October 13, 2014: JoCo Cruise Crazy!

It can now be told: I will be the Gaming Guest at JoCo Cruise Crazy next year!

JoCo Cruise Crazy is the Jonathan Coulton cruise. This year will be the fifth, and they keep on doing it, so obviously something is going right. It runs eight nights in the Western Caribbean on Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas, with music, comedy and performances from Coulton and friends. It departs from Ft. Lauderdale, FL on January 31st and returns February 8th, with ports of call at Phillipsburg, St. Maarten; Basseterre, St. Kitts; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Labadee, Haiti.

And because this is a geek event, and because many of us geeks kind of like games, the ship will have a game room. We're sponsoring it. There will be Munchkin. There will be Zombie Dice and Castellan and Revolution. Heck, there will even be Ogre. It's a big ship; we're pretty sure it can carry the box.

Not to mention a great number of games that we did not publish ourselves, because face it, some of those are pretty good too.

This whole thing is exciting to me for several reasons:

• I have been a Coulton fan for years, seen him in concert, spent a lot of time (but not enough yet) listening to the music . . . but I've never met him.
• Time spent around Paul and Storm is never wasted. Well, actually, it probably is, but it sure is fun.
• And Andrew is coming, and when he gets together with Paul and Storm the repartee is competely repickulous.
• Wil Wheaton!
• I have never in my life been on a cruise.

SO: If this sounds like fun, get on board. Listen to Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, the Both, and the other performers. Play some games with me. Just . . . not during the concerts, because I will be in the audience.

-- Steve Jackson