About Me My name is Daniel M. Perez and I am an avid gamer and traveler. Join me on this journey to unite my two passions.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter: @Highmoon
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 As of today, July 13, all fees associated with getting or renewing a USA passport have gone up.
New adult (ages 16+) passports have increased from $100 to $135. New minor (15 and younger) passports have gone up from $85 to $105. Renewals have gone from $75 to $110.
You can see the official fees for all passport and passport cards at Travel.State.Gov. You can also see the fee increase for all other services in this chart (my favorite – renouncing your USA citizenship has gone from free to costing a whooping $450!).
If you do not have a passport at this point, even with the new fee increases, I would go and start the process to get one soon. Here’s why: the reason cited for the fee increases.
According to CNN.com, “Officials recommended the hikes after a study found the current fee structure wasn’t covering the government’s costs for the services, the State Department said in the proposal outlined in the Federal Register.”
Folks, those costs are bound to keep increasing with inflation, so another fee hike cannot be too far away in the future. There already was a more tame one in 2008; consider that one a trial for this more aggressive increase. Now take that scenario and place this new increase as the tame one; you sure you want to wait a couple more years now?
I have to agree with the general consensus: it bites. Even I, because of procrastination, will have to shell out $110 to renew my passport, something I’ve known I have to do before it expires next year, so I’m preaching to myself as well. But here’s the thing: it’s worth it.
I wouldn’t be caught dead without my passport up to date, and I cannot stress enough how important I think it is for everyone to have their own passport. Maybe you think you’ll never travel out of the country, but the truth is you never know. If the opportunity comes up, you’re already set to go. Remember you also need it even to go into Mexico and/or Canada (though, in the Department of Awesome, remember that you do not need it to go to Puerto Rico). Besides, it’s about the most official and irrefutable form of identification there is. Yes, $135 is not chump change, but this is a document that will last for 10 years, so it’s an investment.
To sum up: the fee increase simply sucks, but getting a passport, and having it up to date, is still a good investment for everyone, including all gamer travelers.
 In order to help out all the thousands of gamers descending upon Indianapolis, Indiana in August for Gen Con Indy 2010, the Gen Con team has partnered with Expedia to create the Gen Con Travel Support site.
From the news release:
Gen Con LLC has partnered with Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) to provide attendees with a convenient, reliable, and affordable means of arranging their personal travel. The new service is dubbed “Gen Con Travel Support”, and can be accessed online on the right-hand sidebar of the Gen Con Indy Home Page. Users of the new site will enjoy the convenience of booking a broad selection of flights, rental cars, travel packages, and supplemental lodging.
Gen Con Travel Support runs on the Expedia search engine, so anything Expedia has access to (and they are one of the biggest travel websites) you should be able to get access to through this site as well. This is an affiliate site, so anything you book through the Gen Con Travel Support site gives a percentage of the sale to Gen Con LLC.
So what can you get via this Gen Con Travel Support site? Air tickets, rental cars and “alternate housing,” meaning hotel rooms outside of the Gen Con housing block and subject to regular hotel rates for the dates.Rooms at special Gen Con rates must be booked via the Gen Con Housing Bureau; you will need the housing access code provided at the time of registration in order to book inside the Gen Con block (though those rooms sold out at record time back at the beginning of the year).
If you need to book airfare and rental cars for your trip/stay at Gen Con, give it a whirl.
Note: I am of mixed feelings here because I like Gen Con and want to see them continue to succeed, but I have no desire to support Expedia. I have had a couple of really bad experiences with them in the past 8 years (as in leaving-me-stranded-in-Ireland-with-no-way-to-get-back-home bad) and neither use them myself nor recommend them to anyone. Granted, there are thousands out there who have used Expedia with no issue whatsoever, so it’s up to you to make the decision to use them.
 Yikes, blink a couple of times and suddenly February’s on the downhill towards the 28th! Let’s get this blog carnival roundup going, then.
The participants were few, but the posts they wrote were fan-tas-tic and everyone should check them out for the good info and advice they provided.
From Stargazer’s World we get two entries: How to make travel in your games more exciting, in which Michael offers some advice on making travel an integral and fun part of an adventure; and “We travel light. Let’s hunt some Orc”, in which we get some thoughts on traveling with our copious roleplaying equipment in real life. I especially liked this one a lot.
