Chupacabracon was AWESOME!

The only photo I took the whole con.

I really should have gotten a picture of me and Sean Patrick Fannon together so I could run it with the caption “Seans,” but the only photograph I had the presence of mind to take during Chupacabracon was of Preston DuBose receiving an ETU-themed birthday cake from some fans.

Well, actually I took several photos of that scene, so I might as well run all of them...

Chupacabracon was amazingly fun and – dare I say it? – an unqualified success for me. I spent most of my time in panels, but they were uniformly educational and entertaining. Both games I played in were absolute joys (and taught me a lot about how to run a convention game as opposed to a normal campaign session). And – most importantly if also most selfishly – I made some contacts and got my portfolio into the hands of some important people.

Honest to goodness, though, I’m still blown away that Sean Patrick Fannon knew who the hell I was.  I went over to introduce myself to him and Shane Hensley and he burst into a smile and complimented me on the blog – and then recommended it to Shane. I had to take time later to just thank Fannon for doing that.

I took a little portfolio of articles composed of I’ve written for Savage Insider (both published and not) as well as a hefty chunk of The King is Dead and gave it to Hensley, Fannon, and Ross Watson. Robin helped me get everything converted over to PDF and formatted nicely (she really did a stellar job with the TKID section, adding some public domain pictures and getting it very professionally laid out) and we saved everything to some cheap thumb drives. I’d recommend the same move to any would-be freelancers in the future; it’s a relatively small investment and much easier for people to pocket than a folder full of paper.

With the schmoozing out of the way early on, I spent most of Saturday in a series of fascinating panels led by the likes of Ken Hite and Robin Laws. I came away with some ideas that will really help The King is Dead moving forward, possibly allowing me to get something onto the market by as early as May. (I also concluded that I would much rather be a freelancer than a publisher.)

Savage Saturday Night was a ton of fun. Robin English-Bircher and I joined Jeffrey Gordon and a player whose name I didn’t catch (sorry) in a game of Accursed with Ross Watson DMing. Ross has a great style for convention games that I am going to shamelessly steal from when I next run at a con. I have to admit though that my werewolf was just trying to hit the vampire in the face with a heavy wooden object when I threw that barrel of gunpowder at him; real-world gunpowder wouldn’t have blown up, so I didn’t expect to demolish the castle.

We were going to leave early on Sunday, but then Ross asked us to join him in a real-play episode of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to say about the setting (Ross’ homebrew that he’s working up for publication), but it is the most entertaining, authentic-feeling anime-inspired setting I’ve encountered. Also, I’m curious about how the character voice I used is going to sound on broadcast; I’ve got a couple of female voices my wife assures me sound authentic (yes, I’m actually proud of that) but I haven’t mixed any of them with a Texas twang before.

Sean Patrick Fannon also took me aside to tell me a really big secret that I’m not going to share with anyone. Hmm… I guess that makes me an industry insider now.

YEESSS!!!

Also – and completely coincidentally – I was asked during the weekend to be a guest on the next Savage Worlds GM Hangout (On Air!). We’re going to be making a kaiju setting. I think I can handle that.