PAIZOCON 2009: You Should'a Been There!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

That sound you heard last Sunday night (heard 'round the world, I'm told) was not Krakatoa II (electric boogaloo?), it was the enormous sigh of relief from me as PAIZOCON 2009 came to a close and did so with a feeling of great satisfaction.

A little over a year ago, I spent a Saturday morning in a little hotel in Kirkland, WA and watched a small group of Paizo fans, led by Timitius and Lilith from our boards, gather and enjoy each other's company as fellow Paizo community members. Right then and there I said to myself, "Self," I said, "We have to take this over and help them grow it." So when it came time to plan the 2009 convention season the first thing on my agenda was How Do We Politely Tell Tim That PAIZOCON is Ours Now and Yet Still Get His Help? Well, it turns out, it was really easy.

I had lunch with Tim last fall and laid the cards on the table. I asked Tim what he thought if Paizo wanted to get into PAIZOCON in a really big way for the second year—as in, so big that we basically ran it as an official show. Tim's face was 100% relief and he was thrilled to get the planning process off his shoulders. I, in turn, was thrilled to take it on and despite many late nights and a lot of work, I couldn't be more happy at how it all turned out.

For me, PAIZOCON 2009 began on Friday morning with my arrival at the Coast Bellevue Hotel. Jeff, Cosmo, Chris, and I set up the sales booth, taped up all the signs, and then waited for the hordes to come. And come they did! It was amazing to finally put faces to names and say hello to a lot of folks that I'd been reading about on the boards for years. Additionally, a lot of new faces showed up as well—folks who maybe lurked on the boards, or were only familiar with Paizo and the Beta and just wanted to come and see what Paizo was all about in person. Our special guests were already at the show and folks like Monte and Sue Cook, Eva Widermann, Wolfgang Bauer, and the entire Paizo staff immediately took to mingling with the attendees.

And then the gaming began! RPGs, board games, card games, you name it and someone was playing it. At times we'd sit there at registration and think, "Wow, it got really slow around here suddenly" and that was because the breakout rooms and the ballroom were stuffed to the gills with gaming, gaming, gaming. Laughter, dice rolls, howls of defeat, and cries of success echoed through the halls of the Coast Bellevue and we knew right then that we'd done something right—PAIZOCON 2009 was going to be a success.

Saturday was a long day of gaming that ended with a huge banquet for the attendees. The food was fantastic, the company even better, and it was pushed over the top by a keynote address from Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens, a lengthy preview of the PRPG by Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn, a preview of things to come by Publisher Erik Mona, and a really boring, stuffy, and not very fun quiz game lamely put together by yours truly. (Okay, so the quiz game was awesome! Most fun I've had in front of crowd since the WTO Riots in 1999.)

Sunday was additional gaming fun as the show slowly started to wind down. Folks began collecting in the lobby and just hanging out—sharing gaming stories, asking the PAIZOCON special guest in the seat next to them about their RPG favorites, and just basking in the glow of a successful and fun weekend of all things Paizo and beyond.

With the show behind me now, I've already started thinking about next year. In fact, as I write this, I'm 15 minutes away from the first meeting to do just that: plan PAIZOCON 2010 and figure how, exactly, we're going to be able to top 2009. For those of you who were there, I hope you had fun and played games to your heart's content. For those who couldn't make it—do not, I repeat, DO NOT miss out on the opportunity next year. I imagine it'll only be better.

Thanks, everyone!

The PAIZOCON 2009 sales booth, manned by a cleverly hidden Vic Wertz.	Erik Mona runs his Spire of Nex preview on Friday.
F. Wesley Schneider runs his Ustalav preview on Friday.	Neil Shackleton shows off one of the hobby horses he brought for his live-action Yetisburg game. He had one pink one and he named it "Sebastian."
Lilith looks over cartographer Corey Macourek's shoulder as he explains how he designs Paizo's GameMastery Flip-Mat and Map Pack lines.	PAIZOCON Special Guest Artist Eva Widermann gets ready to burn her personal seal into a drawing she did for a fan.
Pathfinder Wiki guru Yoda8MyHead discusses Pathfinder with others in the Coast Bellevue Hotel lobby.	Eva Widermann and artist rk post sketch for the fans.
Fray and Wolfgang Baur discuss Kobold Quarterly.	Paizo's Disturbing Customer Servant Cosmo ponders his life as a hobby horse cavalryman in a game of live-action Yetisburg.

Until next year!

Joshua J. Frost
Events Manager