The most popular sites for crowd funding are Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, though I’ve been told there are many others.  Depending on the site, a project may need to reach its entire funding before anyone gets charged, or conversely, be allowed to cash out shy of the goal.  Typically, rewards are offered to thank people that donate at varying amounts.  For example, you might get to contribute to the setting, receive an autographed copy, or even get a personal visit from the producer.

Let me start by saying I think this is a wonderful thing.  Podcasting allowed us to get out content that no radio station would have ever picked up.  And in the same way, crowd funding allows people to get the cash they need in the absence of a major financial backer.  Fans can suddenly open their wallets and enable the things they want to see, often through an aggregation of very modest donations from many people.  Publishers get a chance to see their ideas come to fruition and, by observing donations, get an early sense of how the product might do in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, I’m seeing several problems start to emerge.

First and most importantly, I fear that too many people are picking up on this.  The first Kickstarter project I remember seeing was Mikey Mason’s Impotent Nerd Rage.  Since then, I’ve seen many, many more.  The bulk of them are great ideas, and I have nothing but the utmost support for the people doing them.  But with an ever-increasing number of people kicking these projects off, how long before funding fatigue starts to set in and Kickstarter projects become background noise no different than the billboards along a highway?

It’s hard to find truly academic numbers on this sort of thing, but most estimates I’ve found say that only between 30% and 40% of crowd funded projects reach their goal.  And of those that fail, apparently a significant percentage don’t even raise a single dollar.  In an economy of finite currency, contributing cash is a lot harder than clicking “Like” on Facebook.

Second, I think many fundraisers outpace themselves.  When John first brought up using Kickstarter for Bloodmoon, we sat down and thought pretty hard about the goal.  How much will this project cost?  Where can we trim the budget?  Sure, we have an established fan base of a reasonable size, but how much money are we actually likely to get?

I think the situation is even worse for people that have a great idea but no public presence.  Outside of family and friends, projects end up with no contributors and fall embarrassingly short of the goal.  If the site requires full funding, that means you don’t see a single dime.  If the site allows partial funding, you’re left trying to explain what you’ll do with the money in your pocket that’s less than you need to meet your original promises.

With the dreary part out of the way, I want to offer some advice.  I’m sure it will be neither perfect nor exhaustive, but at least it’s better than stating the problem and walking away.

1. People are giving you their money, and they want to know how it will be used.  Talk openly about what you’ll be producing, what features your product will have, and generally how donations will be spent.
2. Set a budget.  Research what it will cost to take your idea from inception to publication.  Ask people in the industry to look over your flowchart to see if you’ve missed an expense.
3. Review your budget and decide if it’s a realistic goal.  Sure, your friends love your homebrew game, but that doesn’t mean the public will front $20,000 for you to make it.  Ask yourself honestly how much you can raise with the people you have access to.  If this is your first time out, maybe it’s better to try for a few hundred bucks, build a following from that project, and get more ambitious later.
4. Be prepared to find some wiggle room in that budget!  How can you get the amount down to something you’re likely to raise?  Maybe it’s time to consider a little less art or purely electronic publication.  The specifics are for you to decide, but make the financial and product goals align.
5. Before selling the product, you have to be able to sell the idea of funding the product.  How are you going to find people that are interested in the idea and likely to support you with a contribution?  And once you’ve got their attention, what sort of text or video message will you use to get them to commit?
6. If your project falls under its funding goal, have a plan already in place for the amount you raised.  I don’t recommend announcing that plan early (why give the impression you don’t believe in your project?) but know what you’ll say if you fall short.  Those people want something for their money, so maybe you can put together a less ambitious version of the original idea or maybe you’ll let contributors vote on a charity it goes to.
7. Be equally ready for the reverse situation.  If you happen to go over your goal, what are you going to do with the extra money?  Make the intended product better?  Put it toward another project?  Donate it?

The way we’re going to address this is by returning Fear the Boot to the description it’s carried in the RSS feed since Episode 1.

Fear the Boot is an irreverent, round table discussion of tabletop role playing games. In this weekly show we debate game-related issues, offer advice for improving your game, and poke fun at the hobby. Our cast changes a little from show to show, but we always assemble a group of dynamic individuals with divergent views, guaranteeing you will hear several perspectives on everything we discuss.

For each show, we will have 3 – 5 hosts present, drawn from the list given above.  That flexibility accomplishes two things.  First, we can make sure we’ve tapped the hosts with the most interest or expertise on a given subject.  Second, it allows the remaining hosts to take some weeks off to spend with family or pursue other projects, such as Fear the Con, Skies of Glass, Epoch of Rysos, and Bloodmoon Goblins.

I don’t expect this change to have any significant impact on the show.  All of the hosts will still be appearing on the show and active on the forums.  However, I wanted to explain in advance why the staffing will shift in seemingly random fashion from week to week.

http://thisjustinfromgencon.com/2011/10/02/tjigencon2011-bonuswrapup/

If you were at Gen Con, you obviously know what the convention has to offer and have likely made up your mind about going back in the future.  However, if you’ve never been, I really can’t recommend the event strongly enough.  It’s one heck of a spectacle, and it’s also nice to have one weekend in the year where geeks take over a town, letting you know loud and clear that you’re not the only one that’s into the things you love.  I hope more of the hosts are in attendance next year, so we can provide coverage of the extraordinarily diverse events the con has to offer.

Last of all, to make up for our inability to cover all of the bases with half of the crew, we partnered with This Just In…From Gen Con!, helping finance their coverage of the con.  If you want some great interviews in podcast form, be sure to check their site!

Something else I observed is that while the dealer hall seemed to be a little bit smaller than in previous years, the gaming halls had grown larger.  If you come to this con and find yourself bored, you’re either really bad at simple tasks (like sitting down at tables) or just not a gamer.

Among the booter crowd, I saw the aforementioned Spin the Issues, along with Nuts, Paranoia, Star Trek, Battletech, and other games being enjoyed.  I personally played in several those, including a great Battletech scenario run by Chris Ings in which disgruntled Solaris fighters, Word of Blake zealots, and Lyran troops tangled in a three-way clash with a local militia caught between.  I’m proud of how my team (the Solaris fighters) performed, though ultimately I had to concede that the Lyrans had better map position in regard to the communication tower, which was the stated objective of the game.

