I had a really great Dexcon this year, trying lots of new (and old) games, and for the first time ever selling real product! This year I also tried a really solid mix of types of games, rather than leaning heavily on a single style. I partly attribute that to my Wednesday through Sunday attendance which meant I had lots of time to check out games.

On Wednesday, I arrived fairly late – which meant mostly hanging out with other early arrivals, and attending Lizzie Stark's talk about her book Leaving Mundania, which is a title Brooklyn Indie Games will be carrying soon.

The total list of games I actively played/GMed/Observed is pretty big: Let the World Burn, Art of Power, Psi*Run, Kingdom of Nothing, The Upgrade, Hyperreality, Doughnuts & Dragons, Project Ninja Panda Taco, Ghost Pirates, Bulldogs! Larp.

My highlights specifically include “Art of Power,” which is a political intrigue game set in a matriarchal feudal society. This latter part by itself made the game particularly fascinating. I grabbed the character sheet with a sword figuring prominently in the character art and discovered that I had selected Honoréte, the High Priestess to the Goddess of War. A few relationships and goals later, and we had our intrigue ready to go. I'm pretty confident that this was my favorite new game that I played this weekend, and I'm very much looking forward to the finished version. If you get a chance to play, take it.

Project Ninja Panda Taco has had a lot of the rough sections ironed out of it since I had last seen it. She has received a lot of very smart advice along the way which has helped shape it into the awesome game I watched. It's still in it's Kickstarter phase with about 10 days to go. Rumor has it there's a recruitment drive, and if you mention me when you pledge $30 for a book, there might be some very special bonuses. So definitely go do that. Project Ninja Panda Taco, on Kickstarter.

I felt like I was showing Ghost Pirates constantly. It's the first con where I've had real copies available, and I ran a two hour slot that ended up taking four hours. I feel really good about the showing, and definitely sold several copies. I'm very excited for the results of GenCon where Game Salute will have it available for the huge numbers of people that attend.

Hyperrealilty also showed well Saturday night. Details of the game are by no means fit for polite company, but I am happy to say that we all laughed incredibly hard for almost the entire four hour timeslot. It's still got some rough spots, but I am overall very happy with the way the system is developing. And Sunday morning, after a very long night and short nap, I caught up with the end of John Adamus' Writer's Workshop, where I ended up responding to questions as a “game professional.” It's true I suppose, I have created several games, published one so far, and am successfully building a business around something I love to do. It's been an adventure – beginning designing games, starting a podcast, creating a business, and then succeeding and being recognized as something of an authority in the area. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still learning here. I think most of us are. So if you want, come join us.

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Yeeha, what a day. The Kickstarter Arcade has been so phenomenal, thank you thank you so much, KS for all your support! Ghost Pirates continues to show like gangbusters, and really makes me feel like I definitely made the right choice with the print run numbers I chose.

Late morning I ran a very quick version of the Dresden Files Night Fears casefile, which was a lot of fun to run and watch people play. I think I turned some long-time D&D players on to both the FATE system, and the Dresden Files game in particular.

Then I went to my appointment to interview Andrew Hackard, the “Munchkin Czar” (aka Brand Manager), which ended up being a fascinating look inside the guts and making-of a Munchkin product. I’m really excited about how this recording went, Andrew was an awesome guest and I can’t wait to post this episode.

Back at the Kickstarter Arcade, my table was full up of Ghost Pirates, Happy Birthday Robot, Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, Dinocalypse Now!, and The Organ Trail. I started by doing quick blurbs on ALL of these great books/products. After a while, I figured out how to aim more directly at talking about Ghost Pirates – which I honestly did mostly for the sake of being able to speak on Saturday and Sunday. I killed my bag of throat drops and need to pick up a new one in the morning.

Eventually, 6pm hit and I had a scheduled dinner with Brennan Taylor of Galileo Games. It ended up that the dinner crew consisted of Rob Bohl, Meg Baker, Jeremy Keller, Will Hindmarch, and Cam Banks in addition to me and Brennan. Thanks all of you for such great dinner company! After a lot of great conversation and stair races, about half of us ended up back at the Games on Demand area, which apparently has been doing great. Steve Segedy has done great work putting the space and rocking volunteers together to make lots of great games available at your convenience!

However, this really wrapped my day. I had woken up at 6:45 this morning (without alarm) due to sunlight and excitement. And now I am EXHAUSTED. Gonna hit the sack for a nice long sleep. Tomorrow, I run a demo of Spirit of the Century via the Pandemonium Games booth at 1pm. Interested in Pulp Action? Come check it out! But for now, goodnight!

Back again after a sparse several months!

I haven’t completely disappeared, although it may have come off that way. Two major things have been happening. The first, a change in jobs. The last one that sucked my time and life energy is now gone as of August (and I’ve just accepted a new one), and two, my board game Ghost Pirates has gone to production and will be available in the spring directly and from select retailers around the country!

I haven’t been completely ignoring the gaming world. There are a couple of backed up interview episodes that I have recorded and not posted yet—so those will go into an active production queue tonight—and I’ve also got further ideas for shows which means great new content to look forward to this year.

Dreamation went off phenomenally this last weekend. I ran six different events and got a chance to catch up with a ton of great people and started planning new exciting projects. I’m now in a live action RP group called Death by Awesome which ran a half-dozen different jeepform events and workshops. I also demoed the aforementioned board game Ghost Pirates, which was very well received by all players, and ran the very first playtest of Where My Clothes!? Plenty of work remains to go there, but with the phenomenal playtest assistance of Kevin Allen Jr., many improvements will be made for the next go-around.

In other news, if you’re in the NYC Area, there are some Marvel RPG Launch Parties coming this weekend. Saturday at the Compleat Strategist, and Sunday at 20 Sided Store (I will be running a game for Sunday’s event, and possibly Saturday if I end up not playtesting). I’ve played with this CortexPlus implementation of superhero role-playing and it’s a lot of fun; definitely a worthy addition to the category.

Finally this week, Brooklyn Indie Games will formally open for business. The Ghost Pirates PDF and FiascoMobile will be the first products available, with plenty more in the pipeline!

I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with everyone, so stay tuned for more.