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.

I was watching a show on castles on History Channel, and they said something that really stuck with me: “Castles were some of the most imposing structures ever built and they inspired awe in the population.” I was immediately transported back to York, England, back in 2001.

We’d been in England for four days, spending three of them in London. I’d seen Westminster Cathedral, Buckminster Palace, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge – all of them structures of impressive grandeur full of history. But I had taken them all in stride, something I attribute to the general “wow-I’m-in-Europe” factor. Then we took a train ride north to York, and the moment I entered the city through its medieval gate, something shifted. As we later walked up the main street and York Minster Cathedral came into view, I had to stop; I couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything but stare. I was in awe.

Awe is a feeling of wonder, reverence, amazement and/or dread (or more accurately, all those at the same time) experienced when in the presence of something that transcends us. In looking at York Minster, I suddenly realized I was standing in front of a 500-year old structure (and that’s only in its finalized form; parts of it date back another 200 to 300 years), in a town that is still surrounded by its original medieval gate, in York, in Europe. I saw York Minster not as a tourist, but for a fleeting moment, as one of the lowly residents of the city must have back in the 1400′s, imagining this imposing structure rising into the heavens, one of the largest buildings I would ever seen in my toil-heavy life. It inspired awe, in all its connotations, and I was so thankful for that wonderful moment that lasted maybe a couple of minutes yet remains one of my most treasured memories of all my travels.

Awe is not something we get to experience a lot on our daily lives, but I have found that travel comes with a healthy supply of it. I experienced it various times after than in Europe; later in Ireland looking over the Cliffs of Moher and the Giant’s Causeway; in Paris, the Netherlands and Belgium; and even in Seattle, especially in the Olympic Peninsula, at the top of Hurricane Ridge. Pure awe, the kind that shuts down your conscious mind and simply lets you absorb the grandness of what you’re witnessing. When we travel we are removed from our familiar surroundings, out of our element; this lowers the barriers and makes us vulnerable to moments of wonder. Be on the lookout for such moments and when they happen, surrender to them.

I have managed to bring that ability back home with me as well. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I am open to it and have experienced it in the form of a beautiful sunrise glimpsed while riding my bike or when contemplating the city skyline from afar. When you travel, leave your jadedness at home and be open to awe, and when you get home, do your best to retain that ability. You will see your home in a whole new way.

In Your Games

There is nothing that annoys me more than having a fantastic description of a site, like a castle or a large cathedral or a majestic spaceship, to be brushed aside by jaded gamers. These characters you are playing are seeing something that may be of an unique nature, I try to remind them. Even characters that are exposed to certain situations on a daily basis–nobles that know a castle inside and out, a spaceship captain that has seen dozens of different ships of all shapes and sizes–experience moments of awe. Perhaps the noble has never seen this side of the castle, or precisely because she knows them so well, this new one they are visiting impresses her so much. The starship captain may have seen a lot, but that new prototype spaceship makes him look out the transport window, completely ignoring his officers.

Bring awe back into your character’s portrayal. If playing a fantasy game, unless you are a world-weary adventurer, monsters, magic and imposing structures will have an effect on you! It doesn’t mean your character stands catatonic like I did in York when he sees an orc for the first time, but a dragon? You bet. A wizard casting a gigantic fireball spell? Yup. The king’s three-times-as-big-as-those-in-the-real-world castle with towers rising a mile into the air and squads of griffin riders patrolling? If you don’t roleplay the awe, you are doing a disservice to yourself, your Game Master and the game.

Note: This post was originally up at my personal site, Highmoon’s Ponderings, but it has now been moved here.

Gen Con is next week and as I’ve said here and on Twitter before, I won’t be attending. It’s by choice (even though by now finances also play a deciding role), though that doesn’t mean I’m not sad I won’t be going; trust me when I tell you that I could use those four days of non-stop gaming awesomeness like a desert nomad needs water.

All that said, just because I’m not going to Gen Con doesn’t mean I am not excited as hell that is almost here. Thanks to the wonders of social and new media, I am fairly sure I will be able to get a really good virtual experience of the beautiful madness that overtakes Downtown Indy when Gen Con is in town. For this vicarious 4-day event, I have two main weapons in my arsenal.

Twitter

It would be hard to beat the amount of information flying about Gen Con on Twitter, and that’s just the week before the con! Though there is an official @Gen_Con Twitter account, the main channel is the hashtag #gencon (as you can see in the title of this post, done that way so that when this posts to my Twitter accounts, it registers as part of that search string), where folks have been chatting up a storm, tweeting about everything from their pre-con plans, what they’re most looking forward to, arranging games and generally hyping themselves up for their time in Indy.

