Other People's Memories of Gen Con Oz 2009

After a little trawling around the place, here are a couple of YouTube vids form the cosplayers point of view. Always impressed by this crowd.

Gen Con Oz 2009 is over!

Four days of gaming.

That's a lot of gaming. I really only did two days of it. Day 1 was all about finalising some printing and assembling a Giant D12 On A Stick. HUGE thanks go to Mark Peric and Worldwide Printing at South Brisbane for this. Great result. If you're looking for art for your game, contact Mark Peric. Here he is finishing the assembly work.

Days 2 and 3 were all about indie games on demand. So many gamers, all having fun. I was booked to run for all six sessions, but Lon Teal volunteered an extra session on Saturday morning, leaving me to wander the trade hall and pick up some minis. Bargain! Of the five sessions, I ran one game of Poison'd and four of Spirit of the Century. People love that game. I need to run Poison'd again. It was my first attempt at it, and I'm sure I made mistakes. This is one of my gaming groups, posing at the D12.

The Friday surprise was finding someone in the trade hall that stocked indie titles. Lacuna, Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard... I finally bought my copies of Monster Burner and Magic Burner. Both last year and this year, people at our indie game tables ask whether these games can be bought at the show. And now Games Paradise have stepped in. Calling cards were exchanged. Watch this space for more!

Sunday was a great surprise for me. The War Stories seminar with Mark and Nathan provoked some great questions from the audience. I just carried the microphone around, but people were taking notes everywhere. I'm looking forward to the games that come from this.

The other Sunday surprise was the Game Design Roundtable. Over two hours we managed to go through five games. One was about a royal loss of innocence, as David brought Dirty Princesses to the room. Timothy Ferguson brought a game about competitive running of a resort, complete with dirty tricks and vice. He walked in without knowing if it should be a board game or an RPG, and he walked out considering whether it should be a card game. Sam brought a computer game about giant monsters. I wasn't expecting a computer game, but the process worked well for him as well. Samuel (another one) joined in with his game idea about high fantasy mages, and was almost recruited for Ars Magica. Lastly, Steve Darlington finished off the session with his espionage game idea, and I'm keen to see whether he leaves the super powers in there.

Had a great time and have every intention of doing it all again next year.

The 3-2-2 Rule

There is a rule of thumb that's around in the gaming world: the 3-2-1 rule. That is to say, when attending a gaming convention each day should have a minimum of 3 hours sleep, 2 square meals and 1 shower. Paul Tevis denies that this is his, but no one can find earlier usage of it ... apparently.

Despite that, this is almost good enough advice. I want to add another shower to the list, though. Or at least a can of deodorant or some cologne in each backpack.

I'm glad that the Brisbane Convention Centre has high ceilings and good ventilation. 3-2-1 might just be enough!

Hope to see you (not smell you) there.

Gencon Oz Schedule

Just before Gencon Oz kicks off, here's the summary for where I'll be.

Thursday

This is my only time to see the trade floor, and I think I'll only get to see it in the afternoon. The morning will be full of last-minute preparations for indie games on demand. Not sure what I'll buy. Last year's haul included Campaign Coins and WOTC miniatures (D&D and Star Wars). I look forward to it in eager anticipation.

Friday

Indie. Games. On. Demand. This is my entire day, from before the 10am session through to after the end of the 6pm session. I'll be at the tables from about 9am to 9:30pm. These are some of our busiest sessions, I hope we can fit you in.

Saturday

Same as Friday. I'll be there from setup to pulldown. By the end of it we will have offered about 2o-something different games from 8 GMs, 4 concurrently-running games, 5 players per game. I'm going to need lozenges.

Sunday

I'll be hosting the 9am session called War Stories and then the 10am session (2 hours) called Game Design Roundtable. If you want to take your game from idea to print, these three hours are thoroughly worth your time.

Hope to see you there.

And we're back .. just in time

Rabid readers of my blogs will know that I've been largely preoccupied this year. I'm overjoyed to say that I managed to knock it off the list in time to prepare for Gencon Oz. There is still a lot to do, but somehow in September I managed to get that finished, spend a week in China for work and finish organising Indie Games On Demand.

So turn up! Get along to Gencon and play them thar games. I'll even be offering Poison'd in my menu, and you can play it this Saturday, which is Talk Like A Pirate Day. Don't say we don't think about these things.

Gencon Indy - Occupancy Rate

Over at the indie games on demand News page, I sometimes update the figures for occupancy of our events. The last time I checked it was around 18%. With 5 weeks to go, I thought that this was a reasonably good rate. By the time Gencon Oz started in 2008, we were booked solid.

