Category: Convention Report

Define Summer ‘Vacation’? (An Update On Work!)

by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Writing Update

The sun is shining. The air is humid in Brooklyn and I’m not in class. It’s summer in New York City.

And there’s work to be done!

The end of the NYU semester came and went with a bang. It was a real hustle to get through the end of the second semester, but I came away with a lot of amazing lessons I learned, not only about game design but about working with others, my own process of dealing with stress, and about myself in general. It was a process of self discovery as well as academia, and as hokey as it sounds it made a profound impact on how I want to work going forward. It was a breakneck pace of work that ended and then-

A break. Summer vacation. It’s meant to give you a chance to kick back and relax… right?

For most people past a certain age, summer vacation is no longer the bucolic months of adventure and fun that it is when you’re young enough not to work. For me, I haven’t had a real summer vacation in years. This is the closest I’ve had and yet I’m freelancing. And boy, has it been busy. Here’s been what I’m up to:

  • Phoenix Outlaw Productions, my company, is ramping up it’s creation process. Things were slowed due to many factors including graduate school and, honestly, the learning curve of a new company. Now I’m putting boots to ground on wrapping up Wanderlust, my tabletop RPG, and have begun organizing the schedule of projects we want to release. Stay tuned for way more information about that in the days to come.
  • June 1st wrapped creation of Wild City, a setting for the upcoming release of the Chronos Theatrical LARP System for Eschaton Media, co-written alongside Josh Harrison. Josh and I had worked on the core book of Chronos as well, so I’m excited to see the release going so well. You can learn more about it on Eschaton Media’s Chronos Facebook group right now.
  • I’m working with my fellow Team Awesome folks to get Octavia ready for submission for IndieCade. More information about that to come.
  • I was asked to come aboard the extremely successful Kickstarter for Trigger Happy by Caias Ward to write a stretch goal scenario, which I’m working on. It’s going to be about a kidnapped kid and what you’re willing to do to kick butt to get that kid back. Stay tuned for more information.
  • I’m working on the translation of the Heroine RPG into a LARP! I’m very excited for this project, as Josh Jordan’s game about girls on their adventures has been a person ‘I heart it so much’ project since I saw it on Kickstarter. I’m so excited to be a part of seeing it come to LARP.
  • I’ve been creative consultant to Michael Consoli on his video game Against the Wall and we’ve been meeting up

And speaking of LARPS – DEXCON. Oh my gosh, DexCon.

For those that don’t know, the Double Exposure conventions in Morristown New Jersey rock. Seriously, they do. I’ve been a regular at these conventions since 2006 and have enjoyed some of my best gaming experiences there. It’s no wonder that the work these good folks are doing is being recognized by the Diana Jones Awards with a nomination this year. I enjoy the hell out of all three of their conventions – Dreamation, DexCon and Metatopia – and would not miss one for the world. That said, I also enjoy the heck out of running LARPs and panels at their conventions and this year is no exception. My DexCon project plate looks like this:

  • The Unofficial Dresden Files LARP: We at Phoenix Outlaw Productions are proud to be wrapping up our first chronicle of our Unofficial Dresden Files LARP, started way back two years ago. The project has been very important to me and I’m so pleased to see us come to the end of the four game series with “Final Frost” this summer. After this, we’ll be going into another phase of the project, in which players will have dedicated characters in an ongoing chronicle setting. We’ve also wrapped up our latest version of the rules iteration, based of course on the wonderful Fate Core rules system, and based on iteration done at each of the conventions thanks to experience and great feedback from players. Saturday Night at DexCon, we head back to the Dresdenverse and we’ll see who survives the chronicle’s climax.
  • Battlestar Galactica LARP: At Dreamation I teamed with Mike Maleki of Last Minute Productions to come up with an idea for a Battlestar Galactica LARP. We were approached thereafter by Double Exposure to run this event as a signature LARP for the convention this summer. And so, “Straight On Til Morning: Tales of the Rising Star” was born. We’ve brought together our two teams to create a large game set aboard the Rising Star, a medical ship in the BSG universe. We’ve developed a brand new system inspired by more freeform LARP techniques to make this game an intense roleplay experience for folks. Come aboard and give it a spin on Friday night!
  • Night’s Black Agent Tournament – The LARP: It’s no secret I’m a huge Night’s Black Agent fan. Well, John Adamus has been involved in writing for the Night’s Black Agent tournaments for the incredible Kenneth Hite for a while now. Therefore when Pelgrane Press wanted to incorporate LARP into their tournament’s first round, we got the call! Myself, John Adamus and Josh Harrison have been working at building the first Night’s Black Agent LARP, where you can play a secret agent out to battle the vampire conspiracy threat! This will be the first round of the NBA Tournament – survive into the second round and see your team to victory.

