Friends, it is time for Gen Con. I will be there from sometime Wednesday afternoon to Sunday morning. As I type this I still don’t know in which hotel I’ll be staying or what time I’ll be arriving.

So, who’s going? Give me a shout out if you see me, even if I am zoned out in my own world. I *love* to hear the words: “I read your blog”. If you’d like to join me for lunch, I plan to be at the RAM for lunch after Killer Breakfast on Saturday.

Those of you who have been to the Indy Convention Center know that cell phones do not get good reception and the ambient noise in most places make phone conversations impossible. If you try to call me, please leave me a voice mail message. Or, send me a text message.

Here is my schedule for this year’s convention:

Wednesday, Aug 15

• ?? pm – Arrive and Check in to Hotel
• ?? pm – Grab Swag Bag from Indianapolis Convention Center
• ?? pm – Gen Con Forum Stink
• ?? pm – BYOV Room Party

Thursday, Aug 16

• 11 am – Vendor Hall Shopping and Swag Grab
• 5 pm – LRP00089 Torchwood: Remember The Time?

Friday, Aug 17

• 4:30 pm – LRP00087 A Holiday at Hogwarts: Slytherin House

Saturday, Aug 18

• 9 am – RPG00010 Hickman’s Killer Breakfast
• 11 am – Lunch at the RAM
• 7 pm – LRP00056 Ten Thousand Bullets LARP: RIP

I hope to bump into each of ya there.

Physics rocks! Check out this demonstration of a Ruben’s tube. In this video a foil lined PVC pipe gives a real-world visualization of sound. Remember friends, PVC at this temperature can melt and emit noxious fumes.

I have been playing Puzzle Quest for my Sony PSP. It uses the same “connect-three-matching-items-in-a-grid” game mechanic throughout most of the game. What is interesting is the RPG aspect that they layer on top of it. The monsters you compete against have the ability to heal themselves, leech health and mana off you and alter the grid. As you level up you can train mounts, research spells and forge magic items which give you bonuses. It is a cute little game.

The lovely Signgirl and her son D joined me for the first night of DieCon this past weekend. Jon Bancroft’s daughter took us through a game of KinderBunnies. During the game Jon dropped off a coupon which Signgirl used to buy some games for D.

I wrote and helped run the Spycraft LARP for Atomic Squash. In all we had about 22 players and wrote 35 characters. Sorry Jirel, but the Cynthia Pride character was cut due to lack of players. Thanks again for writing up the information on the collectible card game.

Our biggest asset for LARP development was the wiki. I believe the ability to work online and see the edit history and recent changes made us more productive. It took some time to become adjusted to the wiki-style formatting. But everyone who used it seem to pick it up fairly quickly.

We published a guest list, a list of characters, on the Atomic Squash forums before the game. The feedback to the list helped us gauge player interest. We were better able to select which characters to put in the optional column in case not enough players showed up.

For a three to five hour game I feel that a 300-400 word character description worked well. It gives the player a good feel for the character and improves their game. For example I gave the Doctor Lo character a family. It was not important to the immediate events of the game, but helped define the character.

There were not big stories that encompassed a large number of characters. This allowed us to safely cut characters and augment the game by playing the museum curator and auctioneer as non-player characters (NPCs). Most players had at a couple goals that encouraged interaction with other players. Making Otto’s disappearance a mystery discouraged players from sticking to their small circles and encouraged them to circulate among the other players.

A couple players told me how much they enjoyed their characters. Seeing them enjoy the game made all of the hard work worth it.

I was thrilled to see Signgirl laughing and enjoying the LARP. Big points for you, sweetie! Now I’ll have to draft you to help me write a new Kobolds LARP.

I spent the Memorial Day weekend writing characters for the Spycraft LARP that Atomic Squash plans to run at DieCon this Saturday. I started Friday after work and worked morning to night on them. I took a few breaks to play Battlefield 2 and do some shopping. More on that in a bit.

We managed to post a list of characters for this year’s game. In total there are a total of 35 characters. Since we usually have around twenty players, the unfortunate reality is that a third of these characters probably will not make it into the game. I just hope some of the ones I sacrificed my holiday weekend to write find their way into the game. Here is the list of characters on which I worked the past three days (in the order on which I worked them):

