Again, Origins
Jun. 29th, 2010 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishI think I've got the timing about figured out by now: leave a little early from work on Wednesday and make ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uilos drive through traffic, stop for dinner and change drivers somewhere between Hagerstown and Cumberland, roll into Columbus around ten-thirty. Collect badge Thursday morning, party hard through Sunday night, come back Monday morning and collapse in the evening. The only reason it didn't work out perfectly this time was that I neglected to schedule sufficient introvert downtime during the con: I spent literally from Wednesday morning through Sunday at noon in the company of someone, and was completely and utterly oversocialed and wiped out.
It was an absolute delight to seerbandrews and Chris and zyxwvut and ee0r and isolde_deely and elvenyukiryu and kdsorceress and currentlee and psilan and gord only knows how many other people I've forgotten. There was a medium-sized expedition to Mongolian for dinner, and waffles every morning from the breakfast bar, and lots of North Market for lunches. There were hugs and scritches and fragments of good conversation, and I got to retell (in somewhat fragmented form) the saga of the Worst D&D Game Ever (moral: if the GM doesn't name the Elvish city, he doesn't get to complain when his players start wanting to go to Graceland). I spent somewhat less time in the Lab than I would have liked. Next year I think I shall sign up to run something again, quite possibly some number of Fluxxen.
I did place in the Icehouse tournament, which is something. Of course, out of the five competitors, four placed; on the other hand, I won two of my four games and still came in second after a tiebreaker, and third in the single-game finals where the scores were all within four points of each other. High level of play all around this year.
I spent a great deal of time in the Board Room taking advantage of the open gaming, and got to try out the Samurai card game based on the board game (verdict: play the board game) and Priests Of Ra, a sequel to the auction game Ra (verdict: play the original), and other things that were decent. I talked Chris into buying Homesteaders on the argument of "this seems like the kind of thing you'll like, and I'm happy to teach it," and was rewarded with him winning by around twelve points (a significant margin) and "this is exactly the kind of thing I like," which made me very happy. He taught Neuland, which is fun but (at least with four players) is made of downtime. I purchased and played British Rails (crayon rails in Britain, go figure) and Golden City (a Michael Schacht connection game with some extra chrome), and got in a late-nite session of At The Gates Of Loyang in which we grew and sold six varieties of wooden vegetables.
Other than the aforementioned two games, plus Italia (Britannia in Italy! Recreate the epic sweep of Italian history, except for the boring parts where the Roman empire dominated everything), I mostly picked up RPGs this year, which felt odd since I gave up trying to interpret the convention program book relatively quickly and didn't actually play any. I snagged Ganakagok, a gameuilos and I played in last year about Inuit mythmaking, and a handful of other indie RPGs. I also snagged a few cheap games including GURPS Alpha Centauri (the RPG based on the computer game that includes a unit from a board game from the same publisher as the RPG...). And also the In Nomine Ethereal Player's Guide, which I only snagged because I'm vaguely interested in how IN handles nonaligned spirits (IN being a game of roleplaying angels and/or demons); it wasn't until after I got it back to the hotel room that I realised it was by R. Sean Borgstrom, of Nobilis fame.
Origins isn't Beach Week. It's higher stress, for, I think, higher reward. I'm closer to the people there. I need that sometimes. I just also need to remember to take time Off.
And now I am tired and a little grumpy and I seem to have misplaced one of the 624 chits from Italia, probably back in the Hampton. Oh well. At least my replacement debit card came in the mail sometime last week.
uilos drive through traffic, stop for dinner and change drivers somewhere between Hagerstown and Cumberland, roll into Columbus around ten-thirty. Collect badge Thursday morning, party hard through Sunday night, come back Monday morning and collapse in the evening. The only reason it didn't work out perfectly this time was that I neglected to schedule sufficient introvert downtime during the con: I spent literally from Wednesday morning through Sunday at noon in the company of someone, and was completely and utterly oversocialed and wiped out.It was an absolute delight to see
rbandrews and Chris and zyxwvut and ee0r and isolde_deely and elvenyukiryu and kdsorceress and currentlee and psilan and gord only knows how many other people I've forgotten. There was a medium-sized expedition to Mongolian for dinner, and waffles every morning from the breakfast bar, and lots of North Market for lunches. There were hugs and scritches and fragments of good conversation, and I got to retell (in somewhat fragmented form) the saga of the Worst D&D Game Ever (moral: if the GM doesn't name the Elvish city, he doesn't get to complain when his players start wanting to go to Graceland). I spent somewhat less time in the Lab than I would have liked. Next year I think I shall sign up to run something again, quite possibly some number of Fluxxen.I did place in the Icehouse tournament, which is something. Of course, out of the five competitors, four placed; on the other hand, I won two of my four games and still came in second after a tiebreaker, and third in the single-game finals where the scores were all within four points of each other. High level of play all around this year.
I spent a great deal of time in the Board Room taking advantage of the open gaming, and got to try out the Samurai card game based on the board game (verdict: play the board game) and Priests Of Ra, a sequel to the auction game Ra (verdict: play the original), and other things that were decent. I talked Chris into buying Homesteaders on the argument of "this seems like the kind of thing you'll like, and I'm happy to teach it," and was rewarded with him winning by around twelve points (a significant margin) and "this is exactly the kind of thing I like," which made me very happy. He taught Neuland, which is fun but (at least with four players) is made of downtime. I purchased and played British Rails (crayon rails in Britain, go figure) and Golden City (a Michael Schacht connection game with some extra chrome), and got in a late-nite session of At The Gates Of Loyang in which we grew and sold six varieties of wooden vegetables.
Other than the aforementioned two games, plus Italia (Britannia in Italy! Recreate the epic sweep of Italian history, except for the boring parts where the Roman empire dominated everything), I mostly picked up RPGs this year, which felt odd since I gave up trying to interpret the convention program book relatively quickly and didn't actually play any. I snagged Ganakagok, a game
uilos and I played in last year about Inuit mythmaking, and a handful of other indie RPGs. I also snagged a few cheap games including GURPS Alpha Centauri (the RPG based on the computer game that includes a unit from a board game from the same publisher as the RPG...). And also the In Nomine Ethereal Player's Guide, which I only snagged because I'm vaguely interested in how IN handles nonaligned spirits (IN being a game of roleplaying angels and/or demons); it wasn't until after I got it back to the hotel room that I realised it was by R. Sean Borgstrom, of Nobilis fame.Origins isn't Beach Week. It's higher stress, for, I think, higher reward. I'm closer to the people there. I need that sometimes. I just also need to remember to take time Off.
And now I am tired and a little grumpy and I seem to have misplaced one of the 624 chits from Italia, probably back in the Hampton. Oh well. At least my replacement debit card came in the mail sometime last week.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-01 05:12 pm (UTC)