Friday
7-8 pm: Castle Dice
(Michelle Hymowitz)
Castle Dice is a light worker-placement, dice-drafting game in which the players have been ordered by the king to build castles along the borders of the kingdom. The player who can create the greatest castle will become the new heir to the throne. Players will explore the land by rolling the dice, and then take turns gathering resources from them. These resources are then used to hire workers and improve castles. Players must gather and spend wisely as the Barbarians from the neighboring lands will attack players and steal their resources throughout the game. At the end of seven turns, the player who has built the greatest castle (earned the most victory points) wins the game!
Saturday
11 am – Noon: Bruges
(Eric Hymowitz)
Bruges in the 15th century – culture and commerce flourish and make the Belgian Hanseatic city into one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.
In Bruges (a.k.a. Brügge depending on the country in which you live), players assume the role of merchants who must maintain their relationships with those in power in the city while competing against one another for influence, power and status. Dramatic events cast their shadows over the city, with players needing to worry about threats to their prosperity from more than just their opponents…
The game includes 165 character cards, with each card having one of five colors. On a turn, a player chooses one of his cards and performs an action, with six different actions being available: Take workers, take money, mitigate a threat, build a canal, build a house or hire the character depicted on the card. In principle, every card can be used for every action – but the color of the card determines in which areas the actions can be used or the strength of the chosen action, e.g., blue cards provide blue workers and red cards help mitigate red threats. All of the action is geared toward the gathering of prestige, with the most prestigious merchant winning in the end.
3 – 4 pm: Star Traders
(Perrianne Lurie)
Each player assumes the role of a intra-galactic merchant, traveling from planet to planet in a future where wars are unheard of and “Traders” are the heroes of the cosmos. The board shows 36 planets: six clustered together in the center of the board, six more in each of five arms of the galaxy. Planets are connected by “jump lines”: you can jump to an adjacent planet on an orange line, to a planet halfway down a galaxy arm on a purple line, and from one galaxy arm to another via green lines. The length of the jump line also indicates the difficulty of the jump, so to successfully complete an “orange’ jump you must roll a 2 or better on a single die, a purple jump requires a 4 or better, and the green jumps necessitate a 6.
As the players scurry about the galaxy, they can pick up and deliver cargoes, which pay both in money and in “Prestige.” These “contracts” vary throughout the game, and only one player can fulfill any given contract. This isn’t to say that multiple players can’t pick up the named cargo, though. But only the first player to arrive at the contract’s destination gets the payoff for a contract; everyone else with the cargo is now just stuck with unwanted junk, and may have to pay a penalty to dump it. Players can also build bases on the various planets as they move around. Building bases earns the players Prestige, and when a player tries to make a jump to a planet with a base, the jump is an automatic success if the player has the owner’s permission. Traders obviously have permission to jump to their own bases, but if they want to jump to an opponent’s, they will probably have to pay a fee. And since only one player can have a base on any given planet, bases rapidly become lucrative investments.
6 – 7 pm: X Machina
(Joan Wendland)
X-Machina is the fun party game where you make impossible inventions out of improbable components for unreasonable customers.
Use the components (Cogs) in your hand to try and build the gadget the customer wants (Reqs). Since they are never sufficient you might want to be … inventive … with your explanation of why it works.
Sunday
11 am – Noon and 2 – 3 pm: Gamers’ Choice
Your choice of game demos (by popular vote) from the following:
10 Days in Asia
7 Wonders
Carcasonne
Drumroll
Nefarious
Power Grid
Qwirkle
Saint Petersburg
Settlers of Catan
Small World
Ticket to Ride
Trains
Vegas Showdown
Village
Yspahan
Online registration is now closed. There will be a few memberships available at the door. Rates are:
Friday: $25
Saturday: $50 ($20 for students, active military, and active military dependents)
Sunday: $20
A special whole-weekend rate of $30 is available for Active Military, dependants of Active Military, and Students ($20 for Saturday alone). You must show valid ID at the registration desk at Capclave to validate this rate. Failure to have a valid ID will require you to pay the difference between the special rate and the At-the-Door rate. So, please, remember to bring your ID.