I have the #gencon tag set up as a search column on TweetDeck so I get auto updates of every tweet with that tag (most Twitter clients that support search or groups should be able to be set up in a similar fashion). Even if you don’t use Twitter, you can follow along at the Twitter Search page for #gencon, though if you want to join the conversation you’ll need an account.

I set up yesterday a Twibbon (a Twitter ribbon, a small graphic that overlays on top of your avatar) for “Going to #GenCon Indy!” and in the last 24 hours it has gathered 175 followers (and it keeps growing), making it one of the front-page trending groups. Yes, it is kind of sad that I cannot use the Twibbon I created, but it’s all just part of my general excitement about the con. If you’re on Twitter and going to Gen Con, why not add it to your profile as well? Click on the widget below and voilà!

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Even more interesting, there’s been some instances of using Twitter and the #gencon tag for promotional purposes: @Gen_Con has given away free generic event tickets to followers using the “Going to #GenCon Indy!” twibbon and Design Matters (@DMbooth1834), an indie/small press boutique is doing daily PDF giveaways combining it with their own #designmatters tag (see below). This is fantastic use of the features of this social medium, and I want to see more like this done by other gaming companies.

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Yeah, Twitter is the epicenter of Gen Con info this year, straight from the folks at the con, right from the middle of the action, with peanut-gallery comments from all those of us not there.

This Just In… from Gen Con! Podcast

My second source of information comes thanks to the podcasting stylings of Master Plan‘s Ryan Macklin, who is bring back for a second year the one and only right-from-the-con podcast, This Just In… from Gen Con! Twice daily on each of the four days of the con (with pre-con preview shows as well), Ryan brings the con right into your MP3 player of choice, with commentary, news, interviews and general shenanigans.

The podcast debuted last year at Gen Con 2008, hosted by Ryan and Paul Tevis (of the 2007 Best Podcast ENnie Award Winner show Have Games, Will Travel), and it was an instant success. Not only were people not attending the con downloading it every day, people at the con were listening in as well! The hosts heard from quite a few people that they would download the show, drop it into their digital players and listen as they walked from their hotels to the convention center and back. I know I listened to a couple of episodes right from my laptop in the hotel room, even finding out about things I had missed while on the exhibition floor.

Doing a twice-daily show, even if they are 15-to-20-minute episodes, takes a lot of work and a lot of commitment. Ryan and Paul sacrificed a good chunk of their time and energy at Gen Con for the show, and I thank them for that. This year Ryan is doing hosting duties by himself, though he’ll be roping in fellow podcasters for each show in addition to any interviews he may do, so up front I want to say to him, thanks for taking on this madness again and allowing us not-attendees a chance to share in the magic.

You can subscribe to This Just In… from Gen Con! at their website or find it in iTunes. Remember you can also listen to the shows right from the website as well. If you do subscribe, let other people know about the show and help spread the word! You can already listen to two preview shows to whet your appetite:

1. This Just In…From GenCon 2009! Pre-show #1
2. This Just In…From GenCon 2009! Pre-show #2

So there you have it, my two main sources through which I will live vicariously next weekend. I cannot wait! And if you have another way through which you plan to experience the con from afar, let me know in the comments.

I already told you about Eberron D&D Campaign Setting-designer Keith Baker and his plan to travel the world, trading hospitality for gaming (and if you haven’t read that post, please do so). By late July, 2009, Keith has already traveled quite a nice chunk of the United States, as well as portions of the UK and Europe. The only news from Keith, however, were coming in scattered and short bursts via his LiveJournal, completely understandable when you figure the man is busy traveling the world, meeting new gamers and playing games on every landmass possible. That is about to change, however.

Keith has finally launched his dedicated site for this round-the-world madness, Have Dice, Will Travel. At the moment, the one post available is a quick introduction to Keith and to his travel project, a post that I recommend everyone reads even if they are aware of what Keith is doing. The tone is far more candid than the just-the-facts-ma’am posts on LiveJournal have been, and promises a good course for this new gaming-related travel blog. I for one have it already on my RSS reader and cannot wait to start seeing new posts come through.

Sadly, since I won’t be going to Gen Con this year, I will not have the opportunity to interview Keith in person for The Gamer Traveler Podcast. That said, I continue to be in touch with Keith so that we can do that interview as soon as it is convenient for him.

Drop by Have Dice, Will Travel and start following the adventures of a true, on-the-road, gamer traveler.

This magnificently bizarre mansion not far from my own home in Miami Beach burned completely this morning. Take a look at these photos and marvel.

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I mean seriously, check out the house from Google Maps’ satellite view. Isn’t that amazing?

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I wrote the following post for Miami Metblogs. I reprint it here because it is, strangely enough, on topic for this blog. I guess now we’ll have the Miami Beach ruins instead!

