This past weekend was yet another convention: Diversicon. It’s a very small con, hovering around 100 people (so it’s smaller than Convergence by near two orders of magnitude). But it can be a lot of fun, with some very interesting panels, a usually-hilarious auction, gaming and other niftiness. This year’s iteration was no exception, with good gaming (I played two games of Zar, though unfortunately other games didn’t end up happening, with insufficient players), a great panel about the works of Iain (M.) Banks, lots of hanging out with good friends and general enjoyment.

A particular highlight for me was getting to do the “Crowd-Source a World” panel, and getting to facilitate it. I modeled this heavily on the way Ben Rosenbaum has done a similar panel at WisCon in the past. (Here are notes from 2008 and 2012.) We got a late start, so we didn’t have enough time, but by the end, everyone in the room had the sense that this was a weird, wonderful place that we somehow knew.

I don’t have time to write up what we created, but here are photos of the sheets we used:

It was an amazing world, with moons connected by rods, giant mats of garbage like the one in the Pacific gyre, nomads determined to destroy the anchor of the supercontinent and more. Can you figure out what order we did the sheets in? (We completed one entire category before moving onto the next.)

Finally, a note: Blogs posts will be sparse here for a few days as I am going on vacation. But I’ll be back at it next week!