For the sake of comparison, I went to the Gencon Indy site and browsed around. Courtesy of the event guide in CSV format, I ran the same numbers for the whole convention. Here is some interesting information for you.

Maximum number of tickets for events: 140,235

Number of hours of gaming: 17,830.5

That's a lot of gaming.

And then I found the "Tickets Available" column and ran a quick calculation.

Number of tickets still available: 90,455

So the occupancy for the whole of Gencon Indy at the time the CSV file was last generated on the day that the convention opened is 35%.

Even with such a large convention, there are still a lot of people waiting until the last minute to get into a game. The 18% for indie games on demand looks even better than I had previously thought.

E.G.G. Spirit of the Century

In my last post I said that I ran a game of SOTC for the E.G.G. August meetup. These are my reflections on it.

I used the session to test the adventure I'll have on offer for indie games on demand. It's a clever little adventure, playing around the numerical significance of January 1st, 1901. I brought some partially generated characters to the table, the same ones I've used for SOTC cons in the past, with phases 4 and 5 of character creation left undone so that the players get the opportunity to try out character creation. This, as usual, worked OK. For Gencon I plan to bring new characters, and also to leave only phase 5 incomplete. This ought to give more time for play, without eliminating the experience of character creation. Also, the new characters are going to have a distinctly Australian feel to them, since the adventure is set in Australia. If you want to know more, register for Gencon and for indie games on demand. The end result was the classic SOTC kind of game, over the top, with zany narration and plenty of scope for the genre to shine.

Special thanks to Nathan and Jason for taking the time at the end of the session to give me feedback on what they enjoyed and what they didn't. There's nothing quite like constructive feedback to help a GM. Nice one guys! See you at Gencon. Go register for it!

Gencon Oz 2009 registrations are open

Just like the heading says, registrations are open for Gencon Oz. This time last year, they were about to close and there was a little panic around the place that events wouldn't fill. Still, the indie games explosion filled, and so did Michael Wenman's Eighth Sea. One of the workers at the registration booth made a comment to me on the Thursday that there were no RPG spaces left anywhere.

For 2009, I expect that the hall will be a little smaller and will have a feeling of being more densely packed. Even if the same number of attendees are there, the smaller space will increase the atmosphere. That's a good thing, for sure. The high ceilings, even though they carry away the odour of thousands of sweaty gamers, make the whole thing seem under-attended. But that's a trick of the eye. Thousands of people made their way to the con.

And dozens of them came to play indie games. I'm excited about it again this year. And this year the indie gamers will be much easier to find.

And no, I'm not going to tell you why I say that. You'll just have to register for gencon and see for yourself.

Indie Day

The fine people of Every Gamer's Guild are hosting their monthly game day on July 4th. In America this is Independence Day. In Newcastle, it's indie games day.

This is too good an opportunity to have an indie game with some people I haven't seen since Gencon 08, so I'll be going and running games. The sessions are only 2 hours long, so the games have to be punchy. At the time of writing, I intend to run Spirit of the Century and either Agon or Burning Wheel (perhaps The Sword).

SOTC will get a slight revision, though. I think I'll try it with only 5 aspects per character. I've found that in most convention games, about half of the aspects aren't used. Either they're not great aspects, or there are too many aspects for players to grasp in a short timeslot. I'll figure it out closer to the day.

And lastly, there is the potential for some after-hours gaming with a Secret Project I'm working on. Stay tuned.

Indie Games On Demand at Gencon Oz 2009

Do you like indie games?

Are you undecided about going to Gencon Oz 2009?

I have good news for you! With some other indie-minded GMs, the indie games on demand event will run on Friday and Saturday of the con. We were booked solid last year, running as the indie games explosion, so make sure you register early.

And to whet your appettite, go and see the indie games on demand event site. Go see it now!

Indie Games Hoedown

I'm musing over names for the indie games event for Gencon this year.  Indie Games Explosion is a great title, but what we do here is different to the IGE in America.  We could try for Games on Demand, but I really want the word "indie" in the title.

Indie Games On Demand?  Then it's the Indie GOD.  Hmm.  We could finally have justification for the totem pole at the event.

2009 Wish List

It's a new year, hooray! I immersed myself in the arbitrariness of dates and years, only for as long as it took to reflect on my 2008 gaming life and generate a wish list for 2009. I couldn't really call these resolutions because I'm more opportunistic than planned with my gaming.

1. Run games for others, without necessarily organising them.
It'd be great to just say, "Hey, I want to run a game of X if you can organise the players, the time and the place" and have it happen. I think there's a prevailing perception that it's the GMs responsibility to organise everything, but it doesn't have to be that way. To that end, if you live in Brisbane and want someone else (that is, me) to run any of the following games for your group as a one-shot, let me know.
Don't Rest Your Head
Agon
Spirit of the Century
Space Rat

2. Organise another Go Play Brisbane - or two!
I had loads of fun with this and want to do it again, with more people. 'nuff said.