Those are the three LARPs we’ve been working hard on for DexCon. Aside from that, I am also pleased to say I’ll be reprising two panels from the last convention: Women in Game Design and Let’s Talk LARP, a round table discussion with LARP designers. I’m also really humbled to be asked to a Wednesday night reading for authors at the convention. I’ve been asked to read from my recently published short story from The Lost Anthology by Galileo Press. And somewhere in there, I promise, I will eat a thing and sleep. Somewhere.

With all this going on, I’m also preparing for my upcoming convention schedule at GenCon, WyrdCon, PaxPrime and more, but that’s what I like to call ‘After July 4th Shoshana’s Problem’ (July 4th weekend being DexCon).

For now, I’m also reminding myself of the importance of balancing some summer fun with all this work- including attending great conferences like the recent Games for Change conference in New York, spending time with great people at Dystopia Rising (including at the new Pennsylvania game – congratulations to the staff there for an amazing first event!), and getting to see Neil Gaiman speak at Brooklyn Academy of Music the other night about his new book, Ocean At the End of the Lane (read it if you haven’t! It’s brilliant!).

That’s summer vacation, folks, and with that I’m off to get back into work, with a cup of tea and a lot of typing to go. More updates to come!

LARPing Like It’s… Cold? Knutepunkt 2013 (Part 1)

by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Game Design, Geek Culture

How much can I get into one suitcase? Do I need a sleeping bag? And what does one wear to a Nordic LARP anyway? These were all questions that ran through my mind when I packed in preparation for my first jaunt overseas in a long while. I was going to attend Knutepunkt, the Nordic LARP conference held once a year in one of the four countries that make up the heart of the Nordic scene – Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. I’d be spending four days in Oslo for the Week in Norway program and then would head up to the main conference up in Haraldvangen, a camp grounds on a beautiful lake. Looking back now back in Brooklyn, I realize I was in no way prepared for how much this trip would have such a profound change on my life.

This is Part 1 of my analysis of the whole Nordic LARP adventure. There’s so much to talk about I’m splitting it up. Pictures included are credited to their creators.

To Begin – What is Nordic LARP?

That question is a little harder to explain than one would imagine. People have been debating the actual definition for the movement for ages, so I don’t presume to have a good one just yet (if I ever will). For better and more concise explanations, I refer to Lizzie Stark’s blog. Or even better, check out Jaakko Stenros’s wonderful lecture in the Nordic LARP Talk series. But here we go anyway, let’s give it a shot, with a little context to the overall LARP community included too.

To those who are familiar with live action role-play games, or LARPs, a simple introduction would start by saying that there are lots of different traditions in the LARP community. Within the United States and abroad, the major traditions include:

  • Theater-style games: these are usually categorized as games that involve non-physical combat styles and simulation of events through description and symbolic representation.  Famous theater-style LARP systems include the Mind’s Eye Theater system by White Wolf for it’s World of Darkness setting. It’s meant to be (mostly) no physical contact.
  • Boffer games: This is a broad term for games that involve actual physical contact in their combat systems. Players use latex or foam weapons to engage in simulated combat, while magic and other supernatural events are symbolically represented using things like ‘spell packets’ (tiny bean bags or birdseed filled sewn packets) or light sources. These games tend to aim for more physical immersion in environment design to help drag the players into a What You See Is What You Get atmosphere.

