We arrived Friday night: me, and . We met up with Stan! () and Hyrum () who were two of the primary reasons I was looking forward to going. I have discovered recently that the key to the Good Life is surrounding yourself with Good People. Stan! and Hyrum certainly qualify. Fabien, Snag and Ben were there as well. More qualifiers for the previously mentioned category. We spent Friday night catching up, chatting and getting ready for the show. It was gonna be busy.

Saturday morning I was part of a seminar calling "Failing Forward" with the Mighty Mighty Paul Tevis (of Have Games Will Travel). The seminar went really well and the room was surprisingly full. Usually, seminars include maybe five or six people. We talked for the entire two hours about success and failure in RPGs, how failure is sometimes more interesting and how to encourage your players to choose it over success. I cannot refrain from saying, "Our seminar on failure was a complete success." You may throw rotten fruit now.

We were sharing a small booth with Stan!, Hyrum and Paul. After the seminar, I returned to the booth to discover we were selling books like mad. I was completely surprised. Usually at small conventions, we have to be masters of the shill: dragging folks over to the booth and running demos to get them to look at anything. As it turned out, folks were grabbing up books left and right.

Saturday afternoon was the Blood & Tears larp. It is only now that I realize I was so busy co-running the event that I had no opportunities to take pictures. And I should have. Folks arrived in gorgeous costumes. put together a collage of revenge red that knocked my jaw to the floor. If anyone has pictures, please post them here or point me to a place where I can link to them.

As folks gathered for the game, we realized we did not have enough pre-generated characters to cover everyone. I quickly started statting up new ones. acquired so many women players just by saying, "We have costumes!" that it became a running gag for the rest of the convention.

I was very happy we got so many Camarilla players: an opportunity to demonstrate a different kind of live action game. showed up to play and looked as if she was having a wonderful time. (I later confirmed my suspicions.) At first, the basics of the system were a little foreign, but once our players figured out what was going on, they were full steam forward. I was proud like a poppa.

Saturday night was running a secret playtest of Yesterday’s Tomorrow! I’m still very much in love with the system but now have a few more kewl elements to add on. This is the steampunk/rocket-men/pulp adventure game I’ve always wanted to play. We followed that up with chatting with Stan! and Hyrum about all kinds of stuff until the early hours. After they went to bed, I ran up to the Rat’s Nest and hung out with some of my Phoenix friends including the inestimable Jessie F (whom I did not get to see enough of at the convention).

Sunday was two more seminars (Play Dirty and Game Design) which went as expected. And then, it was time to say goodbye to everyone. We made a ton of cash from the booth, ran a fantastic larp, showed a bunch of people a new game and sat down for dinner with Paul and Ryan Macklin (from The Master Plan) before we drove home to Phoenix.

Thank you to everyone for a wonderful weekend!