Though there are two parts to the name of this blog, I tend to focus pretty heavily on the Gamer over the Traveler half. Though I see The Gamer Traveler as travel writing for the gaming community (hmm, new tag line?) the blog has followed the same formula that I established when I started the podcast, which means the travel gets filtered through the gaming lens. I’m fine with that, but I would also like to expand the travel-writing part of TGT in the future.

Earlier this year I joined the Travel Bloggers Exchange (TBEX), a social network meant to bring together travel bloggers of all levels and scope. Back on July 26, they held the first TBEX event in Chicago the same weekend as BlogHer 09 Conference. The one-day con (and really, that’s what it was, they just didn’t have any gaming – yet) was a success with over 100 bloggers dropping in from all over the US and from international locations as well. The #TBEX hashtag was flying like mad that Sunday (imagine a conference room full of bloggers most of which are on Twitter as well) with comments, tweet-by-tweet transcripts, pics and general chatter that, much like when #GenCon was around, made me wish I was there. Good news have come my way.

TBEX 2010 has been announced for the weekend of July 26-27, 2010 in New York City!

The venue is still TBA, but NYC is a great location for this conference, not only for the fantastic tourist attractions for all the visitors, not only for the great meeting spaces the city boasts all over the place, but also because my sister-in-law lives up there so I can bring my wife along and she can spend time with her while I geek out on travel blogging goodness all weekend.

Though June 2010 is still a while away and I’ve no idea what the future will bring, I believe I will be pre-registering for the conference at the early-bird rate. Worst case scenario, I can’t go and my fee helps fund this con, from which I still derive benefit through the video recordings of the seminaries and such. But I’d love to go. I haven’t been to New York in about 4 years and that’s just too long. Besides, NYC has really improved their bicycling infrastructure in the city and I’d love to go check that out for myself.

You can find TBEX on the web, on Facebook and on Twitter.

[[ This story originally published at The Gamer Traveler - http://www.thegamertraveler.com ]]

The Gamer Traveler only travels with Geeky Clean soaps.

I told the tale of how I came across Geeky Clean soaps in a previous post, and I promised that I would do a review as well. Here we go!

Just from looking at them, Geeky Clean soaps are unique; they look good (when was the last time you said that about a soap?), and are packaged simply but nicely with themed wrappers and clear cellophane. They are something you can feel good about giving as a gift because they look luxurious. At about 4″ x 2″ in size, these are hefty pieces of geeky hygiene.

When you open a Geeky Clean soap, the scent is overwhelming, and the three soaps I had the pleasure of trying out–Mana, Health and Barbarian Scrub–smelled just amazing. And of course, let’s not forget or ignore what makes these soaps geeky, the embedded d20 die right in the center, floating in a sea of colored and scented glycerin (and all the other not-animal-tested, Vegan-friendly ingredients). It’s a basic, solid-colored die like the ones gamers already have hundreds of, but that did not diminish my glee at knowing I’d have 3 more dice once the review process was done!

I loved all three soaps I used. They each had individual scent profiles that set them apart, but they were all just fantastic. Health has a sharp Nag Champa scent that really revitalizes (I used this one after a long day of plane travel and it perked me up) with a hint of coconut somewhere in the background. Mana brings the coconut oil to the forefront and makes for a very crisp, refreshing shower. Barbarian Scrub has spiced orange as its primary scent and the citrusy kick was just great, not to mention the apricot seed scrubbies floating in the soap which felt just so good. If I had to pick my favorite of the three I tried, I’d go with Barbarian Scrub.

I know, it’s hard to review soaps without wandering into TMI land.

