Tag Archives: Panel Notes

Actions and Consequences

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Given the title you’d think this was attached to John Wick, but it’s decidedly not.

My last panel of the weekend was about running a game that includes “that guy”. I was moved up to the moderator position for this one, so I had limited chat time, but did get to (try) to guide the conversation. I put ‘try’ in there because we had a really excellent panel of creative and sharp people. As we were sitting and chatting before the official panel started we were covering various topics in a startlingly inattentive way. Somebody said, “train of thought derailed… no survivors…” and that was immediately met with “Oh No! All those poor, theoretical thought people!”

Theoretical thought people sort of became an unofficial theme as we rolled into our discussions. It was a whole lot of fun and I was really happy to have such a great panel of folks to work with. Below are my panel notes. The fixes listed are mine alone. The rest of the panel had some great suggestions as well.

Panel description:

One of the biggest problems that can be encountered with running games at events is That Guy. Everyone has heard of a That Guy. They’re the Murder Hobo, the Horny Bard, the one player who doesn’t care about the story or progression or the rest of the party. Our team of Game Masters will share their stories, and discuss tactics to curtail these behaviors.

Loose Outline:

Introductions ~ include: are you currently running a game? Are you currently playing a game?

Definition – what is your definition of “that guy” (or girl – let’s not narrow it too far).

Connected to above – Are there specific types of or styles of “that guy”?

Do you believe in session zero? Will it stop “That Guy”?

Do you have, use or are familiar with player consent question lists? Should GMs use those?

What about personal connections? Does the DMs boyfriend always get special treatment?

Ask the audience for (short) specific examples and see how the panel would handle it?


Example types of bad players:

Rules lawyer(s) – Rules as written OR rules as DM says that’s how it works…
Fix – ask them to help you, and track all the rules (and changes) you make and use.

Instigator – Rogues stealing party treasure, fighting internally, “Leroy Jenkins”!

Fix – actions and consequences, set the tone to your own game, DON’T ROLL – make rulings

Spotlight Hog – player talks over everyone else, jumps onto doing the same action as others

Fix – sandwich compliment(s) around issue. Often just excited~

The Cheater – Faking rolls, “fixing” the amount of gold they have… etc.

Fix – Don’t tell them if they need to roll high or low

The Power Gamer – trying to be super powerful, stretching the rules, pushing limits. Hard to DM

Fix – Use them OR ask them what they’re goal is and then put the next steps on them.

Also – The bad guys learn… how will they grow the character if combat isn’t a challenge?

The Immersion breaker – pulling people out of the mood IF you’re hitting on all the wrong notes

Fix – land

The Meta-gamer – can’t make the separation between player and character knowledge

Fix – ask the player if they think they would know something

The Boss / Critic – who thinks they know it all and tell everyone else what to do or tell them it’s wrong

Fix – direct, call out the behavior

Flippant – Just not paying attention, constantly on the phone, don’t really seem to want to play

Fix – try to engage them a little, see how they respond

IF it doesn’t work, give them an option to leave (and talk it all out) {EPIC DEATH EXIT?}

Communication is key!

My personal house Rule #1: It’s just a game.

We’re here to have fun, and if we’re not having fun, then why are we doing it? Get out there, play games, have fun!

Dark Lording for Fun and Profit

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This was my next to last panel at the convention this year. It had a solid moderator and I was able to chat with my fellow panelists about what it takes to create a really solid story antagonist and what that might look like. There were some excellent bits tossed around and I don’t remember many of them very clearly. These are the notes I was working from, so if you’re trying to create a lasting ‘bad guy’ for your game (or story even) hopefully you can find some inspiration.

Panel description:
Having an antagonist is great, but what takes them past the level of mustache-twirling villain, and into the realm of the Big Bad Evil Guy? Panelists will discuss how to build the structure of minions and influence for your BBEG to stand on, so the heroes have to climb in level to reach them before the final showdown.

My notes:

Antagonist is a better term than “Big Bad Evil Guy”. The best antagonists don’t see themselves as the bad guy. How scary was the operative from Serenity? Who did you hate more from the Harry Potter series, Voldemort or Delores Umbridge?

Be creative.Not everyone is a mastermind with 56 plot lines weaving in and out of their minds, but do any little bit you can. Take on something small if you feel like you don’t know where to start. Look at your character and create from there. What do you really know about? Slide some of that into your character, and use that as a starting point.

