I’ve finished putting my Metatopia (November 4-6, Morristown NJ) Designer Schedule together, and am now posting what I submitted here in case you’re going and want some idea of what’s going on with my games. This schedule isn’t final, but I don’t think it will change.

Friday:  8pm – 10pm
Board Game: Yellow Press
Take on the role of a newspaper to manipulate the reputations of your local superheroes. Be an editor like J. Jonah Jameson, or a plucky reporter like Clark Kent. Or both! Decide who is a hero, and who is a menace.

Prefer 4-5 experienced play-testers or board game designers who are interested in “light” narrative board games with euro-inspired elements.

Saturday:  9AM – 11AM
Party Games: Feral Survivors, Rap Battles
Feral Survivors is a journaling party game — think: Lord of the Flies, Lost, and Robinson Crusoe in an Exquisite Corpse format.

Rap Battles is a party game where Wannabe MCs compete to showcase their lyrical prowess using the same verbal ingredients.
Grandmaster Flash Fiction wants to know: are you ready to throw down?

Anyone welcome at any time, party game format means quick rounds of play.

Saturday: 2PM – 4PM
Open Board Game Rules Testing
Help identify confusing rules, unclear language, and where diagrams would be most useful. Various board games available for review.

No limit on number of participants, anyone welcome, including designers interested in rules-testing their own games (bring paper docs)

Saturday: 8PM – 12AM
RPG: Hyperreality
HYPERREALITY is the best and worst of the new wave of reality TV. Chaos, controversy, adrenaline, sex, violence, and even death are just par for the course. It’s time to win big, so put on your game face and take this chance to get anything and everything you ever wanted. In HYPERREALITY, you put your life on the line—on-line. The internet age is over, it’s time for HYPERREALITY.

Prefer 4-6 RPG/StoryGame-Savvy players/designers, 18+

Sunday: 10AM – 12PM
Board Game: Yellow Press
Take on the role of a newspaper to manipulate the reputations of your local superheroes. Be an editor like J. Jonah Jameson, or a plucky reporter like Clark Kent. Or both! Decide who is a hero, and who is a menace.

Prefer 4-5 experienced play-testers or board game designers who are interested in “light” narrative board games with euro-inspired elements.

Sunday: 3PM – 7PM
RPG: Hyperreality
HYPERREALITY is the best and worst of the new wave of reality TV. Chaos, controversy, adrenaline, sex, violence, and even death are just par for the course. It’s time to win big, so put on your game face and take this chance to get anything and everything you ever wanted. In HYPERREALITY, you put your life on the line—on-line. The internet age is over, it’s time for HYPERREALITY.

Prefer 4-6 RPG/StoryGame-Savvy players/designers, 18+

This last weekend saw my second trip to Dexcon, held in Morristown, NJ every summer. It’s run by the same group that puts out Dreammation (and coming this fall: Metatopia) and seemed to me this year to be an extremely live-action heavy con. In fact that’s most of what I played this weekend.

I didn’t mean to, after all, I swore off larping ages ago when it started taking up far too much of my life. Several people had recently recommended jeepform[1] games to me, when offering direction for my game Hyperreality; but I hadn’t gotten a chance to play any. And then there they were, two different jeepform games being offered.

The first game was called Previous Occupants. The general plot is a story of two couples separated by some number of years (but played simultaneously) that turns into a ghost story as relationship issues are dealt with and played out by having a pair of two players and characters share the same physical body. This ain’t your high-level Vampire dominate power. The combination of the privacy of the space we set aside to play, the intensity of the serious dramatic issues, and all the player’s high level of buy-in left me shaking by the end. Like I said… intense.

I also played a Game of Thrones larp, a game of Fiasco, ran some demos of Ghost Pirates and Happy Birthday Robot, and “Project: Ninja Panda Taco” by Jenn of the Jennisodes. (definitely play this one if you get a chance).

Finally towards the end of the con, I was hanging out at the IPR table with Darren Watts and the Indie Roundtable discussion ended up coming to us; it was great to hear about people’s ideas and plans and to be able to offer feedback on their ideas. It really helped clarify for me the role that I want Dice + Food + Lodging to play in the community, and I’ll post and talk more about this later — but the summary is that it should be a stepping stone for creative ambitions within the gaming community.

All in all, it felt like a very successful con for me – I had a great time and will definitely be back next summer with a little more planning in place.

[1] A quick aside: jeepform games are a scandinavian tradition of what they refer to as “tabletop” games; which differ drastically from our definition. They are played as small-scale live-action games with only a little bit of the loosest preparation. And they frequently aim to induce “bleed,” that is the crossover of character emotions to the player and vice versa. These games are very intense, extremely personal, and to my mind extremely rewarding. Visit http://www.jeepen.org for more information.

Show Notes – 4/17/2011

Conversation with Daniel Perez, the Gamer Traveler. We interview each other back and forth about travel, how we got into podcasting in this weird niche of ours, and a little bit more of each of our distinct yet surprisingly similar backgrounds.

Find Daniel at The Gamer Traveler

Download MP3