To Seattle

Time for a family vacation! Like most travels we take as a group, we tend to love going in the middle of the school year. No crowds or lines, better weather (fall and spring), and you get to dodge truancy officers! This gets harder as the daughter gets older, but currently we can still occasionally swing it.

Why to Seattle? Well, GeekGirlCon 2017 was running, and something I've wanted to see for a while. I already wrote about it on this prior blog post, for details about that convention. But I will also write about other Seattle trip stuff separately, as we got some other gaming mixed in there separate from the convention itself.

The Pearl Jam poster wall at the airport.

The Tranums and Tranum Cafe

Friends Sarah and Ryan have lived up in Seattle area for many years now. Sarah and I grew up as neighbors, and reunite every few years or decades. When I've gone up for Go Play NW (the last 2 years), we've been hanging. Their daughter Ella is about the same age as our daughter, and have gotten along fabulously when they've hung out, and we knew that this family would figure prominently in the weekend.

An aspect I can't help enjoy is getting to be the one to re-introduce them to the world of games 2 years ago, and then come visiting to see the closet full of games. We skipped much sightseeing in lieu of lots of hangout time and gaming. Monday we went to "Tranum board game and cat cafe" as Ryan was free. A game he showed us was Villages of Valeria, enjoyable and one I'd gladly play again.

Blokus Trigon, one of the Blokus variants. It's actually quite a fun little version of the game. On the left you can see the amazingly delicious board game library they have amassed, mostly from thrift stores.

Playing Starving Artists at Queen Bee cafe

Ray Gun and Games

Another hangout opportunity included The Ray Gun Lounge, a local game shop that we've hung out at in prior visits. They have a good selection of pinball machines (including the Dungeons and Dragons one from the 80s) as well as some retro arcade games, and a game library you can freely borrow from. That and beer on tap! Friday included some hangout time there, although the girls ended up doing more video gaming than other stuff... at least it was loads of playing the Simpson arcade game. We did get to teach them how to play King of Tokyo, so that was a plus.

I also picked up "How to Host a Dungeon", a solo dungeon creating adventure by Tony Dowler. More about that another time!

The Quiet Season

On Friday night, as the girls were keeping themselves busy with play and reading, I was pleased that the adults wanted to do some story gaming. J, Ryan, Sarah and I played a little 2 hour session of The Quiet Year, getting through all of Spring a bit of Summer. Everyone dug the session, and it just reminded me what a nice little game it is, and how new-gamer friendly.

To mix it up for myself as a facilitator, I think next time I'll run The Deep Forest variant.

And out...

Thank you Seattle for the good times. Still didn't get to see lots of friends in that vicinity, but maybe the next time around!