The Miami Beach castle boasted iron gates, gargoyles, turrets, towers, parapets, a draw bridge and a 65,000 gallon salt water moat filled with sand sharks. It also had fantastical sculptures inside, like a dragon by a small pool. Not that I knew all this before today. The castle was, sadly, abandoned when the previous owner up and died from an overdose (The Herald has the whole sordid story) and was left to languish in very expensive solitude.

This castle was not far from my house, and whether it was driving to get out of the Beach, or (especially) riding my bike, I would take a moment, whenever I could, to stop by and marvel at this utterly bizarre gem and wish I could go inside. This place should not have been left unused; this place should have been rented out for events, films, videos. This amazing strangeness should have been an attraction in Miami Beach. Frankly, this place should have been the site for many roleplaying game conventions. Can you think of anything more fitting than playing Dungeons & Dragons here?

I am utterly bummed by this loss. In a city with more than its fair share of expensive and massive monuments to ridiculosity, the dark-stoned, gargoyle-guarded castle of Miami Beach stood uniquely apart. Maybe I only speak for myself, but it shall be missed.

See photos of the house and fire at Herald.com.

Also see these photos from the real estate listing at NelsonGonzalez.com. I can’t help but think this listing will soon be taken down.

While in France it is known as the Fête Nationale (National Celebration), for most of the world July 14 is known as Bastille Day, a day for Francophiles to wear their love of that country proudly on their sleeves. Bastille Day commemorates the 1790 celebration of the Fête de la Fédération (Feast of the Federation), an assembly held on the outskirts of Paris, at the Champs de Mars (now well within the city and the site of the Eiffel Tower), to commemorate the storming of the Bastille the year before, on July 14, 1789.

The attack on the Bastille fortress-prison, though perhaps not an incredible military coup at the time, did provide the flashpoint for what would eventually become the French Revolution. The prison was seen as a symbol of monarchical authority; it was used as the holding place for political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royalty as well as lettres de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments that were beyond appeal (though at the time of the attack, there were only seven prisoners held inside, none of them of great political importance). It also held a large stock of ammunition and gunpowder, so it provided both a practical and ideological target for the emerging rebellion.

Today, Bastille Day marks a day of celebrations for the entire country, with its epicenter in the city of Paris, where festivities are held throughout the day, starting with a grandiose parade down the Champs Élysées, and culminating with stunning fireworks displays throughout the city and most notably at the iconic Eiffel Tower. Even in the days leading to and after, the city is dressed up in its finest (for example, a gigantic flag is hung inside the Arc de Triomphe). It is certainly a crowded time to be in Paris, but it is also an exciting time to see this proud culture celebrate their history and their nation.

In Your Game

The storming of the Bastille turned out to be the key event in the start of the French Revolution, which ended up toppling the monarchy and (after years of turmoil and further wars) forming the modern nation of France. Most fantasy medieval campaign worlds are based around kingdoms, so how about starting a revolution? The storming of the Bastille can provide a GM with the perfect starting point for a new campaign that follows the player characters as they live through (and become key figures of?) a monarchy-toppling revolution. Or maybe the characters are assigned to protect the fortress from the rebel forces; do they fight their countrymen or disobey their monarch? Perhaps the characters are far-off witnesses of the attack but then find their world upturned by the aftereffects of such a defiance against the crown. The attack on the Bastille was a world-shaking event, so you can use it as inspiration, and the kickstart, for any major change you want to enact in your campaign world.

Aside from all the neat places I visited in Belgium, all the wonderful historic grounds I traipsed upon, all the yummy beer I drank, the scrumptious chocolates I ate, and the wonderful people I met, there was one event, one surprise event, that stands out as “The Coolest Thing I Saw in Belgium ™”.

Let the picture speak for itself:

That thing is exactly what it looks like, a mechanical, motorized tiger.

It was built by a local artist-metalworker named Kezanti who has a studio on the same street I was staying at. On our last day in Brugge, I went out for a little walk around the block, and ended up on the open-air dining area of this small restaurant two buildings down from our B&B. I saw the mechanical tiger standing there, but at first I thought it was just a bitchin’ sculpture (Brugge is the kind of town where you can see open air art displays). Then the guy stood up and turned it on and I could not hold my geekyness inside.

I spoke with him a little (him in much better English than me in my horrible Dutch) and he told me this was the first time he had taken it outside the studio and was having a celebratory beer. He then stood up and proceeded to ride the mechanical tiger! What’s even better, I got video:

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Just a handful of people saw this walking work of art take its first steps, beaming artists riding atop. These are the kinds of magic moments that happen when you travel that you remember forever, the moments that you could never, in a million years, have foreseen and that happen, seemingly, just for you. Be sure to check out more photos of Shiva at Flickr: Mecha Creatures by Kezanti, The Steampunk Wizard.

