WWdN: In Exile

My 2010 PAX Prime Schedule

When I was at GenCon last month, I signed autographs and stuff for close to six hours a day. I got to meet a lot of people (and took home about ten pounds of dice!) but I hardly got to see any of the con, and I got to play a grand total of three games while I was there. I’ve been working my ass off for three weeks, and the idea of doing the same thing at PAX this year makes me so sad, I want to curl up in a little ball on the floor and cry.

So this year, I have decided that, instead of spending most of the show signing in Bandland and taking three days to recover when I get home, I’m going to finally attend PAX, enjoy the company of my tribe, and play a ton of games. This means that I have severely curtailed my signing schedule, and it means there is no way I’m going to be able to sign things for everyone who wants things signed. (I’m not saying that in some kind of  “Hey, everyone come and see how good I look!” sort of way, I just know that at every PAX I’ve been to - this is my fifth - people tell me they typically wait 90 minutes or more, and we always turn people away because I run out of time.)

My PAX schedule this year is fundamentally different from every other PAX I’ve attended. I’m afraid that this is going to make a non-zero number of people unhappy with me, but here we go:

Friday:

10am 1pm: Signing in Bandland for about an hour. No lineups before 9:45. 12:45.

Saturday:

10am: Signing in Bandland for about an hour. No lineups before 9:45.

2:30pm-4:30pm - Acquisitions, Incorporated: D&D Live!

Gabe, Tycho, and Scott Kurtz begin an adventure with one goal, find a way to bring back Wil Wheaton’s deceased character, Aeofel. This is unscripted Dungeons & Dragons before a live studio audience... and through the magic of TECHNOLOGY, the audience influences the game! Bring your cell phone and guide Jim Darkmagic, Binwin Bronzebottom, and Omin Dran to riches or ruin.

6:30pm: Hi, I’m Wil Wheaton. AMA (Title shamelessly stolen from Reddit)

I’ve been working so much on secret projects and Eureka, I haven’t had time to write anything new for PAX, and rather than tell the same stories everyone’s heard already, I thought it would be fun to spend an hour together answering questions and talking about things that are interesting to you.

Sunday:

10am 1pm: Signing in Bandland for about an hour. No lineups before 9:45. 12:45.

Like I said, I know this is going to make some people unhappy, and if you’re one of those people, I hope I can appeal to your fundamental humanity for a moment, and ask for some understanding: I’ve been working my ass off for three weeks on a job that’s amazingly wonderful and fun, but is also emotionally exhausting (all creative work is emotional, I’ve realized, which is a subject that deserves its own post when I’m not as exhausted as I am now) and I’m just plain out of HP and Mana. I have a choice: I can skip PAX entirely, or I can attend PAX in a way that will still be fun for me. I chose the latter, because I think I’ve earned it, and as I said in my PAX East keynote:

We are all here today because we love playing games. Some of the happiest days of our lives would not exist without games and gaming. Games are important. Games matter. PAX is where we come together to celebrate that.

I can’t think of a better place to refill my HP and Mana than PAX, and I'm incredibly excited to finally attend this con that I've come to love so much. See you in about 56 hours!

You may ask yourself, "well, how did I get here?"

About two hours ago, I said goodbye to my friends on the set of Eureka, and rode back to my home away from home, here in Vancouver.

About an hour ago, I started doing my laundry and packing my suitcase. I think the last time I did coin-op laundry, I was 20. It's strangely familiar, and the unique smell that happens when a dozen detergents and softeners all combine in the warm, humid air of a laundry room hasn't changed at all in 18 years. Breathing it in provokes of sense memories from so long ago, they almost feel like they belong to someone who exists only in my head.

It's a beautiful day outside: a very light breeze is sort of lazily pushing some sparse clouds through a deep blue sky, over the tops of the buildings outside my window, and through the open window I can hear the traffic droning through the streets below. It's a peaceful backdrop, and I'm glad that I finally have some time to reflect back on my time here, and write some of this stuff down.

I can't get into specifics about work until these episodes air, but there are a few things I don't want to forget. This may be overly-general and a little weird, so please bear with me:

In every scene I do with Colin, we find something entertaining during rehearsal that wasn't there in the script (which is always great to begin with.) The producers and directors have been supportive of our creative discovery, and it's lead to this great relationship between Doctor Parrish and Sheriff Carter. Colin and I had a scene with Joe Morton the other day where Joe and I decided that Parrish and Henry would get all excited and geek out about some scientist stuff, totally ignoring Carter while we did. The foundation Colin and I had built for our character relationship let this thing I had with Joe stand right on top of it.

