One of my guilty pleasures at GenCon is to attend a variety of interesting game design panels with digital recorder in hand. I was quite successful this year with 5 distinct seminar recordings. I have done some rudimentary audio clean-up on the recordings but I currently lack the skill to properly polish them. They are definitely worth a listen though, in my opinion I present the seminars in chronological order as I attended them. I will try to link to the presenters websites whenever possible.
Things You Think About Games
Event Number: SEM1122700
Presenters: Jeff Tidball and Will Hindmarch from Gameplaywright (http://gameplaywright.net)
The No-No’s of Game Design
Event Number: SEM1128758
Presenters:
Stan! (http://www.stannex.com/)
Jeff Neil Bellinger (http://killerbunnies.com)
Daniel Solis (http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com)
Matt Forbeck (http://www.forbeck.com)
Lessons from Indie Publishing
Event Number: SEM1122904
Presenters: David A Hill Jr. from Machine Age Productions (http://machineageproductions.com)
Design an RPG in an Hour
Event Number: SEM1122800
Presenters: David A Hill Jr. from Machine Age Productions (http://machineageproductions.com)
Game Design is Mind Control
Event Number: SEM1120297
Presenters:
Luke Crane (http://www.burningwheel.org)
Jared A Sorenson (http://memento-mori.com)
The Legal Rules of Gaming
Event Number: SEM1118576
Presenters: Neil A. Wehneman (http://boardgamegeek.com/blog/377)
In addition to those excellent seminars, I also had the pleasure of running 2-3 playtests of the Spark RPG with some excellent gamers and/or designers. I didn’t request permission to post those game sessions online from the participants, so I will not post those particular recordings. I was told a couple of things by all of the different groups of playtesters.
- I need to improve the presentation of the rules; teach them in a better fashion with more clear character sheets
- I should change the GM Fate tracking sheet into a variant of the normal player character sheet.
- It is counter-intuitive to have conditions which only help you or only impede you, regardless of circumstances. I will consider changing this around, though I am uncertain how exactly that would affect the economy.
I hope the seminar recordings and I wish to thank all of the fine participants of GenCon who supported my playtesting endeavours.
GenCon 2010 Seminar Recordings can be found Here.
Thanks so much for recording and sharing these, Jason.
Also, add this plugin to your WP: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
Thank you, I have added those plugins to my WP and people should now be able to subscribe to comments.
No-Nos of design was a fun listen this morning.
Nice to hear your voice again, Stan!
Thanks for putting these online! Not sure why or how it’s a “guilty pleasure,” really, but whatever — I’m just glad I can listen to all these seminars I missed.
It’s a guilty pleasure because I feel like I should be spending my gencon focusing on playing games, running games or helping a booth. Still, the seminars are so much fun and can teach me quite well.
[...] August 11, 2011 in Conventions,Things We Think About Games with 0 Comments Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet Box WordPress PluginFriend of Gameplaywright Jason Pitre recorded our GenCon roundtable “Things You Think About Games,” and has posted it online at his website. Check out his other recordings from the convention as well. [...]
[...] you’re looking for more of the amazing seminars at Gen Con, be sure to check out this page at Genesis of Legend Publishing. I may be listening to all of these podcasts for the rest of the year to catch [...]
Someone also left a comment here asking if I know about any recording of the kickstarter panel. Unfortunately I do not, though I would love to listen to that panel myself if anyone has that MP3.
Sorry, my spam filter caught the comment and I accidentally deleted in my attempts to approve it.
[...] I took part at Gen Con. I don’t have details for all of them yet, but right now you can go listen to a whole bunch of the seminars over on Jason Pitre’s site. Scroll down there, and you’ll see “The No-Nos of Game [...]
[...] I know not everyone came to Gen Con. And not everyone had the time to attend my seminars. But rest assured, Jason Pitre of Genesis of Legend Publishing made sure you could listen to them afterward. You should go listen. [...]
[...] Age Productions has released recordings of their Gen Con 2011 seminars. The recordings include Things You Think About Games, The No-No’s of Game Design, Lessons from Indie [...]
Thanks for uploading these. They are entertaining and useful.
Sebastian.
[...] 6. Attend a seminar or three There’s more to GenCon than just gaming. Seminars are an excellent way to get off your feet for an hour, while not venturing too far from the Convention Centre. They vary from Q&A panels with people from the gaming industry, to topic discussions, to the ever popular Writer’s Symposium. On top of this, seminars start at 8am and continue through to the evening. The downside with most panels is that they aren’t repeated throughout the weekend, so if a panel is on at the same time as an event you’ve signed up for, you’ll have to make some tough choices. Unlike Comic-Con, only a few of the panels get recorded and end up on YouTube, so there’s even less chance of catching up with missed panels once you get home. If you want to listen to a selection of panels, you can find them on Genesis of Legend. [...]