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I made a webcomic. There goes any hope of a social life.

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This past weekend I helped Jay Loomis celebrate his birthday with LoomiConVII, but really he gave me and a bunch of other gamers a great gift: the chance to be social and celebrate and have fun during this otherwise lonely and stressful year.

We grouped up in Discord and did a virtual "donut.” In real life, this involves standing in a circle like hippies and pitching games out loud to the crowd of players, describing your game, how you will run it, any content concerns, and how many players you can take. After all the games are pitched there is a mad scramble as players group up next to the facilitator of the game they want to play.

On Discord we did the same thing in a virtual format, using a video chat room, and separate text chat and video channels for each game. We used a virtual dice bot and shared google docs, ant it all worked surprisingly well. You could even eavesdrop on games in other chat rooms, just like at real life cons!

As evidenced from my neglected blog (brushes off dust) it's been a while since I've facilitated story games at cons, and almost as long since I've played any at all. This past weekend I played more games than I've played in the last couple years, and my rusty collaborative skills began to loosen up.

I played:

Psirun- Amnesiacs with psychic powers on the run from a shadowy organization.

The story goal is to evade capture and regain your memories. "Psychic" is actually any power you can think of; think young X Men, with the option of invisible mental abilities or physical manifestations like wings. GMed by Jerry Tidwell.

This was a really fun game with lots of explosions, action, and mayhem. Great low-pressure fun but still lots of potential for creative collaboration between players and the GM. I played a Human Torch -esque character, although we didn't get to see much beyond explosions and sparks (I wanted to work up to flying) We also had giant growth and mind control, so a pretty balanced set of powers.

Downfall- Build a world with a fatal flaw and watch as your tragic hero tries, and fails, to save it from its own demise. 

Downfall’s unique game mechanic involves players rotating between playing the Hero, the Hero's (and story’s) antagonist, and an average citizen content in a flawed society. For those that love tragic dramas and black comedies.

I facilitated two games of Downfall, very different from each other.

"Let's make an underground world with geodes, and a culture that loves symmetry and sturdy stone. Maybe being tall is a stigma?" "Uhhh I think we're making dwarves..."

We made an underground world that was an interesting mash up of dwarf-like culture with some ancient Greek overtones. Our Hero and antagonist were twins on opposite sides of a Perfectionist meritocratic society.

My second game of Downfall was a 1930's / noir-esque Hollywood where the price of Courage was the watering down of artistic merit. It was a great story to play out and would have been a good film itself.

Kingdom- Explore how people interact with each other and their community.

A great game for people interested in psychology, sociology, character growth, relationships, and individual action juxtaposed against societal pressures and group dynamics. Create a kingdom of any size and genre, from a massive colony spaceship to a village of medieval folk to a 1950's newspaper publisher. Players have 3 character roles to choose from, and during play can switch to a different role when appropriate for character growth and story development.

Our Kingdom was The Department of Witches, a department within the real government in a fictional 1800s. Lots of bureaucracy and rules revolving around curses and proper magic use. One character was a witch who had been transformed into a cat years ago, and another player was her overworked assistant, forced to brush her and clean the dreaded litter box.

Like most indie/ house cons Jay scheduled various time slots throughout the weekend, to cram in as much gaming as possible and also to accommodate difficult adult schedules. While gaming from home has downsides, rolling out of bed for coffee and toast and jumping into a role playing session in pajamas is pretty satisfying, and convenient.

During our pitch sessions and the after party we chatted in a group video chat room, and it was personal in a different way from the usual cons. While we didn't get hugs after games, we got to see our friends from various cities in the comfort of their homes, with various kids and pets making appearances. It was great to see friendly familiar faces and new ones. I’m looking forward to seeing many of them in person again soon. Life is too short to not make time for gaming.

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Ten young people decide to quarantine outside Florence. It’s 1348, in the time of the bubonic plague. The afflicted develop lumps in their groins or armpits, then dark spots on their limbs. Some appear healthy at breakfast but by dinner are sharing a meal, it is said, with their ancestors in another world. Wild pigs sniff and tear at the rags of corpses, then convulse and die themselves. What do these young people do, after fleeing unspeakable suffering and horror?

They eat, sing songs and take turns telling one another stories. In one story, a nun mistakenly wears her own lover’s trousers on her head, as a wimple. In another, a heartbroken woman grows basil in a pot that contains her lover’s severed head. Most of the stories are silly, some are sad and none are focused on the plague. This is the structure of Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” a book that has been celebrated now for nearly 700 years.

