Okay, we’re ready to make this official: we will be holding an online Go Play NW event this year the weekend of Friday October 1 through Sunday October 3. We’ll be using a dedicated Discord server as our base of operations, and we’ll be able to have video, audio-only, and text-only channels for hosting the games.

This year’s event will focus on organizing games through “the donut”, in which we get everyone together and ask for volunteers to step forward and pitch a game they’d like to run or facilitate, and then the rest of the players choose a game to join. Our volunteer staff members Star and ET have worked hard to develop tools and procedures to help make this happen smoothly.

The event will kick off with a social gathering on Friday evening that will give you time to catch up with old friends and meet new ones, and give us time to get everyone checked in for the weekend. Then on Saturday and Sunday we’ll have the game sessions. We’ll announce full details on the schedule and procedures soon!

This will be a paid ticketed event; we’ll be opening registration on Friday September 3. Revenues from this event go towards our regular expenses to keep functioning as an organization; the particular expenses to set up and run this event; and our reserves so that we can host in-person events again as soon as it’s safe to do so—hopefully next year!

In the meantime, in order to help ensure this all works as planned, we’re holding a beta test of our event Discord, and we need around 15 to 20 volunteers to help make that happen! Please join our regular Go Play NW discussion Discord at https://discord.gg/vwrrF2q and check out the #make-it-happen channel to learn more and volunteer!

We’re very excited to bring the Go Play NW experience to you online this year, and we hope you’ll join us!