I also ran a classic FASA Star Trek game, with a 50/50 mix of new and veteran players.  I decided to recreate the initial battle from The Wrath of Khan, with the Enterprise starting off unprepared and the Reliant losing its shields six turns in.  (16309?  What level of crappy encryption is that?)  Keith Curtis and Ed Sawyer ran the respective ships, and they both did an awesome job of roleplaying Kirk and Khan.  I noted some setup mistakes I made as the Game Master, but everyone had a great time.  I think I’ll be running this one again at Fear the Con 5.  And for anyone that’s curious, the Enterprise won.

If you’re into organized play, there was plenty of that going on as well.  Wizards of the Coast was running a con-wide game in which three forces clashed over the city of Neverwinter.  I also saw the Paizo/Pathfinder folks there in force.  And there were demo teams from just about every company you can imagine.

If you need something really different to do, there’s the live-action, puzzle-solving, monster-fighting, special-effects-bonanza known as True Dungeon.  We ran through that again this year.  It was enjoyable, though I’m not a fan of the increased group size.  Eight people were hard enough to organize, and ten is just a mob.  I wish I had some pictures or video of the various rooms and animatronic monsters, some of which were breathtaking.  Unfortunately, they don’t allow cameras back there.  The only tidbit I can give is that I wasn’t expecting the gargoyle to jump off its pedestal.  If you were there, you know what I’m talking about.

I never took a head count at any of the events, but between the TOFTBCH gatherings and random handshakes in the hall, I think I met around 100 listeners at Gen Con this year.  Fine people, one and all.  I’m sure there are also other listeners I just didn’t happen to bump into.  I won’t start listing names of people I met, because for every name I mention there will be one I forget.  But I can’t stress enough how great it was meeting some booters for the first time and connecting with others yet again.  If you’re one of those people, yes, I’m talking to you!

As for the general attendees, Gen Con is a great place to take the pulse of gaming.  This year, I was reminded that our hobby is evolving.  Every year I see more card games and board games, with a few less RPGs.  I don’t think that represents a decline in RPGs, so much as an increasing number of publishers.  Back in the 80s and 90s, there were a small number of companies that really dominated the scene, and they showed up in force.  Technology has made publication more approachable, leaving less companies on top with a growing number in the second and third string.  They’re putting out great products but might not be able to justify the cost of a booth at Gen Con.

Whether my guess is right or not, seeing the percentage of booths taken up by RPG companies receding ever-so-slowly makes me a little sad.  But the general attendance was up, and to know that the culture of tabletop gaming is on the rise warms my heart.  I also saw an increasing diversity in the age, gender, race, etc, represented which says that our culture is not only here to stay, but it’s reaching across divides it’s historically struggled to cross.  Is our hobby changing?  Sure.  That doesn’t mean it’s fading away.

The first convention I ever attended was a local, St. Louis con back in 1991.  I remember the first two thoughts I had upon entering the main hall: “Holy crap, I’m not the only one into this stuff!”…followed shortly thereafter by…”Wow, everyone here is so nice.”  Both are true of the Gen Con attendees as well.  Watching our subculture descend upon a town gives you a certain sense of being where you belong.  For once, loving D&D or knowing obscure things about anime gets the people around you energized instead of annoyed.  As a man that still struggles with some degree of “gamer shame”, that’s a refreshing feeling.

To close this post off, I’ll go ahead and deal with one of the things several people have already asked about: Pat’s Gen Con photo roll.  Fair warning that while these pictures are all PG rated, they’re…well…what you’d expect Pat to be taking pictures of.  So here ya go.

 Turnstile attendance was over 119,707 with 36,733 unique attendees present for 96 hours of gaming, cosplay, music, shopping and more. This positive spike in turnout represents a greater than 20% increase in a single year. Game event participation grew even more steeply, with over 250,000 event tickets yielding an over 26% expansion throughout the Best Four Days In Gaming!

I’ll come back soon with more posts detailing our experience gaming, shopping, and socializing at the con, so keep checking this space!  Also, I realize we haven’t put out an episode yet this week, so I’ll make it up to you guys by releasing two next week.

This will have absolutely no impact on the podcast itself, as those files are served by LibSyn.  However, when we flip the switch, it can take a day or two for your internet provider to pick up the fact that our forums, blog, email, etc, is now at a new address.  I’ll try to provide 24 hours notice when that’s about to occur, but if you can’t get to our site, just keep trying every so often until we appear again.

Also, we will be migrating all data along with the site.  So no blog posts, forum posts, user accounts, Con Planner entries, etc, will be lost.

The game supports two to five players and takes around 20 minutes to play.  As with the other games from Looney Labs, Seven Dragons is whimsical, easy to learn, and a lot of fun.

If you’re looking for a complex game with a long list of mechanics and choices, this probably isn’t for you.  The rules only take up a single sheet of paper and require just a few minutes to learn.  However, it fit our tastes wonderfully, and we also found that once play commenced, we needed a bit more observation and planning than we initially thought.

During setup, each person is secretly assigned a dragon they’ll be representing during the course of play.  Each of these five dragons bears a particular color: green, blue, red, black, or gold.  A silver dragon staring into a sort of magical mirror is placed in the center of the play field.  There are also rainbow dragons that pop up as wild cards, simultaneously representing every other color of dragon in play.  (There’s the seven dragons for anyone that’s counting.)

As with Fluxx, players are dealt three cards to form their hand.  During each turn, they play one card and draw one card.  The primary cards (featuring original paintings by Larry Elmore) have one, two, or four panels that show dragons of various colors.  When you play a card, you must place it adjacent to the other cards in play, with at least one panel touching a dragon of the same color on any adjacent card.

The silver dragon starts off colorless and thus legal to be in contact with any card.  However, to keep things interesting, players will also come across action cards that let you swap hands, rotate goals, reorganize cards on the field, or engage in similar forms of mischief.  These cards each bear a color that matches one of the five dragons.  When you play one, the silver dragon will see the magic in his mirror and morph to match the color on the action card.  This is an important part of play strategy, since he’s typically the center of the expanding play field.

In order to keep players from consistently skipping over action cards whose color are unhelpful to them, you have the choice of either playing the card normally, playing the card but ignoring its action (thus only changing the silver dragon’s color), or doing the reverse and requesting the action while tucking the card beneath the discard pile so the silver dragon retains his prior color.

As a side note, we invented a house rule that helped us keep track of the silver dragon’s color.  Instead of keeping a separate discard pile for used actions, we piled them on the silver dragon (poor guy) so we didn’t have to look in two places to see his current color.  That’s why you won’t see him in the picture I took of our game.

