And thus it came, the first day of the first ever PAX Australia. But lets go back in time to the day before, briefly.
I arrived in Melbourne, Australia well into the night. Weather had made my flight at least an hour late, so it was dark, wet and windy. Myself and my campanions headed to our hotel. After checking in we decided to pop out for some dinner before heading to bed. Our trip to the Ground Floor saw us trapped in an elevator for fourty five minutes. Hopefully things only improve from here.
Here comes my first PAX tip. Leave for PAX much earlier than you had planned to. Twice my tram arrived, and twice I could not board, as it was packed to bursting with PAX attendants. “I’ll wait for another one” I told a man flattened against the centre doors pole. He cackled at me as the doors closed on his nose.
I have a Press Pass into PAX, so I managed to avoid the massive press of bodies waiting to enter. A boon!
However, the tram snafu meant I was running too late to catch the Keynote Speech. I had really been looking forward to hearing what the creator of Monkey Island had to say. This did give me a chance to get a look at a couple of the digital games on offer, like Solitarium, an interesting fantasy card game inspired by Solitaire.
The rest of the time was spent in line for various panels. The panel titled Beyond the Tabletop was quite interesting. A number of digital developers talked about how technology can be incorporated into RPG games, and also about the instances where technology might hinder the experience.
I also attended the Raising the Next Generation of Gamers panel. Even though this was primarily digital game focussed, many of the panels thoughts on how children and games interact and should be managed could still be applied to tabletop wargamers.
Soon the day will end when I go see MC Frontalot live on the main stage.
Things have improved.
