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jazzfishThis year's Gathering was smaller than usual: 262 attendees was I think the final count, where in a normal year it's a little over 400. (To the extent that anything pre-plague can count as "normal" going forward.) I noticed this partly in several missing people I'd hoped to see, and partly in a difficulty in finding pickup games by just wandering through the main hall.
Joe H-- pointed out that he'd seen a bunch of people he knew who weren't really circulating this year but were playing a bunch of games together. Which makes sense: normally (that word again) they'd get plenty of gaming with each other during the year and would use the Gathering to meet new folks and try new things, but, well.
When Sarah left she dropped me at the grocery store, so I picked up my standard pop-tarts and sandwich fixins so that breakfast and lunch were sorted. I've taken to bringing my own tea and small hot-water-heater, so I'm not dependent on a) bad hotel tea or b) a coffee-maker for hot water. This works out really well: tea and pop-tarts for breakfast, sandwich and apple for lunch, wander off to a restaurant for a "real" dinner. The sole advantage of Niagara in the summer is the row of food trucks a couple blocks from the hotel: slightly cheaper and faster than restaurant food, and far more varied.
I got in an 18xx game every morning but one, when I overslept due to overstress. I progressed from making obvious errors at the start of the game (1880: starting my initial railroad with a tile lay that could have helped Mark, but Tom's railroad could help him more, so I got quickly shut out of some early money) to obvious errors about a third of the way through (1822CA: starting a minor with enough money to buy a 2-train but miscounting and buying a more expensive 3-train out of pocket... and then the minor I actually wanted came up next round instead of one round later) to no obvious errors (2038: I could probably critique my play if I reviewed it closely but I didn't see any severe misjudgements). I even managed to win my first 18xx at the Gathering: a three-player 18CZ against Tom and Mark, where I got enough of a mid-game dividend lead to (barely) carry me through against Tom's superior share-value position and Mark's impressive late-game dividends.
Apart from that I spent a surprising-to-me amount of time with Jacob D--. I met Jacob ages ago at Origins, even before I was running Fluxx tournaments for the Looneys, where I gained a lot of respect for him as an Icehouse shark, a savvy game developer, and a generally insightful if somewhat pushy person. "Game developer" isn't a term I would have used at the time, I would have said "designer," and he's designed one of my favourite abstract-strategy games in Pikemen, but even early-mid-2000s I think a lot of his best work was in refining other peoples' ideas. More recently he's done an awful lot of work on Sidereal Confluence, a game of aggressive cooperation.
"Pushy" isn't the right word either. I struggle some with Jacob, honestly: he's very much an extrovert, and he's interested in people, and so he asks probing questions and talks a bunch. He's happy to back off if you ask him to, or if you're obviously uncomfortable, but to me it's still awkward. It's by no means wholly or even mostly unpleasant: I enjoy talking to him. (Compare with my ex-friend N--, who always seemed like he was looking for ... weaknesses, or sore points to poke at: Jacob just feels genuinely interested and curious.)
I played two rounds of Sidereal Confluence with the late-playtest-stage expansion, about which I can't say anything other than OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME. SidCon is already one of my favourite games: a trading game where the point isn't to make a few good (ie, lopsided-in-your-favour) trades, it's to make as many trades as possible. Everyone has a pile of Stuff, and everyone needs some Stuff to run their machines, but no one has the kinds of Stuff they need. So there's a mad flurry of exchanges and negotiations, and the more of those exchanges and negotiations you can be a part of the better off you are. Even if you're not technically "gaining" anything, you're getting more Stuff that you can actually use. Now add on to that what they call "variable player powers," where each player can break certain rules in certain extreme ways. The end result is an awful lot of busy chaotic noisy fun. The expansion ... basically adds in a new and even wackier set of variable-player-powers. There is just so much gamespace to explore here.
I also played a handful of "normal" games: nothing super exciting but plenty of "that was fun" or "someone I know should own this so I can play it a few more times and figure out if I like it." And I talked to Jacob, and to Tau (the designer of SidCon) and Chris C-- also from Origins, and a few other folks.
And it was, for the most part, a really good time. I've missed people, I've missed having a flood of gaming, I've missed getting my butt solidly kicked in a bunch of different 18xx games. I've missed travel, though by the end of it I was ready to be Home for awhile.