The objective is to get seven panels of your dragon in a contiguous pattern.  So, for example, if I’m playing the black dragon, I need seven black dragon panels which touch each other in an unbroken pattern.  Having three touching on one side and four on the other doesn’t count.  Nor can you move along diagonals.  However, rainbow dragons and the silver dragon (if he’s either silver or currently mimicking your dragon’s color) will help you achieve victory.

With the basics explained, I want to add two specific bits of praise and one minor criticism.

First, as I noted above, the game is more strategic than it sounds.  Matching dragon colors implies a game so simple that it’s moved from beer-and-pretzels into why-bother-playing.  However, Looney Labs has a track record of introducing simple ideas that keep play surprisingly fluid.  For example, we had someone deduce the player next to him was playing the gold dragon. He let them get very close to victory and then dropped an action card that allowed him to switch dragon colors.  In another game, the black dragon won simply by being very casual about her card placement along the bottom of the field while everyone else bickered over the silver dragon’s color and the matches along the top.

Second, for anyone that has kids, the game includes rules variants designed for young children.  The simplest one suggests using the dragon cards alone in a non-competitive format where the kids just look for matches, thus teaching colors and visual reasoning.  Another variant suggests changing the size of the chain needed to win based on the player’s age, leveling the playing field for gamers of varying age.  That’s a great addition for a casual game that’s just as likely to end up on the dinner table as in a gaming group.  I wish more companies would offer rules along those lines.

My minor criticism is that the action cards — while featuring lovely artwork in the middle — don’t take advantage of the black margins to write out an explanation of what they do.  So whenever a player wanted to use one of the five action cards, they had to refer back to the rules insert to see what their card would unleash.  The rules for each card are relatively simple, so an experienced group is likely to have them memorized after a game or two.  But for new players, a sentence of explanation would have made these cards much more user-friendly.

In closing, I suppose the highest praise I can offer the game was its reception.  My family had a great time playing it and has asked me to bring it back on future holidays.  If you’re a fan of Looney’s other offerings, I’d recommend spending the $15 to pick up a copy or at least tracking down someone that has it and giving it a try.  It’s a great product to tuck in your bag for downtime in your gaming group, a pick-up at a con, or some casual fun at a family gathering.

If you’re interested in grabbing a copy, Seven Dragons is set for release on June 24th.  You can get more information at your local gaming store or on Looney Lab’s own site.

Let me be as straightforward as I can.  While this money is going to be used to finish the product — he’s not just pocketing it — this isn’t a charity.  You’re not curing cancer, saving babies, or feeding remote villages.  However, he’s a great guy working on a product that will make life a little brighter for geeks like us, based on the comedy act he does free of charge at the con every year.  And in case you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, you will get something in return based on the amount you pledge, so it’s not just a donation.

If you’re interested in helping Mikey out, please do so here!  As for Fear the Boot, we’ve made our own pledge, we’ll mention it once on the show (probably episode 229), and then we’ll get back to raising money for stuff that really is curing cancer, saving babies, and feeding remote villages.

A role playing game about entering someone’s dreams and stealing their thoughts.

The Setup

In this game you play highly illegal con men who steal information from unsuspecting people while they, and you, sleep. Using a briefcase sized technological device and specially made chemicals you and your teammates will sedate, without his knowledge, The Mark. The Architect will create up to three layers of dreams that the team will have control over in every way except for the people who populate it. The Mark will believe that The Dream is his own unless he is convinced otherwise and will generally not understand that he is even dreaming. As The Dream becomes less and less stable The Mark might start to realize that this is not his dream and if he has had proper training he might be able to turn the tables on the team.

Not counting The Mark or the team there are two kinds of people who populate The Dream, Normal Projections and Agents. The Normal Projections are part of The Mark’s subconscious and may be interacted with to gain insights about him, his personality or his past. For example, if the team questions an ex-girlfriend projection they might find something out about The Marks past or sexuality but this information will be from The Mark’s point of view. The more specific the character of the Normal Projection is the more specific the information that might be gained. A waiter at a dinner in The Dream might bemoan his life choices and lack of education indicating The Mark thinks highly of his own education where as an encounter mean and bossy parent might point to deeper issues. These projections will become increasingly hostile as The Dream destabilizes to the point of hunting down and ‘killing’ the outsider in a subconscious effort to protect The Mark. The Agents on the other hand are projections of a ‘militarized’ subconscious indicating The Mark has had specialized training to combat the types of incursions that your team is conducting. The Agents start out unaware of the team and like any good body guards they will blend into the background until needed. The Mark is usually unaware of their purpose in the dream and they act independent of him. As The Mark feels threatened, suspects that this dream is not his own or becomes generally agitated these Agents begin to react to disrupt the plans of the team. Killing these projections and Agents in no way hurts The Mark nor does it erase anything from his mind.

Since the team defines the world of The Dream (via The Architect) they can do anything they want within the dream. They can create endless roads that lead nowhere, M.C. Escher like landscapes, impossible objects such as Penrose Stairs and The Devils Tuning Fork. Individual objects can be created by any team member from guns to air planes. The more out of character the objects are in relation to the reality of The Dream the more destabilized The Dream becomes when they are used. An example of this would be using a particle beam cannon on a tank in a dream that is set during World War II. Only The Architect can change the world of The Dream on the fly but anyone can dream objects. This means that the team must work with world The Architect defines for them. They cannot create the roads, only The Architect can, but they can create the cars to drive on them.

The information the team is looking for can be extracted in a variety of ways. Commonly the Architect creates a very secure space for The Mark to put the concepts the team is looking for in such as a safe. The information is not automatically put into the safe as The Mark must be convinced that is where it should be and that it is truly secure. The Mark’s belief in the security of whatever is containing the information makes it such that the team cannot open it without convincing The Mark to open it for them or by destabilizing The Dream in such a way as to risk waking The Mark. The team can create dreams within dreams to gain this trust with The Mark or to gather information in one layer and use that information to reach their goals in the second and third layers. This will buy them time as each layer is a newly stabilized dream.

The Mechanic

The Mechanic in Lucid uses the diceless tension building of a Jenga tower. This tower represents the stability of The Dream. The players are asked to make pulls from the tower when they do something that upsets The Mark and his subconscious defenders or alters the reality of The Dream. The GM will ask the players to make pulls of between one and three blocks depending on the severity of what it is they are trying to do.  As the players do more and more pulls The Dream becomes unstable and The Normal Projections will grow increasingly hostile going from rude to actively hunting down and ‘killing’ the team. The Normal Projections will tend to lash out at random whereas The Agents will be reacting to specific threats to The Mark and their level of hostility will increase as the stability of The Dream decreases. Agents tend to respond with like force, this means that if team isn’t hostile and pulling guns killing people the agents will not tend to do so either unless The Dream is getting very unstable or the team has been operating unchallenged for to long.

