Mostly I fussed over the panel track again at Big Bad Con so that’s what you’re going to hear about.

Friday night’s “You Don’t Look Like a Geek” with Tanya DePass, of I Need Diverse Games, Jamahl Brown, Kristine Hassell, and Brie Sheldon went super well, where they talked about their experiences being nerds and not cis white dudes.  It was great hearing their perspectives about how their interactions with geek culture have gone.  Tanya is planning on streaming video from it, so I will try to post a link when I find out where it is.  It was a fantastic panel.

Saturday we did “Gaming & Emotional Safety,” giving a synopsis of sorts of the posts I’ve done here, and adding the experiences of other folks to that.  Brie Sheldon and Misha Bushyager did that one with me.  We discussed the X-Card, Script Change, Lines and Veils, how to handle a triggered player, and how to frame discussions of what the triggered player might need.

Then we had “Gaming with the Next Generation,” which had Misha Bushyager, Meera Berry and Ogre Whiteside (otherwise known as the Geek Husband What Rules).  They talked about how to engage with kids, pick age appropriate game subjects and styles, and also about the surprising bloodthirstiness of 8 year old girls.  One audience member proudly showed them her two pages of notes at the end of the panel.

After that was a break and then, “GM-ing Advice” with Nadja Otikor, Kate Baker and myself.  We discussed how to deal with problem players, and how to curate your games.  Because Nadja GMs mainly on Twitch, she talked about how that works, from player selection to streaming and production work on those streams.  We talked about the differences between con games and your home gaming group, and how to handle difficult players and situations, and how sometimes you have to practice how to shut down bad behavior.

Then we had “Adult Themes in Games,” with Jason Morningstar, Brie Sheldon, Ogre Whiteside and me.  We discussed that there are more types of “adult” games than just sexy, and how to negotiate to do those, how to talk like adults, and hopefully we did not bobble the question of how do you handle someone who is not a POC who wants to play a POC and you know they’re going to fall back on stereotype and racist tropes.  Hopefully we did not fuck that up too badly, and not having a person of color on that panel was my fuck up, I apologize, and should I be allowed to run programming here in the future, I will not repeat that mistake. Thank you for pointing that out to me.

That was the end of panels.  But the rest of the convention was just a great relaxing time to not stress reconnect with friends,

I really enjoy coming down here and working on Big Bad Con.  It’s so nice (to try) to create inclusive and intersectional paneling with no pushback.  In fact it is heavily encouraged.  And where the audience doesn’t feel entitled to push back against those attempts at inclusivity.

I really enjoy this convention and I hope that they let me come back next year.

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