6d6 Fireball shares 5 Travel Related Hooks for GMs.
Mad Brew Labs writes about A Well Traveled Gamer, in which he draws on his own travel experiences to give some advice to gamers.
Campaign Mastery gathers us round the fire and gives us My Favourite PC Travel Game: Campfire Chats, a simple mini-game-in-game that can be used to simulate travel and enhance character development.
Fame & Fortune shares Places To Be, which has a very detailed list of suggestions to turn real places you’ve been to into memorable locations for your games.
Travel in the Sea of Stars has a post packed to the gills with links to travel-related entries made during the month of January. Seriously, check this out; it’s like 10 posts in one!
Held Action asks a very basic and important question: How Far Will You Travel to Game? Well, how far?
Worlds in a Handful of Dice talks simply about Travelling, finding new game stores, meeting and playing with new people, hitting museums and couch-traveling. It’s like 3 posts in one.
The team at Dice Monkey brings it to a great close with Travel in my Star Wars and D&D Games and Fueling Imagination By Exploring Your Own Backyard (an activity I heartily endorse).
Thanks a lot to all the participants. I am amazed by the great posts you all shared. It was my honor to have hosted this month’s blog carnival.
A Well Traveled Gamer
Welcome to 2010 and to the first blog carnival of the new year. Unsurprisingly, in this month’s carnival we’ll be tackling the topic of travel from two perspectives, which will hopefully mean everyone will have something to say on the subject.
 Travel in Games
Thinking of pseudo-medieval fantasy roleplaying games, travel is something that happens fairly often but that is given rarely the proper attention. Think about it: adventurers go from cities and towns across uncivilized wilderness, impassable mountains and dense forests to reach long-abandoned ruins in search of the unknown. That sounds almost like my trip to Europe! Yes, there are encounters along the way, but travel is almost an effect; how about if it was the cause instead, the focus?
In modern/futuristic games, travel is more present, but also even more so matter-of-fact. Characters zip from New York to Tokyo in a sentence, from Earth to the edge of the galaxy in a couple of Piloting dice rolls. Movement is far more common, yet even more invisible than in the fantasy genre.
What if we were to change this?
Tell me stories of how travel affected your games. Maybe you have an anecdote of an adventure where travel was the focus (Call of Cthulhu’s Horror on the Orient Express, anyone?), or rules to address travel in your games? Maybe a review of a travel-oriented game, be it roleplaying (Ribbon Drive!) or board game. Surprise me, and surprise yourself.
 Gamers Traveling
If you are a gamer, and you have traveled, then you are a gamer traveler. Gamers cannot help but look at the world through the gaming lens, storing all that inspiration for a future game: the Eiffel Tower becomes an eldritch antenna transmiting ectoplasmic waves into the netherworld; the Arch of Titus becomes a cursed gate that floods the minds of those that pass through with the horror of the sack of Jerusalem; Mt Rushmore becomes the resting place of four gargantuan stone golems built to protect the US from the inevitable alien invasion. See what I mean?
Or perhaps in one of your travels you encountered a new game, one that speaks of a culture other than your own. Maybe you played some games with folks wherever you were visiting. And I know for a fact there’s quite a few gamers out there with respectable air mileage totals just from visiting conventions all over the country.
Tell me your stories.
To My Fellow Travel Bloggers
Don’t think that because you aren’t gamers you’re off the hook! Games are universal fun across all cultures, so even if you are not hardcore into them, chances are you have a story about games and travel to tell. Share it with us!
The Details
- The Games & Travel Blog Carnival runs through the month of January, with a final roundup showing up within the first 15 days of February.
- Any and all bloggers are welcomed to participate.
- Leave a link to your blog post in the comments section.
- Any questions, ask them in the comments.
- If you’d like a graphic for your post, you can use one of the two below:
RPG Blog Carnival
Games & Travel Blog Carnival
Have fun!
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This is just a quick post to let you know that I will be closing and deleting the @GamerTraveler Twitter account. The change will go in effect on Sunday, March 7 (at some point during the day).
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