A pull is not necessarily a combat or skill check, it is a representation of player action having an impact on The Dream outside of what The Mark expects from The Dream. Examples of this would be killing the high school principle at a class reunion set up because he would not let the teammate preform a task. A pull was request not to hit or kill the projection of the principle but because he was killed, even though The Mark was not consciously aware of the act as all of this is taking place in his subconscious. Several pulls were requested during the same high school reunion set up when The Counterfeiter was trying to gain the trust of The Mark by being his date. During this date the other team members kept calling The Counterfeiter on her cell phone. Every time this happened after the 1st few calls a pull was requested. Pull requests are made by the GM and take place after the action is declared. Success or failure of the action is not determined by the pull, only the effect it has on The Dream.  Whether an action secedes or fails is up to the both the GM and the player collaboratively with the general rule of whatever would make the story better from everyone being the best choice.

The Dream takes place in The Architects mind and he controls all of it. He can alter the weather, the physics, the landscape and the buildings. The GM does not describe the world of The Dream to the players, The Architect does. When one of the players asks if there is a back door out of the building they in the GM defers to The Architect. To take that example further, if it was established that there was no back door the non-Architect player cannot make one short of dreaming up some explosives but The Architect can make a pull to have a door be there. Any of the other players, including The Mark once he realises he is in a dream, can call into being any object they know of in real life. For example, The Architect creates the back door to the building anyone on the team can have a car waiting for them in the alley. They can set up an explosive trap on the newly created door for the unsuspecting agents that are chasing them. These things are just there when no one noticed them before, as if they have always been there.

The team may enter a second layer of dreaming. A dream within The Dream. They would dream up the machine and chemicals necessary to sedate and induce themselves and The Mark as they would in the real world. The Architect would rebuild the tower, The Dream, and describe the new Dream to everyone. This has the advantage of resetting an unstable layer one Dream or being able to gather information or trust from The Mark to use on him in layer two. Even if The Mark is convinced that he dreaming in layer one then he will not necessarily know layer two is a dream. It we be easier to convince him if that is the players goal because he will have vague recollections of the previous events that will fade over time. Concepts of trust, betrayal, love, loss and the like will stay with The Mark even if the specifics of the events are fuzzy. The layer two dream is not fully in the control of The Architect. If the team is wet for some reason in layer one then it might be raining in layer two. If they have gotten dirty by setting up in an old basement then everything might be old and covered in dust in the second layer despite The Architect’s best efforts. Most of the time there is something bleeding over from the layer one dream into the layer two dream no matter what The Architect does. If the team so chooses they can go down to a third layer of dreaming. At this layer the is a large amount of bleed over from the first two layers and the GM will start to add in things from the teams subconscious as The Architect will be having a hard time keeping the different aspects of the dream together. The GM should make up to five pulls from this third level tower to represent it’s inherent instability as well as he is now able to reinterpret the world that The Architect describes. Layer three dreams are very dangerous and should only be entered into in extreme cases.

As was described earlier the tower represent the stability of The Dream. As the tower becomes unstable so does the subconscious of The Mark. The subconscious projects become agitated and even hostile. The Agents being homing in on the team to disrupt their plans and even kill them. There are two kinds of tower collapse, full and partial. A full collapse in layer one kicks the team back out to reality. The Mark wakes up and sees himself hooked to a machine. The Team wakes up at the same time. If they can mange to sedate him and induce him back into The Dream he is going to know something is wrong and will be very hard if not impossible to deal with. Since most of these job require The Mark to not know what was done to him in the first place this usually means the team has failed at this job. If everyone is in the second layer of The Dream they are all kicked into the first layer. The Mark suspects something and it will become very difficult, but not impossible, for the team to overcome The Mark’s suspicions and achieve their goals. One way of doing this would be to convince The Mark that the team is really the militarized projections, The Agents, and that they are trying to help him. Framing the real Agents as the bad guys as they operate independent of the one they are trying to protect. If the tower collapses when the team is in the third layers it turns The Mark and possibly one or more members of the team into vegetables, trapping them within a never ending dream within their own minds. A partial collapse happens in those rare occasions when someone knocks a few blocks off of the tower but doesn’t actually cause a collapse. This is the only time when an action by a player is guaranteed to go wrong. If they are in a gun fight, they get shot. If they are trying to drive a car, they crash. Regardless, something bad happens to just them and if they are injured the injuries follow them up and down the levels. If a player is killed in The Dream they are kicked to previous level with no ill effects and may re-induce themselves back. Pain is very real and can be felt. If enough pain is administered to The Mark it will wake him up.

Game play usually goes as follows:

1. The Point Man is given a job and a small amount of information on The Mark.
2. The Point Man assembles the team.
3. The Team recons The Mark and gains a little bit more information
4. The Team formulates the plan to induce The Mark into The Dream and what to do with him once he is there.
5. Enact the plan

The team should be going into The Dream with only a small amount of information on The Mark. The majority of the play of the game should take place within The Dream. The team should use the clues it found in the real world to start asking the right questions in The Dream. The teams whole plan could take place in layer one but most of the time it goes layer two. The tendency is to gain information or trust in layer one. Generally, the team is trying to get The Mark to do something they want him to do that he would not do normally. They plant the ideas to do this in layer one and try and get him to to it in layer two and even in layer three. And example of this would be getting hired to get the password to a certain person’s computer. The team finds out that The Mark has a strict father and he is into 1001 Arabian Nights. In layer one they discover through questioning subconscious projections, direct interactions with The Mark, observations of different events that they and The Mark’s subconscious put in motion that the father beats The Mark’s mother. The team manufactures situations where The Mark can rebel against his father, tying in the concepts of protecting passwords and keeping secrets as something his father would do. Doing this in a world The Architect has created to mimic the real world. When the team is ready the induce The Mark to the second layer of The Dream. The Architect has created the world of 1001 Arabian Nights. The team masquerades as The Marks protectors and take him to a cave guarded by an evil version of his father who has trapped him mother behind a door that only he can open with a magic word.