Each soap lasted between 10-12 washes (consider I am 6′ tall and of portly size when figuring out how many washes that would translate into based on your size), and I’m happy to say that from start to finish, each soap held its scent wonderfully. I had no problem using the soaps, but my wife found them way too big for her hand and kept dropping them until they’d shrunk to about 2/3 of their original size. The d20 die does not interfere with the soaping process at the start, but about 3-4 washes in, it would start to protrude from the surface of the soap. Personally I did not mind; the die kinda gives you a massage as you lather up, but my wife hated it and I’d always end up pushing it out about midway through the soap’s lifespan. And while I have no complaints about the soaps in general, I did not feel at all the exfoliating spheres supposed to be in Health, and found myself wanting more apricot seeds (and better distributed throughout the whole soap) in Barbarian Scrub.

Priced at around $5, these aren’t soaps for day-to-day bathing, but they make a perfect and utterly geeky gift that’s useful as well.

Days of Wonder wants to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their train travel boardgame by hosting a Ticket to Ride World Championship in Paris, France on June of 2010. There will be eight National Championships (North America, France, Germany, UK, Benelux, Spain and Poland), yielding the top eight players in the world, plus two alternates per region in case the National champion cannot make it.

Each National champion will receive air/train fare to and hotel accommodations in Paris, a National Champion trophy and a set of gold-plated Ticket to Ride train game pieces with a matching score marker. The World Championship winner will receive a trip for two on the legendary and luxurious Orient-Express Train, from London, England to Venice, Italy, including a two-night stay at both ends of the journey. If that prize alone is not reason enough to play in this tournament, I don’t know what is!

Check out the Days of Wonder site for full rules and Regional Championship information and bust out those Ticket to Ride boardgames and start practicing!

I was watching a show on castles on History Channel, and they said something that really stuck with me: “Castles were some of the most imposing structures ever built and they inspired awe in the population.” I was immediately transported back to York, England, back in 2001.

We’d been in England for four days, spending three of them in London. I’d seen Westminster Cathedral, Buckminster Palace, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge – all of them structures of impressive grandeur full of history. But I had taken them all in stride, something I attribute to the general “wow-I’m-in-Europe” factor. Then we took a train ride north to York, and the moment I entered the city through its medieval gate, something shifted. As we later walked up the main street and York Minster Cathedral came into view, I had to stop; I couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything but stare. I was in awe.

Awe is a feeling of wonder, reverence, amazement and/or dread (or more accurately, all those at the same time) experienced when in the presence of something that transcends us. In looking at York Minster, I suddenly realized I was standing in front of a 500-year old structure (and that’s only in its finalized form; parts of it date back another 200 to 300 years), in a town that is still surrounded by its original medieval gate, in York, in Europe. I saw York Minster not as a tourist, but for a fleeting moment, as one of the lowly residents of the city must have back in the 1400’s, imagining this imposing structure rising into the heavens, one of the largest buildings I would ever seen in my toil-heavy life. It inspired awe, in all its connotations, and I was so thankful for that wonderful moment that lasted maybe a couple of minutes yet remains one of my most treasured memories of all my travels.

Awe is not something we get to experience a lot on our daily lives, but I have found that travel comes with a healthy supply of it. I experienced it various times after than in Europe; later in Ireland looking over the Cliffs of Moher and the Giant’s Causeway; in Paris, the Netherlands and Belgium; and even in Seattle, especially in the Olympic Peninsula, at the top of Hurricane Ridge. Pure awe, the kind that shuts down your conscious mind and simply lets you absorb the grandness of what you’re witnessing. When we travel we are removed from our familiar surroundings, out of our element; this lowers the barriers and makes us vulnerable to moments of wonder. Be on the lookout for such moments and when they happen, surrender to them.

I have managed to bring that ability back home with me as well. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I am open to it and have experienced it in the form of a beautiful sunrise glimpsed while riding my bike or when contemplating the city skyline from afar. When you travel, leave your jadedness at home and be open to awe, and when you get home, do your best to retain that ability. You will see your home in a whole new way.

