GenCon the Third, Part Only

Best decision this year for GenCon was to pre-order the sack lunch from St Elmo for Thursday. Two filet mignon sliders, house cooked potato chips and a triangle brownie. Quick pickup, no long lines like at the food trucks. Ate in the shade a block up from the convention center. The horse radish sauce was the coup de grace.

Two Autographs: Heath Robinson of Infinite Black on his photo in the GenCon program, and Cherie Priest, Author Guest of Honor on her book "Four and Twenty Blackbirds".

Worst Time to Host a Game: Thursday morning. Hundreds, maybe thousands of con goers were still in the Will Call line, not a lot of gamers in the playing hall. I had no one for my 11:00 am session of Throw Down Seven.

Good Hosting: Four folks came and played Throw Down Seven on Friday afternoon at three. They were dice lovers, so were perfect for this. They had each bought a set of dice in the exhibit hall and used their own to play. They emailed me later to say they had played again at dinner.

In the Booth: Throw Down Seven from ChipsterzoneGames was for sale in the Indie Game Alliance booth.

Pricey but Convenient: The Holiday Inn Express was quite nice, with a full hot breakfast and is far from the most expensive hotel within a couple blocks of the Convention Center, but at over $200 a night, it's still much more than I'm comfortable paying for a hotel room. They handled the crowd well.

Overwhelming: The exhibit hall was huge and packed with people the entire time. Nice to be with the bustle, but would have been nice to have more elbow room.

Top Technical Innovation: Dice, physical dice, that know what they roll, and tell your software. These are way cool, though still under development: https://www.electronic-dice.com/

Gorgeous Game: "Parks" designed by Henry Audubon and will be published by Keymaster Games in October.

Sold Out! But I played them: "Klask" is a bit like miniature knock-hockey with magnet-limited sticks. And "Point Salad" is a card drafting game with vegetables on the cards. Odd, but kind of fun.

Schlock Mercenary, Weird Giraffes, and Infinite Black in the exhibit hall: Pleased to talk shop briefly with Howard Tayler in his booth and said "hey" to fellow Alabama game producers in a couple other booths.

Only Three: seminars I attended this time. The writing track was still big, but I recognized fewer of the authors. I only went to a Revisions panel there, other talks were from Panda Games and on Script Writing (in the film track).

Script Writing: Thomas DeCarlo, from Bloomington (where we spent Wednesday night pre-con, about an hour out from Indy), he does animation; Kylie Eaton, "Dispel", Writer/Director; May (somebody), Australian comedienne/actress/writer; Timothy Tray, ABBY; Dan McGuire, ABBY

Writing is solitary, directing is social.

Fit your script to time/budget: 3 locations, 2 speaking parts, 4 days to shoot -- if really going to film it

Script Notes Podcast #403 recommended (w Craig Mazin and John August)

Recommended books: Screen Play by Syd Field and Save the Cat by Blake Snyder.

Hook in the first couple pages

Write for visualization (setting or character come first)

E.g. describe a person sitting quietly reading, then describe the chaos around them

Use cards, one scene per card, can rearrange them easily

"If you watch a movie w/no sound you should get 80% of it" - Alfred Hitchcock

Outline in Word, or Final Draft

Find screenplays on line, e.g. Aliens (try https://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Aliens.html)

Costly, worth it ?: https://blcklst.com/.

Know what you're writing for: spec? Go big! short film to shoot with friends, or for demo? time/budget/locale

Accept that a script is a living document, will be interpreted, re-written, etc.

Only write what can be seen and heard -- tough to script smell, touch

Don't give direction, but help the cast/crew: "sitting alone weeping in a bathtub" and not "he felt sad"

Game Manufacturing presented by Panda Games.
Online quote system -- get an idea of costs, even if you don't go with them as manufacturer
Can Kickstart, or not.
50% of per game cost + 100% of tooling costs up front
Good to know things like what needs to maintain hidden info, e.g. matching card backs
Cards per sheet (so target that number): 54 black jack size, 62 Taro size
Chinese holidays will impact schedule
Put a blurb on the quote to indicate intent of game, gives the project some context
PPC article is a hand crafted one off (Prototype Proof of Concept?)
MPC is first game off production
Suggestion: work with an experienced graphic designer (and fulfillment partner)
Adult Hobby Market: 14+ age designation avoids some safety testing
Panda shipping is extra, does not do fulfillment
Tariff issues are unknown.
1500 game minimum, 2500-5000 is more the sweet spot.