The characters also have Totems. This is an object that they are so familiar with in the real world that if someone tries to trick them into thinking that The Dream is real that person would have insert an exact replica of that character’s totem into The Dream. When the character would check this fake Totem they would likely know that it is not their and thus they are in The Dream as the Totems have many hidden defects or details, they are weighted in certain ways or only roll a certain ways that only the owner would know of even if the Totem was stolen and copied in a Dream. There is no in game mechanical effect for the Totems other than it allows the players to confirm that they are not in The Dream. Highly trained Marks might also have a Totem and once they realise that they are in a Dream they would check their Totem to confirm. Should they do this they cannot escape The Dream but now they can actively work against the characters unless the characters can convince him that they are Agents working for him or some other clever action.

The majority of the game should be played in The Dream. Getting the job, assembly of the team, the recon and the planning should take substantially less time combined than the portion of the game spent in The Dream. Time, as perceived by the characters, within The Dream is almost impossible to track. Time accelerates as the team goes down in levels of The Dream. Time in the previous levels continues going on but much more slowly. Agents and Normal Projections will still be after the team but in a sort of slow motion. There is no need to leave anyone behind to guard the sleeping team when they go down in levels with proper preparations. Even if, in the first layer of The Dream, the team is in a crashing plane they have time work in layer two. In the real word a minder is left behind and awake to monitor the sleepers and to provide a kick at the prescribed time or if something is going wrong. A kick is when a sleeper is artificially awaken or kicked out of The Dream. The minder will place headphones on The Architect’s head in the real world to give him a five minute warning that the kick is about to occur. The Architect will become aware of music playing throughout the world coming from nowhere. The GM will then start a ten or fifteen minute timer telling the team that they have until the timer goes off to finish what they are doing. If the team is working together to make a last ditch effort achieve success the GM can have each player pull two or three in the last five to ten minutes and then describe what happens. This all or nothing, down to the wire event is a pretty good way of ending the session. Many times it is a good idea to have the game go for a set period of real world/player time that way there is a real world clock that is ticking down putting more pressure on the players. This can be explained by whatever is the situation is in game, the train the characters are doing their work in will pull into the station at 6PM real world/player time when we are ending the session, whether the characters have done their job or not. Or at 6PM when the game is over that is when the drugs being used to keep everyone asleep will wear off. Tying the real world time to the ending of the mission adds a lot of tension and introduces the possibility of failure to the story beyond the tower collapsing. Also, having the last ten of fifteen minutes of the session tie in with the last ditch effort of the whole team making pulls, as described above, tends to add a great climax to the story.

There is an optional combat system for Lucid. When a player wants to engage in a fight of some kind the GM should immediately tell the player to pull X number of blocks and then make a ten count of some kind. Either a verbal count down, a count up or sticking his fingers up one at a time until all ten are showing. If the player is wanting to ambush someone or the target is generally unaware then no count is really needed. The ten count shouldn’t be over used as the combat should be taken as a whole where there is one count down event for the fight in general rather than for each target. For instance, if a player is engaging in combat with three Agents you should not do a ten count for each Agent, you are going to collapse the tower that way and should the player succeed they might go from tense to stressed out or even burned out for making anymore pulls. If the player wins they should describe what happens be it success of failure is up to them. If they can’t make the pull in time then the GM can describe what happens, they become wounded or they get kicked up one level and have to reinsert themselves into the whatever level the rest of the players are on, this should take them out of the game for at least a few minutes due to the speed of time differences between the levels of The Dream. Also, if the tower collapses due to a combat count down the GM can choose to have the character kicked back one level, keep his injuries (only in The Dream) and delay his entry back into the level with the other players. Then make the players rebuild the tower and then make pulls to get it back roughly to the state it was in before the collapse. This tends to be a good way of dealing with games that have a high amount of combat and fighting.

The Classes

In Lucid there are five classes that can be played as well as the ability for a player to run as The Mark in a GM-less game. Each player chooses one class and no class should be represented more than once. The players define their characters by filling out a form that GM gives them. The GM makes an effort to link each of the characters through the questions asked. The questions are designed to be open ended and assume certain predefined facts about the character.  The player then defines, fleshes out and specifies these open ended facts by putting them into context with his answers. The game tends to work better when one person is chosen to be the leader and that person is tasked with assembling the team. The Point Man is designed to fill this roll. Assembling the team can take the form of a few minutes of RP between The Point Man and each player as he recruits them. This, of course, can be altered in any way to fit the needs of the story.

The Point Man – The leader of the group. He is the one that assembles the team and has final say over the plans that are made. As leader he sees a macro view of the situation that the other characters might be unaware of. This view of things allows him to use his Burden of Command ability. Any time a player is asked to make a pull of more than one block The Point Man can step in and reduce the number of pulls by one. If the pulls are at two then he may pull one himself for the other person. To use this ability he must say how he is altering the actions of the other person either physically or by communicating with them. When he uses this ability he is not changing the outcome of the action but suggesting a different way to go about it or helping the other person to do it differently.

The Architect – This is a person who creates the dream world and everything in it. This person defines to the GM and the rest of the team what the world looks like, its size, its physics and its rules. If The Dream is one filled with mountains and Norse Gods where people can fly around it is The Architect that defines that. The Architect is the one who builds the Jenga tower and he can use alternative tower constructions if he likes, with GM approval. The Architect is the only one who can alter the physical landscape of the Dream and change its rules.

The Counterfeiter – This teammate is the only one who can alter his appearance to be anything he wants. He is the only one that, when disguised, that the projects will ignore as a threat. His purpose is to take on the roles of people The Mark knows gain trust and influence over him. He has the ability of Short Term Risk, Long Term Gain. This allows him to, while disguised; bring stability back to the dream. If he can convince the projects that something that is out of the ordinary is normal or gets the projections away from something that is destabilizing the dream or any number of other methods he can take a block off of the top of the tower and insert it anywhere else within.

The Chemist – The chemist is the person who makes the sedative that puts everyone asleep. He is also the only who can create a sedative within the dream to put people asleep again thus creating a dream within a dream. He has the ability to Affect More than Consciousness allows him to, once per dream level, negate a pull. If the GM asks for a pull of any player The Chemist can say that his drug would prevent the pull but allow the action but he must give a reason why. He can do this once per level and it will negate all the blocks in that one pull.

The Tourist – This is the non professional of the team. Not every team has one as they tend to get in the way at worst or not know how to help out at best. Most of the time they can be the hanger on that begs their way into the job looking for that big break, the 10%er that wants to make sure the job goes well or the person who set up the job in the 1st place who’s presents keeps everyone honest. Their ability is that they have none. They are non professionals there for the ride.