While these are two of the predominant systems of gameplay in LARP, each full of their own traditions and development history, there is a third tradition that has been gaining more international attention in the last few years. That tradition is known as Nordic LARP and though as the name suggests it began in the Nordic countries, its influence has been felt across Europe and in recent years in the US, Canada and South America.

So what is Nordic LARP? It’s a tradition of LARP heavily influenced by artistic and theatrical expression that focus on high immersion both in environment and emotional/psychological engagement. The games in this tradition tend to focus on serious material and frame their games with workshops before the game and debriefs afterwards to present a well-informed and emotionally safe environment to engage in serious subject matter. The games also utilize what are known as metatechniques within the game to structure the play, drawing heavily from theatrical and cinematic influences. The culture also involves putting aside stricter goal-driven, ‘winning’ mindsets by encouraging players to often ‘play to lose’ so as to experience a richer story in game, as well as encourages players to create characters that let them play close to home and tie themselves emotionally to their characters. This can cause a lot of bleed, emotional cross-over from your character to yourself, which is something that Nordic LARP encourages for richness of play.

THE book on Nordic LARP.
THE book on Nordic LARP.

What develops out of these and other complexities of the Nordic tradition is a body of games that are deeply touching, well-structured, and immersive to players. The Nordic community is also heavily interested in cultivating a body of work which documents LARPs, since by nature larps are ephemeral and cannot be repeated exactly. For that reason, one can read up on some of the major games over there, like Mad About the Boy (based on Y: the Last Man), Kapo (a prison-camp LARP about internment and the loss of humanity during incarceration), and Just A Little Lovin’ (about the AIDS crisis in the 80’s in NYC). There’s also an amazing textbook on the community called Nordic LARP by Jaako Stenros and Markus Montola which has received critical acclaim, including winning the Diana Jones Award at Gencon in 2012.

Knutepunkt developed as the convention center of this developing community, a conference where games could be showcased and discourse on the art of making larps could be held. As far as I can tell, Knutepunkt is THE place to discuss Nordic LARP and welcomes passionate designers and players from everywhere once a year. This was my first time in attendance.

The Trip Over and A Week in Norway

I caught a flight overnight and arrived in Norway Monday morning. I was traveling with Chris, a DC area gamer and larp organizer that I met earlier this year at InterCon. We stayed together at a local hotel in Oslo while participating in A Week in Norway, the four day extended programming provided by the Knutepunkt organizers for those who wanted to cram more Nordic LARP experience into their trip. From Monday on they had a community house open with games and food available all day, and events planned for the participants. We did a workshop on rituals in LARP, a particular favorite tradition of the Norwegian designers, that took place inside a mausoleum. We listened to talks about Nordic LARP hosted by Nordic Larp Talks, including presentations by Jaako Stenros (co-author of Pervasive Games and the Nordic LARP book), Annika Waern (Pervasive Game co-author) and Sarah Lynne Bowman (author of The Functions of Role-Playing Games). And one of my personal favorites, we played a game called Limbo, held on a tram as it rode around the city and experienced being trapped in Purgatory.

Part of the events scheduled also included larps written by participants in the Larp Exchange Academy, an extension of the summer LARP Exchange Academy run in Vilnus, Lithuania in June. These brave souls traveled from their home countries to be holed up in a house in the hills outside of Oslo to spend three days writing LARPs. The results were some brand new games which we play tested during that week we were there. I had the pleasure of playing a game called Stereo Hearts, in which the players explored inter-personal relationships using songs on your playlist and recited monologues. I was at first skeptical – I’d seen game jams done but a game jam on larps? And a game about playlists to share emotion?

I was never so happy to be wrong. Stereo Hearts proved to be a moving, extremely engaging game with some fantastic use of Nordic metatechniques. I don’t think I’d ever engaged so quickly or so deeply in emotional relationships in a LARP. Afterwards, I felt emotionally exhausted and yet happy, as I’d been deeply touched by the depth of internal struggles we’d experienced in a brief game.

