Coming to TriWyrd early and want to have some fun before the convention?

Join Live Game Labs co-founder and LA Cocktails Examiner Aaron Vanek, a 20-year resident of Los Angeles on a memory-making tour of locations used in the classic 1982 movie Blade Runner. We’ll visit Deckard’s Apartment, Bryant’s Office, Sebastian’s Apartment Building and the 2nd Street Tunnel seen in the movie.

In addition, we’ll drink and dine in some of Los Angeles’s most cyberpunk & steampunk-themed venues such as The Edison.
Don’t forget your precious photos.

Who should go? Any 21 and older folks who love the movie or just want to enjoy good food and great drinks while geeking out in the City of Angels. Everyone MUST RSVP. Include names of everyone in your party, and spell out how you will be getting to Union Station and back to your sleeping accommodations.

Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 3:00 PM – 12:00 AM (ish)
Location: Tour starts at Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles. We’ll return to Union Station at the end of the evening (exceptions can be made if your transport is elsewhere). Note that the Hilton Hotel, location of Wyrd Con, is an hour’s drive away from Union Station, and there is no easy public transportation to or from those places. **If you have trouble getting there, let Aaron know at email below**

Of note: We will be traveling as a group inside a rented van. Cost TBD by the number of people aboard–the more we have, the cheaper it is. Expect a $10-$15 charge for the ride. You are responsible for your own food and drink costs. None of the venues have a cover charge. A rough figure for the evening, depending on what you eat and drink, would be $50-$60 per person. Do note that there is a dress code for some places, such as The Edison (left side, Attire/Parking link).

Designer: Aaron Vanek. Please send any questions and your RSVP to his e-mail.

Greetings my friends of Wyrd Con – I wanted to share something awesome we’re working on for Los Angeles . . .

Clockwork Couture is building a space in Burbank which will include Role Playing GAME ROOMS that anyone can appreciate. . .

We have a lot of amazing people working to create a very unique space. The Labyrinth Masquerade / Sypher Art Studios, The Guild, Veronique Chevalier and the League of S.T.E.A.M. have donated a lot of time and resources to help build out this space, and it is an ambitious project!

We’re working on building a Huge Zeppelin and life-size Tardis in this interactive space.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/clockworkcouture/lets-build-a-zeppelin?ref=home_location

Check it, if you can lend a hand, that’s great! Every little bit helps.

And when the Shoppe opens in July, we welcome any attendees of Wyrd Con to come and visit our space and share in the fun that we’re creating for you!

We look forward to seeing you on board!

What is Transmedia? Whether you are new to the concept, or you want to expand your understanding of Transmedia Storytelling and its potential to change the way we consume media, this is the panel for you.

Top storytellers in the entertainment industry and academics come together to discuss the basic principles of Transmedia Storytelling and how they have begun impacting our lives. Just what is it and why is it important? As the old paradigms of entertainment media break down, how can telling narratives across platforms change the way we consume, and participate in the story worlds we love?

Date: Saturday, June 23, 2012 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: Laguna Beach
Designer: Starlight Runner Entertainment

How we can take our experience playing LARPs and RPGs and use them to improve our lives in the real world?

Scientific research has suggested that our dreams are actually our minds metaphorically role playing possible scenarios and “troubleshooting” issues in our daily lives. Taking this concept a bit further, this panel looks at Role Playing as a means to better understand ourselves and our world around us. From achieving personal goals to inciting political change, much can be understood about the fabric of human behavior and overcoming real world adversity through roleplaying in fictional worlds.

Date: Saturday, June 23, 2012 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (
Location: Laguna Beach
Designer: Starlight Runner Entertainment

Through the “immersive narrative experience” of ZED.TO—a sort of transmedia thought experiment along the lines of Vonnegut’s Galapagos—the quintet at The Mission Business and their collaborators invite you to find out. Something definitely will go wrong: “end of the world,” “cataclysm,” and “apocalyptic” are all part of the baseline description. The creators emphasize that they want to push the boundaries of audience participation in influencing the story through moral choices that must be made along the way.

ZED.TO rests on a tripod of live interactive events spaced over the coming summer and fall that follow a dramatic arc of ByoLogyc’s unveiling of its latest and greatest product at the Toronto Fringe Festival in July, a pandemic catastrophe at Nuit Blanche in September, and an as-yet mysterious climax at a rural location a month later. For those who live in or visit Toronto, smaller-scale live events are planned, while for everyone, much of the high-quality online content, such as ByoLogyc’s website, is already up and running.

One unusual feature of ZED.TO is that some participants are brought inside the doomsday corporation, implicating them in the double-edged science and morality of biotechnology development as well as the all-too-possible, all-too-human wrenches that might complicate the work at hand. It is also cool that the organizers are publicly documenting aspects of the project’s own development, which will be useful to anyone with an interest in either the theory or practice of transmedia.