• Vittorio Esperto: an Italian collector visiting the United States. (White Tux, Greased Hair, Pinky Ring)
• Malcolm Whitlow: a former Prime Minister of Australia. (Bald, Charismatic, Bold tie)
• Clodomir Uteem: an exiled islander and activist. (Dark Skin, Beard, Scowl)
• Nicole Mason: an Australian government official. (Plain, Flat Hair, Nice Dress)
• Jamal Riggs: a European Union tax agent. (Wrinkled jacket, Wing tipped shoes, Soul patch)
• Izanami Kishi: a famous Japanese actor and martial arts expert. (Black Formal Robe, Bald, Short)
• Hong Gildong: a Korean-born Texas oil magnate. (Comb over, False Teeth, Designer Tuxedo)
• Jeremy Wade: the assistant to Izanami Kishi. (Flamboyant, Curly Hair, Pink Shirt)
• Juan Kerr: the bodyguard to Elsa Beisheim. (Eye patch, Muscular, Van Dyke)
• Cynthia Pride: a British journalist working for The London Times. (Pantsuit, Short Hair, Notepad)
• Elmyr: a little known artist seeking some exposure. (Ascot, Chain Smoker, Earrings)
• James Camelot: a hacker who claims he has a program that can determine if paintings are fake. (Young, Nerdy, Skinny Tie)
• Pat Pennyworth: a beautiful auctioneer working for Fukabun Naka Auctions. (Stiff Prosthetic Arm, Stunning, Red Dress)

Yeah, I’m a slacker. I have a new respect for writers. Getting my head around most of these characters was a challenge. How do you make a tax agent interesting? What motives a wealthy Texas oil tycoon? What would compel somebody to spend time with a former Australian Prime Minister? I am convinced that writing involves hundreds of these little decisions. Good authors are the folks that make the best decisions.

I managed to accumulate enough points in Battlefield 2 to get promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant. So far I have earned 75,099 points and have played the game for a total of 825 hours.

I picked up Ozzy Osbourne’s new album, Black Rain. It definitely rocks. The album features some juicy guitar riffs, or as I heard a DJ once say, “.. the sound of finely tuned chainsaws”. It’s a beautiful thing. The lyrics were adequate but fell short of being great. Thankfully Ozzy did not completely disappoint me like Sevendust’s last effort did.

I am continuing to work on the Spycraft LARP for Atomic Squash. Our setting this year is an art auction. Here is the description of the game if you have not read it yet:

Mickey took twenty eight pictures of art items for the game. I spent some time last night uploading them to our game wiki and creating pages for them. By the way while I think wikis are terrible for software project documentation, we have succeeded in using one to organize our character sheets, art items, game rules and reference materials.

We are also trying to think of some nice items to give away as prizes for players. Last year for the Fight Night game Atomic Squash gave away a pair of boxing gloves. Cool, huh? Ideas?

I saw this on a fortune cookie yesterday: Doing what you love is freedom. Loving what you do is happiness.

Don’t panic! I just found out today is Towel Day, the annual celebration of the life and humor of Douglas Adams.

It was a busy week for me this past week. On Thursday I met Signgirl’s family and went to her graduation from Southwestern Illinois College. I brought my Olympus EVOLT E-500 digital SLR camera. In an attempt to appease her anxious five year son I let him snap a few pictures with it before the ceremony. He was mostly careful with the camera but thought it was cute to press his face against the lens. After the ceremony we went to a get together with Signgirl’s classmates and friends.

On Friday Bella Rose and her husband came over for an impromptu BBQ. I told Signgirl I usually like to plan things like that out better. But lately I’ve been trying quite a few things outside my comfort zone. Things were fine. I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

The next day Signgirl took me to a graduation party hosted by a classmate, VA. VA recently moved into a house in Belleville not too far where I used to live on North Charles. She has already done some great work remodeling the place. Out back was a building that was once used as a bakery. It is now being used to house a couple old cars and a refrigerator.

Later that evening we met Nicholas and his fiancee, Delaney, for dinner at Union Station in St Louis. Afterwards we toured the mall stopping to see the floor show at the Fudgery and feeding the mutant koi in the pond under the train shed. There was some discussion about Ren Faires including the recent trend for pirate only faires. Arrr, looks like Signgirl wishes to go to one of these later this summer.

Jason came over on Sunday. I have been helping him write characters for the upcoming Atomic Squash Spycraft LARP game. We hammered out the backgrounds for a dozen or so characters. Jason laid out his plans for the two weeks we have left before we run the game at DieCon. He wants me to figure out how to print out the characters in a format suitable for our players. So I plan to be occupied with game work this week.

Signgirl is making a trip out of town. Her and D came over yesterday and stayed until I dropped them at the airport around 5 AM this morning. When I got back home, I climbed into bed and fell asleep. I woke around 11 AM and sent an email to my boss saying that I was going to be out today. Then I fell back asleep and didn’t get up until around 5 PM. Yeah, I am a bum.

I’ve been doing more writing for the Spycraft LARP. I added information to our wiki about the now defunct Spycraft Collectible Card Game (CCG). It was difficult to find the information. As recently as two years ago there was an active community around the game. Now there is hardly a trace of it. I had to go to the Wayback Machine to find information on the game’s factions. When a game dies, it disappears.

I went over to CptSquash’s place Monday night. We played a game of Power Grid. I have had a copy of the game for two years now and haven’t had the opportunity to play. It was a fun game, but I lost terribly.

The terms of my mortgage were different than I had discussed with the company before the closing. They are redoing it with terms I like better. That means I have to close again. Yeah, more paper signing! LOL! Thankfully they are waiving the closing fees for the redux.