by Skyway Library and Playtest Northwest

The Skyway Library is honored that along with Playtest NorthWest we will be kicking off our region of library’s Pride celebration, with June’s Mini Game Day! We cannot wait to play games with you that are designed by members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and gaming events and conventions that celebrate the queer community! We have loved hosting gaming events that bring our community together for some unplugged face time, and are thrilled that our last Mini Game Day (until the fall) will celebrate diversity within the PNW gaming scene. Can’t wait to see you there, and play these great games!

 

Paws and Padlocks

Designers: Christian DeRego & John Gawaran

Publisher: Puppy Slime Games

Recommended ages: 8+

Game Length: 30 min – 1 hr

Paws and Padlocks is a family-friendly dungeon crawler where you play as adventurers breaking into Slime Castle to steal the evil Slime Queen’s treasure. Build your path to the treasure by laying out room cards on the board and try to mess up another player’s path along the way. While exploring the castle, you can fight Slime monsters, open treasure chests, find interesting items, and trigger events that change up the game! Will you escape with your treasure, or will you be trapped inside Slime Castle forever?

We wanted to make a game that was family-friendly so people of all ages can play and a game that serves as an introduction to the world of tabletop RPGs. We also wanted to put a lot of diverse characters and punny humor to make this game truly our creation.

We will hopefully have our game available for sale this summer! Check out our website and social media for updates.

Our website is linked here: http://www.pawsandpadlocks.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/puppyslimegames

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/puppyslimegames/

 

Orca Con

Volunteers: Rick Labadie, Jesse Ferguson

Orca Con volunteers will be bringing Codenames and SKULL to play at Mini Game Day, because they’re some of the best social games around, and Dragoon, because it’s easy to pick up and play, and it’s GORGEOUS. And others!

OrcaCon is a tabletop games convention, which includes board and card games, role-playing games, and miniatures games. We pride ourselves (see what I did there?) on creating a safe and welcoming space for promoting the tabletop games hobby, supporting diversity in tabletop games, and building a community of both novice and experienced game players. We volunteer at the con because we believe in their vision, and because it’s a blast! One specific example [of how we celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community] that we’re really proud of is the pronoun ribbons for badges.

When you pick up your badge, you can attach a ribbon with your pronoun. Either grab a pre-made one (for example: she/her) or write in your own. Inclusivity continues to be a huge focus for us in 2019, and our GoH and most of our Special Guests are LGBTQIA+. We’ll also have a table at Seattle Pridefest Queer Geeks & Gamers con and Tacoma Pridefest.

The tabletop industry and community are incredibly diverse, but we’ve got a long way to go to improve representation and treatment of marginalized folks. Clear and well-informed harassment policies at conventions and trade shows, marked efforts toward better representation in leadership positions, and more empathy in general would all go a long way to making our community one where everyone feels safe and comfortable. That’s one of the reasons OrcaCon was founded in the first place.

You can find info on our mission, buying badges, hotel accommodations and more at OrcaCon.org

 

QSA Cafes

The Library’s LGBTQIA+ youth social and leadership group

QSA stands for Queer Straight Alliance, and calling them cafes refers to the needs for there to be queer spaces that are not clubs and bars. So QSA Cafes is youth-friendly space in the library, for LGBTQIA+ folks. QSA Cafes meet weekly, sometimes to hang out, watch affirming media, listen to our favorite music, or do crafting projects together. The QSA Cafes also plan and help implement bigger celebratory queer events in the Southend/Renton, such as our upcoming Queer Camp: Pride!

For Mini Game Day we will be bringing our favorite games to play and teach! We’re planning on having the classic of all classic games Chess, as well as the aptly rainbow colored Uno, and one of our newest favorites Coup! We are excited to play these games (and maybe some more) with you!

While QSA Cafes are taking a break for the summer we’ll be back to meeting every Thursday come September, and will be holding a big event at Renton Library June 30th from 12-5pm which we hope to see you at! Please follow the Instagram account our members just created!

We hope to see you at Mini Game Day, and at the great pride events happening across our region of libraries! On June 18 a Rainbow Edition of Tween Storytime at Renton Highlands Library, June 24 a screening of The Trans List at Fairwood Library, June 27 a Drag Queen Story Hour at the Fairwood Library, And June 30th Queer Camp: Pride a pride celebration for teens and tweens!

And we’ll be back with Mini Game Days starting in September!

Please stay up to date on the amazing gaming events PlaytestNW does throughout the PNW on our website.

And to know what’s happening at Skyway Library please check out our events calendar.