Author D&D II: Immortal ConFusion
Back in January of 2012, the ConFusion convention in Detroit had Epic Fantasy as it’s annual theme, calling together such a gathering of my fantasy rivals (curses upon them) that I snarkily suggested on twitter we should all get together for a game of Dungeons & Dragons. It was a joke, but the response was so overwhelming we decided to make it happen.
With such an epic gathering of egos, the only person I knew who could instill some sense of order to the chaos was USCG Lt. Myke Cole, who just so happened to be debuting his own fantasy novel that month. The two of us begged, borrowed and stole to put the event together at the last minuteand film it. You can read more on the first game (and watch it!) here.
At the time, I didn’t expect that many people to be interested in watching a bunch of professional nerds sit around eating Doritos and playing D&D, but close to 25,000 views proved me wrong, and a tradition was born.
This year, with help from the con staff, we planned a little further in advance. After cringing at the low quality of the first recording, I kicked in a bit of a budget from my own coffers to hire some real camera and sound people in addition to Erin McConnell, the fantastic editor who turned the first recording into something watchable.
The 2013 con, dubbed Immortal Confusion, had a different guest roster, so we rotated in some new players to fill the empty chairs. Myke Cole and Saladin Ahmed took the reins again as DMs. Returning adventurers included: Pat Rothfuss, Jim C. Hines and yours truly. To fill out the party we invited Mary Robinette Kowal, Sam Sykes, and Diana Rowland.
There was no shortage of writers lobbying for the final seat at the table, but I like to do something special each year for the Worldbuilders charity, and after chatting about it with charity founder Pat Rothfuss, we decided to auction off the seat off to a fan. the lucky winner was Dave Wohlreich, who (thank heavens) turned out to be an awesome addition to the game. We also hope to release a small number of DVDs of the event for the charity at some point later in the year.
You may notice that all the players in this year’s game are wearing Hawaiian shirts. This was done in solidarity for 2012 player author Jay Lake, who at the time was running an Acts of Whimsy campaign on Kickstarter to raise money for genome sequencing to help battle his recurring cancer.
This video comes at a difficult time for Jay and the SF community that loves him. Last week, Jay received his terminal diagnosis, and has begun making end of life plans. He speaks quite frankly about it, and a wide range of other things, over on his blog, which I encourage you to read. Despite everything Jay is going through, his outward face throughout the ordeal has been one of vast courage; an inspiration to us all.
Special thanks to our ConFusion liaison Dave Kletcha, video editor Erin McConnell, Producer Zack Takenaga and his film crew, Pete Mitchell who provided the song “Critical Hit” (You can buy the full album here), and of course my assistant Meg, who coordinated the whole project.
So what you waiting for? Indulge yourself for the better part of an hour and see what happens when fantasy authors hang out:
I can’t watch this at work, but look forward to the opportunity to do so. I wish I had been there to witness it
Next year we may do it as an official con panel with an audience.
This is hilarious! I loved the first one, and this is even better! Too bad you didn’t get to finish the adventure. Maybe you should consider doing it as it’s own event so you can spend the entire day and get to finish an adventure, maybe live-stream it for charity or something like that.
Way too much fun. It is nice to see you favorite authors having a great time as well helping charities.
I second Gary’s idea. But unfortunately, getting that many people to coordinate an entire day is nigh impossible. It’s still fun to watch.
My house mates now think I am crazy… Thanks for that. Sam Sykes and his oily “Brown Brown” beer had me canning myself.
I really hope this can become a longer full event, Gary Chambers’ idea of a charity live stream is a great one!
Yes, the streaming idea is awesome.