Hotel reservations are up for next year (back to April again, in theory). Hopefully Alan will put up registration info soon and I can start thinking "I get to go back soon" instead of just vaguely hoping.
Joe H-- pointed out that he'd seen a bunch of people he knew who weren't really circulating this year but were playing a bunch of games together. Which makes sense: normally (that word again) they'd get plenty of gaming with each other during the year and would use the Gathering to meet new folks and try new things, but, well.
When Sarah left she dropped me at the grocery store, so I picked up my standard pop-tarts and sandwich fixins so that breakfast and lunch were sorted. I've taken to bringing my own tea and small hot-water-heater, so I'm not dependent on a) bad hotel tea or b) a coffee-maker for hot water. This works out really well: tea and pop-tarts for breakfast, sandwich and apple for lunch, wander off to a restaurant for a "real" dinner. The sole advantage of Niagara in the summer is the row of food trucks a couple blocks from the hotel: slightly cheaper and faster than restaurant food, and far more varied.
I got in an 18xx game every morning but one, when I overslept due to overstress. I progressed from making obvious errors at the start of the game (1880: starting my initial railroad with a tile lay that could have helped Mark, but Tom's railroad could help him more, so I got quickly shut out of some early money) to obvious errors about a third of the way through (1822CA: starting a minor with enough money to buy a 2-train but miscounting and buying a more expensive 3-train out of pocket... and then the minor I actually wanted came up next round instead of one round later) to no obvious errors (2038: I could probably critique my play if I reviewed it closely but I didn't see any severe misjudgements). I even managed to win my first 18xx at the Gathering: a three-player 18CZ against Tom and Mark, where I got enough of a mid-game dividend lead to (barely) carry me through against Tom's superior share-value position and Mark's impressive late-game dividends.
Apart from that I spent a surprising-to-me amount of time with Jacob D--. I met Jacob ages ago at Origins, even before I was running Fluxx tournaments for the Looneys, where I gained a lot of respect for him as an Icehouse shark, a savvy game developer, and a generally insightful if somewhat pushy person. "Game developer" isn't a term I would have used at the time, I would have said "designer," and he's designed one of my favourite abstract-strategy games in Pikemen, but even early-mid-2000s I think a lot of his best work was in refining other peoples' ideas. More recently he's done an awful lot of work on Sidereal Confluence, a game of aggressive cooperation.
"Pushy" isn't the right word either. I struggle some with Jacob, honestly: he's very much an extrovert, and he's interested in people, and so he asks probing questions and talks a bunch. He's happy to back off if you ask him to, or if you're obviously uncomfortable, but to me it's still awkward. It's by no means wholly or even mostly unpleasant: I enjoy talking to him. (Compare with my ex-friend N--, who always seemed like he was looking for ... weaknesses, or sore points to poke at: Jacob just feels genuinely interested and curious.)
I played two rounds of Sidereal Confluence with the late-playtest-stage expansion, about which I can't say anything other than OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME. SidCon is already one of my favourite games: a trading game where the point isn't to make a few good (ie, lopsided-in-your-favour) trades, it's to make as many trades as possible. Everyone has a pile of Stuff, and everyone needs some Stuff to run their machines, but no one has the kinds of Stuff they need. So there's a mad flurry of exchanges and negotiations, and the more of those exchanges and negotiations you can be a part of the better off you are. Even if you're not technically "gaining" anything, you're getting more Stuff that you can actually use. Now add on to that what they call "variable player powers," where each player can break certain rules in certain extreme ways. The end result is an awful lot of busy chaotic noisy fun. The expansion ... basically adds in a new and even wackier set of variable-player-powers. There is just so much gamespace to explore here.
I also played a handful of "normal" games: nothing super exciting but plenty of "that was fun" or "someone I know should own this so I can play it a few more times and figure out if I like it." And I talked to Jacob, and to Tau (the designer of SidCon) and Chris C-- also from Origins, and a few other folks.
And it was, for the most part, a really good time. I've missed people, I've missed having a flood of gaming, I've missed getting my butt solidly kicked in a bunch of different 18xx games. I've missed travel, though by the end of it I was ready to be Home for awhile.
Hotel reservations are up for next year (back to April again, in theory). Hopefully Alan will put up registration info soon and I can start thinking "I get to go back soon" instead of just vaguely hoping.