PAX Unplugged 2024 Part 1: Thursday and Friday, TTRPGs and Dice Galore

image by Ian, who was the best emotional support human and photographer on this trip

I haven’t been to a convention in years, and I’ve never been to one as big as PAX Unplugged. PAXU was an amazing experience, one I will cherish forever.

I dove into TTRPGs at the beginning of 2024 after seeing friends in the streaming sphere on Twitch do many amazing Actual Plays—fundraising oneshots, long campaigns like Rivals of Waterdeep, and everything in-between. All of it appealed to me, but I felt too shy and incapable of acting or improv work. I’m a writer and an introvert, I kept telling myself. No one would want to see me perform. Then I was kindly encouraged to stop overthinking it and played a few oneshots with friends on and off stream. The collaborative storytelling, the shenanigans, the joy? I was hooked. I think my total is somewhere around 10-12 oneshots or small 3-6 episode campaigns this year. Which is a lot for one year! And while I had to slow down due to college and finishing novel, I have no intention of stopping. TTRPGs are now a solid part of my life and I love them.

So, we have our setting for the scene going into PAXU:

Me, a very anxious but eager gremlin going to my first TTRPG focused convention—and the biggest convention I’ve ever attended at all

My partner Ian, not too into TTRPGs but very kindly going along as photographer and emotional support human. He’s wonderful. Without him helping me navigate things I wouldn’t have been able to manage. Never let anyone demand you have to figure out big crowds alone if you have severe social anxiety, just saying! It is perfectly okay and encouraged to bring an emotional support human (friend, family, partner, etc.).

PAX Unplugged is MASSIVE. There were several times I had to retreat to our hotel because I was overstimulated by the sound and sheer quantity of people. I didn’t even have time to fully experience all the panels, play any games, or participate in any workshops. So many things to offer, I definitely want to play some games with friends next year if I can manage to gather enough of us in one place at one time (the true difficulty).

Oh, and one more note: I went to PAXU with a focus on solo, duo, and GMless TTRPGs that were designed for solo play in some form (even if it could be played with others) because I want to create a one-page or solo TTRPG myself in 2025. There were so many good games. I barely scratched the surface, and certainly didn’t touch any of the larger systems—I forgot I wanted a physical copy of Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Girl By Moonlight, for example.

Oops, this blog post got long. Very long. Cleaving it in two seems best. This is now Part 1, which will cover Thursday and Friday. Part 2 will cover Saturday and Sunday. Read Part 2 here!

In the meantime: let’s begin the tale of my first PAX Unplugged 2024 experience. The convention itself was December 6-8. Apologies this is being posted on December 14; it took some time to recover energy and gather all the information, links, and photos. But let’s do this. Cue lights, drama, loud crowds, equally loud laughter with friends, and a lot of anxious wandering around the exhibit floor trying to learn how to confidently ask booth attendants about their games.

DAY 0 – Thursday: We Arrived Intact!

the view from our hotel! not bad!

A tip from me to you: don’t drive into Philadelphia at 4pm on a Thursday. That’s rush hour. That way lies madness. That way lies lots of angry honking inner city drivers (which, okay, that part is mostly fun) and taking several wrong turns. It took some stressful navigating, but we made it to our hotel, got our badges for the con early to avoid any lines, and settled in. I got to say hi to some lovely friends and meet some new folks. But I was so out of my element I panicked and fled and fell asleep early, feeling the social anxiety.

Thankfully, the rest of the weekend wasn’t so intense. I let myself have fun and tried not to pressure myself too hard to be some perfect abstract concept of myself that everyone would love. No, I just had to be me! So I was.

DAY 1 – Friday: In Which Val Buys Too Many Dice and Solo TTRPGs

After snagging some coffee, my partner and I wandered to the exhibit show floor. This is where I spent far too much money and failed to take adequate pictures of everything. So let’s try to break this down. I tried to check out a fair bit of games as well (though I also did that Saturday, and more will be on that in Part 2).

First, I found THIS ADORABLE OWLBEAR PLUSH. It has a cape, a bowtie, and a little magnetic fish it holds in its beak. It was worth every penny. I still need to name them. Accepting ideas, cursed or otherwise.

are they not an adorable owlbear??? too cute!

You can find owlbear plush (maybe not exactly this one, but I saw a brown owlbear on their website) at Baby Bestiary. They seem to be part of publisher Metal Weave Games. I also picked up the Wanderlust deck of cards and oracle deck at their booth. I never did find a tarot deck at the convention itself, but this deck of cards was gorgeous and also has a fun booklet of prompts that I’ve used for microfic themes as practice.

I also spoke briefly to Pete Petrusha about Chew: The Roleplaying Game and that was a nice conversation! It was the first time I tried to ask someone to explain their game and booth merch selection, so shoutout to Pete for being very kind to me while I was flailing trying to ask questions and introduce myself as a writer interested in working in TTRPGs for the first time in person ever.

all the TTRPGs I bought from Indie Press Revolution

From there I found myself at the Indie Press Revolution booth and bought I think 5 solo or 2-4 player TTRPGS.

• Fetch My Blade by Kelly Tran and Ethan Yen

BE THE DOG, GO FETCH YOUR MASTER’S SWORD IN TIME FOR A DUEL. IT’S TOO CUTE. I can’t wait to play this one on stream with my chat. This one is a solo journaling game.