Niall Matter and I have decided that Zane and Parrish are friends from working together, and their mutual irritation with authority in general and Fargo specifically has formed the foundation for that friendship. So far, we haven't had much to do together, but when we're in the same scene, we make sure to look share character-based "can you believe this frakkin guy?" looks that may not ever read on the screen, but sure are a lot of fun to create.

Last Wednesday, I twisted the fuck out of my ankle on the set, and ultimately had to go to the doctor to get it looked at. I can't say how or why (it's spoilery) but the timing couldn't have been worse: we were on location, I was in almost all of 9 pages that day, and it happened during first rehearsal, before we'd even shot a single second of film. It was a long and painful day, but I ended up with a brace, a cane, and a Naproxen prescription, so I'm doing much better now. I don't need the cane, and I don't even limp that much, which is nice. An X-ray said it wasn't broken, and I said, "Holy shit, a talking X-ray!"

I really, really, really miss my family, but I've had a great time being here. As I look back on these two episodes, I see a lot of work I'm proud of, a lot of people I'm glad to know, some great times out with good friends ... but mostly, I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I'm so grateful for this life, and what I'm able to do with it, that even on the longest day on set when I'm in a scene that stopped being interesting and fresh hours ago, I can remember that I get paid to imagine. I make my living making things up to entertain people, to give them a place to escape to every once and a while, and I just love it. I've said it a lot on Twitter lately, but it bears repeating: I am the luckiest guy in the world. Sometimes, I feel like I'm living someone else's life, and I don't ever want to wake up.

a quick one while i'm away...

Yesterday, Niall Matter and I went over to Granville Island for lunch and shopping at the public market. Matt Hastings, who is one of the producers, met us, and we had a really nice time sitting on the deck of this restaurant, enjoying the beautiful day, and some great food.

We talked about all kinds of things, and when Matt arrived with some PS3 games in his bag, our conversation turned to gaming.

"I don't own a console," Niall said, "gaming just isn't my thing."

Matt and I looked at him like he was from another planet, which I think was a not-unreasonable assumption.

Niall looked at Matt, then at me, and added, "I don't have anything against it, I just play guitar and drums instead."

"Oh, I play guitar and drums, too," I said, "... in Rock Band."

"Yeah," Matt added, "I play guitar and drums, too ... with the Beatles."

We all laughed at that, and I said, "I'm so good, I get to play with The Who, and I went on tour with The Pixies once."

"Really." Niall said.

"Yeah, if you want, I could probably get you on the guest list the next time I play in Moscow."

Relevant to my interests, and perhaps to yours, as well: The Rock Band 3 setlist.

Edited to add: Here's my view from lunch, which you can click to embiggen at Flickr. Can you believe I took this picture with my phone?

random thoughts from vancouver

I have a late call today, so I have some time to write. Yaaaaay. Here's a few things that have been on my mind in the last, oh, 36 hours or so.

So that silly thing Paul and Storm and Adam and I did sort of took off, didn't it? I'm thrilled that so many people found it as entertaining and amusing as we did; it was a lot of fun to put it all together.

You know, it almost didn't happen. Storm suggested it on Thursday, and I was on my way to Vancouver on Friday, so I wouldn't be able to do my part until Saturday, and we were positive that someone else would beat us to the punch. It was pretty cool when Saturday morning rolled around and nobody had done our joke, yet, so we all soldiered on. Paul and Storm took their photos backstage at a show, Adam did his picture in his secret underground evil genius lair (it's not a secret that he has one of those, right? Because if it is, let's just forget that I said that, okay?) and I just figured that I'd bug Felicia to take my pictures ... but she was working second unit all day Saturday, and I had to figure out a way to do it all on my own.

First, I tried holding my cell phone camera, but that didn't work and left me with just one hand to gesture and stuff, so I thought that I could maybe use photobooth on my Mac. I knew it would look like I'd used photobooth, so I thought it would be fun to take advantage of that and embrace its limitations. That's how I ended up putting in all those fake backgrounds. (I have to say, the Paris one is my favorite.)

The app I used on my iPad is called Penultimate. Molly Lewis turned me on to it, and for what it does, it's totally worth a couple bucks.

I also wanted to make sure that The Chive was properly credited: we're just standing on their shoulders, riffing on their original idea, and this obviously wouldn't have happened on its own.

Speaking of w00tstock: I just heard that the San Francisco w00tstock shows are selling out, fast. Thursday has more tickets available than Friday, but I'm pretty sure both shows will be SRO, because SF seems to really like our show.