3. Run indie games at Gencon Oz
I had even more fun with this than with GPB. This is high on the list, and is scheduled around the time that my thesis is due. Go read Divine Trauma to follow that particular adventure. A lesser wish, tho far from a substitute, is to get to more local cons. If all goes well, I might even try to get to a Sydney, Melbourne or Newcastle con (to repay the huge favour).

4. Burning Wheel Campaign
All my gaming is convention style. It's one-shots all the way. If I was going to get into a campaign, I'd really enjoy Burning Wheel. Not sure if I'm keen to run it, preferring to play in it. Of course, I'm not sure how I'd go with timeslots (refer to previous comment about a thesis).

5. Try at least 2 new games
And by "new" I'd like to think that I'd find some gold from 2009. A worthy substitute would include good ones from years past, such as Primetime Adventures.

So that's my wishlist for 2009. Note that there's no mention of Nobles in there. As I've said before, I don't think I want to publish it; I just want to design it so that my own game skills get better. It's my DIY peek under the hood of game systems. Anyway, I hope to see you along the way as the genie grants me my wishes.

Gen Con Australia 2009

I see that there's a facebook group for Gen Con Australia 2009.  I don't imagine that I'm going to learn anything from this that wouldn't see on the GCO website, but at the very least it'll give the organisers some indication of numbers.

If you're on facebook, go join the group today.

An indie summary of Gencon Oz

The first Gencon Oz was, for indie games, a good experience. We had games from Australian designers being launched, we had seminars on indie game play and design, and we had full registrations for all tables of the Indie Games Explosion. Best of all, the organisers are enthusiastic about our contribution and are keen to give us more space for larger events in 2009.

And now for some details.

Seminars
There were two seminars for indie games across the four days. The first was on Thursday night, with a panel of Nathan Russell, Michael Wenman and Robin Laws (and I got to be MC for this illustrious group) and the topic was "Steal This Trick - The indie games you should play at least once". For an hour the panelists spoke on the topic and took questions from the audience.

The second one was in the last day of the con, and wasn't actually advertised in the programme, but we still managed to get people to come. It was intended to be a session on indie game design, primarily with the guys who were launching games, but we turned it into a Game Design Roundtable as was done at Dreamation. Two games were thrown on the table and dissected by the assembled group. Both of the designers set themselves goals to have ashcans ready in six months, in time for Melbourne's Arcanacon.

Indie Games Launched
Michael Wenman came up from Sydney to launch The Eighth Sea, his game about time-travelling pirates with a penchant for making money from temporal disturbances. He ran two or three sessions every day, and was fully booked (and over booked!) for each one. The pre-orders list grew quite well, I hear.

Nathan Russell decided to only run his game - Space Rat - through the IGE, and was handsomely rewarded. I sat in on an hour of one session and enjoyed it immensely. Due to a delay in printing from Lulu he didn't have any product to sell, but he handed out stacks of postcards and flyers. He generously left me with one of his few pre-release copies to add to my library. Thanks, Nathan!

Indie Games Explosion
According to the registration table, all sessions were fully booked and even though about 10-20% didn't turn up, we had gamer after gamer approaching us and ask about empty spaces at the table. We estimate that about half of them had never heard of any of the games, and were still keen to play. We also estimate that about two-thirds finished the games and asked, "Where can I buy this game?" Unfortunately, the only thing we could do was point them to the IPR online store. We hadn't really expected people to try and buy these games from us, but they were keen. I would have loved to point them towards one of the retailers, but none of them were carrying indie stock either.

In short, the indie gamer crowd had more demand than supply and the organisers noticed. I suspect that we left our mark partially through the registration database and partially through the periodic visits from Robin Laws, Peter Adkison and the Gencon staff. I need to give a big thank you to Scott Vandervalk, Nathan Russell and Michael Wenman for bringing content to the con. I also need to point out the great support from Peter Ball and the rest of the con organisers for squeezing a non-standard event into the programme.

And now... go plan the next one.

Editorial Addition
In my original post, I forgot to thank the folks who came to the round table. Thanks to Scott V, Louise, Lon, Michael (and his wife), Craig and Danica. We'll do it again next year.

Halftime at Gencon

So it's halfway through Gencon and I have to say that the con is exceeding my expectations in almost every way. The gaming has been great, but the best thing has been the response to the Indie Games Explosion. When internet pre-registrations closed (the Monday morning before the con) we had 47 places left from our 90 places available. At that point I thought we would have a lot of flexibility, and perhaps half-full sessions that we could use to run games that were more focused on a smaller number of characters. The reality, after just one day, is that we have had every table of every session full. Even overflowing at least once. I couldn't have expected it. Over and above this, I heard yesterday that all our sessions for today (Saturday) are full already, and that we might be offering one final session on Sunday. It's not in the programme right now, but at this stage anything seems possible.