In Your Games

There is nothing that annoys me more than having a fantastic description of a site, like a castle or a large cathedral or a majestic spaceship, to be brushed aside by jaded gamers. These characters you are playing are seeing something that may be of an unique nature, I try to remind them. Even characters that are exposed to certain situations on a daily basis–nobles that know a castle inside and out, a spaceship captain that has seen dozens of different ships of all shapes and sizes–experience moments of awe. Perhaps the noble has never seen this side of the castle, or precisely because she knows them so well, this new one they are visiting impresses her so much. The starship captain may have seen a lot, but that new prototype spaceship makes him look out the transport window, completely ignoring his officers.

Bring awe back into your character’s portrayal. If playing a fantasy game, unless you are a world-weary adventurer, monsters, magic and imposing structures will have an effect on you! It doesn’t mean your character stands catatonic like I did in York when he sees an orc for the first time, but a dragon? You bet. A wizard casting a gigantic fireball spell? Yup. The king’s three-times-as-big-as-those-in-the-real-world castle with towers rising a mile into the air and squads of griffin riders patrolling? If you don’t roleplay the awe, you are doing a disservice to yourself, your Game Master and the game.

Note: This post was originally up at my personal site, Highmoon’s Ponderings, but it has now been moved here.

Gen Con is next week and as I’ve said here and on Twitter before, I won’t be attending. It’s by choice (even though by now finances also play a deciding role), though that doesn’t mean I’m not sad I won’t be going; trust me when I tell you that I could use those four days of non-stop gaming awesomeness like a desert nomad needs water.

All that said, just because I’m not going to Gen Con doesn’t mean I am not excited as hell that is almost here. Thanks to the wonders of social and new media, I am fairly sure I will be able to get a really good virtual experience of the beautiful madness that overtakes Downtown Indy when Gen Con is in town. For this vicarious 4-day event, I have two main weapons in my arsenal.

Twitter

It would be hard to beat the amount of information flying about Gen Con on Twitter, and that’s just the week before the con! Though there is an official @Gen_Con Twitter account, the main channel is the hashtag #gencon (as you can see in the title of this post, done that way so that when this posts to my Twitter accounts, it registers as part of that search string), where folks have been chatting up a storm, tweeting about everything from their pre-con plans, what they’re most looking forward to, arranging games and generally hyping themselves up for their time in Indy.

I have the #gencon tag set up as a search column on TweetDeck so I get auto updates of every tweet with that tag (most Twitter clients that support search or groups should be able to be set up in a similar fashion). Even if you don’t use Twitter, you can follow along at the Twitter Search page for #gencon, though if you want to join the conversation you’ll need an account.

I set up yesterday a Twibbon (a Twitter ribbon, a small graphic that overlays on top of your avatar) for “Going to #GenCon Indy!” and in the last 24 hours it has gathered 175 followers (and it keeps growing), making it one of the front-page trending groups. Yes, it is kind of sad that I cannot use the Twibbon I created, but it’s all just part of my general excitement about the con. If you’re on Twitter and going to Gen Con, why not add it to your profile as well? Click on the widget below and voilà!

Even more interesting, there’s been some instances of using Twitter and the #gencon tag for promotional purposes: @Gen_Con has given away free generic event tickets to followers using the “Going to #GenCon Indy!” twibbon and Design Matters (@DMbooth1834), an indie/small press boutique is doing daily PDF giveaways combining it with their own #designmatters tag (see below). This is fantastic use of the features of this social medium, and I want to see more like this done by other gaming companies.

Yeah, Twitter is the epicenter of Gen Con info this year, straight from the folks at the con, right from the middle of the action, with peanut-gallery comments from all those of us not there.

This Just In… from Gen Con! Podcast

My second source of information comes thanks to the podcasting stylings of Master Plan’s Ryan Macklin, who is bring back for a second year the one and only right-from-the-con podcast, This Just In… from Gen Con! Twice daily on each of the four days of the con (with pre-con preview shows as well), Ryan brings the con right into your MP3 player of choice, with commentary, news, interviews and general shenanigans.

