“This just keeps getting better!”

“If the Penny Arcade Expo has a star, it’s not Gabe or Tycho. It’s not special guests like MC Frontalot or Wil Wheaton. It’s not even veritable champions of nerdery like PAX ’08 Omegathon winner Joey Gecko. No, it’s geeky culture itself. And when we gather to celebrate our own, wackiness invariably ensues.”

– GeekDad Z, Wired’s GeekDad blog.

“Best Thing About PAX: Ownership. PAX is everyone’s so everyone tends to add their bit, creating something new or innovating. It’s just part of the makeup of this demographic that things don’t get left alone. I think that’s what I like best of all, is how most of the con goers think of it as their convention, not just one they attend.”

–Fellow PAX owner Steph.

The night before I left for PAX, I hardly got any sleep at all (thank you, ribacge, for picking Thursday night to hurt like a bitch) so by the time I got there on Friday afternoon, I was already down to single-digit hit points, and taking a -5 on all my rolls.

But an unexpected thing happened as soon as I set foot in the convention center. As explained by the quotes above, this weekend is our time. It’s Goonie time, and the moment I walked in, I got +10 to all my stats and was restored to maximum HP.

Sometime on Friday night, though, I failed a critical save vs. ConSARS, and by the middle of the day on Saturday, I was feeling pretty terrible. I think I played though it pretty well, but I missed the concerts on Saturday night, and felt a little “off” for the first 15 minutes of my panel on Sunday, until I picked up another +10 from the ohmygodstandingroomonly crowd. By the time I got on the plane to come home yesterday, though, I was hovering around 2 HP, and I’d picked up a familiar I’ll just call Wil’s Sinusital Ooze (Level 4 Disgusting Annoyance. Gives owner -8 to all abilities, -15 CHA, and -6 to all reaction rolls. 5 successive Fortitude saves ends.)

I’ll have to give a full report when Wil’s Sinusital Ooze isn’t launching Slimers out of my head every five minutes, but I think I can sum it up in five words I repeated dozens of times during the weekend: “This just keeps getting better!”

five simple ways to Just Keep Writing

I’m reluctant to pass myself off as some kind of authority on writing, because I still have a lot to learn, but from time to time I’m asked a question that I can answer with some degree of confidence.

That happened earlier today, and (as you’ll see at the end of this post) I thought it may be worth sharing here.

On Aug 28, 2008, at 12:52 PM, [redacted] wrote:

When you’re writing something that’s not for a blog, like a book or script, something that has to remain a secret until it’s published, do you just go bonkers?

Yes. Yes I do. It’s really hard, because as a blogger you’re used to instant feedback to keep you going, but when you’re working on something that can’t be shared or released the same way blog posts are, you can lose your way and lose your confidence.

I’ve found a couple ways to help overcome this:

1. Blog less. It’s incredibly hard to blog and write a book at the same time, because you’re using different muscles. Think of it like trying to run the 100 meter dash and do a marathon at the same time.

2. Make a deadline for yourself, then work backwards to have milestones every day or week, whichever works better for you.

3. Give yourself little rewards when you make a big milestone (5K words, 10K words, 20K words, first draft completed, etc.)

4. Don’t show your work to anyone until the first draft is done. Don’t even excerpt little bits and put them on your blog. I put about 30 words from House of Cards online, and I lost all of my momentum as a result. I’m not sure why this happens, but it really sucks when it does.

5. Find an editor who you trust to work with you. Good editors do more than just edit the draft you give them, and I know this because I have a great editor.

You know, this may be useful to other people. I’m going to anonymize the line I quoted from you, and post this on my blog. I’m sure readers will have other bits of advice and experience to share in comments.

-Wil

This isn’t anything more than common sense, I guess, and it’s not even that original (the post I linked to day before yesterday about blogging vs. writing a book covers most of this in much greater detail than I did) but I hope it’s helpful anyway.

Wil Wheaton’s 2008 PAX Schedule

Please excuse the indexing-friendly title. I hate it as much as you do, but I know there are literally fives of people on the Internets who may want to know this vital information for the coming weekend.

