Hosting This Just In… From Gen Con 2011

The news is out and it’s now official: I will be one of the hosts of this year’s This Just In… From Gen Con podcast. My co-host will be Rich Rogers of Canon Puncture and The Voice of the Revolution fame.

For the last three years, I have thoroughly this innovative show, recorded at and released during Gen Con, which captures a small sample of the beautiful chaos that is the best four days in gaming. While I’ve attended, the show gives me a window into some of the other cool stuff going on all around me, and especially the year I did not go right after my mother passed away, This Just In managed to give me a little bit of the excitement of being at the con. I won’t lie, there’s a bit of an intimidation factor in being the next one in the legacy, especially being on the first season without any of the two founders, but I’m up for it.

How did I end up here? Well…

It happened at last year’s Gen Con (2010). It was extremely late Saturday night–technically already Sunday morning, really–and I was walking outside my hotel, the Embassy Suites. In all honesty, I was very drunk. At 3 AM that Sunday morning, it was one year since my mother died, so you can imagine how I felt. In any case, it was way later than 3 AM and I was just walking outside when I see Ryan Macklin approaching along with Ed Healy and Chris Perrin. Chris and Ed decided to go get something to eat, so Ryan and I sat at one of the sidewalk tables nearby and talked things that only two drunk men at past 4 AM talk (which is to say, games, women and Life).[ref]I wonder if that was actually Night Macklin I was chatting with…[/ref]

At one point Ryan turns to me and says, I don’t think I’m gonna do This Just In next year. If I don’t, I am offering it to you. I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. I smiled, nodded, felt honored, actually, and thanked him, said I’d certainly let him know. See, Gen Con to me is an April/May decision, adjusted as the summer goes along. I don’t make plans for Gen Con a year in advanced, and I knew I was in the middle of taking a bunch of Pre-Nursing classes. My answer at the time was all I could offer.

Some time after Gen Con, I’d put that conversation aside and almost forgotten it, when Ryan emailed me reiterating what we spoke that night. I told him again thanks, that I’d get back to him once I had a better idea of what Gen Con was looking like later on in the year. It took all of the Spring semester for me to get a better view of what the late summer would look like. When Gen Con loomed near enough in the horizon that I could start making some plans, I told Ryan that I would be taking him up on his offer to host This Just In.

And that’s how it happened. I decided to bring Rich in because the simple truth is that I would not be able to do the two Saturday episodes due to Shabbat, so I needed someone to pinch hit. Rich is a great podcaster that I know would understand what we were getting into and someone I admire as a friend and dedicated individual, so I was thrilled when he said he was in for the whole ride.

I don’t know why Ryan decided to offer the show to me in the first place, why me when he knows so many other podcasters of note, but whatever the reason why, I actually thank him and am grateful for the opportunity. I hope to not disappoint anyone.