This is largely due to the great work by Peter Ball. He looks tired, but he is still happy and works hard to make it all happen. I'm glad he's involved in this because he's supportive, helpful and friendly. Great work, Peter.

To close, I'm going to give a very quick summary of what I've been up to so far.

Thursday
- Met Nathan Russell in person for the first time. And from that point, I met a bunch of people from the Newcastle gaming scene, and frequenters of Imbercorvus.
- Bought some Campaign Coins. Wow. These things are great. They have good heft and are already in use for my Don't Rest Your Head games.
- Played a demo of Heroclix, and was soundly beaten by my friend Mat. 3-0. Ack! He's a great tactical player who didn't even use one of his minis.
- Played a game (or part of a game) of Cleopatra. This looks like an interesting strategy game and it has some great supporting plasticware for game pieces.
- Hosted (was MC of...) the Steal This Trick seminar, with Robin Laws, Nathan Russell and Michael Wenman. This was a great seminar, with about 30-40 people.
- Had dinner with Robin Laws. He's a great guy with interesting things to say on a wide range of topics. My only regret was the "Vietnamese" restaurant we chose wasn't all that Vietnamese. Ah well.

Friday
- First session of the IGE: I played Spirit of the Century with a great group. That adds 6 to my count of new people to game with. Some of these guys had played SOTC before, and most were from Brisbane. If I can find my notes from the game, I'll add their names.
- Second session of the IGE: 80% of the group demanded Don't Rest Your Head. So that's what we played. I don't feel that it was my best game, but the last hour of game play was pretty good, and I especially like the epilogues that the players created to close off the session. Fantastic.
- Played Grey Ranks with Peter Adkison, Robin Laws and Luke (no surname, just like Prince and Madonna). This was shakey at first, but after the first round of learning, the second and third rounds were fantastic. I hadn't played it before, but now I want to play it again. I also have to say that Robin is a great gamer, showing great rhythm between silence and speaking, between plot development and plot resolution. I learnt a lot. Thanks Robin!

And now... time to embrace Saturday at Gencon. See you there.

Where to find me at Gencon

So, if you're looking for me at Gencon, this is my schedule so far.

Thursday
6pm Steal This Trick. I'm the MC for this seminar, featuring Michael Wenman, Nathan Russell and Robin D. Laws.

Friday
10am Indie Games Explosion
2pm Indie Games Explosion
6pm Indie Games Explosion

Saturday
10am Indie Games Explosion
2pm Indie Games Explosion
6pm Indie Games Explosion

Sunday
9am Robin's Laws of Gamemastery
4pm An untitled seminar on game development


And that's it! I've left some good space in there to wander the floor and chat with passersby, but mostly it's about the games. Let's roll them bones.

Secret Gencon Oz Project Revealed!

If you will be at Gencon on Thursday night, come to this seminar.

Steal This Trick: The Indie Games You Should Play at Least Once
Small games often contain big ideas, pushing the boundaries and testing mechanics that more established games can't. Join our panelists as they discuss their favourite small-press/indie games and the fresh ideas that drive them. Featuring Robin Laws, Nathan Russell, Michael Wenman, Andrew Smith

Yes that's right. I will be sharing a stage with Robin Laws, talking about indie games. remember, it's Thursday night at 6pm in Seminar Room F1.

IGE Games List

And the list of games for the IGE just keeps growing! This is where we're at right now, and I'm still waiting for the other few GMs to say what they're going to offer.

Primetime Adventures
Dust Devils
Cold City
With Great Power
Hero's Journey
Spirit of the Century
Don't Rest Your Head
Agon
Nobles - (yes, a playtest session for my own game!)
InSpectres
Og
Vs Monsters / Vs Outlaws
Space Rat

Local press coverage for GenCon

It's a tiny article, so I'm glad that my wife scours the paper every week for things to read. Nevertheless, the local tabloid has an article on Gencon Oz.

So, for as long as you don't mind reading what Uncle Rupert has published, and for as long as that link continues to work... click away. Perhaps a higher number of clicks will encourage them to write more stories about it.

The Gencon Oz schedule is up!

The Gencon Oz schedule is up and the Indie Games Explosion is there. Get yourselves some tickets now and play the best games you never knew existed.

The other Secret Project (tm) is not yet up. I'll let you know when the cat is allowed to come out of the bag. Until then, the cat stays there.