Im having an amazing time here in the US! As always I started with a visit to Chaosium in the Bay Area, where Charlie hosted Genki Max & Wendy & I with the annual Stuff the Aussie barbie n boardgames day (although jetlag lurgi kept me from the gaming table, it did not keep me from the special vegetarian-only standalone barbecue!). I became great friends with new household dog Dax, the small poodle cross who has Great Dane backup on call, and knows it. On the Monday we visited Chris Hanrahan at his store EndGame in Oakland, and ate Mexican at the third-finest joint in the area because the others are closed Mondays - no matter, it was damn good! Ive dropped into the store each year, and I call it as the best game store in the world - when the new cafe opens (we got a construction site tour) it will be unbeatable. Its always a pleasure to see Chris. We had a record year at the Gen Con games convention with Campaign Coins, it was packed all day every day. Penny sourced some fantastic jewelry trays and printed table skirts, so we looked our booth looked a million gold pieces. We wouldnt be here at all without the amazing efforts of Will and the Paizo loadout crew who haul our heavy stuff across America for us. Tom Lommel aka Dungeon Bastard did a massive shout out for our new D20 coins designed by Lynda so those were selling and selling (and now popping up on Ebay at 1000% markup, haha suckers theyll be on Paizo in the next couple of weeks!). I met so many people I have corresponded with or bantered with on Twitter as well as more and more of the ever lovin Paizo family, as well as quite a few other game design heroes of mine. Theyre all friends with each other, so its like a big RPG family. Thanks to the booth we also met tons of cosplayers and regular gamers like Bear & Ash who became my de facto Gen Con gamer guides because I really have no idea what goes on outside 10 meters of my booth. It was great to get out in the halls on Saturday night and play some actual games. However, Aidan shared my hotel room so I got to experience Gen Con vicariously through him when we caught up at midnight each day. His travel photos go 1. komodo dragon hunting / 2. jellyfish snorkeling / 3. Chewbacca playing the cellow, so I think his standards are slipping. The Fate Roleplaying game is our big discovery this year with our Fate Tokens Kickstarter (brilliant art by Tez), so we were thrilled to get in a Fate game of Atomic Robo with Morgan, Jeremy, Amanda & Clark - the latter two authors were on stage the next night at the ENnies receiving their well deserved Best Family Game for Fate Accelerated. I also crashed the Evil Hat panel and was made so welcome; meeting Fred & Rob & Sean & Chris (again) & the rest of the Evil Hat gang was a blast. Also great was breakfasting with Mike Mason who is Mr Call of Cthulhu and just one of the worlds finest gentlemen, a rousing breakfast in Glorantha with Michael OBrien and the Design Mechanism boys, as well as a catchup with my 1990s writing buddy Allen Varney, who says (with a twinkle) that I need to change my business model and get out of atoms. Seeing Sandy Petersen killing it with his game Cthulhu Wars was an eldritch thrill (so-many-models), and it was truly wonderful to shake Greg Staffords hand after so many years. I also got in some quality Cthulhu moments. Pedro and Heidveig showed me the new Brazilian edition of Call of Cthulhu with a superb illustration of Deadman Stomp, which made me think of how great it was working on that with Lynn. At the Chaosium booth there was a mockup of the boxed Horror on the Orient Express which at 7 pounds is more like a murder weapon than a roleplaying campaign, so dont be dropping that on your foot. I also got to hold the astonishing and creepy Sedekfar Simulacrum sculpture crafted by French artist Delphes. So that was a wonderful convention, but the absolute highlight of the trip was getting into Seattle and just two hours after getting off the plane I was sitting in the Skylark bar drinking a local IPA listening to my old housemate Cameron absolutely playing his heart out with his new band Audiochunk. That took me right back to the City Hotel days of the 1990s, and when he played his two songs Contact and Taj Mahal, well, lets just say I got something in my eye. I played those songs on the CD player in the Registry Office in 2009 when Penny married me. Wish she was here. Listen out for Audiochunk and friend em up on Facebook. Cams ear for raucously joyful melodic pop has fine tuned with age, and lets face it, it was already awesome anyway. Now Im a very comfortable guest in Amy & Cams beautiful home in leafy green and rugged Seattle, and watching our very first Campaign Coins Kickstarter click over $46,000 with more to come in the next four hours. Tonight Ill celebrate at a Japanese fusion joint with more new friends Ryan and Lillian and Logan, so Ill be raising a glass of sake on the west coast at 9pm while Andre & Wendy do the same in New York at midnight. Penny will be 2pm at work in Australia, maybe shell go nuts and have a cuppa and a bicky. Tomorrow Im off to Georgetown, the punkrock heart of Seattle, to eat the finest Mexican in the Pac Northwest with Pramas and Rob, with a catchup with BlueTongue mate Christian planned for tomorrow night. I think I can say its been a pretty amazing two weeks. I wish Penny had been along, but well do it all again together in 2015. Sorry for the long post, hope youre all well! Mark
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 00:36:50 +0000
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