It’s been an exciting few months for Leigh Grossman and Wildside gaming; every time we get ready to send out a newsletter, something else dramatic happens. There’s a lot going on, between new books, trips around the world, and upcoming events and publications.

Wildside Overseas!
In January Leigh was in the Philippines, where (in spite of being sick enough to run through two boxes of tissues and lose his voice halfway through) he ran a lively Wildside demo on January 12 as part of a monthly gathering of gamers in the Metro Manila area.

The crowded demo ran from 3:00 to midnight and evolved into a “circus performers on the run” adventure. (Clowns are always fun.) Special thanks to Mark, Vlad, “Howl” and all our other new friends who attended.

There is a thriving metro Manila gaming community, and Wildside gamers should feel free to drop by their terrific website and chat a bit about Wildside Wildside gaming experiences.

If you’d like to read Leigh’s long account of his adventures in the Philippines, you can click here.

Conventions.
Because of the Philippines trip, Leigh had to skip Boskone this year, but he wasn’t about to miss Lunacon in March. Since Leigh turned over the programming reins to longtime Wildsidegamer Nuance this year, he’ll expected to relax a bit more at this year’s con than over the past five years. At least until Nuance decided to program him for seven consecutive hours on Friday night as payback for handing the programming stress over to her. Nuance is delightfully evil, as those of you who have met her at Wildside demos can attest. (As can her husband Shaughn, who she met at one of those demos....)

The Wildside demo at Lunacon was crowded this year, at one point filling three tables at once. We had a mix of newcomers and returnees from previous years, and Myke’s popular “Genie Island” adventure drew a particular crowd. You can see more pictures here.

Leigh also did a reading and book signing (where many copies of fantasy novels The Green Lion and The Golden Thorns were inscribed), participated in tributes for late friends David Honigsberg and Robert Legault, and sat on a number of panels, including one on online learning - a timely topic since he and Rowena are in the process of developing online learning projects both for schools in the Philippines and in partnership with a science fiction magazine in the U.S. (Hopefully more news soon about those projects.)

As usual, Leigh also hosted the Swordsmith party at Lunacon. Apparently word is getting out beyond the science fiction community about some of the Swordsmith parties over the years, though; apparently one longtime attendee mentioned it in Leigh’s Wikipedia entry. This year’s party did live up to the tradition.

Even more excitement: Leigh will be a Guest of Honor at next year’s Lunacon.

Upcoming Conventions.
Speaking of guest appearances, Leigh will be one of the guests of honor at Uni-Con in New Hampshire on April 26. Uni-Con is a one-day convention on the campus of Franklin Pierce University, run in part by Joe T., who ran a fun Wildside game at Connecticon last year set in Sarajevo in 1914. Other guests of honor include old friend Jeanne Cavelos and Walter Koenig of Star Trek fame. Pre-registration is only $15, or $25 at the door. Come visit for a day of fun and Wildside gaming. Leigh will be doing a reading at the convention as well.

Wildside has also been invited to run games as part of The Gathering at Origins, the massive (30,000 people) gaming convention held in Columbus, Ohio every summer. We’ll have a crew there basically around the clock from June 25-29, including Leigh, Nuance, summer intern Kim, and Wildside authors R. Scott Peoples and Rob Altomare - both of whom will be debuting new books! You can buy a membership at the convention now, and sign up for individual events shortly. The Wildside gaming schedule includes the public debuts of Crusade of Kings and Koboldly Where Gnome Has Gone Before, Leigh’s “Revenge of the Mimes” scenario (along with other, somewhat more serious adventures), an adventure set in the world of Beowulf, and many other scenarios. We’ll also be running workshops on GMing, worldbuilding, spellwriting, and using roleplaying in the classroom. For a look at our schedule, click here, or to sign up for games, click here.

Of course, there has to be Wildside at Connecticon on August 1-3, which has been so good to us over the years. Once again Max will be running the gaming rooms, and once again, we’ll have a big presence. You can sign up for a game this year, or just drop by and join one of the games in progress. If you’d like to learn the game better, get your copy autographed by the author, or just drop by to say hello, feel free to come by.

As always, check the Wildside events page for updated listings, or if you use Google Calender, search for “Wildside Game” to view or add our calendar of events.

If you’d like to volunteer to help run Wildside at a convention we’ll be attending, let us know. For that matter, let us know if you’ll be running Wildside at a convention we’re not attending, so we can list you on our events page.

Other Appearances.
Leigh will be a program participant at Readercon on July 18-20, a small but intense literary convention in Burlington, Massachusetts.

More importantly, Leigh and Rowena will be getting married a week after Connecticon, so don’t expect a lot of fall convention appearances or demos.

New things on the website.
More than a hundred new spells have been added to the free downloads section of the website, as well as to the searchable spell database (new summoning spells are about to go in as well). Also new in the downloads section is an expanded psi table used in Myke’s “Genie Island” adventure and approved for regular game use. In the samples section you can now download excerpts from Crusade of Kings, Koboldly Where Gnome Has Gone Before, and The Wildside Book of Loot.

If you’d like, you can send new spells for approval to wildside@swordsmith.com. Include the spell name and spell description, classes you think the spell should appear in, and your name so we can give you credit. Spells that are accepted for regular game use will be posted to the site, with costs and editied descriptions. By sending us the spell, you’re giving us the right to edit and reprint it on the website and in future editions of Wildside gaming books.

New books.
Koboldly Where Gnome Has Gone Before and Crusade of Kings will both be debuting at Origins. Koboldly, by longtime West Coast Wildside gamer Robert Altomare, is a pun-filled romp of an adventure suitable for convention play or folks new to Wildside, while Crusade of Kings is a rich campaign resource for GMs interested in building a setting based on the first three Crusades. Crusades author R. Scott Peoples is a Colorado historian best known for his popular weekly history column that appears on the DailyKos website.

Publishing and teaching.
While Leigh’s series of essays on publishing hasn’t been added to in a while, there are several new entries in the works should his crazy deadlines ever lift (hah!). He’s also teaching the book publishing class at UConn again this spring, along with his course in science fiction literature. The SF course will be repeated online over the summer (he’ll be teaching it from Origins, among other places); next fall Leigh will be teaching fantasy and writing.

Other demos and workshops.
We mostly run demos in the Northeast, but occasionally wander elsewhere as travel schedules permit. If you’d like to see a Wildside demo at your local store, drop us a line and we’ll see what we can do. We look for about 10 players - enough to run two games - at demos. And obviously the stores are happier if some of you show them some love by buying Wildside books. Occasionally we run full-day demos for specific groups that want to learn the game. (These demos are closed to the public and not listed on the events page.) Usually we do them here in northeast Connecticut. We’re looking at starting a series of all-day workshops for Wildside GMs, also here in Connecticut. If you’re interested in participating, drop us an email for more details.

Thanks for reading.
Feel free to pass this on, and we hope to see you at a signing, demo, convention, or other event soon.