High Shelf Gaming Podcast

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Thursday Mar 05, 2020

HSG109: Gen Con Survival Guide: History

Thursday Mar 05, 2020

We are so fortunate Randall Porter reached out asking to come on and dive deep into Gen Con's history. The stories he shares are mind-boggling. From remote-controlled robots poaching customers from other booths to folks sleeping in parking lots in early Gen Con days. We get a strong sense of how Gen Con worked under TSR, WOTC, and now as an independent entity. We even get a bit of a glimpse into the rift between Gen Con, Origins, and how they mended fences.

Randy is an excellent guest and brought a wealth of information to the show.

merchandise Link!

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Monday Dec 30, 2019

HSG101: Gen Con Survival Guide: Food and Drink [Refreshed]

Monday Dec 30, 2019

HSG returns to Gen Con Food and Drink in and around the convention center. We add more tips and advice from our first attempt in 2017, and make sure to talk about places that are still open! 2017's guide was great but it mentions a few places that have since closed down. Rich and David walk you through the most likely places to find food, and some tips on what you can do to get better food options with a tiny bit of effort. One point we don't say enough in the episode is stay hydrated. Gen Con's wonderful air conditioning and all the walking is going to dry you out. We recommend getting a little flat-pack water bladder just to keep your head cleared while you play in the world's best games and tournaments.

As always we love feedback and more food suggestions. be sure to leave comments on Facebook or twitter, wherever the discussion is.

Lastly - we are running a giveaway! contest winners will get a bundle of goods!
We will be accepting submissions from December 23rd, 2019 through January 10th, 2020.

Contest details: To enter simply go to Facebook or Twitter and tell your friends and followers about your favorite HSG episode! Maybe tell them a bit about why you like that episode. Tag us so we see it. 1 entry per human. After January 10th we will gather all the submissions and roll a die to figure out who our two winners will be!

#1 - You will get a copy of the Cyberpunk Red Jump Start Kit! (US winners get a physical copy, international sorry but we hope the .PDFs will suffice) + Beta access to Legend Keeper a tool that helps you track your imaginary world, RPG campaign, or write your next fantasy or sci-fi novel. It effectively combines Google Maps with Wikipedia just for your projects. + something special from Rich (details in the episode).

#2 - You will also get beta access to Legend Keeper + something special from Rich (details in the episode)

Huge thank you goes to R. Talsorian Games for their continuous boosting of our show on social media and sponsoring this episode. We are all pumped for what 2020 will mean for RTG.

Also, we want to thank Legend Keeper for kicking off an ongoing sponsorship of HSG staring now with 2 give away licenses! We'll be giving away more of these in the future, we're so excited for this relationship and the success of LK.

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Monday Dec 16, 2019

HSG99: Gen Con Survival Guide: Registration [Refreshed]

Monday Dec 16, 2019

HSG takes on Gen Con Event Registration to add more tips and advice from our first attempt in 2017. Rich and David break down strategies for groups of gamers who can pool their effort and are comfortable paying each other back for events registered. We cover solo attendees and some good suggestions there and give some insights into how Event Organizers are measured by Gen Con. Also, we talk about the things you can do without registering, there are tons of ways to enjoy Gen Con without booking every second of your time.

Not mentioned in this episode, which we should have, try not to over-book your Gen Con. Leave time in there for food, socializing, walking the dealer hall. If you have back to back events all convention long you will be exhausted by the end of it.

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Wednesday Dec 11, 2019

HSG98: Gen Con Survival Guide: Running Your Own Event [Refreshed]

Wednesday Dec 11, 2019

Running events at Gen Con is one of the most rewarding things we do every year. Last year, we went bigger than ever and plan to grow again in 2020. This episode shares the lessons High Shelf Gaming has learned over the years to help individuals and groups of event organizers have a successful con!

Rich and David have been running events at Gen Con and other conventions for years, so this is a blending of not only Gen Con-specific knowledge but also general convention gaming prep. We also sneak in some pro tips for players too, so if you attend Gen Con or one of the larger conventions there are some kernels of wisdom here for you.

High Shelf Gaming will run events at Gen Con. If you want to join us as a GM or play in our games, be sure to join the HSG Facebook group and Discord where we organize all those efforts. We have many independent contributors and folks from other podcasts and channels who team up to make for an awesome group of games. This all helps us pool our efforts to earn badges and hotel reimbursement from Gen Con, which is a big deal!

