Northeast Wars X

After judicious application of Random.org’s random number generator, we have determined the winner of the drawing from the pool of respondents to our Northeast Wars IX attendee survey to be Danny Campbell, of Rhode Island. Danny has won a free pass to Northeast Wars X in April 2010.

Thanks again to Danny and everyone else who took the time to fill out our survey. Your answers will help us make Northeast Wars X even better than last year by giving more of what you want and less of what you don’t want. Isn’t it great how these things work?

If you haven’t yet filled out the attendee feedback survey for Northeast Wars IX, now’s the time to do so. Just hop over to Survey Monkey and click some buttons. The survey closes at the end of June. Then we’ll use the information provided to better tailor Northeast Wars X to your interests and desires.

And don’t forget: respondents who provide their email address are entered in a drawing for a free badge to the 2010 convention. Go to it!

For Northeast Wars IX, Doug Duprey, host of Design & Conquer, part of the Online Gaming Radio network, recorded during the Saturday afternoon gaming slot. In addition to that on-the-spot material, Doug also got the chance to speak with the guests of honor, artist Melissa Benson and RPG designer Steve Kenson.

To listen to the episode, visit the Design & Conquer page, scroll down to the entry for Monday, April 16th, and click the “Download this episode” link.

In the interests of making Northeast Wars X even better, we want to hear from this year’s attendees. What did you enjoy? What do you want to see more of? Stuff like that.

Pursuant to this goal, we have prepared a short survey about Northeast Wars IX. Just click this link, mark your answers accordingly and press the Submit button. To sweeten the pie, everyone who completes the survey and includes their email address will be entered in a drawing for a free pass to Northeast Wars X in April 2010.

It’s just that easy.

Our photo album grows ever larger, this time thanks to our own SheepLord, AKA Brennan, AKA Painter of Gobbos. Over the weekend of Northeast Wars IX, Brennan managed to tear himself away from the miniatures room long enough to snap some great pictures. Like, for example, this shot of a player really getting into his dancer character during the Serenity roleplaying adventure Reaver’s Dance. Said dance involved a pole, apparently.

Side note: is it true that if you stand up during a roleplaying game, it counts as LARPing?

You can see more of Brennan’s photography in the Northeast Wars IX photo album, or view the whole stream over at our Flickr page.

Wordle is a web application that generates a collage out of a mass of text, like, say the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, or the Call of Cthulhu corebook. In our case, this word cloud comes from the Northeast Wars IX convention book — which, by the way, you can download here if you want to see what was on offer last year. Just click on the image to the right to see it in greater detail.

The bigger a word is, the more frequently it’s used in the text. Going by our wordle, events scheduled in the post meridian seem pretty popular; so few gamers are morning people! These word clouds can also be customized, in that you can select the font type, color palette and even general orientation of the words.

There are forum threads of people who converted roleplaying game books into wordles, over on RPG.net, ENWorld and Storygames.

The past weekend of gaming may still be fresh in everyone’s minds, but that’s no reason not to take a flip through the photo album. Yes, pictures snapped by staff and conventioneers are already rolling in. Take a gander at what’s in the Northeast Wars Flickr stream, as well as what Andrew Liptak, our stormtrooper and unofficial part time photographer, took with his own camera. As memory cards are off-loaded, there will be more to come in the future, so keep checking back.

If you have pictures from Northeast Wars IX, or any previous year, feel free to send a link or copies our way at northeastwars@gmail.com. We’ll be very happy to host them in our Flickr account — with due credit, natch — or link to your website or gallery.

And so Northeast Wars IX closes out. The battlemats are rolled up, the miniatures safely stowed and that lucky d20 is swathed in its silken shroud until the call to battle sounds again. A huge thanks goes out to everyone who made this year such a rousing success. Many conventioneers commented repeatedly how much fun they had and how impressed they were by the quality of gaming going on. So thank you to our sponsors, volunteers, attendees and especially the GMs who make the convention worth going to. You make it all worthwhile and we thank you profusely.

In other news, here on the forty-second floor of 1 Northeast Wars Plaza, staffers already look to 2010. Yes, that’s right. 2010. Northeast Wars will be back, this time April 9th through the 11th. Circle it on your calendars — once you’ve gone out and bought 2010 calendars.

In the meantime, keep visiting the website, as we will be posting throughout the year to bring you the latest developments on Northeast Wars X, including an extended timeline, special events and maybe even a contest or two. You can also keep up by friending us on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, or joining our LiveJournal or web forum communities.

Live, on the ground, everybody at Northeast Wars is having tons of fun. The board game and RPG room has been rocking all day long, there’s all sorts of mayhem in the miniatures room and the impromptu video gaming corner has really exploded since it got running a few hours ago. It’s really weird hearing competing tracks from Guitar Hero II and Rock Band at the same time.

If you couldn’t make it this weekend, or are here and don’t already have enough to do, check out the conversation on Twitter. Just search for the hashtag #newars.

Let’s run the numbers, shall we?

• 105 games on the schedule.
• 53 GMs making this the best convention yet.
• 32 pages in the conbook.
• 12 hours until the first slot kicks off tonight.
• 3 (anna half) months in the making.
• 1 place to be this weekend: Northeast Wars IX!