Theory From the Closet

Show060: Interview with David Wesely

I spent so much time trying to fix the sound on this one… at least 24 hours total. It either can’t be done well, or is beyond my ability. Which sucks as this was the interview I was most excited about, from Gen Con. Major David Wesely, Ret., is the guy who Dave Arneson credits with inventing the idea of the Roleplaying Game. It was so very interesting to hear about stuff that was going on before I was born to make this thing I’m fascinated with today. It’s interesting to see how closely our beginning was tied to LARP.

I think it is worth the effort of having to concentrate to focus on what is being said over the background noise.

Show059: Interview with Vincent Baker

Text later, sound-file… now.

Gen Con recaps seem popular; I want to be popular, so I wrote this post full of name-dropping for you. Warning: I add the letter s to words that don’t need it to be internet cute. Also there are inside jokes and mystic writings. You’ve been warned.

This year my back wasn’t completely ruined, so I got to do the full Gen Con experience, as opposed to last years 24 hour experience. This means I got a couple interviews, a couple of games in, and lots of hanging out. It was a really good experience, and as always I feel more charged up about gaming and podcasting. On to the diary form of the post!

Wednesday:
This is the day I left. 3 to 4 hour bus trip to Chi-town’s Union Station spent mostly staring out the window. From Union Station I was scheduled to take the Amtrak to Indy, which dumps you right by the convention center. This is where probably the coolest thing happened for Gen Con. I met up with the inventor of role-playing, Major David Wesely, Ret., and his friend, The First Dwarf, Ross W. Maker. I conducted a interview with David, for just under two hours on the Amtrack, and we talked much of the way to Indy. It was really awesome to get insight into our hobby from back before I was born. I arrived in Indy at was technically Thursday, so….

Thursday:
I arrived about one in the morning to the Embassy Suites, and picked up the keycard my roommates the BG’s kindly left at the front Desk for me. Remarkably Josh was still up and was chatting with Fat Patroller, Luscious Myers. I talked to them for a few minutes, Luscious left, and Josh went to bed. I left the room to do something…. Drugs? Something like that, but it was sold by Steak and Shake, where I arrived just in time to catch other people going to bed. Lead by Luscious’ partner in podcasting evil, David Adam was backed by the Hand-mangler, Johnathon A.K.A Stingray02, so I let their posse get away, as I waited for my too-thin-burger plus Banana and Chocolate shake.

After food in the belly, I made sure to copy Wesely’s interview over to my computer so it was in two places. ’cause I care about you, friendly listener. Bedtime about 4 a.m.

I got up around 7 a.m. got a shower, then some bad food from the Embassy Suites buffet breakfast. Free is as free does, or so my Forrest used to say. I went and got my press pass, with the BG’s two, and then checked in at SorenCrane Industries as is my wont. Handshakes, hugs, and insults for to win. Then I did stuff, saw peoples, checked in on folks I was scheduled to interview, and found out there were no video game companies this year. Which sucked as I wanted to hunt down Mythic and Bioware people for interviews, figuring I’m harder to ignore in person than via the emails. Escaped again, but the hunt isn’t done.

This is about where my chronological memory breaks down. We gained two more roommates, Ms. Jennisodes, and Rich Nolastname. With impossible blue eyed baby, Meg BG, plus Josh BG, that equals 6 gamers in two rooms.

I think I played two games of Ascension with Josh and Rich. Then did some other things.

I believe this is the night where we played part of Misspent Youth, and then Fat Patrol. Made characters with Kevin Eye, and some other folks. We made characters and played about two scenes, by the end of which, my character was raped and so there was no reason to go on. Or something… forget why we quit.

I ran into Luscious, after refusing to partake in evil with the kids. So of course we formed Fat Patrol, and went on the quest for 323, and slayed the mighty notebook. We did not engage the bottle-throwing demon, however, as we needed to med up at Steak and Shake, for too-thin-burgers and shakes. Plus we were afraid. Bedtime about 4 a.m.

As an aside, I can’t sleep well at cons and tend to get 3 hours a night until I can finally sit down to a roleplaying game at which I promptly fall asleep. I should figure out how to deal with this.

