Were you at Go Play NW in 2007? If so, you can help us out! Way back in 2007 we didn’t use nifty tools like online forums for scheduling. As a result, we don’t really know what games were played. We’re reconstructing events on the Go Play NW forum for historical purposes. Please come and tell us what you played in 2007!
And while you’re at it, let us know about pickup games you played in which may not be recorded in the archives for other years. We’ve all had some great times at Go Play NW and it would be really great to have a complete archive to reminisce, ruminate, and boast over.

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’ve extended the closing date of our room block at the Silver Cloud Hotel. You now have until May 24 to book rooms at our discounted event rate.

Silver Cloud Hotel – Broadway
1100 Broadway Avenue
Standard Single King: $159.00
Standard Double Queen: $159.00
Call Reservations (800.590.1801) or use the online reservation system with our Group ID:
Group ID: GOPLAYNW
Password: GOPLAYNW

See Getting There & Lodging for more information and other lodging options.

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.

Archives are cool, and we have a lot of archives. It’s just plain fun to peruse the pictures and all the games that people played. I didn’t know John ran a version of Danger Patrol in 2007. I didn’t know Chris Bennett has podcasted about every GPNW.
But by no means are the archives complete. There’s got to be more out there, especially all the pick-up games. We purposely put the archives in the forums so everyone can add whatever they want. I’m already enjoying the cascading effect: Johnzo remembered a missing In a Wicked Age game from GPNW 2008 which in turn jogged my memory of another missing IAWA game from the same year.

I don’t need the archives all the time, but when I want them, I’m glad we have them. Especially right now only a few weeks before the next GPNW, it’s a way to look back at the old games and old GPNWs in between thinking about the games and fun for the next one.
Oh, and in the course of writing this post (I kid you not), I found some pictures of the GPNW 2007 Danger Patrol game. How’s that for kismet?

UGh-Graagh!
Uggka uggka Gragh GRAuGH. Grunf? Hrrr grugfh arr grack urgh grungh hree grugh?
Grough! Grrrrrrr.

The Go Play NW 2010 t-shirt is here! John decided to pay homage to the ol’ Sasquatch for our fourth year, and just check out the results.
Register and get your very own. If you’re already coming, it’s not too late to add t-shirts to your registration (order by May 24).
For everyone who can’t make it or who wants alternate apparel, we’ll have a link soon to the online shirt store.

The Go Play NW forums are up! Brainstorm games, share cool places to eat, or just weep about how long you have to wait until the fun starts.
There’s a separate forum RSS feed, plus you can see the latest posts on the right hand side of this page. See, there they are!
We’ve also made forums for all the previous years to archive all the fond memories. If you have old discussions from other forums, blog posts, pictures, etc., make a thread, put up a link and share the love.
Why So Yellow?
Anyone can join the forums, but we configured it so that posts by users registered for GPNW 2010 look different from those who aren’t. That way you’ll know if the person you’re talking to is even committed to coming.
When you sign up for the forums, we’ll check to see if you’re registered. If you use the same email to sign up on the forums as you did when you registered for the event, we’ll be able to match you up. If we miss you, drop us a line and we’ll tag you proper.

My little heart is leaping with joy that Hugo House has a water fountain. Huh? Shouldn’t I be more excited by the gaming spaces?
Oh yeah… gaming spaces… sure… but…
<she flashes back to 2009>
Filling the water jugs at 7:30am for the daily drive-by assault to chuck them at the theatre from my double-parked car. Vigilantly monitoring water levels all day with a steely Fremen eye.
</flashback>
Oh no, sir. Not this year. We have terraformed this desert planet.

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.