Crazy example – If you’re a hair stylist, allow your character to wear a hair style that you’d love to see, then leap off from there and make it a quirky part of that character – the character constantly tries to get others to color their hair or braid their beard or something. Those little bits of flavor make a very rich game. Then… grow that.
In the ‘Big City’ there’s a fashion explosion of magical hair styles. Hair stylist becomes the new, hot profession. This proliferates and generates lots of requests to learn at the top school.
Only this so called school is secretly backed by the mind flayer society. They’re creating these techniques to cause hair to fall out and skulls to soften so they don’t get hair in their teeth and their meals are easier to get to.
And they in turn get all the ‘product’ they use from a magical factory / distribution center where the true big boss is running the entire thing.

Your heroes can do the traditional ‘missing person’ quest to get into this OR they can get one of these hair styles. When their hair all falls out they can quest for new hair!

Work with what you know and use it.

Antagonists don’t just stop being ‘bad guys’ when the players aren’t around. Players leave and come back and things have changed. New guards in town, less favorable deals at the potion shop, any sort of thing that might hinder the quest, even just a little.

Example – in a game I run one smaller antagonist cut a deal with the players. The players left that area. When they returned they found the deal was in place, but the small antagonist was now the head of a bureaucratic structure (that he created using charm spells) that was doing tons of shady things, but with an entirely legit staff. His new position changed the leverage point for the players.

In the end, keep notes. Write down a handful of small things and circle back to them when they fit. You don’t have to be a mastermind, you just have to be mindful. Hopefully there are some game masters out there that get a little bump from this!

Let’s Get Cozy!

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Cozy fantasy is more popular than ever. Why do we love it so much? What makes a story cozy? And is there such a thing as too cozy? We’ll talk favorite tropes and recommend lots of books as we celebrate this warm and fuzzy genre.

I was asked to be the moderator for this panel and happily accepted. Being the moderator means asking the questions and helping to guide the conversation, not (necessarily) giving one’s own answers. I’m going to put the questions here, along with some brief notes on what my answers would have been. Sadly, this panel was not recorded and I kind of wish it had been. My fellow panelists were delightful and had lots of great commentary. The audience was one of the better attended panels I’d seen for the weekend and they were actually really great too. Perhaps it had something to do with the topic itself and the type of person that might be drawn to that? Whatever the case, I did my best to keep the conversation moving along and staying lively. I was quite happy with the whole thing. Probably best of the weekend.

After introductions, How do you define a cozy fantasy?

What are the defining elements? Is it possible to quantify a ‘warm hug’ vibe?

How much conflict is too much conflict? There has to be some to make a story, right?

‘Cozy’ as a sub-genre is generally thought of as a 2020s arrival to the scene ~ are there older stories that fit?

Do we think this ‘cozy’ movement is a direct reaction as a response to the current socio-political environment?

If yes – do you think it will last?

If it doesn’t, will there be any of these works that transcend the movement and have saying power?

Here it is – what is your recommendations list?

So, you’ve indulged. You gave in to your sweet tooth. You’ve consumed all the gooey sweetness you can handle… what do you follow these with (other than many some insulin)?

Those were the questions and the panel easily filled an hour chatting about various aspects of all those things. Given some concern from the folks running the show that only 3 panelists might not be enough, I think it was great.

Coziest picture I have... now I want sweets...

Here are some of my notes on the questions I generated for everyone else.

Cozy really is a feeling. That feeling can be prompted by lower/personal only stakes in a story. No overwhelming things tying the world to the character. That’s not to say there isn’t war or political unrest or danger, just that it’s distant. The story is smaller in scale – often a single location. It’s personal, and often relates to family (found is a particularly common part of that) or a positive romance. Generally the story must have some version of a happy ending. There’s a certain calmness to things, as opposed to the rush and chaos of so many epic stories. It is hard to define that feeling, but it is an important part of this sub-genre.

As for conflict? I once read part of a series where the author specifically set out to create something that had no conflict. The best way to describe it would have been character notes. Nothing happened, we just learned about this person. I say part of a series because she never finished writing or publishing it (to my knowledge). Nothing happened, so nothing happened with it. It just withered in place.

Earlier cozy stories. I wish I had better notes on some of the things others brought up, but my best example was “Howl’s Moving Castle”. I also asked about “The Hobbit”, but the consensus seemed to be that Hobbits themselves were cozy, the story with spiders and dragons and changing the world didn’t actually fit.

As with any literature response to political times, most will fade away and be noted as ‘of their time’, but any truly excellent writing and good story will sustain past the current moment. Only time will really tell for this question.