That is a great way to describe most of my week in Oslo – emotionally exhausted and yet happy. I had never imagined that immersing myself in the Nordic LARP scene would require me to open up quite so much of myself, both in games and in inter-personal relationships. I spent a lot of the time meeting new people and discussing the differences between LARP cultures in different countries, and as a result met a lot of wonderful, friendly, intelligent folks from more countries than I could name. Personally, the games that I was introduced to also required me to dig deep into my own emotions to feed the role-play and I soon found myself exploring some deep-down emotionally intense places both during and after events.

I soon realized why the Nordic larp tradition focuses intently on what is known as debriefing or after-care, in which organizers go over the events of the game and how players felt about what went down. While this might sound very touchy-feely to gamers from America, this culture of after-care is instrumental in giving players an avenue to express what they felt in a game should they feel the need. I found myself being open and honest about how events in character felt and what I was thinking about after the game ended, a space that I often find lacking in American LARPs. I also found myself talking extensively with other designers and larp academics about the emotional implications of the idea of ‘bleeding’ in and out of ones character, whether that was ‘healthy’ and whether or not after-care was needed – all fodder for a blog post all it’s own shortly.

Overall, the week in Norway provided me with insight into how the community worked and gave me a great taste of what’s to come. Because if I believed that four days in Oslo with Nordic LARP was intense, I was nowhere prepared for the awesomeness of Knutepunkt 2013.

To be continued…

Trains, Planes and Automobiles – My Upcoming Convention Schedule

by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture

Hey again, folks! It’s your exhausted, still jet lagged a week later friend, recovering from what can only be convention plague a week after coming back from Norway. I will shortly have up my recap of the amazing time I had at Knutepunkt 2013 in Norway and at the Different Games conference at NYU Poly this weekend, but first I have exciting news. My convention schedule for this upcoming con season has blossomed into a lot of travel and I’m excited to talk about some places where I’ll be attending, running events, and sitting on panels. Heck, between this and attending Dystopia Rising games in New Jersey, Massechussets and soon potentially in Pennsylvania, I doubt I’ll have a free weekend until the end of the year.

Regardless, here’s the schedule, and it’s robust to say the least!

Camp Nerdly – Ever want to go Nerd camping? Go out to summer camp with tabletop RPGs and more dice than you can shake a marshmallow on a stick at? Well, that’s Camp Nerdly folks. Outside of Washington DC the weekend of May 17th-19th, I’ll be attending just for the heck of playing some fun RPGs with some great people (my present to myself for surviving a tough semester). I’ll admit to coming into this event blind, but anything that looks like nerd camp sounds like fun!

KristaCon – If you’re not familiar, KristaCon is a tabletop extravaganza held by Krista White and Brennan Taylor (of Galileo Games fame). Organized originally as an intense weekend of tabletop at their home, it has now blossomed into a tradition of two days of intense RPG madness that’s expanding to be held in New York City weekend of May 24th-26th. I attending a KristaCon where I got to play two days of intense Marvel Heroic RPG as my favorite character, Jean Grey, and wouldn’t miss this one for the world.

DexCon – All right, no more fun and games… well, that sounds wrong when talking about a convention. But what I mean is, no more just going to a convention to have fun! I’ll be rolling into one of my favorite conventions, DexCon 2013 in Morristown New Jersey with my Phoenix Outlaw crew to run two amazing LARPs. The first is a brand new signature event based on the Battlestar Galactica universe called ‘Straight On ‘Til Morning: Tales of the Rising Star’ with Last Second Productions, headed by my old friend Michael Maleki. The second event we’ll be running is my favorite, the Dresden Files LARP. This will be the chronicle closer for our last four games and it’s entitled “Final Frost.” There might be some other Phoenix Outlaw surprises going on that weekend, so stay tuned…

GenCon– This is the big road trip, folks! I will be strapping into a vehicle for a nice long road trip out to Indianapolis, Indiana to play like a rockstar at GenCon 2013. Along with celebrating the good work done by folks in the industry, I’m waiting to hear back about possibly doing a couple of panels there, including one on representation of religion and religious ideas in game culture and another on mental health in game culture. More information will be coming up about these as they appear. Mostly I’m excited about the epic road trip that always precedes GenCon. This year I’ll be doing it with John Adamus, a writer and an editor trapped in a car for ten hours of driving. This should be fun!