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Twitter @highshelfgaming

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Discord Chat https://discord.gg/tMPCXgN

Wednesday Dec 04, 2019

HSG97: Gen Con Survival Guide: Housing [Refreshed]

Wednesday Dec 04, 2019

The Gen Con Survival Guide series that launched HSG has aged a bit and changes have hit Gen Con and Indy. Meaning, we need to remake this series and update it with current tips and suggestions.

In this episode, David and Rich talk all about housing for Gen Con. We cover the housing portal and how it behaves leading up to the con when rooms will suddenly become available. HSG discusses how to stack the odds in your favor as well as contingency plans with places like Airbnb, VRBO, and some…err creative solutions for when the portal doesn’t go well.

Episode Correction: We talk about changing and canceling rooms in the housing portal. Changing rooms is free, canceling entirely is where you get hit with a $50 fee.

Helpful links:
Gen Con housing and travel
Fans of Gen Con Facebook group (EXCELLENT RESOURCE)
Gen Con Housing Portal auto-checker (Github link, programmer-friendly resource)

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Sunday Mar 24, 2019

HSG63: Traveller: A Space Opera RPG

Sunday Mar 24, 2019

In this episode, we are joined by Patrick Kanouse, a sci-fi and mystery novel author, who happens to be a huge fan of Traveller RPG. As one of the first and certainly the most popular space opera RPGs Traveller is one of the classic mainstays of the role-playing industry. Patrick helps us unpack some of the primary themes of Traveller and break down the various editions of the game.

We chat about the big draws for the system. Like the iconic character creation process that's a risk vs reward system that can lead to PC death before the game even begins. We also chat about how insanely flexible the system is from a technology perspective which leads to some cool discussions around some of the most popular Sci-Fi shows out there today and their possible origins (spoiler: we're pretty sure those creators played Traveller).

We also take a swing at talking about Traveller's impact on the industry. Certain rules of traveller have made it into so many other games like our big favorites: Cyberpunk and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.

Some helpful links:

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iTunes | GooglePlay | Spotify | Stitcher

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Thursday Feb 07, 2019

HSG58: GenCon Survival Guide Part 8: History

Thursday Feb 07, 2019

Rich and David are back to talk all about the history of their favorite gaming convention, Gen Con. How it got started, and what steps led to its enormous success. Everything from the humble beginnings as a place to play "Fight in the Skies!" and other war games to the ideal incubator for D&D and TSR. early on Gen Con becomes the place to launch games like Magic the Gathering, whos founding company goes on to purchase TSR and Gen Con... Really an interesting story.

::Correction! We claim Gen Con is the largest convention in the world... There is another. and it's an impressive 3x larger with 190,000 attendees! over in Germany: https://www.spiel-messe.com/en/

^ Turns out this convention does turn style accounting instead of estimating headcount. It's a fair bit smaller than GenCon. Unless it doesn't, then it is larger. We're getting conflicting reports and I can't read German.

Some additional resources:

Interactive site with maps, timelines, and every Gen Con program cover

Gen Con Wiki

40 Years of Gen Con, a hardcover book detailing waaaay more than we ever could

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Thursday Nov 22, 2018

HSG50: Gen Con Survival Guide Part 7: Volunteering

Thursday Nov 22, 2018

This Week, Thanksgiving week, we are thankful for volunteers like Amy who's joining us from the Gen Con volunteers community to share with us what brought her to Gen Con, volunteering, and what it's like to help 60,000 people have a great weekend.

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Thursday Aug 23, 2018

HSG38: GenCon Survival Guide Part 6: New Attendee Impressions & Lessons Learned

Thursday Aug 23, 2018

This one is special. Heather (AKA @Kratrina) returns with a friend from the Critical Role community, Conner (AKA @Cybrwulf1201) joins us to talk all about their first time at Gen Con. We cover everything from the many live shows and panels they got up to, lessons learned, and some great laughs as Rich and I are exposed to a completely different side of the show from anything we've ever seen.

Huge shout out to the amazing and wonderful Critical Role show and their community (critters as they like to be called), to Dungeon Master - Interactive Stage Show (@DungeonMasterLA), Library Bards (@LibraryBards, @bonniebellg, @xanderrific), @theanimegoddess, Maze Arcana with @satinephoenix, @mazearcana, Dread game system (@hydra_lord) https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the-game/

And lastly, two amazing artists who really took great care of @kratrina (Heather) @crystalsully @kristinacarroll

You can find more of Connor's stuff here:

Twitter, Twitch, YouTube

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