Friday:
I got up after my wonder three hours sleep, ate my bad food, and went and interviewed Matt Synder, and Keith Senkowski. We said things that are going to make people angry, and likely said the word fuck a lot. Another outstanding interview.

At some point I went to find out how SorenCrane makes donuts.

I’m not sure what happened after this… how about you?

Saturday:

I ran into my friend Mike Holmes, and dropped him off at Games on Demand, which I like to eyeball every year, but never use. I went back to the hotel room to do laundry, with the plan of attending the Extreme Dungeon Mastering seminar afterwards, so I could judge the words of the devil for myself. It took me too long, but I had a really cool conversation with Rich about American Parkour LARPS, whoops, I mean American Parlor LARPs, and why their tabletop derived rules are dumb. Do I have better ideas? Seem to… so did Rich. Hit me up with that email address, dude? Then it was on to the Game Design is Mind Control seminar. If you’re into Game Design, attend this in the future, and arrive early as the room wasn’t big enough for everyone.

Then I got over to the Adept Press booth to grab Vincent Baker for Dinner. We went to this awesome Cajun place, that was like 50 miles from the convention center on foot, with Anna Kreider, Graham Walmsley, plus a passel of British folks whose names I can’t recall. My god, the Brits mastery of sarcasm had me rolling, and the Cajun food was good. It wasn’t low-fat high-brow crap, but straight up Cajun. You could taste the grease, and that was a good thing.

On the way back to the hotel I pissed Vincent off with political talk, and we found several strong common grounds, which is interesting, since I’d define myself conservative, and I believe he would define himself liberal. We did the interview and it worked out much better than I thought it would. I wasn’t as prepared for this interview as the others, and I was worried I was going to waste Vincent’s time. Turns out? Nope, another excellent interview.

I think afterwards I played a lego game with James Brown, and friends. It was okay. A Knizia game, themed on Egyptian Pyramids, and Mummies, that balances hidden information versus open information. I’d prefer to play it with kids I think, not really deep enough for adults, but would be fun with kids.

Things happened after this, with a bedtime of maybe 5:00? Then….

Sunday:
Got up around 9:00 a.m. Got good food at Einstein bagels as I was tired of crap breakfast. Went to the free internet spot, and ran into Dave Spoonbender and Tim Jensen. Finished breakfast and walked around the show floor. After walking the floor with them we parted ways, and I walked the floor again with Dro Kielbasa, Thor the Editor of the Gods, and Ken “Fuck” Sentowski.

I bought Ascension. It’s a deck building game, similiar to Dominion, but with a bit smaller possibility space. Your methods to winning are a little easier to compute, but there’s enough space for it to still be interesting… at least over four plays. We’ll see how it does as I play it more. It sets up a ton faster than Dominion, and puts away quicker too. It won’t replace Dominion, but it doesn’t need to as Ascension occupies it’s own space.

I also bought Apocalypse World. The reasons for this will pop up in the interview with Vincent, suffice to say, shit is tight, yo-box. That was it for Gen Con purchases. I was loaded down with equipment, and didn’t want to add much weight.

Thor encouraged me to sit down with Ron Edwards, which was good, as he shared some of that belly-fire he’s got going on. I spent most of my time nodding. Talked to James Brown some more. I thanked Greg Stolze for City of Lies, which I finally bought this year. There’s good game design stuff to build on in that boxed set that folks don’t seem to have grabbed yet.

I went to Dinner with New York, which was Terry Hope Romano, John Wrestle-opolis, Crane, Thor, Dro, Keith, and Alexander. They argued about something silly, and we all ate overthought Mexican food.

Later we went to the Embassy suites for the Sunday night showdown. Sunday is a cool night as the weak have been weeded out, and commerce is over, so you get to sit down with all those people you missed. I took a 3 hour nap, and then saw everyone, but Macklin and Will off. Those two were up when I left at 5:00 to catch a cab to the Amtrak station.

The Amtrak train was delayed 4 fucking hours, and I had to sit in that dirty fucking place and wait. Note to Indianapolis, hire better janitors for your Bus/Train station. They haven’t swept under the chairs in forever and the bathroom was disgusting. I eventually got home. The end.

