I-Con

Monte (center) and Skip with the guys who lingered to talk a while after the Meet Malhavoc Press panel. at I-Con

Last weekend we went to I-Con in Long Island (that's in New York, and it's pronounced Lawn-Giland, in case you were wondering). It was cold and rainy, while back in Seattle it was apparently warm and sunny. Go figure. That's okay, though, because we were inside most of the time, and it was fun.

Some random highlights from the show included:

Running the first Arcana Unearthed game for the "public."
I ran one session of a game which is going to end up being the first round of a two-round event we're doing at Gen Con this year. We had six players (had to turn many others away), all of whom were good and all of whom seemed to enjoy themselves. I know I did.

Meeting more message board regulars in person.
Our message boards have well over 5,000 users, but all I know of most of them is what I can pick out of their posts -- funny screen names and bits of personality. It's so much nicer to meet someone face to face and really talk.

Almost running afoul of Harlan Ellison.
Sue, Bill Slavicsek (of Wizards of the Coast), and Robin Laws (a great designer) trekked through the rain to catch part of a talk by Harlan Ellison. While we waited outside the room, Harlan himself was standing there and came up to us. "You guys must be $#%@ insane to walk through that rain just to come hear me talk," he said. Now, I can be a bit of a smart aleck, and make no bones about it, Mr. Ellison really set me up there. Multiple funny comebacks and quips came to mind. But Harlan Ellison has... quite a reputation as being ruthlessly verbally savage to people that rub him the wrong way. Sometimes even to people who don't. So I said nothing. Maybe that's a sign that I'm finally wising up. While I stared blankly, Sue said something characteristically nice and Robin said something characteristically interesting. Whew.

Blathering on for hours.
I-Con scheduled me for no fewer than seven panels in the 36 hours or so I was there. That's a lot of jabbering. Sue, Skip Williams, and I did a "Meet Malhavoc Press" sort of thing where we talked about Arcana Unearthed and Cry Havoc, mostly. Skip, Bill, and I did one on designing 3rd Edition, which was fun. Robin and I gave a talk about GMing advice and another on creating villains, joined by Skip. There was a "state of the gaming industry" panel, which I usually find to be kind of a pretentious topic, but it was fun nonetheless, mostly because we were able to bring it down to a more personal level rather than spouting "Here's where I think gaming will be in 10 years," or whatever. They had Robin, Sue, Neal Sofge (co-founder of Fat Messiah Games), and I on a panel where we were supposed to provide our "picks" of good games. This quickly, however, devolved into a discussion about movies, books, and other things as well.

They even had one about "Evil," in which I was the sole panelist, I suppose because of the Book of Vile Darkness. That wasn't my favorite panel, because I think it's further evidence that being the author of that book has given people the wrong idea about me. I'm not really into dark stuff. My interest is only from the point of view of the DM, actually. Ah well.
In most of these panels, I think people began to pick up on the fact that I can be pretty forthright, particularly now that I'm no longer with Wizards of the Coast and don't have a "company line" to give anymore. Truthfully, if you're at a convention and come to one of my panels, ask me a question and I'll give you the honest answer. Sometimes I'm surprised more people don't take advantage of that to get the good dirt.

I-Con gave me a nice plaque that I'll be putting on my wall. I wasn't expecting that -- purely gaming cons never do stuff like that for the Guests of Honor, and this was mostly a sci-fi con. And a really good one, I might add. Six thousand attendees, tons of interesting writer and actor guests, and a really big dealer's area (big as in smaller only than Gen Con in my experience).

It was a nice time. The next con I'll be attending is MarCon in Columbus, Ohio, May 23 to 25. Hope to see you there!