Ever since this event I have had this idea to turn Kezanti into a great character in a game: The Steampunk Wizard of Brugge. I can imagine the Steampunk Wizard, riding atop his mecha-tiger Shiva, leading his army of mechanical troops based on his Arthades mecha-man moving sculpture, and a host of other mecha-creatures at his beck and call. How about it, anyone want to stat him up in the comments?

There are cities that have, at one point or another, been the destination par excellance when it comes to gaming. For years Lake Geneva, Wisconsin was such a place, what with it being the birthplace of D&D, TSR and Gen Con (a worthy pedigree by anyone’s reckoning), but these days, the nexus of gaming has moved further west, the mantle passed to a new city. My vote for Best Gamer City goes to Seattle, Washington.

Located in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the Emerald City has become in the last decade or so the new center of hobby gaming in the nation (and worldwide, perhaps?). Seattle is home to the mothership of hobby gaming companies, Wizards of the Coast, as well as to a number of the bigger “smaller” companies, such as Paizo Publishing, Green Ronin Publishing, Privateer Press, Open Design/Kobold Quarterly (and up to recently, WizKids), as well as a couple of small, indie suits like TAO Games and One Seven Design Studio, makers of Agon. To this add yearly geeky/gaming events such as Penny Arcade Expo, Norwescon, ConQuest NW, GoPlay Northwest and PaizoCon and you got quite a few places to take out all that locally-produced gaming goodness out for a spin. Sprinkle in those Seattle-based podcasts, like Stabbing Contest, Atomic Array, Open Design Podcast, Green Ronin Podcast, and Seattle Geekly Podcast (what other city has its own weekly geek-cast, I ask?) and serve with a side-dish of cool geek attractions like the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum, the Space Needle (for that retro-futuristic touch) and nearby Snoqualmie, aka Twin Peaks. If you want more, consider that Seattle is also home to uber-nerd companies like Microsoft and Adobe, as well as to a number of small computer game studios like Flying Lab Software, makers of Pirates of the Burning Sea.

I would love to my vote to my home city of Miami Beach, but the simple truth is that for all the reasons outlined above and more, Seattle, Washington is the Best Gamer City.

What do you think? Do you agree or do you have another contender? Let me know in the comments.

Ok, it’s meme time! This thingie popped up on two of my friend’s blog over the weekend, so by the laws of the Internet I had to feature it as well.

visited 10 states (4.44%)
Create your own visited map of The World

visited 8 states (16%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Very obvious first impression: for someone who calls himself The Gamer Traveler, I’ve been to very few places in the world. In my defense, I have used my time abroad very well, and spent good chunks of time in each of my tours: 35 days doing the Grand Tour of Europe, 2 weeks in Ireland, a week in Paris, and 2 weeks in Belgium & Netherlands. Frankly, I don’t like traveling abroad for less than 2 weeks, though as in the case of Paris, I would consider a week-long trip if it is concentrated in only one place (and boy, have I been eyeing one of those week-long escapes to explore Venice).

When it comes to the states, I fare just as bad, I’m afraid. I am guilty of, for many years, not really having considered travel inside the US interesting or appealing, which is total hogwash. The other factor is that living in Miami, at the bottom tip of Florida, it takes 6-7 hours just to get out of the state, so interstate car travel has been nonexistent (not to mention that, after having grown up in an island only 100 miles long, the idea of being able to drive far beyond that is still strange to me). In fact, all of my travel inside the US has been by plane, thus the scattered red marks on the second map. Funny thing, three of the states I have visited I’ve gone there because of gaming (Wisconsin and Indiana for Gen Con, and Nevada for GTS), so I guess there is still some merit to my moniker.

The best part of it all is that, from each of those trips, I have gathered tons of ideas for my games, the source of what I share with you here and in the podcast. Thinking back to what I have covered already, there is still tons of stuff to share, and I’m not done traveling yet either (in fact, I’ll be doing my first interstate roadtrip in July!), so there should be TGT for a while.

So how about you? Where have you been? Feel free to post your map image (or link, if the image tag doesn’t work) in the comments and tell me what you’ve drawn from one of those places as inspiration for your game.

In The Gamer Traveler – Episode 12 I bring you a soundseeing tour of the famous Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, recorded April, 2008 while I attened the GAMA Trade Show. Join me as I set out of my hotel, the Ballys, and head up the Strip to walk the sidewalks, visit The Venetian, Wynn, Treasure Island and Caesar’s Palace hotels. Check out the quirky things that make up Vegas I encounter along the way (including provocative postcards and Halo’s Master Chief) as I ponder the kitsch of it all.

If you are heading to GAMA Trade Show 2009, check out also my GTS 2008 Special Episode for an idea of what you’ll encounter at the show.

Check out some photos of Las Vegas in the slideshow below or at Flickr: The Gamer Traveler – Las Vegas