A scotsman, a reformed thief, a gay half-orc, halfling wizard, and two fearless warriors walk into a bar…

Rey is organizing events for the October Rebellion convention here in Denver, which is running ‘living’ games exclusively. For those not familiar with the RPGA, let me explain that living campaigns are basically like home campaigns (gain exp and gear, advance your character) except you’ve got 15000 people playing in the same setting (maximum of six to a table, please).
Most of the campaigns are good ones, and thus the judges (GMs) also like to play, so in order to get judges willing to GM tables for most living campaigns, you have to first organize “Slot Zero’s” for the judges (so named because they come before the First Slot of the convention). Judges play their own characters at the Slot Zeros, which lets them actually gain experience points and gee gaws for their characters as well as familiarizing them with the module in a way that a simple read-through rarely can. It’s a pretty good system (provided you can find someone willing to GM for the judges) and generally, when you sit down with a table full of people who are willing and able to GM for a group of strangers on a regular basis, you’ve a table full of good role-players.
Last night (Living Greyhawk) was no exception (although with the guys we had playing, we had more joking going on than actual hard-core roleplay, but still), and I had a great time, plus, this module’s a two-parter so we’re wrapping it up tonight with the same group. Good stuff.
Next week on Tuesday/Wednesday we’re Slot 0-ing the Living Force stuff (Star wars), then the week after that is more Living Greyhawk and some other fantasy thing I still need to create a character for (a much darker, intrigue-oriented thing).
Yeah, I’m playing a lot of games right now. I know. I plan to do something about it, then I think “wow, this would be a really cool campaign to run”. There just isn’t enough room in the week for everything I want to do, plus writing, plus working on the house and doing family stuff. I expect that there will be some changes pretty soon, since the current schedule has held together for about six months (or more) with no major changes… some players are getting new jobs, etc., and frankly there’s some stuff I’d like to wrap up to make room for other things.
Plus, hey, it’s coming up on the start of new seasons for my shows. That’s going to have an impact, I’m sorry. 🙂