The Mark – In a GM-less game one of the players should play The Mark. He is the target that team is trying to infiltrate. The players should agree on what they are trying to get out of The Mark before the games starts and the person playing The Mark should base his character on the answers given play the other players. This player does not fill out any questionnaire nor does he get to make any pulls from the tower. He isn’t allowed to dream up any objects within the dream until he is able to realize that he is dreaming.

Acknowledgments
The whole idea of using a Jenga tower as a mechanic in an RPG is from Dread by The Impossible Dream. Adding classes that effect the tower and the combat system were my inventions. You can find more information about Dread and The Impossible Dream at http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net/ This game is also based, with a few modifications, on the Christopher Nolan movie Inception. Check out some of his other works if you have not heard of him: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0634240/ Memento is pretty good as well.

Here is a sample questionnaire designed to create a picture of The Mark as well as build in tension between the characters.

The Point Man

1.       Why did you leave your legitimate life behind?

2.       Why do you have sympathy for the target?

3.       Why did you betray The Counterfeiter on your last job?

4.       Who or what is Melody?

5.       Why did you just stand there and watch your father die?

6.       Why do you always eat the same meal in every dream?

The Architect

1.       Why is this your last job?

2.       Why is a sea shell your totem?

3.       Why do you put the same clock tower in every dream you make?

4.       How badly do you wish to embarrass The Chemist?

5.       Why does your projection not look like you?

6.       Why did you get a new totem?

The Counterfeiter

1.       Why are you working with The Agent after he betrayed you?

2.       Where does The Mark know you from?

3.       When you engage a target why are you, ever so slightly, out of character?

4.       Why do you love your job?

5.       Why do you use the same song as the warning for a kick?

6.       Why did you reveal your totem to your wife after the divorce?

The Chemist

1.       In what way did The Mark pay you to protect him?

2.       How did you find out about The Agents totem?

3.       Why does your Mentor support illegal activates?

4.       Why is chemistry your 2nd job choice?

5.       Why did you name your 1st child Jo Ann?

6.       What made you stop drinking?

2. Since I’ll need to print the game sign-up sheets with some time to spare, any changes made on Con Planner must be in by the end of Wednesday night.  All changes made on Thursday or Friday will not be accounted for.  If you need to change anything about an activity, please either get it in before Wednesday night or simply wait until the con and do it on the registration papers there.

3. If you’re coming for the pre-con tourism, don’t forget to either PM your cell phone number to ZeikeCopperEyes on the forums or keep an eye on our Twitter feed.  Those are your two best resources for getting linked up with the group.

4. Since I’m entering into a week of pre-con activities, last minute prep, and finally hosting the convention itself, I will be out of contact until next Sunday.  If you need anything dealt with immediately, please send me a PM on the forums.  That’s the only form of communication I’ll be checking with any regularity.

BOARD GAME RESOURCES

• Board Game Geek
• Board Games with Scott
• Myriad Games
• Pulp Gamer’s White Glove series

BOARD GAME TITLES

• 1870
• Agricola
• Arkham Horror
• Battlestar Galactica
• Blokus
• Carcassone
• Castle of Magic
• Chaos in the Old World
• Colossal Arena
• Cosmic Encounter
• Diplomacy
• Dominion
• Empire Builder
• Fluxx
• Formula D
• Fury of Dracula
• Le Havre
• Pandemic
• Powerboats
• Puerto Rico
• Race for the Galaxy
• Return to Castle Ravenloft
• San Juan
• Settlers of Catan
• Shadows Over Camelot
• St. Petersburg
• Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit
• Ticket to Ride
• Tsuro
• Twilight Struggle

We’ll be back on our normal schedule next week!  I also have a Fear en Route file from Wayne which I’ll try to post tonight or tomorrow to at least have something on the feed for this week.

The company that first owned the game, Sabertooth Games, did actually go under and the game was bought by Fantasy Flight Games.  After a number of overpowered sets and promotional cards, players started to leave the game.  When they decided to make seven sets illegal in the Standard format, most players stopped buying the cards.  Fantasy Flight Games decided to end the game.  However Fantasy Flight Games is still very much in business and I do appreciate their board games.  They just were not equipped for the trading card game market.

Around January 2010, a local game store down in Texas decided to buy the license for the game.  The owners were very much fans of the game and saw its potential in the right hands.  When they [bought the game], they determined that the focus should be on the players.  We have already had several polls about formats and banned cards and errata to cards.

Even in this short time, they had a new set ready to go.  It is their own intellectual property, since they cannot yet afford to buy the rights to use popular figures from Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, Tekken, etc.  They only were able to get the license to the mechanics of the game.  The older cards that include these familiar properties can still be used (Soul Calibur IV and Tekken can still be played in Standard).  But it may be a couple of years before they can afford these other licenses.

To build a deck for sanctioned tournament play, a player must choose an existing character that is included in the released sets.  They come with their own powers.  The rest is how you stated it.  Now there is a caveat.  In non-sanctioned play, you can use cards of your own making.  Although please support the developer by buying sanctioned sets.  But you can develop, say Batman, with his own powers and play with your friends.  When Fantasy Flight Games stopped supporting the game, our play group decided to make our own set (attacks, assets, foundations) with us as character cards.  It was a lot of fun to do and to play.  Our characters were totally overpowered, but it was still cool.

I just wanted to add one more thing.  They have a thing called, “The Coolest Prize in Gaming”.  Winners of nationals and worlds standard tournaments get to make themselves as character cards that are tournament legal.  I have also seen store groups be able to make tournament legal assets.  It is a really cool concept.  While cash is not awarded to winners, these prizes are definitely worth the price of playing.  Also the removal of cash has also made this a really great, fun player base to with which to play.  I have not encountered the cut throat player that I have seen, even in low level tournaments [of other games].

Also if anyone has questions about the game, they can reach me at liendolf@gmail.com.  I really want to be an ambassador for it and make it prosper.

If you’re not signed up to come yet, you can find the convention site at http://www.fearthecon.com.

A century or two before the game began, human technology could only provide FTL travel along certain paths.  A ship full of 50,000 cryogenically stored colonists fell off one of those paths and was stranded.  Realizing they would be stuck there for an extremely long time — and likely never be found at all given the vastness of space — the crew of the ship responsible for these colonists was left to panic.

Some of them lived out their lives normally and died when supplies ran out.  Some killed themselves.  But a few dozen traded places with colonists.  They dumped one body per crewman that opted into this plan, placing themselves in the chambers instead, hoping to be revived one day.

