro Tip: Plenty of tables are empty on Friday during the day while people are still at work, so stake your claim on a table early. I limited myself to playing a demo of Dino Dice at the Steve Jackson booth since I wanted to hit the 2 PM panel on the Future of RPGs (guaranteed wrongness: 90%). The Tabletop Theatre line was declared full about a half hour before seating happened, but I hung out and sleazed into one of the seats left over after the crowd settled. An excellent panel was heard by all, challenging the idea that basements and caffeinated sparkling beverages and threatening the PCs' lives are somehow integral to the "true" RPG experience.
We had our Worldbuilding 101 panel immediately afterward at 3:30 PM. It was "full" a half hour before, but we ended up with space for 5 more. We had a great time with a very responsive and appreciative audience, and we fielded a few questions. We also had it filmed by professional videographers with actual borrowed video industry high-end equipment (thank you Natalya!), so stay tuned for the edited video as it becomes available. I can't wait to see it myself.
After the panel we talked with panel attendees, then dispersed. I wandered through the expo hall again, and ended up picking up some PAX Merch. I found Dan in the Jamspace to return the room key. (Note to self: Spend time in Jamspace next year - that freestyler kicked ass rolling costumes and props into his rhymes.) I was tired, so I left and ended up getting home around 7.
Saturday
The Saturday morning commute held no slowdowns at all, and it delivered me around 10:45 because I started out later. Overflow parking became my friend, and the shuttle bus service didn't have me waiting at all on either end. Win!
I walked the hall briefly and stared at dice (the Chessex booth is the penny candy store for tabletop gamers), saw that the merch booth still had scarves, decided to take the aforementioned crappy cell phone vids, and wandered into the Tabletop Area, my default destination at PAX. I hooked up with both circles of friends, one group sitting down for a demo of the X-Wing mini game on the table directly next to the other group fighting through a game of Zombie Fluxx. Odd how convergence happens. I took over for a round or two at the end of the Zombie Fluxx game, and then we wandered over to the Tabletop Theatre for our Tabletop System Wars panel.
I prefaced the panel with a brief talk about the usenet newsgroup wpi.flame and the ritualization of flame wars in a safe space so nobody's feelings got hurt, which set the tone for the good-natured intra-panel disprespect which followed. After a rousing chorus of, "You're wrong, the correct system to use is..." from every panelist, we gave away Bob's bags of gaming loot that he was contractually obligated to part with if he wanted to remain married. Everyone who stuck around got something, I think. If you didn't, let me know or poke a head into the chat and we'll rectify that situation. And yes, I'll post the video of this panel as it's available.
We wandered back into the Tabletop Area, and Brent convinced Daniel Solis to demo a few of his card games for us.
Belle of the Ball has come a long way in the past year.
Suspense (I think?) is an evil little game with a 13-card deck which plays in about 2 minutes and breaks your head along the way. Part logic puzzle, part playing to achieve an unknown victory condition, it packs a lot of analysis-paralysis angst into a tiny deck. Belle of the Ball has become a complex game of matching guests and using Belles to change the game, and it'll take a few times through for me to really feel some of the subtler strategies for the Belles. The good news is it'll be Kickstarted in August, so stay tuned for that.
My mother calls me around quarter of seven, just about halfway through the game of Belle, about an hour after she should have delivered my daughter back home. If you've ever tried taking a call during PAX, you'll know that tens of thousands of smartphone users tend to stress the cell network a bit, and the roar of the hall doesn't make phone communication exactly easy. Suffice to say that monkey wrenches were introduced and I had to leave slightly before I wanted to.
Overall
I spent a total of 15 hours in or near PAX. That seems like so little for a 3-day event, but it felt so full.
Playing games with their creators just can't be beat. Thanks, +Daniel Solis!
On Sunday, I learned that I missed a free ninja gig by +Molly Lewis and +The Doubleclicks on Saturday afternoon. Also various other folk I've talked with online were trolling the hall and active on Twitter. Note to self: Next year look at Twitter, you knob.
"Hi! My name is Wombat, and it's been thirty days since my last blog entry."
"Hi, Wombat!"
