This year at Gen Con Vicki Potter from Tabletop Adventures joined fellow gnomes Kurt “Telas” Schneider, Phil “DNAphil” Vecchione, and myself to give the seminar “All Grown Up, and Still Gaming". We discussed gaming with a career, gaming after marriage, and gaming as a parent. And since it was at Gen Con we got lots of great feedback and tips from the plethora of gamers in attendance.
But the best part of all? We recorded it! You can listen to it right here.
Now for our first podcast this one does have lots of room for improvement. It is a large mp3 file (117MB), and the quality is a little less than perfect, but it is a start and a promise of things to come.
So enjoy our first podcast, and as always feel free to leave your comments below for all to read! Enjoy!
I’m looking forward to listening to this.
I’ll add a link to the interview on The Dice of Life, too.
@Kristian – Perfect! Thanks for posting the link.
For those who don’t read The Dice of Life blog, Kristian interviewed all of the presenters for this seminar. It is a good read, and I suggest checking it out.
Reading the interview it seems that they mostly went over the upside of having a gaming significant other. My ex-girlfriend was a gamer and while it was usually a good thing it did have downsides. One of which was that when we broke up she got the gaming group and had to find a new one.
@Patrick No problem! We appreciate you giving us the opportunity.
@Hawksmoor That’s a bummer. Did your ex take any of your RPG stuff?
I was on the opposite side of a similar situation. I once had a geek girlfriend before I played D&D. The relationship went really bad, and during our relationship, I ended up becoming really good friends with her geek friends (and some of her coworkers). They were the ones who invited me to my first D&D game. She got upset because she wanted to play, too, but didn’t want to be in the group with me. I had no problem with the idea of the two of us in a gaming group.
She used to get mad at them when they’d talk about the game at work and mention my name. Of course, they all disregarded her.
In any case, I guess what I was trying to get to was whether or not it’s possible for the two of you to amicably enjoy a game together, or is there too much bitterness? How does your gaming group feel about the situation?
It was a good seminar; we all brought different personalities, experiences, and points of view to the table, but we all got along fine.
I’d like to apologize for a rambling answer about mid-way through the seminar. “Help, I’m talking, and I can’t shut up!” Something viral mugged me at Gen Con, gave me a temperature of 102 later that day, and literally took six weeks to clear. I was definitely not 100%.
The “gaming with a significant other” thing has recently become a part of my life. My main group lost a couple players and one guy’s girlfriend (who happens to live with me) has been making puppy eyes every time I mention the group. So she’s probably joining. And now my girlfriend is making puppy eyes when I mention the group, and I did tell her I’d run a game for her, but that was before we started dating. Now I’m just scared. But from the interview, it sounds like it works out more often than not. So that helps.
One thing I noticed, especially during the beginning, was that it seems like you treat gaming as a chore, maybe it’s just the way that other people have to balance what they do versus what they want to do; I’m lucky enough to have a job that I cannot take home from work, so that leaves all of my after work time for things that I want to do.
@umbral.fury – It isn’t that gaming is a chore. Scheduling and organizing gaming sessions is a chore. If I had enough income to hire a personal assistant all of those tasks would fall onto that person’s plate.
The gaming is till incredibly fun. 🙂
@Patrick Benson – And I think a portion of the burden is greater when you’re the GM rather than a player. Additionally, the game system you run can effect some of that as well. As much as I loved D&D v3.5 and all of the supplements I owned for it, the work involved seemed like it was exactly that. It wasn’t until I switched to Savage Worlds that I felt relief from a lot of the stress prepping can create.
I honestly do believe the game system can make that much of a difference.
I’m glad you guys recorded this one, thank you! Any chance there can be a write up or a recording posted soon with the points outlined in the gaming charter seminar? That one was fabulous as well!
Will the Gnomes be doing more seminars at Gen Con this coming year? I attended two and found them massively helpful, and definitely highlights of the whole convention.
@silentseas – Nope, unfortunately we didn’t record nor do we have a set of fleshed out notes for the Gaming Charter seminar. Sorry!
That said, I have a PowerPoint presentation from a seminar that John Arcadian and I gave at Con on the Cob this past Saturday on pacing and storytelling. I also recorded a discussion that I was invited to be the guest speaker at regarding speeding up combat for RPGs. Those might make their way onto the stew soon.
I try to present seminars every year at Gen Con. 2010 I might not attend as my wife and I are planning a big Las Vegas trip for our tenth anniversary and I only have so much vacation time and money for vacations. That said, if I do attend I will probably give at least two seminars while there.
@silentseas – I have (somewhere) the notes for that seminar, and a request to send them to someone… I also have a major project staring me in the face right now.
Open offer: Email me at telastx at the gmail thingy, and I’ll send ’em to you.
@silentseas – FWIW, I recently invested in a nice USB travel microphone for podcasting following a recording session with the Windmill Game Co. staff that did not turn out so well. I really wanted to post that as today’s article instead of the written review. So in the future, hopefully, any seminars I’m involved in will be recorded with a higher quality.
I completely forgot to have this go live the day that I posted this:
http://www.youmeetinatavern.com/index.php?board=17.0
Sorry about that!
This is the forum board dedicated to discussing this seminar that I mention in the end credits.