I’ll be at Arisia next weekend, from Jan 17^th-20^th (Friday through Monday). I’m going to be on seven panels, and will be moderating three of them! Here’s my schedule, and a quick overview of *some* of the material for each panel.

The GM-less Game; Lewis, Friday 7pm: discussing the growing genre of GM-less games, what makes them work, and how to dig into them.

Cooperative Games (mod); Marina 4, Saturday 4pm: discussing cooperative and semi-cooperative board and video games, barriers to entry, how to pick the right ones for your group, and how to navigate their traps and pitfalls.

Feet of Clay, Mind of Light; Marina 2, Saturday 5:30pm: discussing sentient life in non-organic bodies, with plenty of robots, AIs, and conversation about gender, immortality, bodies, dysphoria, and the soul.

Harassment, Missing Stairs, and Safety in LARP; Faneuil, Saturday 7pm: discussing do’s and don’ts of writing and enforcing codes of conduct, dealing with malicious actors in your social groups, and maintaining a healthy and welcoming community that is less vulnerable to abusive behavior.

Death and Funerary Practices in Science Fiction (mod); Marina 4, Sunday 1pm: discussing how genre fiction has dealt with (and failed to deal with) death, how this informs our understanding of the cultures inside those stories, and how our own culture has shaped death and funerary practices in our fiction.

Bringing Horror Into Other Genres (mod); Otis, Sunday 7pm: discussing what horror actually is, the effect of horror’s dread and frisson, what purposes horror may serve (both in horror and elsewhere), and how horror and its elements can expand and improve other genres.

The Hacker’s Guide to D&D; Marina 2, Sunday 8:30pm: discussing D&D 5^th edition, how (un)important it is to use the rules as they’re written, and how we as storytellers can use rules and systems from elsewhere to create the experiences we want for our players inside the constraints of D&D’s 5^th edition.