I’ll be at Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this weekend. I’m not keynoting, but I am on a couple of panels, and I will have a booth, stocked with all of my books, plus my glasses and my shoes, so I have them. I don’t have a ton of stuff, though, so you should probably drop everything you’re doing and go get in line right now.

My schedule looks shockingly similar to this:

Friday

3-4PM: Signing in my booth

7-8PM: Signing in my booth

Saturday

3-4PM : Signing in my booth

6-7PM: Panel – “Is Casual Killing Core Games?” in the Raven Theater. This should be an interesting conversation. I don’t think casual is killing core gaming at all, but I’m interested to hear from people who think it is, and tell them why they’re so very very wrong.

7-8PM: Signing in my booth

Sunday

11:30-12:30: “The Wil Wheaton Panel!” in the Serpent Theater. I’m going to be honest: I don’t think a lot of people are going to come to this. There are two absolutely awesome panels at the same time, including Family Feud with Gabe and Tycho, and if the panel didn’t have my name in it, I would skip it, too. However, for those of you who will be in attendance, due to your sacred vow to never watch Family Feud, I’ll be reading from Happiest Days and Sunken Treasure, wand I’ll do a Q&A if there’s enough interest. We’ll have fun (oh yes, we’ll have fun. We always have fun, and we float, Georgie! We all FLOAT DOWN HERE!) and it will be awesome.

12:15-2PM: Signing in my booth

I reserve the right to bail on signings early if nobody’s there, and stay a little longer if that’s necessary.

Please, please, please come introduce yourself if you read my blog, especially if you’re a regular commenter. It’s pretty awesome to have faces to go with the names.

the joys of unsubtle roleplaying

Inspired by my previous post and its related conversation in the geek group, my friend Andrew and I have been talking, as we so often do, about our RPG experiences. He said I could share this one:

Our college group wasn’t big on subtle roleplaying. The anecdote that best exemplifies our attitude comes from a random night encounter.

The mage was on guard, heard a rustle in the woods outside the camp, and immediately unleashed a fireball.

“You aren’t going to wait to see who it is?” asked the DM (different guy; we rotated). “What if it’s one of your friends?”

“They can take the damage,” replied the mage’s player.

End of encounter.

There are times to take RPGs seriously (or so I’ve heard) but it’s time like these that I look forward to the most when I play a tabletop RPG. If you listened to the Penny Arcade D&D podcasts (JIM DARKMAGIC FOR THE WIN!) you heard something remarkably similar to my friends and me playing . . . well, just about everything, really. That’s sort of the whole reason we play games, isn’t it?

I’m going to PAX this weekend, where I’m sure I’ll engage in quite a bit of the video gaming. I’m especially looking forward to playing Rock Band 2 with the Enforcers, but more than anything else, I’m excited to spend some time in the Original Wireless Gaming area, which I missed last year. It’s nothing but classic RPGs and hobby games, all donated and run by volunteers. Last year, there were opportunities to do a one-shot dungeon crawl, and I can’t wait to get on the list for one of those if they’re doing it again.

underrated sci-fi movies and the geek group

One of my favorite topics when I was writing Geek in Review was the Guilty Pleasures series. It gave me an excuse to watch movies without feeling like I was slacking off, and always generated entertaining discussions (and more than a few suggestions for other movies to use in future columns.)

When I checked in on The Geek Group at Propeller this morning, I saw something similar: Ten Truly Underrated Sci-Fi Movies.

Take a look, and let me know what you think. I wouldn’t have included Aeon Flux, which tried real hard but couldn’t close the deal, but the rest of them are great, especially Primer, which never gets the respect it deserves.

I think Groups are where Propeller is going to set itself apart from the rest of the social news world, so I really want to build and nurture the Geek group. I think it’s a fantastic resource and if there’s enough participation, could become a wonderful place for geeks to gather and goof off – I already check in several times a day, even when I’m not doing admin work. In support of that effort, I’m going to close comments on this post, so if you’re interested in commenting and stuff, you’ll do it there. (Bonus: the Conversations are a lot of fun, too. D&D geeks need to check out What’s the most audacious thing you’ve gotten away with in D&D?)