Posts Tagged ‘conventions’

Another Gen Con has passed, and now we ring in the new gaming year the way we ring in the new true year — by talking about antics we participated in and antics we missed during the New Year’s Party that is Gen Con.

The lovely and badass Jen Dixon of The Walking Eye Podcast did a great job filling in for our traditional One Cool Thing video:

(Look at that handsome bastard.)

Of course, you can get your fix by going over the shows we did as part of This Just In From Gen Con 2010! The post-show wrap-up, a.k.a. Ken Hite’s traditional unpacking of the Gen Con we all just experienced, will be up in the next day or so. (Some news about me will drop on that episode as well.)

But I just did a couple shows every day. There was amazing live coverage this year, thanks to the good folks at NeonCon. If you know me, you know I’ve raved about NeonCon since I was one of their GamesU (now rebranded CreativeU) guests last year. (With all or most of their GamesU seminars up online, you can see me make an ass of myself.) The team there — with folks like Doug and Jules being the faceman/woman for the broadcast — were a joy to work with and to watch produce what was essentially hours of Gen Con for those at home.

You can check out archives of the live stream, like the filming of the ENnie Awards, at http://www.livestream.com/neoncon/

I was really happy to accept on behalf of Jason & Steve at Bully Pulpit the ENnie Fiasco got. Of course, I also feel like a touch of a heel, because that was a moment that I wished I could have admired from the audience, like I got to with Ken Hite & Hal Mangold accepting their gold ENnies for Cthulhu 101 & Day After Ragnarok. But, the point of accepting an award is less for the person accepting and more for the crowd watching. When you’re up there on stage, your job is to say (using completely different language) “Thank you for putting the effort into this award and giving me this opportunity. I will not belittle those efforts.”[1]

In other words, it’s okay to fuck up my own award speech, but I take accepting for someone else seriously, because it’s their moment and the crowd’s moment, and I’m just a stand-in. A stunt-Morningstar or -Segedy, if you will.

Speaking of Fiasco, this was fun:

(Thanks to Travis & Kira Scott for the bourbon pictured in the photo.[2])

Anyway, that’s all right now. Thanks for indulging this non-post.

- Ryan

[1] A non-zero number of you are reading between the lines. Good.

[2] If your comment is “but there’s no bourbon in that picture!” I assure you there is. See those smiles. Yeah.

The two talks that I did at Neoncon‘s GamesU are available for your viewing pleasure!

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Howdy!

A lot going on here in my world. I’ve been buried under a pile of work, day-job and elsewise. But I’m taking a quick breather to tell y’all about stuff:

Podcasts

I’ve been on a few podcasts recently. Of course, there’s the most recent episode of Master Plan, where Monica Valentinelli and I talk about horror game design. It was a great conversation, and I’m happy to have teamed up with FlamesRising.com on that ep. Those guys are pretty awesome.

(As yes, that’s proof that I’m not podfading yet. Master Plan is still around!)

I was interviewed by Wolfgang Baur on the Open Design Podcast episode 006. We talk a bit about how I got started as a podcaster, making my journey as a game designer more public than most. Of course, I come from indieland, where we’re all fairly public about it — I suppose the main difference is that I turned my journey into produced show rather than something more journal-esque. (Not because I look down on journal-type stuff — I read them all the time. But producing a show is fun for me.

While at RinCon, a few of us “hijacked” an episode of The Game’s The Thing. It was fun to sit down with Don Dehm & Derek Rex from Pulp Gamer, and of course as always with Paul Tevis. We talked about the con and just had a good time doing the episode.

Neoncon

Also, I’ll be at Neoncon in Vegas this week! I’ll be speaking at GamesU, with at least two panels on my docket:

Gaming Podcasting 101 (alongside Ed Healy), Sunday 11am

Interested in getting your voice out there in the world of podcasting, but don’t know where to start? This presentation is for you! You’ll learn the basics on a variety of topics, from microphone & recording space, to audio editing (on PC and Mac), to show theory and speaking to your target audience. In addition to planned topics, there will be plenty of time to answer your questions.

and

5 Major Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (alongside Leonard Balsera), Sunday, 2pm

In this seminar, you’ll learn about five foundational mistakes that people make in the process of designing a roleplaying game and how to keep them out of a game during development. Whether you’re working on a project right now or are just interested in learning more about the design process, this overview will provide you with some concrete techniques and tactics to focus both the concept and execution of your design.