===

Yesterday, Stan Lee had a cameo on Eureka. I can't divulge any details, but I can say that he's one of the nicest people I've ever met - certainly the nicest living legend - and he was just wonderful to everyone. It was adorable how excited and nerdy everyone in the cast and crew was, and how great Stan was to all of us. Also? The cameo they wrote for him was just fucking perfect. I just know it's going to kill when this episode airs.

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Facebook continues its all-out assault on its users' privacy with the new Places feature, which is (of course) on by default, with no warning. Lifehacker has the lowdown, including how to turn it off. As I've said before, if you dig Facebook, I'm not going to give you a hard time about it, but I strongly encourage you to turn this feature off. The world doesn't need to know where you live, and when you are (and aren't) home. Also: Fuck you, Facebook, for turning this on by default and not warning your users about it. You're one of the most profoundly immoral companies in the history of the Internet.

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When I was at Gencon, I got to play this storytelling RPG called Fiasco that is simply amazing. I will write an entire post about it in the near future, but until then, check out Gnome Stew and Critical Hits for posts about the greatest storytelling RPG this side of A Penny For My Thoughts. One of the great thing about Fiasco is how easy it is to write settings for the game, like this time traveler setting my friend Will is developing. (Warning: if you haven't played the game, this is not a good setting for your first time.)

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I keep running up against content and licensing restrictions, since I'm in Canada. It's making me show my rageface a lot, but that's a rant for a Techland column, I think. The short version: it's really fucking stupid to apply geographic restrictions to the Internet, which is sort of its own place that doesn't give a shit about geography. Media companies could go a long way toward combating piracy simply by acknowledging this reality and making it easier for honest people like me to watch the goddamn on-demand videos they bought from Amazon while they were in the United States, regardless of what country they're currently visiting.

===

I've been taking pictures and Twittering like crazy from the set. If you are interested in that sort of thing, you can follow me on Twitter for more updates than you ever wanted to see.

===

One last thing: Slacker Radio works just fine in Canada (go Slacker!) and I've been enjoying the hell out of my Camera Obscura and Catherine Wheel stations. The problems I used to have with the Android app have all been fixed, and it's been a real joy to walk around Vancouver, streaming music right into my head. (Right now, it's playing Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is weird to hear outside of Rock Band.)

It's unlikely I'll have time to write again before the weekend, so let me take this moment to wish you all a great weekend. Take deep breaths, and be kind.

Thanks for spending this moment with me.

In which I am a HPOA

I'm working very long hours on Eureka, so I don't have a lot of time or energy to post more than silly things on Twitter, but I did this over the weekend, and I wanted to share:

The w00tstock organization wishes to post the following photo correspondence from “Wil”—which is most certainly not a hoax, and is not just a derivative attempt to cash in on some meme that was funny for 36 hours last week—without comment.

We will, however, attempt to rise above this hardship and continue somehow. The next w00tstock shows will occur September 16 & 17 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

We’re working our contact for “Wil’s” last name.

This idea was entirely Storm's. He wrote most of it, and then we all brainstormed (brainSTORMed! HA! HA!) some of the other bits. I improvised the photo effects part, and it was Storm's idea to put me on a boat.

And no, I'm not really quitting w00tstock.

epic wil ... ll ... ll

That's me, Will Hindmarch, and Will Schoonover, making the most epic Wil ... ll ... ll gang sign, ever. I loved that, because I only have one L in my name, I had a hand to make the W. (I don't remember who owns the hand making the I, but I'm pretty sure it's not someone called Wil(l).)

(Photo by Dammit Liz, our w00tstock Dungeon Master, who kept me company at GenCon and didn't get her copy of Munchkin because I needed to get geeky soap.)

i have the heart of a dragon (no, really, i do)

Home from GenCon.

Happily exhausted.

I killed a dragon with one hit.

Now, it's time to sleep for two days.

Game on: GenCon info, chapbooks, and dice. Lots and lots of dice.

I leave for GenCon in about 3d12 hours. While I'm not thrilled about getting up at 4am on Thursday, knowing that the reward for dragging myself out of bed at areyoufuckingserious o'clock is three days of gaming and geeking makes it all worthwhile.

I'm blessing dice, taking pictures, and signing books, pictures, bodies and other interesting things for about 3 6 hours each day. I'm trying to set it up so I have a 2 3 hour session in the morning and a 1 3 hour session in the afternoon, but I won't know precise times until I'm on site, and I get a sense of how many people want to get stuff signed and whatever. I'll announce times on Twitter once I'm at the con.

