2003 Summer Convention Report

I went to Origins and GenCon this summer, and ran a very entertaining event at GwenCon, the annual "convention" held at the home of Andy Collins and Gwen Kestrel.

Origins

I volunteered to be the lone RPG R&D delegate to Origins this year, primarily because City of the Spider Queen was nominated for an award and I thought it had a shot at winning. At very nearly the last minute, Charles Ryan volunteered to go as well, so I got to spend a lot of time with Charles—who, as former chair of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Art and Design, is a great person to go to Origins with. Plus, he really took charge of making sure all our preparations for the Dungeon Delve and everything were in place. Charles rocks.

I went to Columbus feeling a little sick. By the end of the first day sitting in the booth, I had almost completely lost my voice. The job of running the Dungeon Delve and the Star Wars Delve was handled by volunteers from a Kansas City RPGA group, who (as always) did a fabulous job, so Charles and I were basically there to show off our copies of the D&D 3.5 books and answer questions about them and about the new D&D miniatures. Which meant talking all the time. Or, after the first day, croaking.

The highlight of the convention, for me, was the Origins award ceremony. It was long (though, I'm told, not as long as in previous years), but through the whole thing I was watching this parade of industry luminaries across the stage and feeling very humbled. By the time the award for Best Roleplaying Adventure was announced, I got up on the stage feeling like I should take off my shoes before standing on that ground. I'm tremendously proud of that award, primarily because it puts me in such phenomenally good company. What it comes down to is this: I have had a very sheltered career in the industry. I freelanced for a good four years, but almost entirely for the TSR/WotC magazines. (My two forays into other companies and systems were a harsh taste of realism: one company went out of business and never paid me, the other paid me $0.02 per word... Canadian. The magazines were a great gig.) Then I got my job at Wizards, and spent the next three years sitting in my cube cranking out D&D products having very little contact with the rest of the industry. Origins as a whole really gave me a taste of the whole scope of the industryy. It gave me a chance to put faces to a lot of names I had seen on other products and emails and such, and made me realize just how sheltered I had been before. At GenCon, when typically most of the RPG R&D staff at Wizards goes, it's much easier to remain isolated from the rest of the people there, spending time just with other WotC people (and former WotC people).

After the awards ceremony, Charles and I felt like a game. We went out into the hall, still in our tuxedos, hoping to find a d20 Modern game to play. Since I had no voice, I had the idea of playing a character who would be basically Silent Bob. As it turned out, we found a couple of guys getting ready to play D&D with a sign that said, "Need 2 more players." So we joined them, never telling them who we were, and played a pretty fun D&D 3.0 adventure. Thanks, guys. After playing 3.5 for several months, I felt guilty playing a 3.0 sorcerer and casting haste at the start of every combat. I'm glad we changed that.

I liked talking about the D&D miniatures. Here's the key points I repeated over and over:

  1. The miniatures in the fancy lighted display case, all carefully arranged, were transported to the convention in a large manila envelope, rolled up and stuffed in Mary-Elizabeth Allen's luggage.
  2. You can paint over the paint jobs. In fact, one person there told us that he prefers painting plastic rather than metal. Just use the right paints.
  3. As a Wizards employee, I have a large hanging file drawer in my office that is full of unpainted, unassembled D&D and Chainmail miniatures. I have painted one miniature in the last 20 years (a Jozan figure, which I use for Sanaril, with a really hideous symbol of Wee Jas on the shield). When we game at my house, we use Lego (see the Firebringer PCs and the Savage Species characters), because that's what I have. I am so excited about these new minis!
  4. This was my favorite part, but it was pretty much nonverbal. When people asked, "Why plastic?" we'd often pick up one of the promotional minis we were handing out, throw it as hard as possible against a nearby wall, step on it several times while pretending to look for it on the floor, then pick it up and demonstrate that it was completely unharmed. Try doing that with a metal mini.

I also liked talking about 3.5. I was a little surprised at how positive people were, in general. I liked watching what people looked at first when they picked up the new books—usually the class of the character they're currently playing, or else the ranger or bard. Or whatever their favorite broken rule was, to see if we fixed it. I posted a list of questions I received at Origins and their answers on the Wizards.com message boards.

Last little thing about Origins: I had the guts to walk up to Chris Pramas and ask if he'd give me a copy of Testament. He did. It was only later that I remembered that the last time Chris gave me free product, I panned it on this site. Wow, it was good of him to give me another one. And it's not just for that reason that I'm going to say that Testament rocks. It's a really good book. I hope that soon I'll have more time and be able to put up a brief page about how good it is. Until then, just go buy it. And thanks a bunch, Chris.

GenCon

...coming soon...