I’ll be attending some of the other panels, and otherwise be popping around having a good time. If you see me, feel free to say hi!

Dresden Files RPG

Oh, and we have a little announcement about the upcoming Dresden Files RPG on the official site. Enjoy!

Anyway, that’s it for now. There’s more on the horizon…but there always is. Hope to see some of you at Neoncon!

- Ryan

Context:  Vinny speaking at the Indie Roundtable at Dreamation and the various responses (initial post on Fred’s journal)

The thought I had on Sunday night can be summarized as:  Provided the extra work is tolerated, some of Vinny’s concerns could be potentially solved with the enforcement of player-hour requirements for free GM badges.

So, when Kat emailed me that I was getting a free badge for Dreamation, I was honestly surprised.   I was only running two games, and then only for four players per game.  To me, this didn’t seem like enough to warrant a free badge, but hey, I won’t complain.

Vinny’s concerns of limited numbers of players and having to turn so many away are totally valid, and I was bummed to hear that people who wanted in Mythender didn’t get in.  At the same time, I wanted to have fun playing in other games and I know my game breaks with six players.  So, what am I to do?

Well, since I assumed that I wasn’t going to get a free badge, I felt the numbers were alright.  Last year, I ran three games — two four-player slots of A Penny for my Thoughts and one of Don’t Rest Your Head.  I felt I earned the badge then, but I also felt like I didn’t get to play enough other stuff (hence only two games this year).

Working back from that personal experience and towards what Vinny’s suggested of running six-player slots, here’s my thought:  not every game works for six players, and fitting games that don’t into that format will only create sourness.  But we clearly can’t do what we’re doing right now and just assume it’ll work.  Thus, I’m brought to the idea of serving the same number of players in two different configurations:  running two slots for six players (2×6 = 12) or running three slots for four players (3×4 = 12).

Now, you could leave this as player-slots or go to the GenCon standard of player-hours.  At four hours per slot (with some exceptions, which will disincentivize those slots in this model), that comes to 48 player-hours.

If you want to encourage this behavior, you need to create an incentive for that, either carrot-style or stick-style.  Carrot-style makes sense here; you get a free GM badge if you run at least that many player-slots or player-hours.

To concisely state my idea:  Require people to run enough games to fit 12 player-slots (or 48 player-hours) to receive a free GM badge.

If you buy the idea that this is a potential solution, we can talk about how to hack it.  I’m not saying I recommend any or all of these, but point them out to show how flexible a solution like this could be with some work.

Partial Credit. If you run, say, 1/2th or 2/3rds the number required, then perhaps you only get half off your badge.  It could still be a nice, shiny pink GM badge, but it’s one you had to pay for.

Playtests Count Less.  If you want to create a disincentive for the number of playtests on the schedule, you could count them as a fraction of player-slots, like 2/3rds or even 1/2th.  I do think this could blow up, given the number of playtests that happen at Dreamation (and, frankly, part of why I fly out from the West Coast to go to this thing.)

Minimum Player-Slot Counts. You could deny putting people on the schedule at all if they didn’t hit a certain count, like only running one game on the schedule (I’m talking about you, Tony! *grin*).  This might sound bad at first, but consider this in concern with a Games on Demand type place at the con, and it has a potentially positive spin on things.

In any case, that’s the idea in a nutshell.  Hopefully it’ll help someone wiser than I (like Rob Donoghue) articulate an idea that works.  It mainly came as a reason to Vinny’s comment on the playtests, saying that most of the people involved have pink badges anyway, and reacting with “Yes, but the fact that so many have pink badges is not exactly our fault.”  (Bleh, that sounds like I’m being ungrateful for getting a free badge, which I’m not since I have to worry about layoffs and travel expenses.)

- Ryan