Read on at http://zed.to and http://www.byologyc.com/, or at http://www.indiegogo.com/ZEDTO, where you can help fund the project if you like.

How to develop aspirational themes and messaging in your game narratives and connect them powerfully with your players.

A lot goes into developing a strong story world that has the capacity to come alive in many forms across multiple media. This panel looks at the fundamental elements of World-Building methodologies. By starting with core concepts, themes and aspirational drivers, a world can be successfully extended across many media channels, while maintaining its essence and core vision. This panel offers specific techniques for how we, as storytellers, can build rich worlds that allow for expansion, development and fan participation.

Date: Friday, June 22, 2012 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: Laguna Beach
Designer: Starlight Runner Entertainment

Full title: Role Playing Our Future: How LARPs and RPGs can Help You Prepare for a Career in Entertainment, Advertising, Software Development and Social Media

Until recently, LARPs and RPGs, along with most forms of gaming, were considered niche hobbies at best and doorways to anti-social behaviors and taboo activities at worst. However, this is changing as academics, educators, and media producers begin to see the value of role-play and gaming as a means to convey messages and concepts, connect people, and understand social climates, patterns, and politics. This panel will clarify how the process of collaborative narrative and character building that is intrinsic to participation in LARPs and RPGs have a great capacity to launch us from the realms of fantasy to realize personal goals, achieve successful careers and impact the world in positive ways.

Date: Friday, June 22, 2012 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Location: Laguna Beach
Designer: Starlight Runner Entertainment

Since the 1980s LARPs and RPGs have carried an unfair social stigma, and as a result, the entertainment industry has been reluctant to consider Live Action Role Playing and RPGs as valuable channels for storytelling in large entertainment properties. This panel investigates the reasons behind this attitude, breaking down stereotypes, and looking at how LARPs and RPGs can add a valuable live social element to properties, leverage greater user participation, and foster a sense of ownership that drives fan loyalty. Furthermore, we will look at how we can broaden our understanding of the mechanisms and psychological drivers inherent in fanship and participation through LARPs and RPGs.

Date: Friday, June 22, 2012 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Laguna Beach
Designer: Starlight Runner Entertainment

Panelist may include such prominent Blizzard personalities such as:

Micky Neilson (Publishing Lead at Blizzard Entertainment)
Flint Dillle (Owner at GZP and Consultant at Blizzard Entertainment)
James Waugh (Senior Story Developer at Blizzard Entertainment)
Sean Copeland (Historian, Creative Development at Blizzard Entertainment)
Chris Metzen (Senior VP of Story and Franchise Development, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.)

The panel will take place on Saturday, June 23^rd, 2012 from 2 PM to 4 PM in the Laguna Beach Room.

For more information about any of the programing mentioned above, a full schedule of events, panels, games and workshops as well as to register visit www.wyrdcon.com. Four day attendee badges are only $69 through the end of April.

About Wyrd Con:

Wyrd Con is an interactive storytelling convention that brings together a program of rich panels, presentations, and roundtable dialogues about the relationship between live participatory culture and transmedia storytelling across multiple platforms with an exciting lineup of LARP’s, ARG’s, pervasive games, and transmedia experiences. If you have ever had a desire to solve the mystery, fight the enemy, or experience a world that mixes theater, costuming, create storyworlds and interact with all of the story worlds you have heard of from Anime, History, or Science Fiction, then Wyrd Con is the place to be.

Wyrd Con also strives to educate others in the concept and applications of Interactive storytelling. This knowledge can be applied to daily life in a variety of ways, from personally interacting to understand different roles in situations, to developing innovative interactive worlds, and even training to gain confidence and grow as a leader. Much of our programming discusses how different interactive narrative threads can have differing psychological effects on the participants; expand a storyline to other media and market concepts to generate new opportunities. Education is central to us, as it allows every participant to better understand, as well as convey the story in the most intimately interactive way possible. Please visit us online at www.wyrdcon.com.

About Micky Neilson:

Micky Neilson is the Publishing Lead at Blizzard Entertainment, where he has worked since 1993. Micky’s game writing credits include World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Warcraft III and Lost Vikings II. Micky is a television and movie fanatic, and with his writing partner Sam Didier, writes screenplays in his spare time (What spare time? Luckily he was able to create a fold in the time/space continuum!). Micky’s first comic book, World of Warcraft: Ashbringer, hit number two on the New York Times Bestseller list for Hardcover Graphic Novels. Micky and James Waugh co-wrote World of Warcraft: Curse of the Worgen in 2011. With the support of his wife Tiffany and daughter Tatiana, Micky looks forward to continuing his adventures in the worlds of Azeroth and beyond for many years to come.

