
This is the first of three GenCon-related posts this week, covering the ENnies, the Mastering Your GM-Fu seminar and the TT meetup at the Ram on Saturday afternoon.
The next two posts will be about GMing products at GenCon (Wednesday) and GMing lessons I learned as a player over the course of six events at this year’s con (Thursday).
The ENnie Awards
Treasure Tables was nominated for Best Fan Site, but we didn’t win. The gold went to Dragonlance Nexus and the silver was awarded to Planewalker. Congratulations to both sites — they’re excellent resources, and their awards were well-deserved.
Thank you very much to everyone who voted for TT in the ENnies — every vote was appreciated. I’m 99% likely to enter TT again next year, and hopefully 2008 will be our year to take the gold!
Mastering Your GM-Fu
If you came to our GMing seminar, I hope you had a great time — I know all four panelists enjoyed it. While Zachary, Vicki, Phil and myself all provided some good GMing advice, a lot of the best answers to questions came from members of the audience.
That was the upside to using a more “open forum” format this year than we did last year: lots of kickass advice from attendees. The downside was that some questions ran long, which meant that fewer questions were answered overall. That’s our fault for trying a slightly different approach this time around, and I apologize to anyone who didn’t get as much out of the seminar as they’d hoped — that certainly wasn’t our intention!
It’s also worth noting that this seminar marked the largest gathering of TT members ever (at least, as far as I know): Cassandra, Dante, DNAphil, myself, stupidranger, Svisionguy, Telas, thedangerranger, VV_GM, Walt C. and zacharythefirst. Very cool!
(Pictured at the beginning of this post is one of the official GM-Fu d2s we handed out at the end of the seminar, which we had made by Dragonfire Laser Crafts.)
Treasure Tables Meetup
After the seminar, 11 of us headed over to the Ram for drinks and an early dinner, which was a lot of fun. It was great to finally be able to put faces to names, and for everyone to get a chance to swap war stories and talk about gaming with people we’d previously only known online.

From left to right, with TT forum names in parentheses where applicable: Stef (with her face chopped off — sorry, Stef!), Matt (thedangerranger), Michael (Svisionguy), Phil (DNAphil), Patrick (VV_GM), a fellow from Phil’s gaming group, Vicki (Cassandra), Walt (Walt C.), Darren and Kurt (Telas). Between the beer, my poor memory and the dim lighting, this photo isn’t exactly my finest work…

Much better! Standing outside the Ram, in front of Privateer’s huge banner (with Darren behind the camera — thanks!): (back row) me, Walt, Phil and Patrick; (front row) Stef, Matt and Kurt.
Not that I expected otherwise, but I was pleased to find out that these guys were just as friendly offline as they are online. To my mind, that’s a large part of what TT’s all about: genuinely nice people talking about GMing — and funnily enough, that works in person, too.
This was an excellent GenCon, made all the better by getting to attend the ENnies, run a fun seminar and meet some great TT members. Tomorrow, it’s on to GMing products — and I’ve got three great ones in mind.
Did you guys at least get a bigger room for the seminar this year?
Yes — they actually bumped our event to a different room. The initial room had space for 20-30, and the final room had space for the full 100 we expected.
By my rough count, I’d say we had 60-70 people, which was a bit of surprise — I was pretty sure we’d fill the room (like we did last year with 60 spots).
It was a very large room. And that space was put to good use with all of the attendees. They gave me a walk-in closet for my seminar! 🙂
It was awesome to meet so many TT members at GenCon this year. Next year I am going to invite you all to a private event where I’ll GM an adventure for any TT attendees who are interested using the Fudge system. The one thing we didn’t do was game together!
According to the Doorman, one of my friends, the GenCon Volunteer who took the head count about an hour into the talk, had us at 57. Which was just a few under the number that had registered.
The room was great, nice and big. People were able to spread out a bit.
The open format was good and there were a lot of great pieces of advice. Next year, there will have to be some moderation or time limits for the audience participation, just so we can answer more questions, but the group there was excellent.
I really enjoyed sitting at the RAM and having a drink with everyone. It was great to put faces to the avatars in on the forums.
I love the idea of doing a game as our TT meetup next year (or in addition to it, if that works out). Hopefully as the site continues to grow we’ll get a few more people at GenCon every year.
Enjoyed the heck out of it, although some of the answers did tend to wander into “lemme tell you about my cool campaign” territory. Someone mentioned a “lightning round” at the end – great idea.
The TT.org folks I met were as cool in a non-gaming setting as they are on the forums. I’m already looking forward to next year’s GenCon, although I may be with child…
The mystery man in the first pic is my friend and current GM, Micheal (svisionguy on the forums).
Telas
Thanks, Telas — I had no idea Michael was already a member, and shamefully I also forgot his name. I’ve corrected the post.
If I’d known he was on the boards, I’d have insisted he get in the outside photo — sorry, Michael!
It was great seeing everybody…I was telling Telas afterwards that we should have organized a game, so I certainly support that idea!
Walt C
Sorry I couldn’t make it. It would have been great meeting some of you guys and spending a couple days playing some games I normally don’t get to play.
Sadly, with my work, limited vacation and other commitments, I don’t see a GenCon anywhere in my (near) future. Maybe when I’m retired? (eek!)
I can’t believe I missed this stuff. I ran into Zach right after it the seminar…
argh.
The seminar was great, and it was great to see everyone! Dante & I would have loved to come along for dinner, but we had other commitments. We’ll have to try again next year!
Oh man, work is a bummer… 🙁
I’ll be there next year, and it will be my first GenCon event to attend!
Walt C.: It was great to meet you! The PowerPoint session intro you mentioned at the seminar floored me — if you ever want to write that up for TT, just let me know.
brcarl, hopefully your first GenCon will come sooner than you think!
Stuart: D’oh! Next year, then. 🙂
stupidranger: It was excellent to meet you and Dante, and I recognized you both from the 2006 seminar.
blackheart: Excellent. It sounds like we might have an even larger TT contingent for next year’s con.