Panda Prepping for Printing
contact@pandagm.com
Suggest to use a graphic designer or layout specialist with experience in print media
Need your own UPC # (resale ones are fine for hobby market)
Black text should be pure black
Panda has templates on their website
Use Preflight Profile in Acrobat
(I really liked the folks from Panda, they were down to earth and clearly enjoy their work of bringing new games into the world.)

Revisions Panel, Writing Seminar
John Helfers, Editor; Howard Andrew Jones, Author; Cerece Rennie Murphy, Author
Finish the first draft!
Cerece kind of stole the show, an attractive 30-something African American, she introduced herself as a children's author, then proceeded to drop sporadic F-bombs.
Check the distance between what you wrote and what you thought you wrote
Read it out loud. Try read aloud mode from MS Word. (I tried letting Word read some, not bad.)
Read it out of order. Maybe one character's POV at a time, or last section of a chapter and back by sections.
Know what each character needs from each scene, what their emotional state is.
Does the plot work?
Make sure if your character goes after some big magical item that it gets used (Ahem, HBO Game of Thrones)
Everything should serve a point (to keep readers turning pages) -- advance plot; advance character.
Good to use others to review: developmental editor, copy editor, proof reader.
Dr. McCoy Test: "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer."
Recommended: Steve Pressfield "The War of Art"
Also: Save the Cat, same as from the Script Writing Panel

Too Big?: Once again I enjoyed GenCon, but since I wasn't focused on the sideshow that is the writing seminar I was more immersed in the larger show and it was a bit overwhelming. And crowded. But getting to play hot, pre-release games, and talk to a lot of friendly people, both ones trying to sell me something and those just doing what they love, is a good time.

GenCon The Second, Part Two

No Dice

I was scheduled to play Dicenstein on Friday morning, but the other players were no-shows. So I watched the previous round finish up and read through the rules. Waaaay too complicated for me. I still had some time before my writing panels began so I started a systematic perusal of the exhibit hall. There are some 29 aisles and each one took about 10 minutes -- if all you did was browse along.

A Panel

Writer's Craft: How to Write an Amazing First Page (Susan J Morris (mod), Dan Wells, Leigh Perry, Marco Palmieri, Dave Mack)

Dan: Don't worry too much about the first page at first.

Leigh (who writes cozy mysteries with a skeleton sidekick): Get your (dead) body out there as soon as possible.

Marco (editor): likes to be dropped in the middle of things without preamble: total immersion; challenge readers to keep up.

Some like to be grabbed by the throat, some like to start with dialog (to get the characters rolling)
Emotion. visceral. Double duty: show the promise/genre, e.g. magic (for fantasy), tech (for sci-fi).

Ground the reader pretty quickly, if not the first page then the first (short) chapter.


Great first lines: 

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." – William Gibson, Neuromancer.

'He punched the door with a code combination, and awaited face check. It came promptly; the door dilated, and a voice inside said, "Come in, Felix."' -- Robert Heinlein, Beyond this Horizon (cheating here, that's 2 sentences, a full paragraph. And, heaven forbid, a semi-colon. I guess things were different in 1942.)

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Stephen King, The Dark Tower.

Make the reader want answers. Start with dramatic tension -- readers will read on without knowing exactly what's going on.

Too Many Panels

I walked past a long row of food trucks with lines up to yar and on to lunch at the 24 hour Steak'N'Shake. It was booming but I grabbed a stool at the counter without a wait. They were handling the crowd with aplomb, yes-sirree Bob. Then back for two panels and a reading. 

The first was Writer's Life: An Introvert's Guide to Interacting with the Public. Sandra Tayler was sage.

The reading was Ilana C. Myer and Sandra Tayler. A very small audience of about 7 of us. Highly recommended because we got insights into the evolution of the things they read.

The next panel wasn't part of the Writing Symposium, it was over in the Convention Center (the Symposium was in meeting rooms of the Westin hotel, attached to the CC by a skywalk). Immoral Women in RPGs  and Why We Need More of Them. It was packed but largely lost on me. Margaret Weis, a big name apparently in early Role Playing Game design was there, I think folks came to hear her.

Beware the Kickstarter, My Son

(Always with the apologies to Lewis Carroll)

I had a bit of a Hero's Journey of my own just to find my next presentation, Kickstarting your Game, Book or Film 101. It was at the Crowne Plaza hotel on the far side of the convention center. The Plaza was converted from the old central railway station with some rooms still in train cars and the architecture is of massive steel girders. My meeting room was in the farthest basement corner. 

