Norwescon 2011

April 25, 2011

Norwescon 2011

Norwescon started early for me with a flurry of baking for the Dethcon room party. Wednesday and Thursday were very busy days and I took the last foccaccia out of the oven mere minutes before I left to head down and be on my first panel on Thursday night.

That panel “Not just for white boys anymore: beyond stereotypes” Was very well attended for a Thursday night panel, in fact Thursday overall was very well attended. I think a lot of people treated Norwes as a staycation this year. I did the panel with Jules Hahn, Donna Prior, and Phil Brucato. So there I was a white boy on that panel, feeling a little uncomfortable about trying to talk about non-heteronormative gamers while being one, but it went well and I think we definitely put down some food for thought. Next year I’m really hoping that I’ll be able to gladly give up my seat to a Mike Pondsmith, or a Chris Chen, or a John Kim, plus that would mean that I’d get to sit in the audience and watch any of those guys talk about gaming, which would be awesome.

After the panel hung out and had some good conversations with some people i hadn’t seen in awhile. I did that a lot this weekend, with the most surprising being my friend Jay, who I went to high school with and not only hadn’t seen in a very long time, but hadn’t expected to see at Norwes.

Friday morning I was on “Game publishing goes digital” with Jeremy Holcomb, Sean K Reynolds, and a good friend of mine, Dustin Gross. This one was pretty interesting, there was some advice those those hoping to digitally publish games, some gripes about the current status of such, a really good section where we talked about promotion online, and a wrap up where we mused about the future of online games publishing. It was a good panel and about the perfect length and content.

I want to take a small moment here, and say that the green room that Alexia ran was the best I’ve seen and I was never for want of a little snack to boost me through, and it was always super neat and well organized.

Again I wandered around and chatted, spent some time in the bar, and then went to pick up Mickey from work and bring her back as we both had panels that night.

I was then on “Ask the gamemasters” with Jonathan Tweet, Rodney Thompson and Jason Bulmahn. I love this panel. it’s fun and it’s easy because the audience generates the content with their questions, and this year we got some really good ones. The highlight questions for me were “how much contribution do you feel the players should have to the setting?” which garnered such a resounding answer of “A whole lot, because then your players are really invested in it” that it made my heart sing, and the question “What was your biggest mistake as a gm?” was really interesting.

That evening I was on “Dude, seriously WTF?: When gamers cross the line” with Phil Brucato, Donna Prior, and my friend Loree Parker. I think this one might have been a little mistitled. I think some people showed up expecting a lot of funny anecdotes about ridiculous gamer behavior and then got some horror stories about Gms and players really really crossing the line. The first example given was a GM who forced a rape upon one of the female characters and ignored the player’s protests. So, we discussed this kind of thing, and talked about how to bring up this kind of subject matter before the game and respect the wishes of the players and GM when it comes to subjects that make them uncomfortable. We also talked about how to talk to disruptive players, how to deal with unengaged players, and what to do about creative differences.

I then ran out and drove up to the Galway in the U-district for a punk rock show, and to deliver a loaf of cheese bread to Davey Death Ray. I hope he liked it. Unfortunately Danger Death Ray had played first, so I missed them. I watched The Tanked, and then some of Steel Horse’s set, but had to head back down to the hotel to pick up Mickey so we could go home and get some sleep.

We got back mid Saturday afternoon and I rounded up some players and ran my Dresden Files RPG demo. It went well and I’m glad Dylan, Ver0nica, David, and Dylan’s mom got to play. They seemed to really enjoy it.

That night I was on “Putting the R in Rpg” which was a big hit last year. This year I was on with Phil and Mickey again and taking Wolfgang Bauer’s seat was Jennifer Brozek. We went over how to broach the subject of adult content and how to set some rules for what won’t be brought up and what will be treated delicately, and got a surprising amout of questions and comments about that. Unfortunately that put our schedule behind just a little so we got to talk about how to make horror horrific, and really scare the hell out of your players, but sadly we only got to touch on the dirty stuff just a little. There was talk after the panel about splitting this panel into two panels next year, possibly three. I’d like to see three with the first being about how to deal with difficults subjects, then the horror panel, and then the sex one.

After the panel I went up to the suites and attended the 19th anual Robert the Bruce Memorail Scotch Off with my friend Thaddeus. As always it was a terrific time and there were some excellent and unusual things on the menu. There were also a few bottles of bourbon there, including the Washington Dry Fly, which I believe might be my father’s christmas present this year, and a bottle of Basil Hayden which I’m very fond of. Scotch-wise I tried the 99 Laphroig special, which was nice, but not as exciting as I’d hoped, an Oban 18 which was lovely, and the Yamazaki 12 which I’ve had before and liked quite a lot. My pal Richard put out the food as usual and it was splendid, especially the hand cured gravlax.

Sunday we stayed home and I recuperated from my hangover and watched tv while Mickey went out to walk around Greenlake and have lunch with a friend. I was going to write this post last night, but the thought of being upright and engaged with anything other than coffee and episodes of Parks and Rec and such was too daunting.

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