Tacky speaking at a Con

[takyris]

I have no idea if this is the right forum. General kind of made sense, as did the Software forum, but really, I dunno. So here we are.

I'm speaking at a con called Pure Speculation, which runs October 13-15 in Edmonton (in Alberta, in Canada). It's a small con, but it's the first time I've spoken at something, so I'm pretty jazzed.

I'll be talking about what it's like working as a writer at BioWare, although it'll kind of be the J.V. presentation, given that I've only been there a year and a half.

Anyway, for all the countless ENWorlders located conveniently near Edmonton, come give me a look! Or, you know, at least come and ask why I defended the d20 Modern rules as written for so long given the problems inherent in the tonfa.

http://www.purespeculation.org/

 

[Mark CMG]

Congrats, Tacky! Knock em dead!

 

[takyris]

Thanks! We'll see how it goes. I'm also evidently running a game now, too.

 

[Ilium]

When I saw the thread title, I thought you were going to complain about people using bad language at a con you attended.

Congratulations!

 

[Mycanid]

May I ask what some of the things you are going to talk about in particular are?

 

[takyris]

Generally speaking, aside from making sure to use tacky language...

Well, they've got a bunch of authors there, so my handful of pro short-story sales aren't terribly impressive. So I'll mainly be speaking there as a BioWare writer.

It's funny -- there are going to be several BioWare writers there, and we've got different stories. A husband and wife couple came here after writing in Hollywood, and they'd played Knights of the Old Republic but not much else. They had much better writing credits than I had (television writing >> handful of short story sales).

On the other hand, I'd played pretty much every BioWare RPG they put out, and when asked in the interview, I could rant about how Aerie ran off with those incredibly expensive bracers of armor when I told her I loved Jaheira, and how I hated getting framed by the red dragon and tricked into killing those paladins, and how I truly LOATHED sneaking up to evil Mandalorian Raider boss-guy with my sneak attacks ready to go, only to de-cloak against my will and get pulled into a conversation cutscene so that it was then me, the Scoundrel/Consular, against ten Mandalorians with all the other party members way off in the distance.

Other than my nefarious roots, I'll likely be talking about how to apply, if you want, and what it's like on a day-to-day basis. I'll probably be popping some balloons with respect to how, yeah, sometimes it's awesome, and sometimes art botches your level so badly that the plot gets cut, even though your writing is brilliant... and sometimes you put in 15,000 words on a plot that turns out to a) have a major structural flaw that's only obvious once you play it, b) get cut because of an overall change to a major storyline, or c) need a complete overhaul because of a decision made by art, or programming, or, heck, anybody, or b) just plain suck because you didn't think it out clearly enough.

I'll probably be more upbeat than that, though.

Heck, I posted something today on the blog that speaks to some of it:

http://pats-quinade.livejournal.com/8942.html

So that'll be a lot of it.

And because I've run a fair number of games, I'll probably be talking about it from the perspective of a GM as well as a fan. Some things that are a pain in the butt in a PnP game are easy and fantastic in a CRPG, while other things are exactly the opposite.

I don't know that I'll blow anybody's socks off, but then, I've been here a year and a half, so maybe I'm just used to the mindset by now. We'll see what the questions bring up.

 

[Mycanid]

Well ... good luck sir. And give Steel Wind a friendly kick in the shins for not making this Wyvern Crown adventure thing a freebie to the NWN community. Phooey!

Seriously though ... thanks to him and all for their work on it ... you involved in that too perchance? Major update.

 

[takyris]

No involvement on the Cormyr project, although I am glad it finally made it out, circuitous and often tortuous as the path to publication was.

Random question for habitual con attendees: how much gaming experience with d20 can I usually assume? Pure Speculation is tiny, so I'm guessing we'll have, I dunno, 40 or 50 people. (Yeah, I'm not speaking at WorldCon or GenCon quite yet.) If I make characters for a Grim Tales game (modern setting, players as high-level movie-cop archetypes (ie, one guy modeled on Will Smith from Bad Boys, another modeled on The Rock, another modeled on Jet Li, etc)) and stat them up and everything, can I assume that people will be able to, you know, know how initiative works and such?

Also, for people not attending, if you had an interest in the inner workings of a game company's design department, I've actually written my first blog post that inspired somebody to disagree with me in another blog:

http://pats-quinade.livejournal.com/8942.html

And my followup:

http://pats-quinade.livejournal.com/9429.html

She's a friend, so it's not like she's calling for my head. But hey, it's a conversation. Slowly but surely, my blog builds a readerboat. Possibly a readercanoe.