http://www.ennie-awards.com/vote/

The Dresden Files RPG has received an outstanding six nominations this year, and Happy Birthday Robot received four as well. We certainly hope you agree with us that these are some of the best games this year and worth your votes, but even if you don’t agree, please do vote. The ENnies deserve the love!

As for my own thoughts, I made this a couple years ago back when The Voice of the Revolution was up for an ENnie. I figure it still applies today, even if my shameful lack of facial hair in the video doesn’t.

Okay, now that I’m rewatch that, replace:

• “show” with “game”
• “Best podcast” with “a number of nominations”
• “Paul Tevis & Brennan Taylor” with “Evil Hat”
• “July 24th” with “July 15th”
• My beardless face with the face of a man, capable of drinking bourbon
• etc.

Man, this video editing thing is easier than I thought.

Anyway, thank you for taking part in the process.

- Ryan

Dresdacon II’s Coming Up!

I’ll be at Dresdacon II, at Endgame Oakland this June 18th. Want to chat with me? Want to play some Dresden Files? Want to enjoy the fine eateries in Downtown Oakland? Come on up!

We need some help, though. To quote Fred Hicks quoting Chris Hanrahan of Endgame:

Hey, folks. The fine folks over at EndGame are hosting a second DresdaCon event at their store on June 18th, but they’re short on GMs. Here’s the message from the store:

DresdaCon II needs a few more GMs!

We are rapidly approaching the deadline for GM signs-ups for DresdaCon II. We have space for 3 more GMs in each time slot. Yes, we are going for 16 games! Wanna help? Head over to http://endgameoakland.com/dresdacon for all the details.

Hope to see you there!

We’ve even made it easy for you to run, with the release of Neutral Grounds and Night Fears! So if you live in or near the San Francisco bay area, and are willing to run a game, please contact the store and let them know. And if you haven’t made it to Endgame before, you owe it to yourself — it’s one of the best gamestores in the nation.

I’ll be a Special Guest at Celesticon!

Celesticon is a San Francisco Bay Area convention happening this Labor Day Weekend, September 2-5, 2011 at the Hotel Sofitel in Redwood City. I’ll be there, along with James Ernest & Kenneth Hite. (As of the time of this post. Check out the special guests page.)

You can find out more about the show at the website, www.celesticon.com. I’m pretty excited to be there, and we’re working out what sort of shenanigans are in store for folks attending. Naturally, I’ll update as we get closer to time.

(Side note: after reading this blog post about writing bios, mine on their site feels anemic.)

Reddit Interview about Dresden Files RPG!

A few months back, Ben Woerner polled folks on reddit for questions to ask Fred Hicks, Leonard Balsera & I. The interview is up now! It’s a two-parter, done with the four of us on Skype, so take the audio quality as you will. It was a fun interview, and the questions were neat. A good group of folks there. Hope you enjoy!

- Ryan

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

I have to say that it’s a lot of fun to be on this project.  It’ll be a few weeks before I do the next update, but we’re plugging away hard on this bad boy.

- Ryan