By Dawn Hewitt

For our third glorious year in a row, Kumoricon ran Console Gaming at GameStorm, a four-day gaming convention in Vancouver, WA, run by OSFCI, the same folks who bring us OryCon. Every year our room gets busier and busier. We brought and ran six set-ups of console gaming in the Boardroom, the room we previously used as the Manga Library. The Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament was over capacity for the room. We'll need to figure out how to set that up differently for next year so we can let more people into tournaments. We kept the room open late most nights, but some people wished we'd kept it open even later. Maybe next year. Nextdoor to us, two fellow Kumoricon Board members were staffing the Collectible Card Gaming room. We also recognized some of our staffers who were there attending the con.

Interestingly, we ran into not one, but two people who have been Guests of Honor at Kumoricon. We knew that Jason Thompson was going to be here. Since we last saw him, the first volume of his manga-style graphic novel, King of RPGs, has been published, and it hit the New York Times Best Seller List for a few weeks. I helped at his booth for awhile as he drew maps for the D&D game he was running that night. Jason was excited to see some of the staff he recognized from Kumoricon. We also ran across Dark Horse Manga Editor Carl Horn, who was there to see Jason's panel on Anime in Gaming.

Like last year, I managed to not actually play any games. However, I did get a lot of work done and spent too much money in the Dealers Room. I am weak versus pretty dice. All in all, it was a fun and productive weekend, and I hope we are back next year!