Boccaccio, himself from Florence, most likely began writing “The Decameron” in 1349, the same year his father died, probably of the plague. He finished the book within a few years. It was first read and loved by the very people who watched roughly half their fellow citizens die.

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My PAX 2014 Schedule

This year at PAX I'm excited to be moderating a panel on gender and queer issues in role-playing games.

Queer Visibility in Tabletop RPGs

In setting and adventure descriptions most characters are assumed to be heterosexual (and cisgender) by default. Does including queer NPCs benefit the players, or is it better to leave a character's sexuality and gender open for interpretation? How much inclusive content should game designers use in their games, and how much should be left up to GMs and players? This panel will discuss how game design affects the way players and GMs see (and create) queer characters and issues in the game world.

My panelists will be Wes Schneider (Paizo Editor-In-Chief), Tork Shaw (Designer for Goblinworks, Paizo), Rebecca Heineman (Oldskuul CEO), Jennell Jaquays (Oldskuul CCO), and Liz Courts (Webstore Gninja, Paizo).

That's my only panel this year, but you can find me running epic story games on Saturday from 10a.m.-6p.m. and Sunday from 6p.m.-10p.m. If you're interested in playing a game of Kingdom, Shock, Fiasco, Archipelago, Zombie Cinema, or one of the new Microscope variants, hit me up!

Looking forward to a laid-back PAX this year. I'll be busy with story games but only the one panel to worry about, so hopefully I'll have a little more time to catch up with people and play some games.

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Come check out our new retro game themed party night at The Eagle! Our launch night is August 2nd and we'll likely be doing this monthly after that.

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Gay City Arts presents Meet The Author: Drawn To Diversity

Tomorrow night at 7 p.m. I'll be at Gay City with Zan Christensen, David Kelly, and Chris Lange for a panel discussion on comics and the queer community. We'll be talking about how we use the medium and where queer comics are going.

Queer Geek! is co-sponsoring the event by hosting some drinks and snacks after the panel discussion.

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Queer Geek Ladies Gaming Night: Story Games!

This Friday March 14th some of the excellent facilitators from Story Games Seattle are coming to play story games with us! Story games are cooperative role-playing games that focus on creating a unique story together. These games focus more on narrative and less on dice-rolling and winning, and are great for beginners or seasoned role-players! Check out the FAQ at SGS to learn more. All LGBT-friendly female-identified individuals are welcome at Ladies Night! Come meet and game with other awesome nerdy women. Ladies Night is inclusive: guys are welcome to come game with us as well. The Raygun Lounge has a selection of Beer, cider, and wine as well as a sandwiches and snacks. If you're new to tabletop, role-playing, or board games, come on out- we're a friendly bunch and happy to show you the ropes.

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Queer Geek: Ladies Holiday Gaming Party! Friday Dec 13th

It's the anniversary of Ladies Gaming Night, plus it's the holiday season! Wear your best party outfit -or your dorkiest Christmas sweater- and come play some board games with us! There will be some special Holiday drinks and treats. If we get enough rsvps I might put up some mistletoe.... The Raygun lounge is 21+ All LGBT-friendly female-identified individuals are welcome! Come meet and game with other awesome nerdy women. Ladies Night is inclusive: guys are welcome to come game with us as well. The Raygun Lounge has a selection of Beer, cider, and wine as well as a small food menu. Feel free to bring your own games or borrow from Raygun's game library. If you're new to tabletop, role-playing, or board games, come on out- we're a friendly bunch and happy to show you the ropes!

Friday December 13th

7-11 p.m.

Raygun Lounge, 501 E Pine St.

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My Geek Girl Con 2013 Schedule

Whew! A little late posting this, but I'm doing a couple panels and a signing this weekend at GGC. I'll also be helping out at the NorthWest Press booth.

On Saturday I'll be on the panel Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond 'Gay' and 'Straight' at 2 p.m., followed by a signing for the comics anthology of the same name.

Sunday at 4 p.m. I'll be a panelist on Queer Geek! Women in Gaymer Communities, sponsored by myself and Benjamin Williams of Queer Geek.

In the meantime I hope to find some cool comic artists at the show to check out. Come say hi at the Northwest Press booth!