I don't have any books, because I ran out and wasn't able to order new ones in time for GenCon. However, I'm bringing a limited-edition Chapbook in the style of Wil Wheaton's Limited Edition Chapbooks. This one is entirely gaming-related stories, and I'm really, really happy with how it has turned out. Here's the introduction:

Of all the things that make me a geek, nothing brings me more joy, or is more important to me, than gaming. I am the person I am today because of the games I played and the people I played them with as I came of age in the 80s.
This is a small collection of stories about gaming in its various forms, from cards to dice to computers to our beloved tabletop RPGs. Most of these stories were originally published in 2009, when my son Ryan was away at college, and my son Nolan was 17.

Keep playing games. Games are important. Games matter. When you play a game - any game - you’re using your imagination to bring a world to life, and that’s truly special, because while all destruction is essentially the same, when you create something, it’s different every single time. When you create something together, you’re building bonds with your fellow gamers that could last for your entire lives. The Venn Diagram of my best friends, my gaming group, and people from high school I still hang out with is one perfect circle. I suspect that for many gamers of my generation, that’s equally true ... and I know that my kids will be saying the same thing in 20 years about people they’ve never met face to face, but interact with almost every day in an online game that will make Call of Duty look then like Pong looks today.

Roll 20s,
Wil Wheaton
August 3, 2010

I'm bringing 200 chapbooks. When I did this at PAX Prime last year, I sold out in about 5 hours, so plan accordingly if you really want one.

Oh, this is really important: I got the Swine Flu at PAX Prime, and it was the worst two weeks of my life. When we went to PAX East, all of us (Jerry, Mike, Kurtz, Straub, Paul and Storm, The Professor and Mary Ann) all agreed that we wouldn't shake hands, give hugs, or engage in human contact with people, to limit the introduction of infection vectors. Most people understood, and we gave each other the old Iron Guard Salute (not the fascist thing, the gaming thing that looks like like "love" in ASL). The result: a few people were cheesed off, but none of us were too upset about that, because none of us got sick. It was the first con I've gone to in my whole life where I didn't get some form of Con Crud, and I'd like to repeat that until we turn out the lights on Planet Earth. So, tl;dr: I'm not going to touch people at the con. I know it seems weird, but I hope you understand why. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm trying not to get sick. (Edited to add: in comments, a non-zero number of readers seem to have a real problem with this, and people on the rest of the Internets are already giving me a hard time about it in very unkind terms. This makes me really sad; I hoped for a little more empathy and understanding. Not that it should matter, but I have Epstein-Barr, so my immune system isn't as robust as a normal person's; it is very easy for me to catch viruses and other nasty things. I'm not going to apologize for not wanting to get sick, especially after two weeks of Swine Flu. If you can't understand that, it's your problem, not mine.)

My panel is called I'm Wil Wheaton, and I'm a Gamer. It is on Friday morning, at 11. If you have one of my T-shirts from Jinx or shirt.woot, and you wear it to the panel, you can be in a group picture either just before or just after the panel.

The rest of the con, I plan to find and play as many games as I can, because holy shit I'm finally coming to GenCon!

Games I want to play while I'm there:

• Savage Worlds
• Dragon Age RPG
• Magic: The Gathering
  
• Zombie Dice
• Cthulhu Dice
• Button Men
  
• Munchkin
• A Penny For My Thoughts

I have one request, which I hope isn't unreasonable: I'd like to test the theory that you can't have too many dice. If I see you at GenCon, would you give me one gaming die? I'll bring home as many as I get, dump them all on my office floor, and take a picture. I think it could be pretty cool ... or very, very sad. Either way, it will be something, you can be sure of that.

It's like there's a monkey on my back. A gaming monkey, and he's rattling dice in my ear.

One more From The Vault, because I'd completely forgotten about it, and it made me laugh out loud when I read it.

While Anne and I drove down the freeway today, Just Like Heaven came on the radio.

"This was my first CD," I said.

"I know," she said. "You tell me that every time we hear a song from it."

"And one day, you'll hear it, and I won't be here for some reason or another, and you'll wish I was here to tell you."

While we both pondered the macabre nature of that particular thought, I realized that not only was this album forever linked to my first CD player, but it also gave me hypernostalgic memories of gaming with my group of friends in high school.

"I don't know what it is," I said, "but lately, I've wanted to get together with geeks and do a weekend of serious nonstop gaming."

She glanced over at me. "Oh?"

"Yeah. But this is more than the usual 'I want to play Car Wars' thing. This is a serious --" I searched for the exact word to describe the overwhelming longing, approaching psychophysical need to play, and settled on, "Jones. Like an addict, you know?"