Skipping ahead – the next thing really can be heavier. I wouldn’t suggest going overboard. Don’t jump directly from a cozy to something like “The Poppy War”. Too jarring and would just not work out well. It would be very easy to just slide into cozy land and stay there, but sometimes you need more than the sweets. Dig up a solid recommendation from a friend and go there next.

And finally – the list of what I felt fit into the category (along with some I found at the con). I’m not going to link them here, other than the first. I’ve read a number of these, but not all of them. I’d be interested to hear if there are any that should be added to this list.

Tea & Treachery at the Infinite Pantry by Jo Miles. They were an excellent panelist – go buy their book!

The rest in no particular order:


Rewitched by Lucy Jane Woods

Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by Ursula Vernon (writing as T. Kingfisher)

The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’niel

The Honey Witch by Sydney Shields

Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis

Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

The Spell Shop by Sara Beth Durst

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

A Pslam for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers (Hugo winner)

Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by rebecca Thorne

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming

and lastly, for this list – Greenwing & Dart series by Victoria Goddard.

This was the sort of panel I hope to end up on again. Lots of good stuff here – including some books I’m off to read now!

Knights of the Virtual Table

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My first panel “at” the convention was a fully virtual panel. No physical presence at all. I’m glad we were able to present the panel again this year, and do it in this format. It wasn’t a bad panel, but my connection at the hotel was not fantastic. Maybe, if we keep rolling with the virtual format we’ll actually get to a place where we can have some pre-set questions and get some screen sharing time in.

The description:

Come one, come all to the virtual table! In this online age, virtual tabletops have boomed in popularity, revolutionizing play with tools such as dynamic lighting, built-in soundboards, and combat trackers. It has never been easier to find a game, and connect with other players around the world. But with technological ease comes technical difficulties. Come listen to experienced GMs and players discuss the advantages and disadvantages of virtual tabletops versus in-person play!

Panel: Jana S. Brown (mod), Swift Crescendo, Angela Yuriko Smith, ME!

My Notes:

I have been a player and game master for a long time. As happened with so many, when we weren’t able to get together in person in the bad old days, we went online. I just kept it going – it is simultaneously easier and more diverse than many of my previous games. We now post our live play games on my YouTube channel for all to view.

First – COST.

It’s important to understand that playing a virtual game automatically has a cost associated with it. That is a limiting factor right from the start. The simple fact that playing like this demands a computer/phone/tablet (depending) and an internet connection. This is a limit for some people. We’re already here, so we can move ahead with an understanding that your party can get there – but it’s important to remember that starting cost.

Where do you connect?

How do you play? Do you have cameras on and do theater of the mind OR are you audio only while navigating a map in a virtual environment? There are a number of places to play, with various costs associated.

Play Tabletop Games hosts a wide variety of games – with per session costs. There are some that are free, others that cost. I have seen a range from $10 – $50 per session from the top GM lists.

Roll20 – Free to use, subscription for more options (from $50/year to $150/year)

Foundry VTT – One-time $50 payment by the Dungeon Master required

Fantasy Grounds – Free to use, subscription or purchasable license required for DM only (requires a download – and that may change your ability to connect based on your computer)

Owlbear Rodeo – Free to use, paid subscription available ($40/annual or $80/annual)

https://new.tableplop.com/ – Free to use

Tale Spire – digital, graphical – looks like it’s 3D (cost $25 on Steam)

There are TONS of digital tools out there for anything you can imagine. Character sheets, random generators, random everything generators, map tools, audio tools, and a massive list of advice videos about which of those tools are the one you should totally use.

Here are some that I think are important:

Random Name generators – my party always wants to know names. Have a list handy OR grab a random generator.

My go to is Fantasy Name Generators

Maps. I am super visual, and I love using Inkarnate

Those were all the notes I had prepared. In the end the path wound its way hither and yon. If you’re really interested in hearing what my co-panelists had to say you can pop over to good ol’YouTube and check out the whole panel – it was virtual so they recorded it!

BALTICON – The Panels – Wrapping Up

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The workshop I ran was the last of my panels at Balticon.

The workshop was GMing for Beginners. It’s exactly what it sounds like. If you hadn’t run a game before, but wanted to. IF you had, but you stumbled or wanted tips to get to the next level sort of thing. In short, my wheelhouse. I’ve been doing this for years.

Turns out the hardest part of all that is going back to the start.