Along come the PCs in an age when humanity has more sophisticated FTL travel, and for reasons I won’t get into (that would be a novel-length gaming story), they discover this ship.  When they start thawing out the thousands of colonists, they realize that a few dozen were ship crew living in cryo chambers that were labeled for other people.  And in some cases the family members of the “murdered” were still among the living colonists.

However, this ship was sitting outside of claimed territory when the event happened, so technically no law was broken.  And with the ship’s Captain dead a century ago, there was no one left with legal authority to rule on their actions.

After being thawed, the crewman begged the players to take them back to Republic space so they could live out their lives there and escape the potentially-vengeful colonists.

So what do you do with these guys?  Kill them?  Turn them over to the colonists who don’t technically have any legal authority over them?  Turn them over to a Republic that has no legal authority over this event either?  Take pity on them as people that did a selfish — but perhaps understandable — act of desperation and take them back home?  Impress them into service in your own ship’s crew so you can exact punishment?

The diversity of character perspectives on life, death, and self-preservation clashed wonderfully in this situation.  And it also played out on some personal level.  As the characters discussed it, the players put themselves in the shoes of both the colonists and crewmen, wondering what they would do in the same situation.

In case you’re curious, the crewmen ended up being turned over to the colonists for judgment by the colony’s governor.  He chose to show them mercy of sorts, forcing them to roll up their sleeves, living a hard life on this new world alongside the rest of the colonists as a form of penance.

I will have this week’s episode edited and posted later tonight, so the feed should be update on major aggregators a full day before the site goes offline.  Also, the MP3 files are stored on another server and will remain available for download during that time.  All that will go offline is features like the forum and blog.

* All times are in U.S. Central.

While I have known about Gamma World for many years, I only got to play it for the first time today at the Gamma World Game Day. Basically, you go to your local participating game store, sit in on a game, and get to experience what Gamma World is all about. I took my 13-year-old son with me today, and we had a blast.

Does Gamma World measure up to past editions? I can’t say either way, as I’m not familiar with those prior editions. What I can comment on is this version of Gamma World. It’s a variant of the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons rules that combines classic role-playing, a card game element, and incorporates tactical game play.

The Gamma World boxed set claims to be, “A wacky, wily roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic peril.” On this, it delivers. Your character begins with two origins. Basically, you pair up two mutations to see what you can be. My son was a speedster doppelganger. I was a radioactive mind courser. Since radioactive characters can shoot radioactive beams from their eyes, I decided to take some X-Men inspiration and have only one eye. My character’s name? Psi-clops. My son got to make copies of himself, who could go into situations, attack bad guys, and keep my son’s character safe. Think Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, from the X-Men comics.

The adventure, Trouble in Freesboro, had the party being hired as mercenaries to take out these bad guys who set up shop in town, and are creating some super-weapon. It consists of three encounters, with an optional third encounter. The first encounter was all combat.

The second, though, went very differently than I thought would happen. I came in expecting a lot of combat. But in this encounter, a little fast-talking had us making friends with humanoid cockroaches who had a Mexican accent. This was more than an encounter. This was role-playing. We didn’t fight, and we convinced these guys that we were the new hires, sent to work with them.

We worked our way up to the top, where we faced the final enemies – a group of porkers and other assorted mutants. The big boss-man was a toughie, but we dispatched of him.

The game includes Alpha mutation cards, which function as Gamma World’s variant of encounter powers. It also has Omega tech, which functions as magic items. There’s a certain suspension of disbelief necessary to really get into these, but once you get into it, it’s fun. Gamma World assumes that random mutations happen, so that’s how you get your Alpha mutation cards. Then it’s assumed that the collision of realities (kind of the background to Gamma World) leads to Omega tech lying around.

I should mention at this point that my son has only gamed a handful of times. For Gamma World, he says that character creation was hard, but once that was over, he was fine. He says he really enjoyed this game, more so than playing D&D. He told his mom that she should play, and he has asked me when we will play next. In my mind, that’s the sign of a successful game.

For me, seeing this sort of positive reaction in my son is all I need to have me sold on the Gamma World game.

The Dresden Files rulebook surprised me almost from the first page.  It was all in character from the perspective of one of the novel characters.  Billy the werewolf was writing an RPG for the sole purpose of informing people about the dangers they could face in the world.  He is following in the foot steps of Bram Stroker who in the Dresden world wrote his book as a veiled way to spread the methods of killing a specific type of vampire.  Harry and Bob the Skull serve as his proofreaders and leave frequently humorous post-it note style comments throughout the book.  I found myself drawn into the rulebook like I were reading a novel instead of jumping around like I usually do.  This book just had a different feel than other rule set I had seen and it was this feel and the short story written by Jim Butcher that finally drew me into the world enough to give the books another try.  It was less about the rules themselves but how they were being presented.  I was very short on time and didn’t think I could muster the focus needed for reading a series with so much going on.  I can always listen to an audiobook while working though and our local libraries do stock them.

Over the next two weeks I listened to all 12 Dresden Files novels as audiobooks on my ipod.  The world was so engrossing that I wanted to jump right to the next book as each one finished and all other podiobooks\podcasts took a backseat.  I was also building more and more game ideas from the books.  The further I got into them the more I wanted to run not just a one-shot, but a whole campaign.  The rules for city building and tying characters together seemed to be the perfect foundation for a strong game and would allow the players to have a big part of the world that is their own creation.  I just kept getting more and more excited about the system.

Then disaster struck.  Chad got sick with a nasty bug that lasted two week and generously shared it with the rest of us.  I caught the sickness and when I finally recovered I passed it on to my wife.  The other players we were expecting decided that they didn’t want to game as World of Warcraft was their current priority.  I had a few volunteers, but they were not new gamers and the sickness left me dragging and not in the mood to organize a game.  With each day the idea of a beginner’s game slipped further and further away.

I approached the Dresden Files RPG from the perspective of using it to change fans of the book into gamers.  What happened instead was the opposite.  I found a captivating world and the book changed me as a gamer into a fan.  I regret to say that as of writing this I have still not actually played the game, and I hope to rectify that someday soon and come back to share my experiences.  I can’t say for certain if the system is as new player friendly as I believe it is.  I know it was very easy to understand while reading it from a GMs perspective, but I don’t actually know how easy it is to run.  What I can say at this point is that for the first time I am a fan of a game system that I have not played and that to me is a very strange concept.

* Atomic Array: Episode 047: Dresden Files, Vol 1: Your Story

* d20 Source: Welcome to The Dresden Files

* Dice Monkey: The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game

* 3.5 Private Sanctuary: PS0 140- Flavour – Backstories

* Emerson’s Bookshelf: City Creation and Cooperative Play

* Gnome Stew: Werewolves and Harpies, oh my!

