EPT
At PAX, I spent four awesome days attending panels, strolling the show floors, and meeting a small fraction of those who share my beloved hobbies. I expected a marvelous weekend full of exciting games and amazing entertainment and that’s exactly what I got.
Spoiler alert: WALL OF TEXT AHEAD.
Friday: For the Alliance!
Even when I spend most of my time inside, the weather at a convention substantially effects my mood. Luckily, the sublimely-mild Seattle weather was optimal for a crowded con. The mornings were as gray and sporadically rainy as one might expect of the city, but the clouds often broke in the afternoon and the temperature remained pleasantly cool throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed the 20 minute walks from my friend’s apartment to the convention center because I wasn’t sweat-covered or frost-bitten by the time I arrived.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/L0Bizvx.jpg)
Nice day, nice Convention Center.
I spent the majority of Friday wandering the halls by myself (my hosts and friends weren’t able to attend until the weekend). I arrived just in time for a panel entitled “Women Surviving and Thriving in Games Media,” which featured several prominent female game developers and journalists. After the pre-PAX week of horrifying misogyny and unbelievable harassment perpetrated by gamers who are almost certainly more like me than I’d ever like to admit, seeing the number of allies (of all genders) in attendance provided a small glimmer of hope for the future of “gamers.” Much of the information presented at the panel I’d heard before, but there were still plenty of revelations that provided insight into the daily experiences of women in the industry.
Afterwards I wandered the expo halls for a few hours. Unlike PAX East 2013, where the hall was one giant floor, PAX Prime’s expo hall was split into three smaller rooms spread across several stories. I started at the hall on the top floor, where a bevy of indie games and smaller publishers were located. Because it was still the work week, the lines were short enough for me to play a few demos. My favorite was Tinertia, a challenging platformer which required clever use of rocket jumping and momentum. Despite my quickly-evident lack of skill, I found the demo very satisfying and decided to make it my first purchase of the convention. For those who are interested: play this with a controller. The mouse controls are not as intuitive.
Next, I visited the booth of Greater Than Gaming, a St. Louis-based studio that created my favorite card game, Sentinels of the Multiverse. To my absolute delight, they demoed the Sentinels iPad game that I’ve wanted ever since I learned of its creation. The app was still unpolished (slow animations, occasional glitches), but when those are cleaned up it will be perfect. Playing it even got me an exclusive promo card, so it was a big win. I also played my first game of Sentinels Tactics at their demo tables. Getting someone to show me the rules (rather than reading them) was wonderful and the game soon became rather fun. After our team earned a victory, I grabbed more promo cards, messed around with a few more games in the hall, then headed to my next destination.
Since the release of the D&D Fifth Edition Player’s Handbook, my desire to play more tabletop adventure games increased incredibly. That growing enthusiasm impelled me to attend the Queer Visibility in Tabletop Games panel. As a straight, white, cisgendered man, D&D (as well as most nerdy media) is tailored to me, so I wanted to learn about ways to include perspectives other than my own in the games I play and GM. The panel provided valuable perspectives about the inclusion of diverse genders and sexualities in games without defaulting to “token” characters. On the other hand, the panelists also counseled against diving into the nuances of those topics in your games unless your players are comfortable doing so (after all, games are meant to be fun). I was also quite curious about the games mentioned at the panel (Pathfinder, Kagematsu, Monster Hearts, Silver and White), and when I left I really wanted to play a few. I spent the final few hours of my first day admiring video game banners and observing tabletop demos before finally heading home.
Saturday: Game Masters
On Saturday, my companions and I slowly roused ourselves and meandered towards the convention center (shout outs to Uptown Expresso for their motivational coffee and chocolate croissants). Because my friends were showing up at the con for the first time, I spent some time retreading the areas I visited on Friday. We took more time to look around than I had before, so even I saw a few new things, such as the Pokemon Gym Badge pins that I had to have. Unfortunately, buying all of the regions’ badges would’ve been extraordinarily expensive and common sense deterred me from that path (barely). I eventually chose the Kanto set in a sudden fit of nostalgia.
Near the badge booth was the League of Legends tournament stage and the Strife open beta area. With the NA LCS Summer Finals in full swing, the League hall was stuffed with cheering (and groaning) fans. I never joined the LoL crowds because I wanted to see the rest of the con (and there are always VODs), but their enthusiasm was palpable every time I walked near the theater. League’s upcoming competitor, Strife, was stationed just outside the tournament hall to promote their own polished and cartoony MOBA. As a huge fan of the genre, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check it out. Even though I knew little about the game, it was quite fun, and it included a few simple ideas that improved upon some of the genre’s typical problems (such as team-based last-hitting). I’m not sure whether or not I’d play it regularly (I’m still a LoL addict), but it’s definitely a game to check out if you are looking for a new MOBA.
They also had a bucking mechanical dragon, so that was pretty cool.
* Good luck.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/o7g7X9V.jpg)
This dragon is actually far LESS friendly than the one in game.
The first panel we attended was a post-mortem on the “cultural phenomena” known as TwitchPlaysPokemon. After I got over my initial disappointment that the stream’s creator was not in attendance, I was very impressed with the presenter, who compiled a lot of great data about those two incredible weeks for Twitch, Pokemon, and meme-lovers everywhere. The researcher and grad student presented his data perfectly to the PAX audience: the panel was both relentlessly informative and interspersed with goofiness that prevented the talk from becoming a lecture. A few fun facts: we wasted over one billion minutes with TPP, the channel had over nine million unique views during the Pokemon Red playthrough, and the favorite mode of play (“effectiveness” notwithstanding) was anarchy. The presenter’s hypotheses about the influence TPP might have on the future of games were particularly exciting. I love the idea of a game with integrated audience participation, such as Upsilon Circuit. Also, the panel began with the entire audience singing the Pokemon theme song, so really, there was no way for this panel not to be good.
I left my friends halfway through the day to attend a panel called “Art of the DM.” It occurred to me as I lined up for this panel that my PAX was becoming less and less about video games (though I still looked at a ton of those) and more about tabletops in general. Apparently, many others shared my interest because I only barely made it into the panel, even though I arrived a good deal ahead of time. However, I’m glad I made it in because it contained a lot of great DMing advice. All of the panel’s members were part of the Wizards of the Coast D&D 5E team, so they all had a ton of experience at the table as both players and dungeon masters. My favorite piece of basic advice was to never save your ideas. If something’s going to be cool, do it as soon as possible. Don’t wait for a higher level or a different campaign, just go with it. There were also some great suggestions for what to do when your own adventuring party dies and how to get feedback about your GMing skills.
Shortly after the crowded panel concluded, we returned home. However, our PAX day was not yet complete. After a delicious Thai food dinner, we tuned into the awesome live stream of the bi-annual (PAX-annual?) Acquisitions Inc. D&D campaign. It featured a lively crew of famous players, including both of the Penny Arcade creators and Patrick Rothfuss, the author of the spectacular Kingkiller Chronicles. It was a ton of fun to watch them play the game, even thought the action was all dice and player imagination (well, that and some very expensive-looking sets/models). Their adventure was so much fun that I might have to go back and watch the rest of Acquisitions, Inc.’s (mis)adventures. They kept me enthralled for about two and a half hours that night, and I bet they could do so for way more.
Stay tuned for Part 2, coming soon…
You can read this overly-detailed-yet-still-incomplete account and some other decent schlock at the N3rd Dimension.
