Mr. Geek Girl What Rules and I went to Gamestorm in Vancouver, WA this weekend.  And boy, did I need that.  With all the illness and the to do with NorwesCon, I just needed a chance to relax somewhere with no expectations on my person.

We drove down in a series of snowstorms Friday evening, and just hung out with one of our AmberConNW buddies, Pol.  Just being chill.

Saturday we got up and went to play Prime Time Adventures with Pol, his wife Karrin and some other folks.  We came up with the series Funkula, about a nine-piece Funk Band that killed vampires.  Basically in this world, evil was defeated with the power of Funk, and defeating evil powered Funk in a self-perpetuating cycle.   It was a blast.  Essentially, in that world The Red Hot Chili Peppers used to be vampire killers, and then right after Blood Sugar Sex Magick they were turned into vampires.  Hey, our world, we make it up.

The rest of Saturday I didn’t really do much until a 10pm Horror Rules game.  Horror Rules is a game where you play horror movie trope characters.  This particular game was a total meatgrinder, where we all just went in knowing we were going to die.  When it was down to one of my characters and one other guy, we were given 30 seconds to convince the other, dead, characters that we were the one who should live.  My impassioned plea for them to save themselves from my narcissistic, criminal ass for all eternity came to nought when my competition said that he was obsessed with jigsaw puzzles with ducks on them, and would talk about them forever.  Bastard.  I did get a lovely pair of monster eye deely-boppers out of the deal.

This morning I and several of my female friends attended the “Lady Gamer Tea” which was lovely.  We met several really awesome girl gamers from the Portland area.  (Hi, guys!)  Then we attended a panel called “Why does gaming mostly appeal to guys?”  The title of which we took exception to.  Fortunately all of the panelists felt this way as well.  However, if I have to hear one more guy talk about how girls play with Barbies until they’re ready for something more, I am going to kick him in the shins.  We kind of took over, explaining that girls had been more or less excluded from gaming for years.  Nearly every woman there had a story about not being able to game when she first wanted to because she had been told that girls didn’t game or couldn’t game.

After the panels, four of us girls ran up to Powell’s for some book shopping, and then came back for some zombie gaming run by my Boy.  We only lost one character.  Woot!

All in all Gamestorm was a brilliant experience.  I, and all the other women I talked to, felt really welcomed there.  The gaming was brilliant.   People were really super nice.  It just a lot of fun!  I highly recommend this convention to any girl gamers, experienced or newbies.