I wiggled around in my seat, and faced her, "It's like there's -- hey, aren't we taking the 110?"

"Whoops." She said, as she quickly changed lanes.

"It's like there's a monkey on my back. A gaming monkey, and he's rattling dice in my ear."

"Like he's shaking them in a Yahtzee cup?" She said.

"Gamers don't use Yahtzee cups," I said, as patiently as I could. "It's more like he's holding a bag of dice in his hand." I held my hand up, and felt the invisible bag in my palm. "And he's rattling the dice around."

"Is it your bag of dice?" she said.

"Yeah! It's totally my bag of dice!" I paused for a moment, and added, "but he's not opening it. Because if he opens it, and touches my dice, I will fucking kill that monkey."

This is totally going into the gaming chapbook for GenCon.

While Anne and I drove down the freeway today, Just Like Heaven came on the radio.

"This was my first CD," I said.

"I know," she said. "You tell me that every time we hear a song from it."

"And one day, you'll hear it, and I won't be here for some reason or another, and you'll wish I was here to tell you."

While we both pondered the macabre nature of that particular thought, I realized that not only was this album forever linked to my first CD player, but it also gave me hypernostalgic memories of gaming with my group of friends in high school.

"I don't know what it is," I said, "but lately, I've wanted to get together with geeks and do a weekend of serious nonstop gaming."

She glanced over at me. "Oh?"

"Yeah. But this is more than the usual 'I want to play Car Wars' thing. This is a serious --" I searched for the exact word to describe the overwhelming longing, approaching psychophysical need to play, and settled on, "Jones. Like an addict, you know?"

I wiggled around in my seat, and faced her, "It's like there's -- hey, aren't we taking the 110?"

"Whoops." She said, as she quickly changed lanes.

"It's like there's a monkey on my back. A gaming monkey, and he's rattling dice in my ear."

"Like he's shaking them in a Yahtzee cup?" She said.

"Gamers don't use Yahtzee cups," I said, as patiently as I could. "It's more like he's holding a bag of dice in his hand." I held my hand up, and felt the invisible bag in my palm. "And he's rattling the dice around."

"Is it your bag of dice?" she said.

"Yeah! It's totally my bag of dice!" I paused for a moment, and added, "but he's not opening it. Because if he opens it, and touches my dice, I will fucking kill that monkey."

From the Vault: there is more than one thing that makes us who we are

I'm bringing a limited-edition chapbook of gaming stories to GenCon, so Andrew and I have been digging through old entries and columns to put it together. This weekend he found and sent me the following old post, with the note: "Nothing to do with gaming, but it's REALLY short and I think we could both use the reminder from time to time"

He's right. I think we can all use the reminder from time to time.

(Imagine the sound of The Vault opening)

It drove me crazy, during the marketing and promotion of Just A Geek, that I couldn't convince the publicity department to stop it with the "It's a Star Trek Bio! Sci-Fi! Sci-Fi!" message and tell readers what I wanted them to get out of the book.

The thing is, a lot of readers who expected that sort of book were pissed because it wasn't what they got, (a few of them were pleasantly surprised, but the ones who wanted a gossipy Star Trek tell-all let me know what an asshole I was for misleading them and wasting their time) but readers who were at least marginally familiar with my blog, who were looking for something different, grokked a different fundamental story in the text. A few days ago, WWdN reader Stephanie wrote me the following, which I reprint with her permision:

What I took from your book is that you shouldn't let one thing you do in your life define you - because we do several different things in our lives and there is more than one thing that makes us who we are.

That's a really big part of my story. I'm really glad you grokked it, Stephanie, and I hope it inspired you and others to follow your dreams, whatever they may be.

(Imagine the sound of The Vault closing)

The thing is, a lot of readers who expected that sort of book were pissed because it wasn't what they got, (a few of them were pleasantly surprised, but the ones who wanted a gossipy Star Trek tell-all let me know what an asshole I was for misleading them and wasting their time) but readers who were at least marginally familiar with my blog, who were looking for something different, grokked a different fundamental story in the text. A few days ago, WWdN reader Stephanie wrote me the following, which I reprint with her permision:

What I took from your book is that you shouldn't let one thing you do in your life define you - because we do several different things in our lives and there is more than one thing that makes us who we are.

That's a really big part of my story. I'm really glad you grokked it, Stephanie, and I hope it inspired you and others to follow your dreams, whatever they may be.

(Imagine the sound of The Vault closing)