It was a very small group of folks that showed up in person. The panel description stated it was aimed at a younger demographic and that’s precisely the folks that showed up. They were fun and creative and our hour melted away and then some. We were still sitting there when the hotel staff came and asked us to give up the space for the next event.

There was a part of me that really wanted to do pictures and notes and all sorts of things related to what we did, but I think that would take something away from the folks that were there in person. I was absolutely delighted to share with them. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did (and they did seem to). I will probably ask to run that workshop again next year, though perhaps earlier in the weekend to give folks that want to try things out more of a chance to hit the game room.

In the end, the con was very successful for me. I’m glad I went. I’m glad to be getting back into the con circuit and working on being creative again. It’s been a rough couple of years for everyone. I’m looking forward to going again. I’m looking forward to meeting new people and seeing my old friends again.

Will I see you there?

BALTICON – The Panels

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The last actual panel I had was on Sunday morning. There was a workshop to run later in the day, but this was the last of the traditionally formatted panels. As it turned out, I was also scheduled to be the moderator. As a moderator, I didn’t prepare notes in the same way I would have for other panels. I went for questions. My job was to get the other panelists to talk about the topic and keep things moving.

Finding Your People:

Whether you are a writer, gamer, costumer, maker, filker, or LARPer, there is a thriving community for you. Panelists will discuss opportunities for attendees to connect with like-minded others outside of Balticon.

  • How did YOU find your people?
  • Best ways to track like minded folks down in general? (discord, failbook, message board at the game shop, others?)
  • Should we ponder the future of in person conventions?
  • What if you’re painfully bad at all the social stuff? Plans are hard, and going out fills me with anxiety.
  • Have you had any experiences that put you off to a group? Any tips on avoiding that kind of thing?

I based my questions on things I believed would be useful from my own experiences. I wanted the folks I was working with to be able to express their thoughts on connecting with others and providing a way for cons and game groups and costumers and all those crazy folks to still be able to get together and enjoy our hobbies like never before. Interestingly / sadly this was also the panel where I caught the fringes of how this all goes wrong. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on the subject, so I’m going to dedicate an entire post to that at a later date. Other than what amounted to a minor ‘blip’ for me, the panel seemed to go well enough. A lot of the answers tended to circle back around to finding connections via the web, but that’s the world we live in these days.

Do you have any great answers for the questions above?

BALTICON – The Panels

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Saturday’s list of panels wrapped up with one on recommendations for reading. I was ready, but also worried for this panel. While I have read a lot, my reading has suffered lately. The volume of words I have consumed has dropped off sharply. It’s been a struggle to read sometimes. The weight of things going on around me has made even the escapism of a good book work. Couple this with the folks on the panel were clearly experts in the field, while my qualifications amounted to being part of a fan group with a long reading list. As it turned out, a really skillful panel moderator made this one run! At the end there was only one request for finding “something else like this” we couldn’t come up with an answer for. At the end of the day, I think I held my own. The things I go back to the most tend to be older works and not the most recently released stuff, but I managed. Here’s the description and the panel notes I had going in.

What Should I Read Next?

While it’s easy for us to be bombarded with automated algorithm-derived suggestions, it’s important to get book recommendations from a dialogue with a real person. Our well-read panelists will listen to what you like and don’t like and suggest something you haven’t heard of… we hope.


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Hope is right – this tends to be a very well read crowd.

I keep a list of books shelved in the dining room. They are books that I go back to over and over again when talking about books. Some examples are:

Magic for Sale (short story collection)
Light of Other Days (Stephen Baxter / Clarke)
Bimbos of the Death Sun (Sharon McCrumb)
Pandora’s Legions (Christopher Anvil)
Song in Stone (Walter Hunt)
Rollback (Robert J Sawyer)
Bureau 13 (Pollata)
Griffin & Sabine (Nick Bantock) series of mysterious letters
Immortal warrior Kane (pulp fantasy series) Karl Edward Wagner
House in the Cerulean Sea (T.J. Klune)
Written in Red (Anne Bishop)

Find a small press!

Talk with booksellers (Cupboard Maker Books in Enola PA is my favorite by far!)

Watch the Skies has a 20+ year reading list. You can always jump on and chat with us! Connect with us here!

BALTICON – The Panels

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Saturday rolled on with more gaming, and a topic I love even more than board games, role playing games.

You Can Start GMing Now: Tips for First-Time Gms

If you want to play RPGs and you don’t have a GM, you should consider stepping up. You don’t have to be an expert on fantasy lore or a master rules lawyer; anyone can be a GM. We’ll talk about common struggles like setting expectations, keeping everyone at the table engaged, finding and playing to your own unique strengths and style, and the hardest part of it all, battling the demons of three to five other people’s schedules.