I disappeared for a month without telling anyone. There were holidays to celebrate and work to crank out and songs to sing and games to play and the battle against dirt and vermin that never seems to end. In a way, it felt great to walk away from the self-imposed pressure of maintaining a blog, but I miss developing my game-related thoughts into something moderately useful, at least useful to myself. So I'm back, and gods help the guilty. Or something like that.
In some ways I never left; I just changed venues. I've been putting some effort into The Gamer Assembly, mainly by curating the Weekly Assembly RPG link roundup. It's fun to scour the blogosphere and collect really cool content that came out in the past week. It shows me that the community remains vibrant, intelligent, and still willing to share with each other. The D&D Next hubbub and all the blog activity it inspires is still happening, but with DDXP happening this weekend, we may be able to get some more hints about it into the community at large despite NDAs flying thick and furious.
We're working on a post-apocalyptic setting at The Gamer Assembly called 3 Generations After The End, or 3GATE for short. It's designed to be system-agnostic, but we're including stats for 5 systems (D&D 4e, Gamma World, Savage Worlds, FATE, and Apocalypse World). We're still publishing bits which may spill over into February, and at this point I'm still developing Greybar City, with apologies to Dunk for wholeheartedly stealing the name. It's got some neat bits, and we hope some GMs will lift parts of it and let us know how they worked. As always, feel free to drop by the chat room and say hi. I'm lurking up there most weekdays.
I'm planning another blogfest for President's week called Campaign Season. That doesn't have quite the punch and unrelated marketing hype that Winter Is Coming does, but then again winter isn't the time for war unless you're a frost giant. Start thinking of your military and war-themed RPG articles and I'll get a signup page going in the next couple of weeks so we can start getting organized.
As for content here at the Gaming Den of Iniquity, we've got a few things on the docket.
A review of Thunderstone coming up on Tuesday for Game Night. This will be my first game review for which I received a complimentary copy of the game, a trend that I hope will continue.
Finish Schrödinger's Gun GMing. I'm planning for another 4 articles, though that may expand as I get deeper into it. I wasn't expecting The 3 Types of Loot to take off as much as it did, so I think I'm on the right path. I need to finish this. It's a first draft and then I'll collate the bits into a PDF with much editing, and hopefully it'll be well-received. But first: finish the blessed thing.
Finish the Traveller Adventure Arc. I want this done for me - maybe it'll be another collected PDF project.
An obligatory D&D Next post. Don't know if it'll be a wishlist or an observational post, but there's more than enough fodder out there to blog about for years to come.
Other things as they strike my fancy. I don't want to make a schedule - that's not really my style. I want to post at least one thing per week. I want the freedom to react to things as they come up without feeling guilty and reworking a set schedule. This is my space to blather on, and I intend to do just that. Hopefully you'll find my blathering interesting enough to not wish for those few minutes back.
I'm also looking for editing gigs. If you're writing an RPG ruleset or supplement, please drop me a line here or on Twitter and I'll be glad to talk over your project and figure out how we can work together to make your final product the best it can be.
Hi to all you crazy RPG folk out there! I've been mildly busy, so I thought I'd bring you up to date as to what's going on here at the Den of Iniquity.
It's been a week and a half since The Gamer Assembly went live, and it feels like it's going great guns. We've got a monthly theme for posts in the blog and several regular contributors. The chat which started it all grows with every new idea for what we can do with the channel - if you're interested, hop on and get involved. I've volunteered to manage the Weekly Assembly, a weekly roundup of articles and interesting tidbits from around the online RPG community released in digest form every Friday. I've published exactly one of them so far and gotten a wide positive response, and the second one is shaping up nicely. That column will take the place of the RPG Newswire weekly post that I half-started here. If you have a project or announcement or cool link to share, please let me know and I'll make sure it gets into the next Weekly Assembly post.
Schrödinger's Gun GMing is still in the works. I've been distracted a bit (see above), and it's slower going than I thought it would be. That said, I think it's a very worthwhile exercise to get the rest of it on (virtual) paper, but it may come out every other week rather than the weekly feature I'd been hoping for. For instance, the next one won't come out this week since there's too much going on. These articles are big. So big that I think a PDF is in order rather than a series of blog articles, but I'm committed to posting them. Consider them rough drafts, and I'm happy to take any feedback you feel like sharing - that will only make the final project that much more usable. Fret not, faithful readers, this is still my highest-priority personal project.