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Frightening Possibilities

A few months ago I wrote a short comic story about a bisexual mermaid called Biped, illustrated by Caroline Hobbs, to appear in Anything That Loves. This was my first foray into writing comics or fiction, and it was easily one of the most stressful things I've put myself through, but also one of the most fulfilling. I've thought about writing fiction for a while, but until now nothing ever grabbed me enough to motivate me to take the plunge.

In the past I've been dismissive of artistic collaboration. I liked the idea of a single, unified vision created by one artist. I appreciated collaborative works created by others, but I never imagined myself doing it; it was a bias I had trouble overcoming.

I didn't realize it at the time, but my opinion started to change when I began playing story games, a genre of role-playing games that focuses on collaborative storytelling. Story games like Fiasco, Microscope, and Shock force people out of their comfort zone. The creative aspect is part of the game; you can't play unless you make something. This can be stressful for some people, including myself. Being put on the spot paralyzes me; being forced to make a creative choice stresses me out. 

Overcoming that fear and discovering what kinds of creative input you are capable of is one of the awesome things about playing story games. Another big part is collaborating: you get to see what other people come up with, and what they do with your ideas. It's one thing to create something by yourself; it's a totally different experience to come up with an idea and see it filtered through another person's mind and shaped into something greater than either of you separately.

When someone tries story games for the first time, there is a moment when all of this clicks, and you can see the realization and discovery in their eyes; and then they're hooked, hooked on the limitless possibilities of what they can do.

I had a moment like this when working on Biped. I had been fretting over the first couple pages, and I finally sent Caroline the first page with a written script and panel layout for her to work on. When she sent me back that first page, and I saw her awesome artwork of my main character- no, *our* main character- the gorgeous background, our squid girl protagonist, and her giant riding snail- I was hooked.

I freaked out. I was excited but also terrified; I've struggled for years to overcome my fears and hangups about creativity. It's hard to be a fiction writer when you're afraid to finalize an idea on paper. Ideas *about* art? I have those in droves; I thrive on writing reviews and thoughts about games, comics, and books. But to create an original narrative has always been much harder for me.

My creative epiphany didn't make writing Biped easy; it was still extremely stressful and challenging. The stakes felt very high for such a small story. It was my first creative endeavor, and every tiny plot decision and line of dialogue felt magnified and important. But we did it- together we made something neither of us could have made separately.

I wonder if I could have made Biped without first taking the plunge into story games. I still have that fear of failure that many artists and writers experience, but it seems much easier after creating numerous characters and stories through gaming.

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Ladies RPG Night: Iron Kingdoms and 13th Age!

Come try out some awesome role-playing games! From 6-7 you can chat with the GMs and game designers, and games start at 7p.m.

*Game descriptions below!* All LGBT-friendly female-identified individuals are welcome! Come meet and game with other awesome nerdy women. Ladies Night is inclusive: Guys are welcome to come game with us as well. Beer and food are available at the Raygun Lounge, which is 21+ Please RSVP on the facebook event or meetup group and let me know which game you would like to play! As of now we have about ten spots for 13th Age and 15 for IKRPG. If you can't get a spot in a game, we will have board games also!

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Gaming in the Park: Clones, Androids, and Sexual Politics

Friends that play story games could likely guess from the title of this post that today I played Shock: Social Science Fiction. It's one of my favorite role playing games, although I've only played it a couple times. I was definitely in the mood for some dramatic story gaming, and Shock scratched that itch nicely.

We played using Story Games Seattle house rules, which suggest a smaller group size and rearrange parts of world creation to encourage a story that is more focused and meaningful to the players. Players come up with issues they would like to explore and design a relevant 'shock', or Sci Fi element, that changes the world in a significant way. Our issues were cloning, androids/AI, and sexual double standards. Our shock was an extremely high infertility rate that had drastically changed the way society operated, creating a class system based largely on fertility and being a "natural" human. 

Fertile humans were given large stipends and high social standing for producing children; fertile clones were treated with less respect than naturally-born fertile humans, infertile humans (duds) were near the bottom of society, and androids (bots) were below everyone else, used to perform service industry jobs, child care, and other jobs that are traditionally lower class.

Our society's current conservative and disparate views on sexuality were magnified to encompass prejudice towards any infertiles who enjoyed sex. Polyamory was encouraged and had become the new normal for the upper class.