There are still openings in the workshops. But they are filling fast. Area 52 is full on Saturday. There is a wait list available. A couple of the others are down to the last couple of openings.
If you have a good time this year, don’t forget to sign up for 2014 when there is another exciting lineup of guests.
The preliminary schedule is up. Check back often for updates.
http://www.capclave.org/capclave/capclave13/programming.php
Interview with this year’s GOH George R. R. Martin:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/books/2013-08-29/lonestarcon-3-the-george-r-r-martin-interview/
Program participant Brenda Clough interviewed at Book View Cafe:
http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2013/08/26/author-interview-brenda-clough/
The Washington Science Fiction Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2013 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (published in 2012):
“Astrophilia” by Carrie Vaughn, published in Clarkesworld Magazine, edited by Neil Clarke (July 2012).
“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu, published in Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams (August 2012).
“Bottled Spirits” by Pamela K. Kinney, published in Buzzy Mag, edited by Laura Anne Gilman (June, 2012).
“Coca Xocolatl” by Lawrence M. Schoen, published in ReDeus: Divine Tales, edited by Robert Greenberger and Aaron Rosenberg (Crazy Eight Press 2012).
“Good Hunting” by Ken Liu, published in Strange Horizons, edited by Brit Mandelo, An Owomoyela, and Julia Rios (October 2012).
“Mornington Ride” by Jason Nahrung, published in Epilogue, edited by Tehani Wessely (Fablecroft Publishing June 2012).
“The Six Million Dollar Mermaid” by Hildy Silverman, published in Mermaids 13: Tales from the Sea, edited by John L. French (Padwolf Publishing Inc. December 2012)
The award honors the efforts of small press publishers in providing a critical venue for short fiction in the area of speculative fiction. The award showcases the best original short fiction published by small presses in the previous year (2012). An unusual feature of the selection process is that all voting is done with the identity of the author and publisher hidden so that the final choice is based solely on the quality of the story.
The winner is chosen by the members of the Washington Science Fiction Association (wsfa.org) and will be presented at their annual convention, Capclave (capclave.org), held this year on October 11-13 in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Interview with 2012 GOH John Scalzi:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/books/article/Scalzi-nominated-for-Hugo-Award-4736468.php
Past Capclave GOHs Ellen Datlow and Gardner Dozois interviewed over at Black Gate Magazine:
Author GOH George R. R. Martin is featured on The Nerdist podcast:
http://www.nerdist.com/2013/07/nerdist-podcast-george-r-r-martin/
We are now into our final week of voting for the WSFA Small Press Award. The last day for voting is midnight, Friday, August 16th.
Paid-up member of WSFA, are eligible to take part in the contest by reading the finalists and voting for your favorites. Read the rules page and do not share the stories with anyone who is not a current WSFA member.
To vote, go to the content area of the award website: http://www.wsfasmallpressaward.org/content
You will be asked for a username and password. These are unique to each WSFAn. If you do not have your username and password, send email to webmaster@wsfa.org. Before writing to the webmaster if your login/password doesn’t work — note that the password is case sensitive, and so must be entered exactly as shown when you received it. If you are refused entry to the site, then email the webmaster and let him know.
The page lists the seven stories up for consideration this year. The name of each story is a link to a PDF of the story for you to read. To the left of each story title is a box where you can register your vote (if any) for the story.
To vote, place a 1 in the box to the left of the story you think is the best, a 2 in the box of the story you think is second best, etc. You do not need to vote at all for any story you don’t think is worthy of consideration.
When you have assigned your votes, click on the “Submit” button at the bottom. The system will respond by giving you the time and date on which your votes were recorded so you’ll know it ‘worked’.
If you do not wish to use the website to vote, you can just submit your vote directly to the WSFA Administrator at: admin@wsfasmallpressaward.org (Be sure to include your name and email in the message so we can verify your membership in WSFA.)
All the details for participating in the WSFA Small Press Award are available at the website: http://www.wsfasmallpressaward.com
Links to the WSFA Small Press Award are also available on http://wsfa.org.