About Flint Dille

Flint Dille is a living embodiment of Transmedia. His career started by turning toys into TV Shows with G1 Transformers (and Movie) all the way to writing the 2007 movie game and the Digital Comic ‘Autocracy’ with Chris Metzen currently being released, G.I. Joe, Inhumanoids and Visionaries. He has designed games with Gary Gygax and written movies for Steven Spielberg. Flint has sold game design documents as feature films twice(Venom: Dimension 2006) and Agent In Place (Lionsgate 2010). He created the ‘Comics Module’ for TSR, a comic book that contained both roleplaying and tabletop gaming content way before Transmedia (soon to be re-published by Cryptozoic). His Agent 13 novels, are in feature film development. Flint directed the Interactive Movie Terror T.R.A.X., Track of the Vampyre which became a television pilot for Fox as well as Dragonstrike, one of the first hybrid film projects.

Currently, Flint’s graphic novel for Diablo III, The Book of Cain is charting on Amazon, and his digital Transformers Comic, Autocracy is a best-selling digital only comic.

Flint has, himself, become a Transmedia character. Old friend Frank Miller immortalized him as Dillios (Spartan-ization of Dille), the narrator in 300. Gary Gygax made him a Barbarian named ‘Chert’ (in geology a low grade of flint). And nobody knows whether Flint from G.I. Joe was named for Flint, but Mr. Dille certainly elevated the Warrant Officer’s career.

Deemed by the Writer’s Guild of America, the most published Game Writer in the World, Flint has twice won ‘Game Script of the Year’ (Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (with JZP) and Dead to Rights and was nominated for Ghostbusters and Dark Athena. He has multiple platinum titles and has worked on crown jewel franchises including James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Tiny Toons, Batman: Rise of Sin Tsu (Guiness Book of Videogame Records for creating the first Batman villain outside of the comics) and also adapted as a novel, Superman, Dungeons & Dragons, Teen Titans and Scooby-Doo.

He has a degree in Ancient History from U.C. Berkeley and an MFA from USC. Currently, Flint is teaching a class on Alternate Reality Games at UCLA. His follow up book to The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design is about Transmedia.

About James Waugh:

In his role as senior story developer at Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., James Waugh is an evangelizer of transmedia and oversees the creation and development of narrative, character, world backstory, and dialogue for filmic content, novels, comic books, cinematic content, and game writing support, across Blizzard’s popular Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo universes. He also writes comics, new media, and short fiction for those universes, and organizes Blizzard’s Writers on Writing program, where prominent writers in various media are brought in to discuss aspects of their craft.

Waugh started at Blizzard in 2008 as a story developer. Prior to arriving at the company, he spent eight years in the film industry as a development executive, screenwriter, and story analyst, where he worked on a wide variety of movies and television shows and earned several awards and honors.

Waugh holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and classics from Florida State University and a master’s degree in screenwriting from the University of Miami. In addition to playing video games, his hobbies include studying mythology and Roman history, doing karaoke, and consuming stories in every possible form.

About Sean Copeland:

Sean has worked as a historian alongside the various development teams of Blizzard Entertainment as the “go-to guy” for all lore-related needs over the past 3 years. Much of his time is dedicated to helping the CDev Publishing Team shape the stories of Blizzard’s award-winning intellectual properties.

Sean has been acknowledged by bestselling authors for his efforts on many novels such as Twilight of the Aspects, Heaven’s Devils, Book of Cain, and in the credits of every Blizzard game since WoW: The Burning Crusade. Sean has recently entered the public eye by being a panelist on two BlizzCon lore panels and was dubbed the “Blue Shirt Guy” by Chris Metzen in response to the internet celebrity: the “Red Shirt Guy”.

When he’s not championing the lore, Sean spends much of his time devoted to his other passions. First among all is his fierce and longstanding passion of gaming. Whether it’s downing heroic raid bosses in World of Warcraft or even just reliving old adventure games, he wears his geek badge proudly. Aside from this, Sean also dedicates time to acting in projects with filmmaking friends or as a lead guitarist in his StarCraft-inspired band: the Black Eyed SCVs.

About Chris Metzen:

Some people write stories; Chris Metzen helps build worlds. As Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.’s senior vice president of story and franchise development, Metzen oversees the creation of the memorable and immersive characters, places, events, and histories behind all Blizzard Entertainment games.

While the majority of his time is spent writing, Metzen also has a hand in game design, conceptual artwork, and the voice direction of Blizzard Entertainment’s titles.

Metzen began working at Blizzard Entertainment in 1994, and he has worked on nearly all of the company’s award-winning games, including WarcraftÒ II: Tides of Darkness®, DiabloÒ, StarCraftÒ, StarCraft: Brood WarÒ, Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction®, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos®, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne®, and most recently, World of WarcraftÒ, World of Warcraft: The Burning CrusadeÒ, and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King™.

Like all of Blizzard Entertainment’s employees, Metzen is an avid gamer. In addition, due to his penchant for creativity, he is particularly fond of role-playing games. When he is not playing or working on building games, the Southern California native can be found reading comics, enjoying music, or reciting the dialogue from his favorite movies.