In Shock, each player has a protagonist, and also plays as an antagonist to another player's character. When not playing as a protagonist or antagonist, the player sitting out acts as an audience member, contributing by rolling a dice and getting a small say in the potential outcome of conflicts in other players' stories. ( This is one reason I think the game works well with only three people; any more and the players are sitting out of play for half the game or more.)

"How much do you love your son?"

Kelly's protagonist was a fertile woman falling in love with her childcare android. Her mother notices and puts pressure on her to get rid of the android and start producing more children, or risk losing access to her son if she wanted be be open about her relationship.

"We need to encourage a stable market price...incinerate the excess clones."

Shuo's character was a dud human cloning scientist who wanted to elevate duds and clones in society to be equal with 'breeders.' I played her antagonist as the CEO who funded the cloning factory and ordered incinerators for the infertile cloned fetuses. I think I'm getting good at this antagonist stuff.

"Androids are people too!"

My character was an android dedicated to ending discrimination and poor treatment for androids. She put pressure on the mayor to end android sexual slavery. When fertile women spend much of their time pregnant, men turn to female androids with illegal sex mods - illegal because androids enjoying sex detracts from their job duties and could never result in offspring.

Shock is a great game; the issues always play out in unexpected ways, and I'm a fan of the protagonist/antagonist mechanic in this and other story games. My only regret is that there was so much more we could have explored about the world, the class system, the cause of the infertility issue, how the sexual disparities affected other areas... it's hard to cover all that ground in one game, but it definitely made me wonder about the possibilities for the fiction. In my book, that's a successful gaming session.

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The Georgetown Carnival was a wacky weird time, as usual. Top photo: Larry of Fantagraphics shows off his entry into the Hazard Factory power tool race.

"What, Larry- a blender??"

" Yeah, I poured a Pina Colada in it, it mixed while it ran the race. Afterward I gave it to the judges."

I <3 Georgetown. Especially Fantagraphics.

The Little Black Devil burlesque show was awesome. Sexy, funny, classy, and very fun. I will definitely go see them again.

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Queer Geek! Ladies Pathfinder RPG Game Night - April 12th

Join me and Pathfinder Society Game Masters as they run players through Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventures! The Pathfinder RPG is the leading fantasy roleplaying game in which you can play a powerful wizard, a stealthy thief, or a strong warrior, while exploring dungeons and defeating monsters. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned veteran, come give the Pathfinder RPG a try with some awesome GMs and some fantasy adventures that might just cater to the ladies in the room.

As always, anyone is welcome to attend Ladies Night. As we have a limited number of player spots for this event, I am requesting RSVPs for the Pathfinder RPG games. Games will begin at 7p.m. and will include pre-generated characters.

The Raygun Lounge is 21+

Note: I am taking RSVPs through facebook and the Queer Geeks meetup group. Please only RSVP once! 

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My Norwescon 36 Schedule

This year at Norwescon I'm the lead for both the comics and gaming programming, and I'm really excited with the panels we're putting on.

Thursday evening at 9 p.m. Ogre Whiteside is moderating Mature Themes in Gaming with myself, John Harper, Charles "Zan" Christensen, and Christopher Bodan as panelists.

Friday at 10 a.m. I'll be discussing Portraying Mental Illness in Comics with Ellen Forney. Her new book Marbles focuses on her own experiences as well as famous artists who struggled with mental illness.

At 5 p.m. on Friday Jenna Pitman and I will discuss Wonder Woman vs. Lois Lane. 

Saturday:

The third installment of D&D vs. Story Games is at 2 p.m. I will once again be moderating with Ben Robbins, John Harper, Ryan Macklin, Jonathan Tweet, and Erik Mona as panelists.

Minorities in the Gaming Industry warranted two hours, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Gwen Yeh, Erik Scott de Bie, Angel Leigh McCoy, Claire Hummel, Julie Haehn will be panelists and I'll be moderating. 

At 6 p.m. Women in Gaming Communities will be moderated by Lillian Cohen-Moore with myself, Ben Robbins, Gwen Yeh, and Mickey Schulz as panelists. 

I've wanted to do a panel on graphic erotica and sexuality in comics for a while now. At 10 p.m. I'll be moderating Tijuana Bibles to Lost Girls with Morgue Anne and Marshall Popham as panelists.

I have no panels on Sunday. I'll probably be popping into various gaming panels and wandering through the dealer's room. At night of course, there is BarCon (coined by Mr. Macklin) and much discussion of the intricacies of gaming and comics nerdery.