PaxPrime– PaxEast a while back saw me, Iris Explosion, Stella Chu, Anja Keister and Susana Polo of the Mary Sue light up the stage with ‘You Game Like A Girl’ (which can now be seen in its entirety on YouTube sans the horrid trolling). It was such an intense experience but apparently a successful one, because we’re doing it again! This time we’re heading to Seattle for PaxPrime and I’m expecting it to be a heck of a trip. I’ve never been to Seattle so I’m looking forward to seeing the city, as well as kicking back at the convention to take in the atmosphere. Now I just have to figure out funding for this one too and we’re set.

WyrdCon – This is a huge one for me and team Phoenix Outlaw, folks. John Adamus and I will be flying out to Los Angeles for WyrdCon 2013 where we have bid to run a session of the Dresden Files LARP. I’m excited to be taking the Dresden LARP across the country for a whirl and look forward to seeing folks like Aaron Vanick of Seekers Unlimited, who I had the pleasure of meeting at InterCon this year in Massachusetts.

GeekGirlCon – It’s my pleasure to say that I’ve been invited to come out and participate in GeekGirlCon 2013. I’ve been a huge fan of this convention since I first heard of it and the great work they’re doing in creating a space for women to talk about women in geek culture. When they reached out to me after PaxEast, I was ecstatic and I’m working hard to gather up funding for a second trip to Seattle this year to make being at this convention a reality. Who knows what kind of women in game design shenanigans I can contribute? Stay tuned as to whether this will be happening!

Metatopia – You know that I wouldn’t miss this one for the world. For those that aren’t familiar with Metatopia, it’s a game designers convention held by the folks who do DexCon and Dreamation in Morristown NJ. I feel like every time I attend Metatopia, amazing things happen and I learn so much. I expect this year to be no exception! That’s way out in November, but generally Metatopia puts a cap on the convention season for me in the most positive way and I always look forward to it. I’m looking forward to potentially bidding the women in game design panel once more, and even a discussion on game scholarship and it’s relations to indie game design. This is another ‘stay tuned’.

But wouldn’t you know, that might not be the close of the con season for me. A document recently made the rounds by Klaus Raasted, a professional larper and designer from the Nordic LARP scene. It seems he wants to run a pro larp convention in November too, maybe the week after Metatopia. Heh, can we say another trip across the pond? Let’s see what happens, but I’d be down.

This schedule also doesn’t take into account conferences like Practice at NYU and other academic events. I’m also trying to put together the funds to attempt to get to Vancouver the first week in June for the Feminists in Games conference to present a paper on the evolution of the Tomb Raider franchise and theories on women’s discourse in game design. But wouldn’t you know, the West Coast is far away and I just need to learn to spontaneously teleport.

In all seriousness, I feel really blessed and happy that folks want me and mine to come out and do awesome events at their conferences and conventions. Being a part of the nerd community has been such a central part of my life for the last ten years or so, and being able to contribute to events has been fantastic. I’m looking forward to more such events (including a special one I’ll be announcing in it’s own post soon) in 2014 as well.

My First PaxEast and “You Game Like A Girl”

by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Game Design, Geek Culture, Speaking Out, Uncategorized

This past weekend, the Boston area hosted thousands of gamers rolling into their fair convention center for PaxEast, a major east coast gaming convention. Triple A companies to Indies in video games and tabletop brought their best to show to consumers and panels were held on every subject imaginable. This might have been enough to bring a gamer like me to the Boston area for the con, but I was lucky enough to be involved in one of the panels this year. And let me tell you, it was a heck of a time.

