That's right, folks! It's time for the grand exciting fourth season of Westfinder games! We had a TON of exciting submissions, a total of twenty-two, WAY more than we can possibly play in a single season. Picking was not easy, but we like to think we've settled on a good mix of games. We cover a range of genres, from a mix of experienced and new gamewriters. We're sorry if your game didn't get picked--we're keeping all of the games we've gotten in our Story Vault, and they'll be in the running for next year.
Due to our past run-ins with rain, our Winter games include two large-scale Tavern Scenes. This is on top of the small Tavernights, which we'll come back to after the schedule.
We also have included the theoretical dates of the games! These account for SAT dates as well as the schedules of various local high schools. There are still one or two conflicts (October game is on the same day as the PSAT, for example) that were unavoidable due to various reasons. If you foresee any problems with the schedule, please tell us ASAP and we'll see what we can do about it.
Without further ado... WESTFINDER SEASON FOUR!
September 5th
Nolix%Uul: Ozer's Ultimatum, by Tom Kelly and Dustin Katz
October 17th
Awakening, by Ben Schwartz and Greg Schram
October 31st
Halloween Tavernight
November 21st
Corporation, by Rowan Abraham
December 19th
The Lair of Dr. Gideon vonDamien, by Jaron Smith
January 2nd
New Years' Tavernight
January 16th
Better on Paper, by Greg Schram
February 20th
All for the Blood of Myanmar: Expedition to the Valley of Rubies! by Jeremy Gleick and Devon Brinner
March 6th
Spring Tavernight
March 27th
Pantheon: The Return of Frialla, by Jenna Brotsky
April 17th
Through to Wonderland, by Hillary Milton
May 8th
Westfinder Community Service Adventure!
May 29th
MEW, by Riva Morton
It's a really exciting lineup of games! We're really excited! Are you really excited? Get excited! MORE excited!
And you know what? We're taking a SECOND CALL for stories. Specifically for Tavernights! You all seemed very enthusiastic about the idea, so we're going on ahead with it... but we need games to play. We have a few possible ones lined up, but we'd like to open it up for more submissions. Tavernights are smaller affairs on Saturday evenings, and as such, have slightly smaller needs and plans. The game should be written to be played with fairly low-key costuming and setup (preferably stuff the players can bring themselves), and if possible with people creating their own characters. These are meant to be small-scale community-oriented events, but that's not to say the games can't be serious. A Tavernight submission should still have the same stuff as any other submission--world background, who the players are, game conventions... you don't need a Flow for these, but you can write one if you want.
If you are already running a game this season, we ask that you not submit a Tavernight--we will not pick it! If you're not, though, please do! If you're someone whose game didn't get picked this year, maybe you can adapt it to work as a Tavernight? Or maybe you can write something entirely new. Either way, you've got a month to do it--we're accepting Tavernights up until the end of Sunday, July 12th. So get submitting!
What's a Community Service Adventure? It's a crazy idea we had where we all go out and do some community service-y thing... in character! We'll talk about that more later, as we haven't really thought about it ourselves too much yet. Got cool ideas for it? Tell us! It's way off, so we've got lots of time to figure it out.
Obviously, all of this is tentative, and hinges on us finding a Regional Coordinator in the next few months--but of course we will! And, again, if you know someone, anyone, who might be a good candidate for RC, PLEASE tell us! We are all ears. We will also soon be posting a more thorough job description of what we and Wayfinder need on the blog.
Congratulations to all our storywriters, and here's looking forward to a great season!
~Westfinder
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ReplyDeletei note with some concern that of the 9 bootlegs out there, 4 have a writer who is on staff. considering the ratios of staff to community members, it's my feeling that this ratio should be much lower. i know that staff write games too, but there is an inherent bias towards one's own game, because it is nearly impossible to write down into a submission exactly how one envisions a world and a game in one's head. i just find the number of staff-written games this year somewhat disturbing.
ReplyDeleteWe sent the gamewriters among us out of the room when their respective games were being discussed, so as to counter that bias. But yeah, there are more staff ones up there than I had in mind.
ReplyDeleteIt also reflects the game submissions. Staff games made up almost half of the submitted games, so it makes sense. And as Tom said, Staff were given no preference during game selection, and weren't allowed to defend or explain their own games at all. The games were judged purely on the merit of the submission.
ReplyDelete~Duk
they also weren't allowed to vote for or against their own games, to add a bit of explanation.
ReplyDeletei wasn't aware of all those measures taken. while i have a better understanding of how this was done, i still have an aversion to seeing so many staff-written games up there. another thing that staff might consider is sending an email to every gamewriter whose game didn't get accepted, saying what they liked about it and how it could be made better. i know that i would appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteWe took significant measures to prevent any bias, and the ratio of games written by staff to those not written by staff is about the same in both the submitted games and the games chosen. There's not really anything more we can do. We don't choose games based on any sort of favoritism, going in either direction. And we do offer advice and feedback on any game submitted, and always have, actually.
ReplyDeleteStaff are community members too. It's that simple.
ReplyDelete~Duk