It was worth the trek. A trio of funding-woes weary Canadian game and film producers from Lynnvander told the several of us all about losing money through successfully funded Kickstarter campaigns.Kickstarter takes 5% off the top, Amazon payments another 3%. If you use a pledge manager (like PledgeManager, Backerkit or Stripe), and you should, that's another 5 to 8 percent. 

If you account for those, the one that most first-timers don't see coming is the delinquent accounts. Credit cards that expired or got canceled between pledge and funding -- and they don't feel like ponying up for that super-double-deluxe package they signed up for. Count on another 2%.

And shipping will kill you. If you include it in the pledge you pay fees on it, too, so a $10 postage stamp costs you more like $12. Count on $11 to $16 to ship a two pound game within the continental US. What to do about a problem like Hawaii? (and Alaska?) More campaigns are handling shipping as extra after the pledging.

Give yourself at least a 15% cushion if you just hit your goal. You're gonna need it.

On the up side, if you blow past your funding goal you look super successful. on the down side if you sell a lot of copies of a game via Kickstarter then no stores will want to stock it. And 1,500 is about a minimum print run for a game, in order to get a good price from the (presumably Chinese) manufacturer. (Lynnvander had a bad print run, ended up telling the backers to throw them in the trash and Lynnvander paid for a second manufacturing run out of their own pockets -- your Kickstarter reputation will follow you, for good or ill. Oh, and so will your Kickstart, you'll be answering emails for years. Tell everybody what's happening every step of the way. It will make (almost) everyone less cranky.)

Consider paying for art, like box cover art, yourself up front. Shows everyone you have skin in the game and you can use it on your Kickstarter page. And backers love the pie chart that shows where their money is going.

Board Game Geek is a great resource. These guys were funny and forthcoming. And they've kept their bank accounts above water, unlike others who have used the next Kickstarter to pay for the shortfalls in the prior one.  Uh-oh.

Your mileage may vary.

Writing Excuses LIVE!

I made my way back to the friendly and familiar surrounds of the Westin, determined never to run my own Kickstarter, The recording sessions for the Writing Excuses podcast had sold out before I got my tickets but I got in as overflow part way through the first hour. The full regular cast was present: Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, Mary Robinette Kowal and Dan Wells. This season they are interviewing experts in things other than writing. I saw a falconer (Larry Dixon), a street artist (Illus), a rap producer (Wild Style) and a lawyer whose name escapes me. All good shows. They ended after 8:00 pm.

I called it a night.

GenCon The Second

Beginnings

I like dice. I'm not a gamer -- not a larping, cosplaying, role-embracing, miniature painting, up-all-night D&D-er. But I do like dice. I'm designing a polyhedral dice solitaire game. Maybe two. And I like board games. And I wanted another chance to discover new games and to hang out with writerly folks and friends from Writing Excuses and to hear wise instruction and tales from living-making authors. So I traveled to GenCon again this year.

It was bigger than ever. Mostly that meant more crowded, even though they spread things out more, too, more, that is, than the other time I attended, which was 2015. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First there was The Journey, a leisurely six hour drive to Indianapolis with a stop in Louisville for some Skyline Chili. I listened to a small portion of The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. It's 36 CDs long, so when I say a small portion I mean about a twelfth.

It turned out I drove a little too leisurely, forgetting that Indianapolis, despite being almost due north of Huntsville, is eastern time; so instead of checking in to my hotel first I went straight to the Indianapolis Table Tennis Club. I played a good couple of hours there and then headed back to the other side of town and my La Quinta home for the next 4 nights.

Like all the area hotels it was sold out largely with GenCon attendees. I smiled to see the lobby full of gamers gaming. Even the desk clerk had done her hair blue for the occasion. It was late and I went straight to bed after showering and eating and channel surfing for a couple of hours.

On to the Show

I really wish my first Writer's Symposium panel had been truer to its title: Writing 101: The Basics -- From POV to Punctuation. At one point Kelly Swails (moderator) started to dive into something, maybe dialogue attribution and when you could skip including "she said" and the like but quickly stopped herself saying that was more like Writing 201. Exhale. We did get some story and self-motivation basics:

Persistence, Time, Discipline. Know what the characters want. Know what the villains are planning to do. (Eric Scott DeBie)

First Draft: What you want to say (Heart). Final Draft: How you want to say it (Head)(Howard Andrew Jones).