Show058: Interview with Robert Bohl

Here’s an interview I did with Robert Bohl a few weeks ago. I think the Skype interviews are really improving, there seems to be much less of the falling in and out that used to occur when using Skype.

In this show we talk about; Misspent Youth, defeating blank page syndrome, mechanizing fun, “my guy” versus “our guy,” why Rob is a more successful designer than me, Ashcans, and abusing people through games and psychology. (Note to literal.net: there is a tongue in cheek in that description.)

Linkies!
• One of Joshua Newman’s cool sculptures.
• The game whose name I can’t remember that reminds me of Human Contact.
• Misspent Youth which can be preordered at the Unstore.
• The This Week In Start-ups interview with Neil Young, CEO of ngmoco, who discusses game design of games like We Rule, among other start-up type things. The interview is around 15:00 minutes into the episode to 47:00 minutes.
• Gabe’s Balls

If you got a This Week in Start-ups episode, instead of Theory From the Closet, the problem should be fixed now. Try deleting that episode and pressing the refresh button in itunes.

Show057: Interview with Michael S. Miller

I did an interview with Michael S. Miller via Skype tonight. We discussed a blog post he made some time back, and Serial: Homicide Unit, which he created with his wife Kat Miller.

Some additional stuff, courtesy of Mike.
Ron Edwards post about main stream games.
No Anthology Press.

Show056: Reincorporation with Ryan Macklin

This is a long show, about Two hours and Twenty minutes. It served as a way for me to have my Gen Con talk with Ryan, as I didn’t have that opportunity this year. We talk about reincorporation, niche protection, and what a Roleplaying game is. Part of this show is a follow up to Ryan’s previous show about reincorporation. There were some moments when I forgot I was being recorded and was playing with a pen, and a clickable eraser, sorry about that.

Show055: Homosexuality and RPG’s

Man this was difficult. Alexander talked to me about discussing homosexuality in RPG’s at least two years. Gen Con 2008, we got together twice and talked, but I somehow lost, or destroyed both recordings accidentally. So that’s what brings us to sitting down to talk via Skype, because I didn’t end up doing any recordings at Gen Con this year. I think I only played one game at Gen Con, where I fell asleep. There was just too much catching up in the short amount of time I was there.

This recording itself was difficult because I had echo during the whole thing which makes it difficult to think and speak. So if there are more pregnant pauses then normal, that’s why.

Show054: Interview with Judd Karlman

Holy wow! This is from Gen Con 2008 and I thought it was lost. Well it was lost, but now it’s found. It’s a bit rambly, I didn’t have an outline which was par for the course for 2008. As always this post is the last thing I do, and I’m cranky, and want to be done. Maybe more notes later.

Later:
This was a good time to find this interview. I am facing the same thing Judd was/is at this years Gen Con, as I wanted to be done with SKMaV by now. Although no one harangued me, so maybe folks are happy not to see it. Heh. I’m still anxious to see what Judd comes up with for 1stQuest, it seems like it will hit many of my interests, kids, coming of age, low points of contact, clear flags, etc. I think it’s a decent interview considering I had no pre-done questions at all.

Show053: Interview with Fred Hicks

This is a great episode that is marred because of me not being prepared. I thought I had a program to record Skype, but I bought it over two years ago, and have since wiped my windoze box so it was no longer installed. Fred had his recorder, so I recorded myself locally with my portable recorder, but it ran out of batteries about an hour into the recording. That left us with Fred recording both our voices and that doesn’t always work well as you hear later in the episode.

Fred and I were talking about having this discussion a year ago, but my back injury prevented me from having a chance to meet him in person this year. The one con I can get to this year, other than Forge Midwest, Fred couldn’t get to… so we Skyped it.

Links:
The post we refer to is here.
Don’t Rest Your Head is here in PDF, dead tree, and dead tree + PDF bundle, just in case you don’t already own the game.

Show052: Live interview with Vincent Baker

Here’s the Live Show. Man this was hard for me. I was cutting in and out,  my interviewee was across space and time, and I had a hard time focusing on the conversation, and paying attention to a chat box. On the plus, it was really cool to have live interaction with listeners. I’d like to make this standard operating procedure, but perhaps not through talkshoe.

What did you think?