Let me run you through a quick overview of what I did and saw during the convention. A few of the things I did and the lessons I learned will merit posts of their own, which I'll get to soon. But for now I'll try to capture as much of the awesome as I can without making a novel long post.
On Friday I arrived in the early afternoon and started things off by having a look around, purchasing a few books, getting them and some more than I brought signed, and just really getting a feel for the place. I grabbed a few gaming books from John Wick and a couple of paperbacks from Kevin J. Anderson. I loved spending time with both of these guys over the course of the weekend, but more on that later.
After that I went to my first panel entitled "Creation of LARP" which was run by the aforementioned John Wick. LARP stands for Live Action RolePlaying for those that don't know. In the panel he talked about the LARP games he has designed and played, including Houses of the Blooded and the Legend of the Five Rings LARPs (both games that he created btw). He also talked about his opinion and views on LARPing in general and how to design a good game. There were some good things there that apply to any type of RPG in my opinion, like allowing players the freedom to take risks, encouraging emotional investment, and realizing that the other players are an audience. I enjoyed the talk and it made me very excited about the fact that I would be able to do some LARPing at the con. In fact I kinda threw out my plans for the rest of Friday in order to do just that.
After the panel I joined a group of about 20 or so folks in the LARP room, which was basically the outer living room area of two joined hotel rooms, and the emptied out bedroom of one of them. These were John's room btw, and I felt it was quite awesome of him to host the games in what amounted to his personal area for the weekend. I'm going to do a separate post on the LARPs that I played in, both the L5R one that night, and the Houses of the Blooded one the next night. For now I will just say they were tons of fun, and the Houses LARP was the single best gaming experience I have had in years.
After the L5R game I had the privilege to play test a new card game that John is developing. It is called the Houses of the Blooded Card Game, and is obviously set in the game world for that game (which I'll do another post on probably). The game was very fun and employed some mechanics that I loved. Since it is in play testing and it is now my property I am not going to divulge any real details here. I will say you get to play one of the six noble houses, that each one has a wonderfully unique thematic feel, that the game feels like it should based on the inspiration, and that House Fox is best. John will be bringing the game to the public via Kickstarter at some point, and I'll be buying it definitely.
After a late night playing that card game I went home, crashed for a few hours, and then came back to the con mid-morning to run a game of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. I had four players, and made up a fun little scenario where Dr. Doom used the Sinister Six (my version of it) to steal some items from safety deposit boxes and help his crazy, evil plans. The heroes (Iron Man, Storm, Spiderman, and Colossus) took down the Sinister Six, and even managed to defeat all the Doombots that came in to try and help, including the one that was actually masquerading as the Dr. himself. It was quite a bit of fun for me, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it. John Wick even added a bit to the end by asking if Dr. Doom had called anyone a cretin, to which I responded by having the real Dr. Doom show up and do that very thing.
After that I went to my first writing panel with Kevin J. Anderson titled "Things I Wish A Pro Had Told Me". His co-panelist was his wife, Rebecca Moesta (another author). They talked about some of the various tips and advice that they wish they could have received early on in their career. They told us things like Heinlein's Rules of Writing, and ways to be professional. I enjoyed listening to these two very talented writers and was definitely feeling a bit of fanboy-ness towards KJA. After that I went to a great panel about Game Design with John and followed that up with a panel on Media and Literature with KJA, Moesta, John, and another author named Richard Knaak.
After that panel it was time for another LARP and some more hanging out with John, his wonderful wife Ro, and a group of his other friends, who were all cool folks that I was super happy to meet. Seriously one of the best nights I could have ever hoped for.
Sunday morning brought me a bunch more panels to attend. The first one I went to was "Collaborating in Writing" with Wick, Moesta, Anderson, and a romance writer Claire Ashgrove. The panel was a bunch of anecdotes and stories about the subject, and was great. I followed that up with a panel on "Exciting Seconday Characters" with Anderson, Moesta, and Ashgrove. Very informative, and I learned that KJA almost killed off one of my favorite characters back in the day, and thankfully his wife stopped him.
The next two hours I sat around and listened to John talk. The two panels were titled "L5R" and "Collectible Card Game Design". He talked about the L5R world and shared stories of designing it in the first one, and then talked about card games design and his upcoming HotB card game. He also shared some fun general stories and talked about how Pro Wrestling related to Roleplaying Games. After that he and his folks were pretty much done with the Con, so I bade some absolutely amazing people goodbye for now and went upstairs to the gaming room for a few board games before I left.
As I said over the course of this post, I had an amazing time and the convention was wonderful. I was able to get a lot of great advice and information for some awesome people in the fields that I love. I learned a lot about game design, writing, and storytelling. I made some new friends, and had some great new experiences. The con was very well run and had tons of great content. They are moving locations next year and are going to have even more room, so I'm looking forward to that.
But I think the biggest and most important moment of the whole thing came during one of John's panels. I can't remember which one it was exactly, but someone basically asked him why he got into game design, and he said "A lack of desire to do anything else." At first that seems a bit joking or flippant, but it really resonated with me. I am never more excited, happy, or alive than when I am playing, designing, teaching, and building games and stories. It is something I have loved doing for years. I have never really taken it seriously as a possible career path until just recently though. After all it isn't something that you'd normally think about as a job, and as John also said "there is no money in game design."
Now I know I can't do anything crazy like quit my job tomorrow and start trying to make a living as a game designer. I'm fairly certain that unless I become very lucky I will always have to have some other form of employment. I'm working on figuring that out. The realization that I love explaining things to people, learning things, and telling stories makes me think I should very seriously look into teaching. But beyond that I now feel that I'm truly okay with the concept of trying to make games for people on a serious and professional level. That and writing. I may never become a best selling author, but I love telling stories and creating worlds and characters, so I'm going to do some sort of writing. I've got a whole lot of ideas, some of them are even in progress right now. I'm certain it will be a bumpy road, but it is wonderful to feel like I'm actually on a road instead of just wandering aimlessly. I look forward to the journey.
One last little note, I befriended John on Facebook, and these posts get cross posted over to there. So, while I do not really expect him to read this, if for some reason he does I just wanted to say "Thank You."
I...this sounds extraordinary.
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