Big holiday weekend

I just got back from my Labor Day weekend trip to Los Angeles... I went to a game convention called Gateway. I had a great time, did some good hanging out with my L.A. friends Chris, Travis, Steph, Erin, Aaron, Daniel, Shannon as well as Tom Jolly (who's not from L.A.). And I didn't even piss off Steph and make her all grouchy like last time! I even met some new friends and saw some people I'd only seen once or twice before.

This time around I played in a few of the tournaments they had, and I won at Princes of Florence and On the Underground, got 2nd at Goa, and effectively won (though technically lost) at Puerto Rico. How does one effectively win but technically lose? Imagine doing something online and clicking the wrong thing - that's pretty much what happened... a mental misclick.

There was prize money for those tournaments which could only be spent in the dealer room, so with my winnings I bought a game called Phoenicia by a guy named Tom Lehmann who I met at the last convention a couple weeks ago.

I also participated in something called Protospiel West on Sunday, a thing where game designers get together and people can come playtest their games and give feedback. I ran a game of All For One (the Three Musketeers game I'm working on with David Brain from London), I helped run Blockade Runner with Bo (a Firefly themed game I'm working on with him), and I played a deduction game called Pitchforks and Torches. It had some interesting bits, but I wasn't too fond of it.

All in all it was a great weekend!