First let me start with saying that as a convention, I found PaxEast to be really enjoyable. The Expo Hall is chock full of video games to try from every company imaginable. I particularly enjoyed discovering a few new independent video games that I am looking forward to, like Red Barrel’s terrifying Outlast and Compulsion Games’ Contrast, both of which I wrote up for Tor.com this week. I also got the chance to get a look at Transistor from the creators of Bastion and I’m going to love putting my hands on it. The Indie Megabooth section was a chance to straight nerd out on great independent companies that are doing stellar work that, I dare say, is competitive with the quality coming out of the Triple A’s.

That, however, wasn’t even the best PART about the convention. PaxEast fostered an open gaming section where you could turn in your ID and take out whatever board game you wanted to try out. This section was open from 10AM until nearly two in the morning, letting gamers just get together with their friends for a good time. I had the privilege of spending most of that time with Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks from Evil Hat productions, and we got to try a few amazing games that I never would have checked out otherwise (Cockroach Poker, anyone?) I could wax on about the convention, but let’s talk about the major event for me that weekend: the panel.

photoI was privileged enough to be invited by Anja Keister of the D20 Burlesque troupe to come in and speak as a game designer on a panel called “You Game Like A Girl: Tales of Trolls and White Knights.” The idea of the panel was to tackle the fraught issue of women in the gaming and geek community, spanning from the treatment of cosplayers to the representation of women in video games. We had a one hour slot on Sunday morning and the panel featured Susanna Polo from the Mary Sue, Stella Chu (professional cosplayer and burlesque dancer), Iris Explosion (burlesque dancer and sex educator), Anja Keister (founder of D20 Burlesque) and myself. For those who missed the panel you can find it on Twitch.tv here (hint: our panel starts at 3:05:00 – that’s hour three folks!) and check us out talking about the issues facing the female community.

From my perspective it was a surreal day. I got to the theater to see a line of people in the room next door. I asked what they were waiting for, and the Enforcer at the door said: “That’s the line for your theater. It’s already out the door.” I was positively floored. We got into Naga theater and set ourselves up on the stage and they let our audience in. And this? This was our audience.

The audience at "You Game Like A Girl"
The audience at “You Game Like A Girl”

I cannot explain how honored I felt to be in the presence of EIGHT HUNDRED of my fellow gamers who came to hear us talk about the topic of women in gaming. It was an incredible experience as people came up to the microphone and asked us questions or lit up Twitter on #Paxlikeagirl to express their support. A tradition was started too when Iris Explosion got so mad at misogyny issues that she launched a plastic cup off the stage, inspiring others who came up to the microphone to throw cups too. Soon we had the ‘we hate this!’ cup launching going on, which was hilarious and light fun.

The panel went off beautifully with only a modicum of trolling (which I’ll address in another post coming up soon), and the experience was overall super powerful and empowering. After the panel people came up to us to share stories and ask questions. I personally got to meet some women who are going into game design and who had questions about how to engage with problematic team situations or content. I’ve never quite been so humbled to have women ask if I’d be willing to mentor them going forward.

photo copyPeople brought up their badges and had us autograph them and asked us to autograph cups that had been thrown! It was a strangely surreal experience for me in general and we stuck around to talk to people as long as we could before we ran off to head back to New York.

From a game designers perspective, the kind of things  we spoke about were just the tip of the iceberg of issues I wanted to talk about. But you only have one hour sometimes! I was really glad to be able to bring up the way men have been spoken to in the ‘fake geek girl’ debate, about people raising children to be the next generation of gamer girls, and about pushing back in unhealthy/uncomfortable situations for women in game teams. There was only so much time and so much we each could have spoken about from our particular specialties, but I think it was a great start. And it will be just a start, because there’s plenty of other opportunities for conversation.

Meanwhile, back at home, there’s more game design though to be done. So I’m back into writing and doing work. PaxEast, was a pleasure, hope to see you next year.

