BaltiCon

This weekend I head out to BaltiCon. This is my home town con and I will be covering it for the ConMen. I will also be sitting on several panels for gaming and new media. BaltiCon is a medium sized con and I enjoy it because it differs from most of the other cons I go to. GenCon, TotalCon, and OGC are all heavy gaming cons and Dragon*Con is a media con. BaltiCon is a science fiction con and has a huge new media portion to it. It also has a budding Skeptic track that I plan to participate in next year.

The down side to BaltiCon is that it is poorly organized. My events for GenCon are already locked in. Dragon*Con will be locked in in the next few weeks. Both TotalCon and OGC are small cons in comparison and they are handled far better. Hell, my OGC stuff is already locked in. How bad is it? Well, I just received my schedule for BaltiCon and it's 4 days away. Also, they have a game track that focuses on RPGs but almost zero RPG events. I might try to fix that as well next year but we'll see.

That said, BaltiCon is pretty cool and a lot of fun. Their are a ton of science track with some pretty qualified scientists. You may not know it but Maryland has a huge science community; especially medicine. But if you want to have the most fun meet me at the bar!

If you live anywhere near Baltimore you should swing down this weekend, check out the con and have some fun. If nothing else, find me in the bar in the evening chatting it up with the likes of Scott Sigler, George Hrab, and Paul Cooley. You mention Studio187 and I'll buy you a drink!

Hardcore Gamer

For those that don't know, I game every Friday night. Me and the boys meet up, get some grub, and some choice alcohol; usually Grog or some type of rum. Now, as the days have run long our group has gone through some changes. Not all of us can make it every week; at least in the flesh.

Welcome to the 21st century. We have come to embrace Skype and when one (or more) of the boys can't make it for one reason or another they Skype in. This has worked for the most part and has been a lot more successful than we ever thought it would be. However, technology is a fickle bird don't you know and we found that out just the other night.

Cory and Steve had to play remotely, nothing new. John and I got together at his place and all was well. Around eleven or so John's network crapped out. Why? Who the hell knows, but it that SOB just did not want to cooperate. End of game right? Wrong.

Like I said, it's the modern age and I'm a modern guy, so I whipped out my iPhone and fired up my Skype app. Back in the game but being modern and being prepared are two different things. My battery was on 50% so our time was limited and I did not have my charger with me. But hey, game on bitches. About an hour into our game a storm rolled in and kicked out the lights. Frell.  Again, technology is a fickle bird.

So there we were, in the dark, gaming over an iPhone. I've had better games. Well, it is kinda hard to roll dice and read your character sheet in the dark and John's flashlight was not exactly awesome. Just then I remembered my emergency bag in my car. I keep an emergency flashlight in that bag. The kind that has several modes and such. So I went out and got it and it was again game on!

We played about another hour or so until my phone crapped out. All-in-all we were able to mostly salvage an evening bent on disaster. What is the moral of this story? Never say die.

Couldn't get together... Used Skype. Network crapped out... Used cell phone. Power went out... Used emergency flashlight. Never. Say. Die.

My name is Peter Bryant. I am a gamer. Don't fuck with my game. Don't let anyone fuck with yours.

The New Page

It's finally time for a brand new page and a brand new look. Change is hard, especially when the only web creation tool you have is outdated, discontinued, and basically sucked to begin with. For a while I was relying on FaceBook and G+ to get my message out. I still do but I really needed a webpage of my own.

So what is a guy to do? A guy who is too busy making art to make a page about his art. Ugh!

I'll tell you what he does. He finds a service that does all of the hard work for him, gives him more than before, and actually costs less. Bazinga! SquareSpace is the new host for Studio187 and the reason you have this slick space to look at and why you will now be getting blogs. Yay, I'm finally a blogger. Every Sunday evening I will post a new take on something Studio187 related and will post additional blogs as the mood strikes me.

If you've been a fan of Studio187 thanks for your continued support. If you're a new fan, welcome and thanks for joining us. I have so much awesome coming that I can barely stand it. Those of you who have been around a while have heard those words before and have seen some false starts and some spurts of work but this time is very different. Studio187 is now an official business and I am generating content like crazy.

I have one product on the market called Cube of Death. I helped launch Blasphemous Cocktails in April. My first Kickstarter for Rogue Chess will launch in mid-May. Mythic Steel is looking to launch on Kickstarter in July and the revamp of Cube of Death is slated for later this year. On top of all that, I will be finishing up my contributions to the Savage Worlds edition of Fringeworthy.

Busy, busy, busy. Yeah, Studio187 is kicking some ass this year. Welcome to the party pal.