Paizo's RPG Superstar 2012 is on! Make a kick-butt Wondrous Item. Submit it. Get in the running for a publishing contract from Paizo. You know you want to. Go. Do it now.
I'm involved with producing an open source bestiary entitled Harlin's Almanac through At The Table Games. I'll be writing as one of the dissenting scholars, poking holes in the original author's ideas through the benefit of hindsight and 100 years of technological advances. It's an ambitious project intended to get a pile of art released into the RPG community under a Creative Commons license, and I'm excited to be involved. There will probably be a Kickstarter campaign sometime soon, so keep your eyes pointed this way for more details when it goes live.
I know I mentioned it previously, but I'm an RPG editor. I've got my first paid gig at Timeless Adventures editing an adventure called The Tribute by Carl Bussler of Flagons and Dragons fame. It's got the fantasy RPG equivalent of a doomsday clock, expressed to the party through prophetic visions. There are hard choices to make, and it's not terribly likely that everyone can be saved. The harshness of the adventure really fits the Norse setting. The Tribute is really coming together nicely - it's awesome to be more of a continuity editor than a proofreader. I'll let you know as more details become available.
Got Loot - The Festive Blogfest will run from Christmas Eve through New Year's Eve. We're vamping around the theme of Loot: specific examples, as the point of quests, different types of loot, and whatever else our fevered little brains can come up with. There's plenty of time to join up - just leave a comment on the page and directions on how to participate will be forthcoming. If you want your article to be hosted as a guest blogger, that option exists as well, so you've got no excuse not to write something during the slow time over the last week of the year.
And speaking of RPG Blog Festivals, file this one under O for "Oh Crap, Wombat's At It Again." Pencil in the week of President's Day (17-24 February) for "Campaign Season". If you've got an idea for an article covering war, or the military, or martial organizations, or (heavens forfend) the politics of conflict, this is the RPG Blog Festival for you. More details will be forthcoming as the date gets closer, but I wanted to get y'all thinking about that date out there before something more interesting comes along.
So yeah, not much happening in my neck of the woods. How's by you?
First off, I have a name stuck in my head: Richard Blurbage. I see him as a near-future marketing magnate with a London accent and a bloodline he can trace back to an Elizabethan theatre owner. And just like that, a character exists.
I've been working on Schrödinger's Gun GMing. That last article kicked my ass for a week. Some days the words just fly out, others require earth-moving machines to even start. Such is the nature of the beast. I'm hoping to have an article a week, but with the holidays and now a new cold to contend with, not to mention the end of Year 2 of the Deathmarch at work, I can see that schedule slipping a bit. In any case I'll work toward some sort of conclusion in January, after which I want to edit it into a single PDF for wider distribution and possibly sale.
Since I haven't mentioned this officially yet: I'm an editor and writer of RPG products. I've got a couple of gigs lined up over the next couple of months and I'm looking for more. If you're writing a game or a supplement and need someone to pick out continuity errors, unclear wording, and typos, give me a shout. Since I'm looking to build my CV, I'm flexible on price. Thanks!
Relatedly, I'm working on making an actual site for me, something I've never had. I'm planning on including CVs in several categories, and I'll want to maintain a links page (or better yet, a database) for my own sanity. I keep adding cool links to my "Personal" folder and they disappear into that etheric quagmire never to be seen again. This Will Not Do. Now to get over my internal perfectionism and get something ready for public consumption even if it ain't perfect.
I'm involved with a new gamer community called Gamer Assembly. It's the new home of the IRC Channel that I've been involved with for almost a year now. There's a blog and a wiki and the beginnings of forums, and we're talking about a Blog Carnival between Christmas and New Year's - stay tuned for more details on that. I invite you to come on over and chat a bit.
Plenty of good things happening out there in Gamerland. Play on!
as of the end of April (but follow the link to purchase print copies of the Basic Game from Amazon). Sad, but that's the way business runs. Related: I'm really looking forward to the 