* Atomic Array: Episode048: Dresden Files, Vol 2: Our World

• Buggin’ – Inspired by movies like Antz and Bee Movie, participants play tiny bugs out on big adventures.  (Thanks to Todd Downing of Deep7!)
• Dread House – In a combination of RPG and board game, you play teenagers spending the night in a haunted mansion.  (Thanks to Emily Care Boss of Black and Green Games!)
• Faery’s Tale – An introductory RPG where players take on the role of one of four kinds of faeries and go adventuring in Brightwood.  (Thanks to Marcy Ganow of Tabletop Adventures who also helps organize the kids’ track at Nuke Con in Omaha!)
• Fuzzy Heroes – A tactical game with plenty of RPG and character elements where kids use stuffed animals to tussle out battles.  (Another hat tip to Marcy Ganow and the game’s creator, Christopher Clark!)
• Happy Birthday Robot – A storytelling game where players take turns writing the story of Robot’s birthday.  (Thanks to Jessica Blair from Sandstorm!)
• Land of Og – Players take on the role of cavemen that have extremely limited vocabularies and go adventuring in a prehistoric world.  (Another hat tip to Marcy Ganow!)
• Meddling Kids – This game is something like Scooby Doo where you make investigators and chase down mysteries.  (Thanks to Tim Dugger from Ice Crown Enterprises!)
• Pre-School RPG – Designed for his daughter when she was very young, this flexible game is easy to learn and requires no literacy.  (Thanks to Keith Curtis for creating this game!)
• rpgKids – A cheap and easy-to-play fantasy game designed for children as young as 4.  (Thanks to Daniel Perez from Highmoon Media and also Brannon!)
• Siege Games: Harvester – Players match little animals with fantasy classes and take their heroes into a world of fantasy adventure.  (Thanks to Christina Stiles of Misfit Studios!)
• The Heroes of Hesiod – A simplified, kid-friendly D&D adventure put out by Wizards to help introduce kids to the hobby.  (Thanks to Matt Forbeck for this one!)
• The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men – Players create gingerbread cookies which represent their characters and then go on adventures about the house.  What other game lets you eat the character sheet?  (Thanks to Ryan Dancey of CCP / White Wolf for introducing me to this game several years ago!)
• Toon – Players take on the role of wacky, slapstick characters straight from Saturday morning cartoons.  (Thanks to Bill Stoddard of Steve Jackson Games!)
• Warriors – A free RPG based on the Harper-Collins books, with a new adventure coming out to accompany each novel.  (Thanks to Stan for this one!)
• Witch Girls Adventure – A fantasy game for new players about the lives of young mistresses of magic.  (Thanks to Grant Davis for this one!)

My friend Curtis and I were it for our table, so we were going to play two characters each. Another group was also short, so they combined us. What’s funny is that we had a lot more role-playing when it was just me and Curtis. The others were probably half our age (or close to it) and only out for the combat. One guy was metagaming like crazy, and another guy kept rolling his eyes any time anyone else did something.

We basically had a bit of setup, then proceeded to the encounter. We battled some dragonborn and various other reptilian creatures, all servants of Tiamat. The DM was a lot of fun, and pulled no punches.

For tonight’s game, I played the pre-generated fighter, Quinn. Quinn utilizes the new knight build found in Heroes of the Fallen Lands. I have to say, the pre-gen felt like a knight to me. Of course, I played up the part. One might even say I hammed it up.

At one point, I had a battle with a monster that kept trying to throw a net over me. He got me in a pit, but I climbed out. Another player moved him into the pit. I went all Hollywood, and jumped in after the monster, pressing my advantage. Eventually, I defeated him.

I have to say that I really enjoyed playing the Essentials fighter. It felt more like the basic fighters of prior editions. Yet the cool stance and aura abilities made for some fun possibilities and nice visuals. I miss having the daily power, but the rest made up for it.

While the Essentials fighter was good, I can’t say that I was terribly enthused about Encounters. It’s a neat idea, but the name is self-explanatory. You’re just playing encounters. Our DM commended the role-playing that Curtis and I did and said that they didn’t have that much role-playing the entire time they did the Dark Sun encounters. I just found that sad.

Now, I’m debating on whether to go back or not. Did I have fun? Yeah, it was a good time. But it wasn’t a great time. I haven’t made any decisions yet, but I think I prefer games where we can get into our characters a bit more.

These are hard questions, to be sure, ones that don’t always have clear-cut answers. Sometimes players won’t tell you if they’re not having fun because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Sometimes you misread your players and think they’re really into your game when they might not be.

I believe the mark of a successful game is when players give back. Perhaps they want to create something for your setting, such as a new technology for your sci-fi game. Or maybe they want to expand their character’s backstory to fit in better with your game, which in turn gives you new NPCs to use in future games. Maybe they want to build a new fortress or space station.

It’s at this point, when players give back, that you know they are invested in your setting, and you have a successful game.

First, I want to thank Cape Rust for the very generous review of our show posted over on Geek Life!  Check out that article and his other stuff when you get a chance.  Among topics he’s tackled is a great series on gaming life in the military (part 1 and part 2).

Second, the dates for Fear the Con 4 have been locked in.  Wing Night is on Thursday, March 17th, 2011.  The con itself will be on Friday, March 18th and Saturday, March 19th.  Much more follow, and I look forward to seeing you there!

From Gen Con 2010, the cast of The Guild shows their love: Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Sandeep Parikh, and Robin Thorson.

First, I’d like to thank the TOFTBCHes. Those guys do an incredible amount of work making reservations, putting together the contact lists, and sending out the text messages that make the events possible. They put in a lot of hard work, and I am in their debt for the service they provide to the community.

I’d like to thank the community for being such excellent, supportive individuals. Not only did a good number of people turn out to our events, but I was yet again amazed at the quality of people that comprise this community.

Last but not least, I’d like to thank Tim and a second donor (I believe wanted to remain anonymous) for generously giving us tickets to True Dungeon. It was an absolutely incredible experience that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. I wish we could have filmed some of the puzzles and monsters, but they don’t allow cameras in there.

It was a great con, and I look forward to posting the rest of the interviews and then making early reservations for Fear the Con 4.

WARNING: Possibly NSFW language.

Of course, I didn’t exactly give them enough time to do it justice. It’s my camera, ha!

WARNING: Video contains NSFW language.