• Lost Among the Starlit Wreckage by Seamus Conneely

Okay, a) I love mechs and angst so this was perfect and b) the cover art looks almost exactly like how I imagined the end of my short story, “Emotional Resonance” would be (well, including one other half of a mech, but you know) so aggressively I couldn’t not get a physical copy of it. Turns out, I already have a digital copy from one of the many awesome itch.io bundles as well! This one is a 1-2 player journaling/storytelling game.

• MIRU by HINOKODO

MIRU is a “solo-first hexcrawling analog adventure game” where you try to kill the God responsible for killing your brother. As someone that loves attack and dethrone god plots, I had to try this one out. Plus it looked a little more elaborate than the journaling solo TTRPGs and I wanted to see how it played.

• Signal to Noise by  LunarShadow Designs

I picked this one up to play with Guan Un (he’s a great writer, go read his work) specifically because we sometimes play duo or GMless TTRPGs together, but life has been hectic and timezones are hard—so when I saw this was an asynchronous two player that revolved around sending emails, I knew I had to try it.

the Plus One EXP cards were very fancy

Then, of course, I found myself at the Plus One EXP booth which also had some awesome stuff. I got to talk to Wes Franks (who DM’d a oneshot where I got to play a faun that did parkour across a cursed lake, it was amazing) and Jason Cordova (love The Silt Verses) for a moment as well, and that was nice! Go check out both of them. I only bought two TTRPGs here, largely because I was getting a little overstimulated and had to go run away from the big crowds.

• Told by Starlight by Ryan Khan

This is a game of “drawing constellations and telling stories” which deeply appeals to me. It’s meant for 2-6 players, but I felt I could try to play it with my chat or my partner sometime or even on my own to worldbuild for my novel (and future novels).

• The Conservatory by Devin Nelson

I wanted to get a tarot based game and this one not only was that but also was made for 1-5 players. So I could play it alone or find some friends, win-win! I also love strange, occult institutions as a setting. When the setting is itself a character in its own right, I do so enjoy that. I’m intrigued by this one, as it seems to be worldbuilding heavy (my favorite).

liquid core dice are so ADHD friendly, they’re pretty and sparkly and distracting in the best way

Of course, I did buy a ridiculous amount of dice too.

Dispel Dice are something I don’t typically have the means to treat myself to. But a good friend gave a generous amount of birthday money, so I bought a set of liquid core dice—the Retrograde set specifically. They’re beautiful, I love them, and I fully plan to use them and try not to just hide them away because they were expensive. (Actually, I just used the d6 from this set in my Nahual second oneshot through Diversity Saves and they were very kind to me).

Shoutout to the folks working the Dispel Dice booth, too. They were so friendly and let me look at all the dice so I could settle on which set spoke to me most.

much dice

After that, urbanbohemian and I stopped by the FanRoll booth since we made an appointment to take a little booth tour. The person running the booth was very stressed and gave us a quick rundown, and I proceeded to buy a pride flag dice tray, pride dice, two d20 necklaces, and one liquid core d20! They had a lot of cool things, what can I say? And, again, shoutout to the person running the booth. They were doing it solo and I hope they got a nice treat after the con.

After a retreat to the hotel room, I wandered back to the show floor with Brian again to go check out Forever Stoked Creative. They had a huge dumpster setup to demo Trash Talk—which I tragically did not get a picture of (next year I will be better about this because there’s so much good stuff). But it looked like a fun family/friend night board game. Minus the giant dumpster the attendees had to jump in and out of, of course.

Also in that same (broader) booth area was Speed Colors, which is a game involving memorizing which colors to draw in specific places, and you lose points for drawing out of the lines or the wrong color in the wrong place. It looked like a silly/fun game for family or slightly tipsy friends.

I still don’t know how to take a selfie, especially in a mask; but I tried!

After that, it was all socializing with friends and new acquaintances time. I got to talk to Taymoor, who is working on a TTRPG called Seeker’s Romance—which looks super cool and vibrant and I’m sold on all the worldbuilding. Will definitely be persuading friends who like to be Storytellers/GMs to run that so I can be a gremlin player when it releases.

friends! thank you to cypheroftyr for sharing the photo and I think shoutout to Ian for taking the picture of everyone! I am awkwardly posing next to urbanbohemian and ladyluck34 in the center. AND I’m not the tallest, felt nice.

Then I absolutely crashed—but not before Ian and I celebrated our time-honored traveling tradition: watching terrible hotel television. Last time we traveled (at least a year ago, and not for a convention), we wound up watching Avatar: The Way of Water until 3am. Our brains simply couldn’t shut off. It was a surreal, oddly liminal experience. This time around? Well, I don’t even remember how we wound up on the Hallmark channel, but we fell asleep to a holiday movie featuring a gay couple looking to adopt, so that was wholesome enough!

Due to the sheer number of games I tried to include, this post got away from me and is now a two part PAX Unplugged saga. Check out Part 2: Saturday and Sunday Boogaloo here if you’re curious about how Saturday went. Thank you for reading! I am feeling insecure about my strange intersection of fiction writing to streamer to TTRPG performer and narrative designer and writer, so I hope you enjoyed this piece.

If you want to reach out to me to point out any games I should check out (especially solo/GMless/duo to play with partner or stream chat), I do have a contact form. Also if you just want to tell me you liked this write-up and it wasn’t a total waste of time! Very good feedback for me too.

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