My Time at LitRPG Con

None of us knew what to expect from the first ever LitRPG Con. I know the people involved in putting it on were straight hustling to get everything ready in time, and there was a lot of last-minute changes and uncertainty. Panel information became available about two weeks before the convention.

Talking with other authors beforehand, all of us were excited to meet each other but no one was sure how many fans would show, or how many books they’d buy, or… well… anything.

Guys. Guys. It was FIRE.

I got in on Thursday evening and found the hotel lobby packed to bursting with incredibly friendly people. I was delighted to run into Madix, from CritRPG podcast, and he introduced me to the amazing SavingThrow, who writes “So When Am I a Hero?” on RoyalRoad and has worked for a long time as a writer in the video game industry. Sadly, I failed to get pictures with either! In lieu of that, I’ll put up this link to the Royal Rogue LitRPG videogame kickstarter, which Madix announced right after the entertainment at LitRPG Con Friday night:

The next morning, I got to meet with an editor, Josiah Davis, who did a sample edit on the end of the last book of Apocalypse Parenting. I was disappointed to hear how far out he was booked up, because it was an excellent experience! I might still try to align schedules with him for future series.

Then we got to the meat of things, the convention itself!

The first actual panel I made it to was the Pets, Mounts, and Familiars panel which included such big names as Matt Dinniman and Haylock Jobson, as well as my new bestie Reck Well, who writes Stumbling Up on Royal Road, plus Sean Dunning and Ryan DeBruyn. Shami Stovall did an amazing job moderating the panel, and all the authors were super encouraging and supportive about each others’ work. Great vibes the whole way through, and all the authors stuck around afterward to chat with fans.

Matt Dinniman was seriously the best. He was incredibly busy – I know the man’s been all across the country doing a marathon signing tour, and literally everyone (I heard that we had at least 1200 attendees) wanted a piece of him. Even so, he took the time to personally and lovingly give shit to every single one of us. 😀 I guess humor is just a default state for him, because I don’t think I could be that funny when I was that exhausted. He actually told me he loved Apocalypse Parenting, so now I guess I get to re-do my covers to add that quote! Yeah!

I wish I’d taken photos at the Humor panel Dinniman was on the following day in the Colorado Ballroom, because it was PACKED. At least 800 chairs filled plus plenty of people standing at the back. Anyway, the panelists got a question like “Where do you draw the line on humor?” The first few people – Hunter Mythos was one of them – were basically “Oh, uh, line? There might be a line somewhere. Anyway, let me tell you this horrible thing I included in my books that I thought was hilarious.”

Then it gets to Dakota Krout and he’s more along the lines of “Family-friendly fun is my thing! I like doing readings to schools and handing out fidget spinners and getting death glares from teachers. I know some parents like to read my books to their kids, so I keep it clean.”

Then he hands the mic to Matt Dinniman, who just stares at him for a minute, leans in, and says, “Wow. What a pussy.”

The whole room was dying, and it seemed like Dakota was laughing just as hard as everyone else. I will ABSOLUTELY be making it to the humor panel in future years. Not all of us authors are good at talking to the audience, but I got the vibe from all of those guys that “stand-up comic” was definitely a backup career path if writing didn’t work out.

Another cool thing that was happening at the con? Live book readings by professional narrators.

That wasn’t even an announced event, just a “Hey, you’re standing in line for a book signing? That can be kind of boring. Let us entertain you.” I think they might tweak some things about how they did it in future years – it was a little hard to hear the narrators sometimes – but it was an amazing idea and I absolutely loved it.

Side note? I was SO EXCITED to meet Laurie. She was my narrator for the audio version of Apocalypse Parenting and she did an excellent job. I would have been happy to meet her even if it had just been a job to her – like “Hey, I’m a professional, and I’m providing you an awesome product no matter what” – but finding out she actually genuinely enjoyed the series? Getting to sit down and have lunch for her and find out how much we had in common? (She’s got an opportunity to play my favorite Shakespeare character in my favorite Shakespeare play soon!) AMAZING.

When I told her book 5 was the last book planned for Apocalypse Parenting, she was genuinely sad about it, and I think we both teared up a little when I was trying to tell her how much her work meant to me. 🙂

Honestly, as someone who almost exclusively reads eBooks, my previous reaction to hearing how many narrators would be at the con was “Oh, how nice,” and wow, was I wrong about that. The narrators were all performers in the variety show on the first evening, and I was absolutely floored by the range and depth of their performances. I also sat in at the Narrator Q&A panel later in the convention, which I think was hugely valuable to me as a writer in getting better insight into what kinds of things I should and shouldn’t do to be a better partner to my narrators in the future.

It probably goes without saying at this point that all the narrators were super friendly and cool as well. For those who are interested in that end of things, Travis Baldree has a series of YouTube videos on narration that all the other narrators agreed were amazing, so, uh, guess I’ll be checking those out sometime soon?

Saturday brought the panel I was on that I was the most excited about: The Women in LitRPG panel. Andrea Parsneau, the Wandering Inn’s narrator, was the moderator, I got to sit next to K.T. Hanna – one of my inspirations to start writing in this genre – and I got to meet the amazing T.J. Reynolds, Shami Stovall, and Rachel Ní Chuirc! People commented on the amazing chemistry on our panel – and I do think everyone else had known each other beforehand – but I met them only moments before the panel and I absolutely agree. I have so much gratitude to these amazing and welcoming women.