Convention Schedule and Putting Out The Call

by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Game Design

On the heels of my last post about being super busy comes news of some awesomeness soon to come. I’ve been graced with the chance to attend several conventions in the next six months to either run games or contribute on panels. And good news, some of that involves needing some help from awesome game designers and LARPers and women in the game world — hey, I might mean you! So check it out:

Dreamation 2013 –

That’s right folks! The Double Exposure convention season for 2013 has begun and Dreamation 2013 is only a few weeks away. I will be hosting my third Dresden Files LARP at the con entitled “Dog Days”. It’s a sequel of the previous two games and will focus on the aftermath of the craziness from last time. Queen Mab mad at you? Rogue Denarians afoot? New York’s supernatural community has to come together, and the wereforms in town are trying to do just that. Too bad someone’s got other plans of course…

On top of that, I’ll also be hosting two panels at the convention. And this is the part where I’d love to hear from folks!

The first panel will be a LARP Roundtable, where we bring together LARP staffers and organizers from around the area to talk about the challenges and rewards of running their games. Whether you do theater style games or boffer, long term campaigns or experimental, nordic or American, you’ve got a seat at the table. Let’s come together and share techniques and learn from each other. If folks are interested, please hit me up on Twitter or my email – I can’t guarantee everyone will be a speaker, but I’d love to hear from you.

The second panel is on a topic near and dear to my heart – Women in Gaming. I’ve spoken with the wonderful Avonelle Wing of the Double Exposure staff and we’d love this to follow up the panels at both DexCon last year and at Metatopia in continuing to unpack the issues of women in gaming and in game design. So if you’re a game designer interested in sitting on the panel with me to talk about the state of women in the gaming world, let’s talk! As above, can’t guarantee everyone can be a speaker but get in touch so we can start a dialogue about it.

Intercon 2013-

Following on the heels of that will be Intercon 2013 up in Boston. I’m super excited to be attending my first Intercon in years, and my first of the Boston conventions. I’m pleased to say I’ll be attending the Pre-Convention on Thursday to be a guest on several panels, including Sexuality in LARP, Gender and LARP, How to Run a Game Briefing/Wrap and What Boffer LARP can Teach Intercon. There are some amazing folks from all corners of the LARP world coming to the con to run games, but the panel track is just as interesting so come by Thursday and Friday to hear some smart folk speak. Oh yeah, and I’ll be there too!

IndieCade East-

This is a brand new convention for me too! I’ll be joining my NYU Game Center brethren to explore the game design landscape of the New York area in IndieCade east. Moreover, I’m going to be on Team NYU in the Iron Game Design Challenge where the NYU Game Center is taking on Parsons! Lead by our glorious leader, Eric Zimmerman, I am sure we will go on to victory!

Pax East-

That’s right folks, another East Con and this time it’s Pax! This one is another first for me as I’m attending PaxEast as a panelist! I will be sitting a panel on the dreaded Fake Geek Girls dilemma alongside such awesome women as Anja Keister, Stella Chu and Iris Explosion of D20 Burlesque. It’s my pleasure to be in such illustrious company and I’m looking forward to the discussions we’re going to have.

And coming soon: GenCon 2013!

That’s right, the plans are already in the works for attending GenCon 2013. I’ll be wending my way out to GenCon and hope to work alongside the always fantastic John Stavropolis to run some games for Games on Demand. I also have plans to do full play tests of my game Wanderlust there, as well as at…

DexCon 2013!

Looking forward to this summer, I’m already planning my next Dresden LARP which will be the finale of the cycle of games and bring the chronicle to a close. I’ll also be bringing more play tests of Wanderlust along, hoping to culminate in having the game ready for Metatopia in November.

So that’s my schedule. I’m already exhausted just thinking about it. Plus I’ve got plans for New York Comic Con and San Diego Comic Con in there, and maybe running something at Recess in NYC. So this year is going to be a lot of running around. But why not? When you’ve got a chance to go great places and game, why not take it? As updates happen, I’ll give more of them. In the meantime, I gotta remember to pack my dice and get ready for a LONG season.