Jason Pitre recorded the GenCon seminar that Matt Forbeck, Stan!, and I gave on the intersection of games and stories. Check it out (along with the audio of a few other seminars, all recorded with permission) at Jason’s Genesis of Legend Publishing website.
(In addition to recording these, Jason was also the eBay hero who bought my GenCon ENnie dream date.)
On Wednesday evening at Jillian’s in Indianapolis, BoardGameGeek was deservedly awarded the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming among a field of nominees that included BoardGameGeek, board game Chaos in the Old World, and roleplaying games Kagematsu and Montsegur 1244.
Matt Forbeck presented the award:
Thing 027 from Things We Think About Games is about awards:
Awards for games can mean a lot of things.
Some awards reflect informed opinions of play and popularity. Other awards just mean the game won a popularity contest, or just that a lot of people had heard of that game.
The argument that awards don’t many anything is well known. We can probably stop having that argument now.
The thing I like about the Diana Jones Award is that it’s not limited to recognizing games. BoardGameGeek is a great example of something great in our industry that ought to be honored. I’m glad to see that it was.
Here’s the skinny on Gameplaywright happenings at the Best Four Days in Gaming.
What do Dr. No, Casablanca, and Shakespeare have to teach us about making the stories in our RPGs awesome? Roleplaying design authority and virtuoso Robin D. Laws (Gumshoe, Feng Shui) has figured it out and presents his new approach for analyzing stories with an eye toward improving your game. Figure out what went right and what went wrong at last week’s session, and learn how to make next week’s game unforgettable. Bring your questions!
Friday, 10–11am, Marriott Indiana Ballroom F (SEM1009222)
The book—Things We Think About Games—makes more than 100 assertions about games from the obvious-but-overlooked (“In an RPG, all the characters are wearing pants”) to the too-frequently-disregarded (“Take your turn, already!”) to the deeply zen (“Be aware that the other players are not necessarily playing for the same reasons you are”). Bring your own cunning, brilliant, or mad assertions to discuss and defend at this thinking gamer’s roundtable.
Saturday, 1–2pm, Marriott Indianan Ballroom F (SEM1009223)
Robin Laws will be signing Hamlet’s Hit Points at the Indie Press Revolution booth (#2339) on Thursday from 1–2pm and Saturday from 4–5pm. Drop by to ask questions, get an autograph, and bask in his knowledgable glow.
Editor Will Hindmarch and as many authors as are able to show up will be signing The Bones: Us and Our Dice at the Indie Press Revolution booth (#2339) on Sunday from 1–2pm. Come tell us a story about your dice.
All three of our books (Things We Think About Games, The Bones: Us and Our Dice, and Hamlet’s Hit Points) will be available in the dealer’s hall from both Indie Press Revolution (booth #2339) and Adventure Retail (booth #1321).
The iPad promises to enhance our tabletop role-playing game experience with the benefit of its magical whirly-ques and revolutionary gizmo-bobs hidden behind that shiny, multi-touch display. Of course, the hardware is useless without apps. Most gamers gravitate toward two particular types of iPad apps to bring to the gaming table: PDF-viewing apps that allow you to virtually flip through the pages of your game books, charts, and character sheets; and dice-rolling apps that let you fling electronic polyhedrals to generate those random numbers that so many games thrive on.
There are great PDF-viewing apps (such as GoodReader) and there are wonderful dice-rolling apps (like Dicenomicon). But the problem is switching between the two. You look down at your character sheet in your PDF-viewer to tell you what to roll. Then you hit the home button, flip through your pages of apps to find your dice-roller, open that up, select the right die or combination of dice to roll, and then roll them. Now what was the modifier you were supposed to add again? Better close out your dice-app, turn the page back to your PDF-viewer, open that again, and wait for your PDF character sheet to render to the screen. Meanwhile your fellow players are all staring at you, waiting for you to say “3!” so the game can march forward once more. This is not ideal.
Thankfully we now have DiceBook by A Sharp. DiceBook has the good sense to combine PDF-viewing and dice-rolling into one, straightforward, easy-to-use app. The developer provided me with a copy of this brand-new iPad app and I was able to take it for a spin at the game table.
Gen Con is next week, so the advice for attendees is going around.
The best advice I’ve ever read about convention attendance comes from Derek Sivers, who’s not a gamer (as far as I know). Even so, his advice on how to attend a music conference is also the best advice I’ve ever read for attending a game convention as a professional. If you aspire to freelancing, publishing, podcasting, or entrepreneurship of any kind in the game business, read the piece.
Sivers is the founder of CD Baby and other ventures. The single greatest communication I’ve ever received from an online retailer came from CD Baby. As far as I’m concerned, the man’s a genius.
