Our trip to a game convention!

Hi all!  (This is Scott writing this post)

So last Thursday Gwen, Jacob and I flew up to attend the Palladium Open House, a small gaming convention run by the company that publishes the role playing games we play.  (Thank you Mark and Van for letting us stay at your home!)  We had a blast playing with old friends from prior Open Houses and met a ton of new people.  I personally ran five separate games/adventures, which left my voice hoarse but was so much fun.  Gwen and Jacob played in some of my games and some run by others.  Jacob's favorite was the superhero game where his character had an ice-breath that could freeze the bad guys or blow them away.  Jacob also enjoyed playing with another boy that was there.

Halfway through Thursday night one of the Palladium staff approached me with a name badge, which was odd since I was already wearing one, but then he said to look at it:

Yes, that's right, I am officially one of Palladium's Freelancers now!  :-)  This is a big deal, as I now am privy to more behind-the-scenes information and can help influence the development of upcoming projects.

Speaking of upcoming projects, the owner of the company sat down with me and a bunch of other freelancers to (finally) play my board game!!  It was awesome!!!  Everyone at the table had fun and had complimentary things to say about it.  One of the freelancers, who has worked for Palladium for many years, even said, "I don't really like board games, but this one is so much fun!"  

After the game I asked the owner, Kevin Siembieda, to autograph the scratch paper he'd been using.  This is what he wrote:

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

During the closing ceremony he also opened the floor for a general Q&A session, during which time he told everyone that my board game was definitely something he wanted to produce.  When he said that everyone in the audience cheered!  So yeah, you could say I'm walking on cloud nine right now!

Before anyone gets too excited, actual production of the game is probably a good 1-2 years off, as they will need to get it into the production schedule and there is a ton of work still to do before it can hit store shelves (like artwork, typesetting, manufacturing & assembly, etc.).  But it has been accepted and will one day see production!  So very exciting.  

I just want to say here and now that without Gwen, this never would have happened.  We were talking the other day about how long we've been working on this game; I think we were both a bit surprised to realize it's been 15 years in the making.  Gwen has worked just as hard as I have on this, and I couldn't have gotten nearly this far without her.  I love you Gwen!

And Thank You Mark for your help with making the boards for the games.  Just so everyone knows, Mark not only allowed us to invade his home for four days but went above and beyond for us.  He not only printed the paper for the game boards (so that they were on one large piece instead of being glued together from a bunch of smaller papers) but also put them on chipboard backings and cut the finished boards in such a way that they would fold up neatly.  He even glued ribbon over the joints to make them stronger.  He did an amazing job, and there were tons of people who commented on just how nice and professional they looked.  You're awesome Mark!