It’s good to be back! The first week of August saw us at GenCon and very happily winning a Gold ENnie award, and then in the weeks after I’ve been catching up on things post-convention and getting back into the swing of things. Lately I’ve been discussing and toying with the concept that the best world building happens through playing a campaign, and so I suggest the world building DMs out there spend less time before play and just jump into things with a published or a bare bones adventure and then let the world build from there. This also opens your game up to the possibilities for players to contribute to the world building which for me has always turned out better than I could imagine.
One Late Gen Con Report
Yes, it’s been a few weeks now since the convention ended. Between some post-Gen Con business and a bit of con crud in the house, it’s been difficult to get back to the blog. But at long last, How I Spent My Gen Con.
Hints From Dire Heloise
This week, I decided to open up the floor to reader questions. I am committed to answering these in the most serious way that I can.
A Year at Critical Hits, and GenCon 2011
Gen Con is always tough for me. When I first started attending, I just ran a few games, played a few games, and hit the Exhibit Hall. I didn’t really know anyone, no one knew me, and I could absorb it all without over-extending myself. Now it is getting more complicated. I still know very few people, and very few people still know me, but there are more obligations that go into a convention now.
The Experience
In most of the games I play in, we just sort of level up as the campaign progresses. I can buy that. My years of martial arts training tell me that a boot to the head is a very powerful lesson. Combat is a great teacher, assuming one survives. However, the theory always sort of fell apart for me when it came to wizards. Certainly, the wizard would gain a lot of knowledge about what worked and what didn’t after a few battles, but that doesn’t explain why a few weeks into his travels he suddenly knows how to cast a Fireball. Wizards always got screwed anyway.
DD&D 2011 Wrap-Up
It’s now been over a week since we ran the 4th annual Drinking Dungeons & Dragons event for folks we know at Gen Con. Our small, single game in a hotel room turned into a room-filling (and food and drink minimum-fulfilling) event with four tables, and including all the attendees of our pre-party and audience, had over 50 gamers talking games and having drinks. The event was talked about the rest of the weekend, and apparently spawned many, many tweets during the game (which I missed due to running and hosting) so I’m happy to call it a success.
Chatty Shorts (and not Chatty’s Shorts, you pervs): Gen Con 2011
In which Chatty takes a few minutes to post updates about Gen Con 2012 and how he used to be cool before he became an insufferable celebrity.
Gen Con 2011: D&D New Products Seminar
As usual, speculation was rampant on what Wizards of the Coast would announce at Gen Con. Given the departure of some high-profile names and based on statements made via the D&D website, the default prediction seemed to be the announcement of D&D 5th edition, or some kind of Basic/Advanced split forked off the current edition of D&D. As it turned out, none of that happened. That said, there was a major announcement at the end of the D&D New Products Seminar at Gen Con, and it’s one that gamers have been asking for a LONG time.
Drinking Dungeons & Dragons 2011 Is Coming
For the fourth year in a row, Drunken Dungeon & Dragons is coming to Gen Con. And you can come eat and drink with the players and watch the game.
The Architect DM: Nations as Character Backgrounds
I am still in the process of brainstorming on the following topics, but this post is an essential part of the process as I express my thoughts so far and more importantly get feedback from others and hear about their experiences. After running an adventure of D&D last week that included our friend Dixon Trimline, he and I were having a post-adventure geek out because we don’t get the chance to talk in person that often. During this geek out we discussed the history of my D&D campaign, specifically the world that has been built before and during the game, when I caught inspiration for an idea of presenting nations and world building as character background “packages” that can be taken by players.
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