Dreamation: Con of the Designers

I hit Dreamation last weekend, along with a metric ton of other game designers. It seemed like game designers outweighed actual players by almost two-to-one. Not really, but there must have been nearly 15 designers there. It was great shooting the shit and trying out each others games. If you don't attend Dreamation and you are anywhere nearby, I encourage you to go. You will have a blast, and the face time with the game creators is unparalleled. There are more game designers at GenCon, but you won't get to talk to them for 20 minutes if you want to.

I came in on Friday, and ran The Mountain Witch right off the bat (9:00 am). I had three players, whose names totally escape me (except for Clinton Nixon, but that's because I know him). This was a great session, even if we had a bit of accelerated scene structure. By the end, the characters were almost more willing to murder each other than take on the witch, which is exactly as it should be. So, con off to an awesome start.

I schmoozed and shot the shit with everyone for the rest of the day, and played the wickedly addictive Jungle Speed (beware!). That evening I had a game of Mortal Coil, which shall deserve its own post. I will just say that seven players is just beyond the limit for this game.

Saturday brought a couple of demos, one of Timestream, a very cool time travel game that I would really like to check out in detail (conflict of interest warning: this game is about to go up on IPR). Nathan Paoletta, the designer, also demoed an upcoming game, Carry, about Vietnam-era soldiers that looks really promising. I want to see more of this as he works on it.

I also had the pleasure of sitting in on a Burning Wheel session, run by Luke Crane, the creator, and across the table from Jared Sorensen. This game was all Duel of Wits, and it rocked aloud, that's a fact. It really got me charged up to play Burning Wheel with my own group, a development that is currently in the works.

At last, on Sunday, Jared and Luke put on an excellent game design panel, where even ringers like me were allowed to put forward game design ideas for a roundtable discussion. It was really, really excellent. I heard there would be a podcast, and I will definitely post a link when it goes up. This session was standing room only, and Rebecca, a con organizer, was extremely pleased by this. She said Dreamation panels were never that popular.

I was also video interviewed for The Perfect Score, and I will link that as well, when it goes up.