Monday, September 14, 2009 

PAX POX

Well, it's been a week since PAX. I had high hopes of really covering the convention - on location blogging from my iPhone that spared no detail. Unfortunately, the wi-fi at the convention was less then co-operative. I think I summed it up well in this almost hiaku-like tweet:

"Sucking on the broadband teat - chapped nipples of wifi... "

So, after a couple of failed updates that cost me long posts that I had typed in with my now near-bloody thumbs, I pretty much gave up on the whole "blogging-from-iPhone" idea. Instead, I figured that I would just post a couple of big updates when I got back, and cover the highlights of the show. I made it home on Labor Day, exhausted, but still awash in a warm post-PAX glow. I caught up on my sleep for most of that day, and I figured that the next day I would catch up on my blogging.

Unfortunately, by the next day my warm post-PAX glow had been replaced by a post-PAX fever... That's right, gentle reader, I had caught the dreaded PAX POX! For those that hadn't heard, there was a hellacious flu outbreak at the show - not during the actual convention, but in the days that followed. Hundreds of people reported (via the #PAX tag on twitter) coming down with nasty cases of the flu. It knocked me out for almost a week.

So, here I am, one week later, and I find that now that I have rejoined "real" life, the motivation to go back in time and discuss PAX in any great detail has left me. It seems that PAX has become like a warm memory of childhood, locked away safe from the harsh light of this working man's reality, only to be brought out over good scotch and in the company of fine friends. To allow one's thoughts to linger over-long on such a happy time is only to invite sorrow it seems, for these days cannot measure against those...

What little I will say: I picked up my Retribution book (only days ahead of the rest of the known universe) as well as the Extreme Juggernaut and a pretty snazzy Cygnar t-shirt. I didn't even make it to any of the Warmachine events (PAX has the odd ability to fold space and time down to a point where you can only accomplish one-quarter of what you had hoped, while still filling your days with 4X the joy of an average day), but my friend Tallyn42 did play in the events, and you can read about that here.

And I find now that even this little bit of reflection is making my heart ache for better days... Alas, I am overwhelmed by emotion (or maybe that is the last bit of the flu). Regardless, I must retire. Fear not, gentle reader, for I will leave you with these images of the neat things you can take pictures of in glass cases. While we have all seen these models a hundred times in magazines and books, I will say that if you have not seen them first hand, it is hard to imagine the mastery apparent in their execution. Every time I get to gaze upon them I am truely humbled and inspired, and my desire to paint is simultaneously rekindled.






Artistry of a different fashion - this was done in sidewalk chalk. Yeah, no shit.

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Sunday, September 06, 2009 

Direct from PAX

Well, my hopes of blogging real-time from the convention haven't quite played out like I wanted it to. One, we have been super busy, finding far more to do than last year, which has been awesome. Two, the wifi at the show has been terrible, and I've already lost two posts to connection drops when uploading. (My blogging app probably deserves some of the blame for that.)

Anyway, what a great show this year! I'll post more detail on this stuff later, but at a high-level, here is what's happened (along with random sights from the show floor):

We played in a couple of Living Forgotten Realms RPGA games. One was a "convention special," which means it was a more difficult dungeon-crawl type game. The other was set in Cormyr, and involved dealing with a ton of NPC and a bunch of skill challenges with only a single, short combat. It was a blast and totally made me rethink the way I run my games. (I'll probably throw up a more complete post on that one sometime in the future.)

The expo hall is even bigger than last year! Privateer Press has a booth right as you walk in, and they were stocking all the October Retribution releases. I picked up their army book and the new No Quarter. I need to swing by today and see if they have the Extreme Juggernaut on hand...

On the video game front, all the big stuff is here and playable - StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, the new WoW expansion, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age, Left for Dead 2, Guild Wars 2 and tons more. The most surprising to me was an MMO called Aion, which looks really amazing.


For Panels, we caught the keynote with Ron Gilbert (who wasn't as funny as I thought he should be), and a Q&A with Gabe and Tycho (who are far more funny than they have any right to be).

We went to a "The Art of the Dungeon Master" panel with all the big names from WotC, and I decided that Chris Perkins (the DM for the Penny Arcade guys) scares me just a little. It was a good panel, and it sounds like the DMG 2 is going to be an awesome book for helping people to run better games.


Right now the "Beyond D&D panel is about to start, so more later.... Loving PAX!!!


-- Posted From My iPhone

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