Don’t see something you want to play in a particular time slot? Never fear! At the start of each game slot, we gather everyone to organize pickup games — the infamous Donut.
Pickup games are a huge part of Go Play NW. Some people spend the whole con never scheduling a game in advance and just join games at the Donut.
If you want to jump in, just be there at the start time for the game slot and you’ll get in a game. We’ll have people combing the corridors to make sure no gamer gets left behind.
Want to facilitate a pickup game? We’d love you to! Just tell the person organizing the donut that you want to run a game and they’ll get you set up.
Happy gaming!

Just a reminder that if you scheduled a game, post your list of players before 10 pm tonight.

Just like life, 90% of Go Play NW is showing up.
But at least 90% of that 90% is showing up with the right attitude. Being ready to make the fun happen, not waiting for it, and not wasting your time worrying whether you will miss that really cool game.
What percentage does that leave for the other critical ingredient, “bringing a game you’re ready to run”? I may need more than 100% in my pie chart.

So you’re registered for Go Play NW, and it’s less than two weeks away, and you’re thinking: what’s going to happen when I get there? What am I going to play? Who am I going to play with? The future’s mysterious, but you can do something about it.
Step one: sign up on the forums. That’s where all the game planning is taking place.
Take a look at the Scheduled Games. See something you like? Post in that thread and say you want to play. Interested in a game, but don’t see it on the schedule? Go to Brainstorming Games and see if other people want to play too (try searching by the name of the game), or just add it to the schedule yourself and see who signs up.
But the schedule doesn’t tell the whole story. There will be pickup games. Lots of pickup games. Don’t have a plan? Looking for a game? Come join the pickup mob right before each time slot. Want to encourage other people to play in pickup games? Go to the pickup GM threads and say you’re up for running something.
The single, absolute best thing you can do to prepare for Go Play NW is to have a game you know well enough to run and teach others, and be ready to throw down.
With even just one game in your arsenal, you can be a Go Play NW rockstar.

We’ve got a consensus on where and when there will be beer and chatting: Big Time Brewery in the U District, Sunday May 23rd, 7:30 pm and onward.
Come hang out, and talk about all the cool games you’re going to play at Go Play NW…

We’re putting together a social meetup before GPNW so that people can socialize, catch up, kick around ideas for games, and maybe meet some people they haven’t met yet. Yes, and drink beer. Think of it as a pre-Go Play warmup.
Sunday May 23rd is looking like the date, and venues are being kicked around right now. You got fingers, you can type, so you can vote too y’know.

A game sign-up system that makes everybody happy may be the Holy Grail of a con, not only because it promises to cure the kingdom of all ills, but because it might be impossible to find. Literally mythical.
In previous years we had GMs/facilitators submit games they wanted to run early on. We posted that line-up and let anticipation simmer for a week or two, then on the appointed hour of the appointed day we opened the floodgates and let players sign up for the games they’d been drooling over.
That is a fairly standard game sign-up system, but it creates the illusion that the games listed when sign-up opens are the only games that will happen: people who aren’t fast enough throw up their hands in despair because (apparently) there aren’t any games left to play. On no, you’re screwed!
In reality more games got added as the days went on, but even more importantly, lots of what got played were pickup games thrown together during the con — by my rough calculation somewhere between a third or a half of the games at GPNW 2009 were not on the schedule beforehand.* The appearance of scarcity was an illusion, and even though the anticipation built excitement, it might not be good excitement.
So we’re trying something a little different this year.
There’s going to be no early submission for games, no gap between listing games you want to run and people signing up for them. We’ll have a forum where people who want to run/facilitate games can pick a slot and announce, and then other people can respond in those threads to say they want to play or ask questions. There won’t be a big list of games that looks like the schedule when the forum opens: it’ll accumulate over time.
There’ll also be an area where you can brainstorm without committing to a slot. Throw out ideas and see if people are interested, or even request for someone to facilitate a game you’ve already been interested in but don’t understand well enough to run yourself.
Will this be a better method? We’ll try it and see. Either way, our motto is “no gamer left behind,” so if you come to Go Play NW you will game if you step up.
* There were about 70 people at GPNW 2009, so if we assume 5 people per game there should be 14 games in the average slot, but only about 7-9 were listed online. After the event the pickup games were added to the online schedule to show what actually got played.

As of last Friday, Go Play NW 2010 was just thirteen weeks away. Which seems like a long time, but blink and you’ll be rolling dice, assuming you remembered to register…
Thirteen weeks also happens to be a quarter of a year, making this the last quarter of the year-long odyssey to bring hawt gaming to the table, yet again.
Were we napping during those other quarters? In a word, no. Okay there was some compulsory recovery-napping right after GPNW 2009 (you too, I’m guessing), but those pictures of the new venue were taken last July, remember? Team Go Play does not sleep.
Tony, Phil or Ping could walk you through the “four seasons of Go Play NW.” Your eyes would bug out. Spoiler: there is some rest and relaxation during season two, but also contracts to sign.

In addition to being an awesome gaming space, there’s another nice thing about our new venue which I’m sure everyone who helped with setup last year will be glad to hear: no table & chair load-in.
That’s right, no hauling splinter-spraying disks of rough hewn lumber up endless flights of stairs in the middle of summer. No fire brigades wrestling with racks and racks and racks of chairs under the cruel lash of Pharaoh.
Richard Hugo House has most of the rooms already set up. They’ve got extra tables and chairs that we’ll bring out as needed, so there will be some setup, but it will be a veritable cakewalk compared to last year.
Oh, and to my brothers & sisters from Table & Chair Deathmarch 2009: much love. Pour some liquor. Peace.