The podcast debuted last year at Gen Con 2008, hosted by Ryan and Paul Tevis (of the 2007 Best Podcast ENnie Award Winner show Have Games, Will Travel), and it was an instant success. Not only were people not attending the con downloading it every day, people at the con were listening in as well! The hosts heard from quite a few people that they would download the show, drop it into their digital players and listen as they walked from their hotels to the convention center and back. I know I listened to a couple of episodes right from my laptop in the hotel room, even finding out about things I had missed while on the exhibition floor.

Doing a twice-daily show, even if they are 15-to-20-minute episodes, takes a lot of work and a lot of commitment. Ryan and Paul sacrificed a good chunk of their time and energy at Gen Con for the show, and I thank them for that. This year Ryan is doing hosting duties by himself, though he’ll be roping in fellow podcasters for each show in addition to any interviews he may do, so up front I want to say to him, thanks for taking on this madness again and allowing us not-attendees a chance to share in the magic.

You can subscribe to This Just In… from Gen Con! at their website or find it in iTunes. Remember you can also listen to the shows right from the website as well. If you do subscribe, let other people know about the show and help spread the word! You can already listen to two preview shows to whet your appetite:

1. This Just In…From GenCon 2009! Pre-show #1
2. This Just In…From GenCon 2009! Pre-show #2

So there you have it, my two main sources through which I will live vicariously next weekend. I cannot wait! And if you have another way through which you plan to experience the con from afar, let me know in the comments.

Folks following me on Twitter (@GamerTraveler) over the last few days got to experience my frustration as I redesigned the TGT website. I was looking to apply a magazine-style theme to WordPress, but those suckers have so many fiddly bits that they were just not working here for whatever reason. I liked the previous look just fine, and maybe one day I’ll go back to it, but it was time for a change, and thus I went with my second theme choice, Atahualpa. Take a look:

I finally did a new header banner based on the pre-installed one my previous theme had, as well as custom favicon based on the “world d20″ logo. This theme’s structure allows me to spread out information much better along two sidebars and leaves a lot of space for possible future use. The central story area is spacious so articles, most of which I publish with images, do not seem cramped, a pet-peeve of mine. The theme’s width is fluid so hopefully that means people with smaller screens than mine (1680×1050) won’t have a problem with the site either.

FYI, when I was doing the last few tweaks today, it was found that there were some suspicious iframes hiding in the code of highmoonmedia.com, the parent site for this website, and that was giving some people a warning notice. Thanks to Stuart Robertson (@RobertsonGames) I was able to find all the annoying instances and delete them. The site is working fine now, and you can confirm it via Google Safe Browser.

Even though I will probably continue to tweak it here and there, all in all I’m very happy with the new look, and I hope you like it as well.

Once upon a time, I wanted to write a roleplaying game about the experience and act of traveling (the truth is that for years I have wanted such a game, and since I could not find one to fill that gap, I decided I would write it myself). I even had the name picked: Grand Tour. Problem was I didn’t really have a solid idea of how to structure it and I found myself floundering too much. I decided to shelve it for a while and look at it at some other point to see if things had improved. That was 2 years ago and I haven’t looked at that file since. Today, while browsing the Story Games forum, I came across a thread on games to be released at Gen Con, and this one gem caught my eye almost immediately:

Posted By: joepub
At the Design Matters booth, I’ll be releasing Ribbon Drive. It’s a game about road trips, and letting go on the open road. Mix CDs are an integral and driving part of the game. It’s diceless, GMless and easy for new gamers to pick up. It’s an intense game, but a slow-burning and soft one, too.

It’s sold with a mix CD (featuring some really cool artists).

