Flashback: Yawlwyrd

For some reason, this story popped into my head last night. It was triggered by the fact I'm working on some of the game scenarios for the Cold Wars con in March. Generally, we end cons with a Sunday WEGS game of epic proportions (3+ hour session with 8+ players). We call these games Yawls, and the scenario title is some derivation of that root: The Yawlwyrd (Ubercon 2005) was the first. The Yawlamo was next, and one we've used as our staple con-closer. My new one is called Escape From Yawlcatraz (a piratey prison-break scenario). The Yawls came from the marriage of two disjointed things. The first being that it is based on the Icelandic All-thing, an enourmous meeting of chieftains, for my purpose key players. The second thing was an elevator ride I experienced at GenCon 2005, Indianapolis. In the elevator were two game geeks decked out in their fantasy armour, two non-gamer NASCAR types (father and son), and me and Sue (who showed no signs of our geekage). As soon as the two knights of the dinner table left the elevator, the two Nascar guys started cracking up to each other. They turned to us and said something like, "Can you believe those guys?!?" I said, "Yup. We're gamers. We're here for the convention, too. We just don't dress up for it." The father chuckled and replied, "Well, y'all weird!" Thus, the Yawlwyrd was born. It's a light-hearted nod to the wackiness of this hobby and the diehard commitment to have fun until the last possible moment.