Going to my first RPG convention!

Late next week, I'll be attending my first ever RPG convention. Fear the Con takes place in St. Charles, MO, which is just a short half-hour drive from where I live, so I won't have to deal with any great expense to participate. Fear the Con is the official convention for the Fear the Boot gaming community, and I recommend the podcast and message board. They're full of friendly and polite folk who exhibit a strong sense of community.

I'm not entirely sure what to expect from the con. I think the closest thing to this that I've ever participated in is a Magic: the Gathering pre-release tournament, and I don't have the fondest memories of that experience. I almost slid my car off of the highway on an icy patch on the 2+ hour drive into Detroit from where I attended college. I played on little sleep since I was nervous about how I'd perform, and it seemed like all of the players were pretty cutthroat and business-minded in my matches. A friend who rode to the tournament with me performed pretty well, but beyond that I mostly remember just a string of losses.

Obviously, an RPG convention is a different animal. Our games are cooperative in nature so I don't need to worry about vicious play souring my day. I won't be running any events since I thought I'd find the newness of the experience stimulating enough without adding particular responsibilities on top of it. Also, I'm signed up for a number of RPGs that I've always wanted to try out as a player like Fantasy Craft and Spirit of the Century.

Still, I'm a bit nervous. I have introverted tendencies, and I'll be meeting a lot of new people. I've also filled all but one event slot in my schedule, so I'll be roleplaying for over 10 hours each day, which could get exhausting. Having a one-shot with relative strangers will be a new experience for me too, though I have played over Skype with a few community members who will be in attendance. Still, in a one-shot game, there's not a great deal of time to find my footing with my character, both mechanically and from a roleplaying standpoint.

Anyway, I'll try to make at least one post from the convention itself on Friday or Saturday. Furthermore, after the event is over I'm sure I'll have at least a few more posts in the near future in response to the event. If you've never been to an RPG convention before, I hope my reflections on my first time will be valuable to you. Also, if you've attended an RPG convention before and have any general advice for me, I'd love to read it in the comments section.

New Dice!

I went to my local game store on Tuesday to pick up some new dice. The Fantasy Shop is a St. Louis game and comic chain with four locations scattered throughout the greater metro area, and all of my experiences with their stores and staff have been wonderful. The St. Charles location in particular is a solid place to meet gamers since it has a great deal of in-store play space, but it's also the furthest from where I live, so I dropped in on their South St. Louis location for this particular errand.

So why new dice? I mostly picked them up because I'm obsessing over a few random systems these days and want to be able to play them at a moment's notice should the craving arise. The new set of assorted polyhedrals is my sixth set to be added to my "regular service" dice bag, and provides me enough dice to provide a pool of every variety needed to play the free RPG Risus using the game's "Funky Dice" advanced option. I wanted to be able to have all of the dice needed to play in the center of the table so that players could grab and return them as needed. I'm not going to go out and get enough sets that people could roll all of the dice needed to double-pump a rank (6) cliche though. That would just be ridiculous. Do yourself a favor though and nab the free PDF of Risus at the link above. If you're ever in the mood to, "Just play something already!" it will likely do the trick.

The purple and black swirled d6 set will join my green and silver swirled set to supply more than enough dice for a group to play Starblazer Adventures. The game is a modified version of Evil Hat's Fate system that uses a d6 minus d6 mechanic. Now that I have two sets of standard-sized d6s in different colors, I can easily supply the table for play.

Speaking of dice, consider leaving a polyhedral set in a conspicuous location in your home or on your desk at work. People who have never played RPGs before will wonder what in the world they're for, giving you an opportunity to introduce them to your hobby, and people who have played before will likely excitedly come out of the woodwork to strike up a chat with you. It's a win-win situation!

I Think About Games... a Lot.

So I'm sitting before a newly-minted blog overthinking the contents of this first post. On one hand, it sets the tone for posts to come, and it makes a critical first impression. On the other, I can think of maybe two times I've read all the way back to the first post of a blog, so it probably isn't that important.

Anyhow, on with the show...

My name is Rob, and I find myself thinking about games a lot each day. I mostly think about role-playing games. Back in my early teen years, I was introduced to RPGs by a cousin of mine during a holiday trip to our grandparents' house. He didn't have any rulebooks along during that trip, so he made up a basic dungeon-crawling game. I played some kind of blue gargoyle with a pitchfork if I remember correctly. My character wandered around some tunnels and killed some monsters. I don't really remember much about it except that it was a lot of fun. Only on a later trip did he show me his Dungeons & Dragons books, and reveal that there was a much bigger game behind the small, simple thing he'd shown me.

I wouldn't have a regular RPG group until I went off to college where I met the friends who I gamed with for six years or so. We mostly played recent editions of D&D or d20 System games, though there were a few attempts (mostly by me) to try out other games here and there. I have lots of fond memories of gaming in college, including 12-hour gaming binges and that spring break during which I stayed at a fellow player's house and we played every single day.

But those days are behind me now. I've moved back to my hometown from where I went to college, and I don't get to play nearly as often as I used to, which is a bummer. This leaves me thinking a lot about games, and happens to neatly bring me back around to my statement of purpose. I love it when that happens.

I've started this blog to share my thoughts on RPGs. Sometimes I'm daydreaming about designing my own game. Other times, I'll have ideas about how to make an existing game behave more to my (and perhaps your) liking. And yes, maybe sometimes I'll just want to tell you about my character. (I beg your pardon in advance.) This is a space for me to empty my mind. When I don't empty it, I tend to fixate on the same idea over and over again without accomplishing much. There's something I find very satisfying about writing my thoughts, but I'm pretty disorganized and rarely think to write or type things out in the heat of the moment. Maybe if I put my thoughts here, and start getting feedback, I'll feel accountable to produce more consistently, which would be great.

My (lofty) goal is to update this blog on Mondays and Thursdays. If I produce something that sparks your interest, by all means leave me a comment. I hope we get an opportunity to add fun and fascination to each others' lives through what goes on here.

So welcome. Thanks for dropping in!