A highlight of the panel for me was a fan at the end asking what we wanted to see more of in female villains. We all agreed that we just wanted more of them, all kinds of them. I grabbed my mic and said “If a woman wants to become an eldritch horror? She should.”

The whole room applauded. I have never felt more like I completely belonged in any group in my life.

We had so many people show up, too! It was a first-thing-in the morning panel in the big ballroom, so you might be looking at the empty seats, but over 250 people showed up to listen to us talk (K.T. counted!), and they were THE BEST AUDIENCE. Like, just super supportive, lots of cheering and clapping, tons of awesome questions… If you were at this panel, I love you.

I got a chance to hang out a little more with K.T. and Rachel later at the con, and I’m so grateful I did. K.T. takes amazing selfies and the coolest hybrid accent (she’s got influence from almost every corner of the globe!). I wish I’d had longer to talk and hang out with her! I should have had her take a picture of me and Rachel, but this is surprisingly the least terrible of all the photos I got of us two. Why’d I post such a bad photo? I had such a great time talking about X-Men, KPop Demon Hunters, and our shared love of editing with Rachel that I couldn’t bear to not document the beginning of our friendship somehow. Please forgive me for uploading this photo of you if you read this. If you have a better one, please let me know.

The “Respawn? Not this time!” panel was pretty grim.

I thought we’d be talking more broadly about consequences and ways to make the stakes feel real in LitRPG, but we really drilled down hard on the death aspect, and I sounded super duper unhinged. Highlights include the time where I decided to point out that, at any given moment, there are always hundreds of people in the world dying horrific torturous deaths.

Just basically emanating psychopath vibes with every answer. 😎 😅 😓

I do absolutely stand by what I said when someone asked if we tried to make character deaths not hurt the reader, though: “If it hurts me, it should hurt you.”

I still had a good time hanging out and talking with the other panelists and the moderator. I gotta shout out Will of the Immortals author Jay Krauss, who was also a death panelist, for coming to LitRPG Con 100% prepared. Not only did he bring like six kinds of swag to hand out, he was relentless in hunting down absolutely every con ribbon available.

I saw him again on Sunday and I’m pretty sure it was at least a foot longer at that time than it was here. How? I don’t know. I really don’t.

Another cool thing LitRPG Con did? They had gaming tables where they threw a couple panelists in with some random attendees, with none of us knowing who’d show up at the table until we’d gotten there. It was a nice way to connect more personally with fans and in a less frenetic setting with other panelists.

I forgot to take a photo of most of my tables, but as an example, I ended up playing Codenames with Neil Hellegers on Sunday. He and his team kicked my team’s ass because I tried silly things like using the word “coiffed” and “vivisection” as hints which Did Not Work. I also ended up at a Catan Dice table (where I lost horribly) where all but one person was a panelist!

I also got a small quantity of books printed by eLanders, who set up some signing times for me. (They were amazing to work with, by the way.) I ended up giving those copies away because, like so many authors, I did not think far enough ahead to have a good way of legally collecting sales tax in Colorado. I didn’t know what to expect from my signing times. I thought “Eh, probably at least a few people will show up. Worst case scenario, I end up talking my book up to a few strangers.”

Guys. Guys, look!

You see that?! That is an actual line of people waiting to talk to me and have me sign books. You see my face in that first photo? That is the delight I felt repeatedly when, for the first time, I got to interact with strangers who had already read and loved my books.

I gotta call out two fan interactions specifically, though:

Henry and Susan floored me by saying that – at this amazing convention with so many huge names! – I was the author they were most excited to meet. Henry does wildlife photography and brought me this sweet metal magnet with a photo he’d taken. It is already on my fridge and brings me joy every time I see it. I gotta find out what kind of bird it is, though! (I forgot to ask.)

I was also really excited to meet Arlie – who writes Tattoo Summoner on Royal Road – who said that Apocalypse Parenting was what had made her start writing, because it made her feel like there was space for her in this genre. I can’t tell you how proud and humbled I was to hear that. I wish her all the success in the world!

On Sunday, I got to moderate a panel on cozy LitRPG! I spent the preceding week desperately speed-reading books from the authors on my panel so I could be familiar with them. Haylock Jobson (author of Heretical Fishing), I’d already read, and I’d already read Sentenced to Troll by S.L. Rowland, but I wanted to make sure to read one of his cozy fantasy books too, so I picked up Sword and Thistle. I also read the first book of Guardian of Aster Fall by David North and Rebuild the World: Alaska by Justin Marks.

Honestly? They were all great, so I’m kind of coming to the conclusion that I need to moderate more panels.

I will say I was super confused during my preparations when I couldn’t figure out what Robert Gagnon had written, but it turns out that – while he does have a book he’s writing – he was mostly there because of his work localizing LitRPG to and from Korea! He had a really interesting perspective to share. I hadn’t realized that Korea was a huge market for cozy stories, but his explanation about how their high-stress culture had created a big demand for cozy made total sense.

There were so many of us there. Walk through the vendor hall? Oh, there’s RinoZ! Better tell him how my oldest loves Chrysalis. Turn around? Oh my gosh, so excited to meet Sean Hall in person! On my way to get dinner? There’s Drew Hayes, better stop and tell him how I love everything he’s written.

Finally, I have to finish this off my new/old friendship with Reck Well, author of Stumbling up on Royal Road. We realized in the days leading up to the con that we had both fenced against each other in college, and he brought foils so we could do a little photoshoot.

It was an amazing time, and I have the feeling that next year is only going to be better!