I'm finally doing it. Following in the grand tradition of Melissa Kaercher, Mimosa and other great sources of fandom reportage, I'm doing a con report.
I wrote a little about Minicon before, but it was by no means a con report. I suppose I could've written more, but Minicon was kind of magical for me -- it was my first exposure to fandom since returning from Taiwan -- and I was too blissed out on geekery to really write much about it.
Also, a disclaimer is in order. I'm probably misremembering about 80% of the things that happened during the con, especially the order in which they happened. Hey, it's not high journalism, okay? But if you want, please feel free to correct any mistakes you see here.
Before the con
I really wasn't sure of what to expect from Convergence, or whether I wanted to go at all, until a month or so beforehand. I attended the old pre-blowup Minicons, and had a good sense of what those were like; and I attended this year's small Minicon, which was great. But I didn't know what Convergence would be like. Pure debauchery with no science fiction content at all? Cool people and great ideas? I finally decided I should at least check it out.
I also knew that my brother would be there, and didn't want to invade his space. He's become quite an excellent geek in his own right, and (as I discovered) is pretty well known in Convergence circles. I'm very proud of his accomplishments in fandom, actually. But I didn't want to feel like I was intruding on his turf. I didn't want him to have to deal with me being there, if it was a problem. I was, I guess, afraid of him being ashamed of me. Eventually, though, I just asked him, and he said he didn't mind at all. So I decided that I wanted to go.
It was a bit iffy right up to the last moment whether or not I was going to be able to go to Convergence, though. I am currently without a job and just about completely broke, but at the last minute, I got a few hours of work that paid enough for me to pay for registration and a bit more for books or whatever. It was very close, though. I never went out to eat and didn't rent a room, bed or patch of carpet.
I also wasn't sure how I'd get there. Luckily, though, Dave Romm gave me a ride. He and I have been hanging out a fair amount at MnStf parties since I returned to the US. He's a really nice, smart, funny guy and has kindly given me rides several times. At Convergence, he gave me a ride to the hotel every day. We also hung out together quite a bit during the con, and he introduced me to all kinds of cool people and gave me lots of fan historical insight into Convergence.
We agreed to meet after we were done with the mundane world on Friday, at around 3pm. I packed my bag full of games, my camera and dice, and Dave picked me up at about 3pm. We had a nice little drive to the Radisson Sheraton, though I forget what we talked about on the drive. Eventually, we arrived at Convergence.
Friday
The first place we went was registration, since I didn't yet have a membership. They had blue lines on the carpet that led the way, which was very handy.
As I gave the woman at registration my money, she asked if I had a brother. I replied that I do; she said that she knew him. I later found out from my brother that she had been his girlfriend for a time. Her name was Sarah, and she was quite nice. She said that she'd heard a fair amount about me, which was a strange feeling.
This sort of thing happened to me a fair amount during the Con. I went to the pre-blowup Minicons, but then missed about ten due to grad school and Taiwan. In the interim, my brother blossomed into an excellent geek in his own right, and I think he's pretty well-known in Convergence/Misfits circles. Several times, people told me about him, or that he had told them about me. It was nice to see that he's found a niche, but also kind of weird that I was slightly famous in a second-hand way.
I told Sarah I'd say hi later at some point, and went off into the Con. It was pretty cool. People were already wearing costumes, having interesting conversations and being weird. There was already a big crowd of people waiting for the elevators.
Dave and I went to the hucksters' dealers' room and looked around. Dave and I resolved to meet later at the consuite, since this seemed like a good point to split up.
The dealers' room was far larger than Minicon's was. There were all kinds of cool things for sale -- crystals, swords, polearms, stuffed animals, stained glass... everything a dealers' room should have. One thing I especially liked was a leather book cover that one booth was selling. (You can see the book covers at the bottom of their webpage.) It was quite thick and had a really cool clasp that twisted to unlock.
Also, there were actually large amounts of gaming stuff for sale. