Another Emerald City Comicon has come and gone but this one was extra-special for an important reason – it was my first! I’m foreign to Seattle just like the horse of a different color isn’t native to Oz. Living here for just over a year, I’m mostly familiar with the wacky Seattle sights and ECCC weekend is no exception. Short of going to the convention center itself, behind the counter at Raygun Lounge might be one of the best places to experience the con. I was granted a front row seat for the nerdtastic conversation and costumery that punctuates any good Comicon.

Curious newcomers and returning friends descended on the Lounge Thursday evening for a multimedia trivia contest hosted by Raygun regular Andrew & his friends. Special guests from Comics Chat with Gat, the Nerdhole, and A Podcast For All Intents and Purposes took turns hosting rounds and stumping teams with obscure knowledge. Eight teams participated during the event and prizes were raffled off between rounds. After the dust settled our first place team was Alternative FAQs, second place went to Ronald Raygun Lounge and third place was claimed by Indiegogo presents Wendigo: Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go: A Tale of Vertigo.

Friday night was a more low key gathering featuring a Queer Comics Mixer hosted by Northwest Press. Sharing the space with our monthly Hearthstone tournament, everyone enjoyed another exciting raffle of prizes and plenty of good times. The easy-going vibe from Friday night was a nice lull before the main event on Saturday – NW Nerd‘s annual costume contest! The Lounge was transformed into a cosplay runway where all the best ECCC costumes strutted their stuff for the masses. Prizes were awarded for a variety of categories pitting fantasy and sci-fi characters against each other for the top spot. Check out the highlights on the .

After a super hectic weekend of comics and community building I have to say ECCC is a blast – and I haven’t even been to the Con yet! I am already looking forward to our next big weekend celebrating Sakuracon April 14th-16th. Stay tuned to our events page for info about parties dedicated to anime and 20 successful years of this unique convention.

A startling expose by game store owner Eric Logan.

Tabletop gaming encompasses a surprisingly wide range of genres including (but certainly not limited to) European style boardgames, American style boardgames, party games, mystery games, cooperative semi-cooperative and one versus many games, classic games and ancient games, abstract games, train games, war games of numerous complexity levels each with their own devoted fanbase, simulations of various kinds from historical to fantasy, custom dice games, collectible miniature and collectible card games, roleplaying and story games. Each of these genres can be further divided into multiple sub-genres and some of these sub-genres, like Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering, are so large and popular that they’ve become full genres in their own rights with even further sub-genres unto themselves. Dungeons & Dragons alone, for example, has at least 6 different editions and multiple retro knock offs, all of which have their own unique audiences and Magic the Gathering has a number of different formats and rule sets each drawing a different type of player.

Every tabletop gamer, even the most well rounded (like all of our employees), has a bias towards a particular game or type of game; usually something from their past, some initial gateway game or genre that they will inevitably tend to compare other games to and gravitate back to even as they expand their gaming interests.

My personal bias is toward roleplaying games (commonly abbreviated as RPGs). I got started on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with my dad when I was 8 years old

and have enjoyed exploring new roleplaying systems ever since. Though I’m familiar with and enjoy playing every type of game that we carry at Gamma Ray Games, my inclination is always toward the new small press RPGs.

And so it was that 2 weeks ago while I was rapidly putting together our page for a space that I knew was going to freely support all of the myriad types of tabletop gaming as well as some non tabletop activities like trivia nights, Barcraft and possibly a even a recently proposed rockband karaoke event, I reached out to the indie RPG community for pledge reward commitments first because I knew from our history of collaborating together for events like PAX, Emerald City Comic Con & GoPlayNW that they would respond quickly and be great to work with. And indeed they were.

But bias has consequences and while monitoring our kickstarter progress for the past couple of weeks I’ve discovered two. First, I’ve received a couple of emails from people who saw our kickstarter page and we’re worried that we intend to exclude/ignore their aspect of the hobby, to which I always respond with a clear and sincere “woops! my bad! we’re totally into your thing too,” because I know that the store and the lounge have been and will continue to be about the greater tabletop gaming community of which I and my personal biases are only one small part.

Second, and possibly more importantly from a Huttese perspective, it’s occurred to me that not having more non-rpg gaming options may have limited some peoples willingness to pledge and that, of course, is a barrier that we simply cannot have. In response I’ve just added the new completely-non-roleplaying-related “boardgame night with Jake Waltier” pledge level for you and your friends. And a… (cough) uh, couple of, uh, new RPG levels as well (cough).

Look, the new RPG rewards weren’t my fault, alright? The Gamer Viceroy came by demanding to know why he’d been snubbed out of the reward levels and, seriously now, you don’t want me to snub the viceroy do you? No, I didn’t think so. The man’s a legend in this town.

So there you have it. I love me some RPGs but you can love you some of whatever you want, and if that something happens to be some kind of tabletop gaming, it will always have a home at .

I can’t wait to see you all there,

-Eric

Wow. The 48 hours since we launched our have been amazing, exciting and, at times, a bit… emotional.

Take last Saturday morning when Seattle’s scheduled an impromptu meeting with me to discuss some “concerns” that they had with the phrasing of some of our Kickstarter pledge descriptions. With us having recently sponsored, provided t-shirts for and walked with their Pride parade float, figured it was going to be all

but when they all showed up wearing leather vests and headbands

and I realized that it was going to be a lot more

So I start hitting AB AB hoping to figure out how the kick and strike work when their lead negotiator pulls a CD Right Trigger Power Combo and just as I’m wondering how many buttons these things even have on them, their wartime consigliere, who shall remain nameless lest I reveal him to be Andrew, shouts “Phoenix Wright Objection Strike!” and pulls out his own controller and while I’m whining about how I thought this this was a sidescroll fighter they all yell 3vP Multiscreen and just go to town on me for the next twenty minutes straight. Absolutely brutal, I tell you. Toughest negotiation I’ve ever experienced.

On the happy side, their lounge date has been secured and is going to be totally great, our Kickstarter pledge goals have been adjusted appropriately, and Dominic got to overhear the most intense in-store business conversation since the legendary Tom Ko phone call of 2010.

And that was just Saturday morning.

Stay tuned for more daring tales of thrilling game store adventure with me, your host, Eric Logan.