Starting reluctance means the scene isn't right (work your outline?) Read. Look at grammar and sentence structure in what you read. Butt in chair. "I won't screw this scene up if I don't write it." Allow yourself to write a bad story. (Swails)

Time management. Write for yourself first. (Dan Wells)

Panel Two: Real Monsters and Vicious Animals (Elizabeth Vaughn, Larry Corriea, Christopher Husberg, Eric Scott De Bie)

Do description through POV reaction.
Use other senses (than sight).
Contrast the mundane with monsters.
More on YouTube than most of us can stand. Shaved bear. Cryptozoology. Wikipedia.
Perception gets blurry in a fight -- go a little bit random and sparing.
Action scenes can be wordy and okay but really wordy can confuse a reader. Movies have the luxury of dragging a viewer forward to the next scene, words on a page can't.

Quick Trip to the Convention Floor

After two panels I had a break and hit the exhibit hall. It is huge. Hundreds of vendors and thousands of people. I found Howard Tayler's booth and chatted with him briefly while he drew. I bought the well-worn version of the Schlock Mercenary Maxims book. Howard signed it for me. Then I found Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells' booth and bought some of Dan's audio books. Later I had him sign them for me.

Next I went to the Calliope Games booth. I had backed a Kickstarter for a new game called Dicey Peaks. The game wasn't expected until October but had come in early and they had arranged pick up and demo games at GenCon, which was sweet. I picked up my signed copy and later got to play a round with the game's designer, Scott Almes. I did not win. But I did get to ask him whether there was a way to play it as solitaire. He said there was no official variant in the rules but that you could play and try to minimize the number of turns it takes to plant your flag atop the mountain. Did I mention I'm designing my own solitaire dice game? Cool to get to talk on the subject with an accomplished designer.

More Panels

Worldbuilding: Creating a Universe of Worlds (Susan J. Morris, Brandon Sanderson, James Sutter, Dave Mack, Marco Palmieri)

I was here, like dozens of others, to get a dose of Brandon Sanderson, but as usual everyone was terrific. In particular Susan J. Morris is a great moderator. Marco is also an editor so brings that perspective.

How to avoid info dumps? Have a newbie/fish-out-of-water character that has to have other characters explain stuff to them. or just bring stuff in gradually, sci-fi/fantasy readers don't need everything clear from the get-go.

Brandon: A grand skill is to be informative AND entertaining.

Avoid tokenism, consider having more than one character from a culture and show differences and similarities.

James Sutter is with Paizo who's new science fantasy role playing game, Starfinder, dropped on Thursday. Their booths had hundreds of people in line all day to pick up copies.

Writer's Craft: Are You Overthinking the Story (Kelly McCullough, Richard Lee Byers, Beth Cato, ??)

Stay in writer brain for first draft, keep editor brain at bay.

World building iceberg -- only a seventh may end up visible in the story but the rest needs to be there, but not fully formed. How much? Who knows...

Stuck on a scene? Look at it from another (tertiary) character's point of view.

I'm interested to check out Beth Cato's Breath of Earth.

Not To Be Missed

An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss

He sold out the large ballroom, so 1,000 or more seats and it filled. Once again he had us agree to not share the grittier details of his regalations, but if you get the chance, he is funny and real. A good storyteller. He's a relatively new parent and has found new connections with parents, the way he had with geeks before that -- just another tribe.

He also asserted, strongly, something that I had already settled on in my mind: in stories, you don't have to kill people for drama. There doesn't have to be horrible death to make a story compelling. You need tension, and stakes, but it doesn't have to be gruesome and final. Especially not for works targeted for all ages. He had some psychology to back up why it might not be good.

He also had some psych on why "spoiling" very young children is a good thing. The young brain decides what kind of world it lives in: nurturing and safe or cutthroat and dangerous. It gets ingrained and manifests in "do unto others". (My words, but I think I got the meaning.)

Late Dinner

Me and some of my fellow Writing Excuses Retreat alumni met Dan Wells for dinner about 10:00 pm at the Ram restaurant. They had reprinted their menus just for GenCon (this con is a big deal for downtown Indianapolis). I had the occasionally named "Fry Haddock and Release the Dogs of War". It was delicious. They had also swapped the in-house TVs from their normal sports fare to showing Bladerunner. It had been a long day and dinner was cozy but sedate.

It was followed by my 15 minute drive to La Quinta and a much shorter session of channel surfing.