Wow. I immediately checked out the website and boy, have I found a new game to fall in love with. Check out the full description:

In Ribbon Drive, we collectively create a story about a road trip. We do this in the comfort of a living room, over the course of 3-5 hours. We each create a character, one of the people going on this road trip. These characters are our individual jobs; each of us will roleplay one character’s decisions and actions. We’ll share the responsibility of narrating the obstacles and scenery that comes up all around us. Ribbon Drive creates stories about letting go on the open road, and we all work to both further and complicate this agenda during the game. It draws inspirations from road movies like Wristcutters, Everything Is Illuminated, y tu Mama Tambien, Little Miss Sunshine, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things and Thelma & Louise (and, to a lesser extent, Two Lane Blacktop, The Doom Generation and Wild At Heart). Our ultimate goal is to create a thought-provoking, meaningful experience. We let the music guide us. We let the road throw us curves. As our characters, we rethink our attachment to the future.

That description fills me with excitement, and if the game performs as billed, it seems I may not have to write Grand Tour after all, Joe McDonald may have written it for me already! Since I won’t be going to Gen Con, I will be ordering this game as soon as I am able and putting together a session a minute after that. Expect a full review sometime in the near future. In the meantime, check out the Ribbon Drive webpage (in case you also want to order it now) and the playlist of the Mix CD that comes with it.

The following conversation developed over Twitter a couple of days ago. I found it hilarious and enlightening at the same time. There’s a question at the end for you to answer (skip to it here).

So I ask, what do you think a The Gamer Traveler show on The Travel Channel would look like?

I already told you about Eberron D&D Campaign Setting-designer Keith Baker and his plan to travel the world, trading hospitality for gaming (and if you haven’t read that post, please do so). By late July, 2009, Keith has already traveled quite a nice chunk of the United States, as well as portions of the UK and Europe. The only news from Keith, however, were coming in scattered and short bursts via his LiveJournal, completely understandable when you figure the man is busy traveling the world, meeting new gamers and playing games on every landmass possible. That is about to change, however.

Keith has finally launched his dedicated site for this round-the-world madness, Have Dice, Will Travel. At the moment, the one post available is a quick introduction to Keith and to his travel project, a post that I recommend everyone reads even if they are aware of what Keith is doing. The tone is far more candid than the just-the-facts-ma’am posts on LiveJournal have been, and promises a good course for this new gaming-related travel blog. I for one have it already on my RSS reader and cannot wait to start seeing new posts come through.

Sadly, since I won’t be going to Gen Con this year, I will not have the opportunity to interview Keith in person for The Gamer Traveler Podcast. That said, I continue to be in touch with Keith so that we can do that interview as soon as it is convenient for him.

Drop by Have Dice, Will Travel and start following the adventures of a true, on-the-road, gamer traveler.

This magnificently bizarre mansion not far from my own home in Miami Beach burned completely this morning. Take a look at these photos and marvel.

I mean seriously, check out the house from Google Maps’ satellite view. Isn’t that amazing?

I wrote the following post for Miami Metblogs. I reprint it here because it is, strangely enough, on topic for this blog. I guess now we’ll have the Miami Beach ruins instead!

The Miami Beach castle boasted iron gates, gargoyles, turrets, towers, parapets, a draw bridge and a 65,000 gallon salt water moat filled with sand sharks. It also had fantastical sculptures inside, like a dragon by a small pool. Not that I knew all this before today. The castle was, sadly, abandoned when the previous owner up and died from an overdose (The Herald has the whole sordid story) and was left to languish in very expensive solitude.

This castle was not far from my house, and whether it was driving to get out of the Beach, or (especially) riding my bike, I would take a moment, whenever I could, to stop by and marvel at this utterly bizarre gem and wish I could go inside. This place should not have been left unused; this place should have been rented out for events, films, videos. This amazing strangeness should have been an attraction in Miami Beach. Frankly, this place should have been the site for many roleplaying game conventions. Can you think of anything more fitting than playing Dungeons & Dragons here?

I am utterly bummed by this loss. In a city with more than its fair share of expensive and massive monuments to ridiculosity, the dark-stoned, gargoyle-guarded castle of Miami Beach stood uniquely apart. Maybe I only speak for myself, but it shall be missed.

See photos of the house and fire at Herald.com.

Also see these photos from the real estate listing at NelsonGonzalez.com. I can’t help but think this listing will soon be taken down.