My personal house Rule #1: It’s just a game.

We’re here to have fun, and if we’re not having fun, then why are we doing it?

Find inspiration (in art, in books, in movies, in conversation with others). I’ve talked about this in other places before – Attacks Of Opportunity being one example.

Prepare to the amount you feel comfortable with, over or under prepared is relative to how you play.

Roll with choices your players make – be flexible – because they WILL change it all. Constantly.

Adapt encounters that were ‘missed’ into something else later in the campaign (save your work).

Keep a list of names (like sounding names from a similar area – on hand just in case random NPC).

Keep notes – particularly of who all those random NPCs are, b/c they might stick and come back (melon guy from Avatar the Last Airbender anyone?)

Feel free to watch shows like critical role – but understand what they’ve got going on behind the scenes (and if you don’t have that, how can your game match that?).

Those were my notes, and many of the other panelists / game masters seemed to share some if not all of those sentiments. There was a lot to pack in during our hour, so I think we did well, but it’s always a challenge. Gaming is such a wide ranging topic it’s tough to squeeze all that in during an hour.

I’ve been running various D&D games for years so there are a lot of things I’ve internalized. Have you run a game? Do you have any thoughts for first timers?

BALTICON – The Panels

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After a couple of solid panels on Friday I was ready for the Saturday schedule and really wanted to dig in. There was a lot of great stuff lined up, starting with games.

Help Me Find a Game I Will Enjoy

Are you new to playing board games, card games, or party games? How can you tell if any particular game will be fun for you? Come to this panel to ask experienced gamers what you should try next based on your own likes and dislikes.

Finding a board game you like is partially about the game itself and partially about the people you’re playing with. Both parts matter.

Board games are by their very nature social. The single biggest challenge is finding a group, or a series of groups of people that you really, truly enjoy gaming with. The people are the key to it all.

As for the games themselves, part of that is learning the language of games. What IS a worker placement game vs. a party game vs. a resource management game? What kinds of those things do you enjoy?

How many people do you want the game to handle?

Do friends recommend the game?

Can you find a YouTube video on it (and do you trust that person’s opinion)?

Find a group – see what they play: https://www.gamesclubofmd.org/

https://www.boardgamefinder.net/

http://www.boardgamesfor.me/

https://boardgamegeek.com/

The best part of this panel for me was the crowd participation. That normally isn’t true for me, but having my dear friend and serious game fan John right up front was really special for this one. Myself and the other panelists enjoyed a good discussion about all the things I listed above in my notes and then some. It was a really great start to the day.

Side note – I highly recommend digging up a board game and finding some folks to play.

Do you have any favorites?

BALTICON – The Panels

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The second panel of the weekend for me was about maps. I was really into the idea of the panel, but I was unsure of how it would all work out. Here’s the description and what I had prepared.

Mapping the Landscape

Every science fiction and fantasy reader has their favorite book with a map in the forward or appendix. Besides helping audiences keep track of where things are taking place, what roles do maps play in fiction and gaming? How does a creator go about creating a clear memorable map, from both narrative and visual perspectives?

______

Ask yourself if a map is really needed? Being a very visual person, I LOVE maps and building layouts, but does your book / story actually need it?

Look at your map at 3”x4”. If you can’t read it then it is too small to print in a mass market. Consider adding extra maps that show blowups of things you actually want readers to know about.

Cheat. Take a known map and turn it upside down, then relabel everything.

Don’t be afraid of looking for inspiration in the old. There are a number of museums that have digitized their collections of historical maps and have them available for viewing online. This goes for plants and monsters too. The biodiversity heritage library has 150,000 images out there. University of Chicago Press have created a history of cartography collection with downloadable PDFs.

Think about what your map looks like relative to your story. What does a fantasy map look like exactly? What does an urban fantasy map look like by comparison? How will it look when it’s squished down to 3 inches wide by 4 inches tall in a paperback?

How much area are you mapping? 2D or 3d for your map?

The panel itself ranged all over the map (see what I did there LOL). The panelists had a wide variety of backgrounds and it was a really neat discussion. I grabbed a couple of notes of my own, and was surprised (though I probably shouldn’t have been) when discussions ranged into technology and things connected with my day job. Turns out that architecture is essentially building mapping – and that includes site context.

It was a very enjoyable discussion and the folks that attended seemed to be really happy with what we delivered.