Pew Pew Laser Blog

PAX '09.

This weekend I went to PAX - a gaming exposition in Seattle put on by the folks at Penny Arcade. It was a ton of fun.

I participated in the brilliantly conceived Distributed Tournament System (DTS) - wherein every expo attendee can participate in a tournament. Every attendee gets two DTS buttons, and can challenge other button-wearing attendees to any game; the winner takes a button. The top 20 ranked button owners earned fabulous prizes. I won two buttons playing Tetris DS, but then lost 2 in Tetris and 1 in New Super Mario Bros. The husband lost one button in a Thumb War. We weren't contenders, but at least we came away with a souvenir button.

I enjoyed the various card / tabletop games that we played. After we'd had a Fluxx game going for about 5 minutes, we got some interested looking people to join. We learned how to play Munchkins in the official Steve Jackson gaming nook. And we were invited to play a pick-up game of Catan that included quite a few laughs.

The Saturday night concerts (with opening band Freezepop, Headliners Paul and Storm, and Closing Act Jonathan Coulton) were excellent. That the concerts lasted until 2 am was a little extreme.

On the day after PAX, I discovered I had come home with a little unanticipated swag. Remember folks, I'm staying in my pajamas all day for your safety.

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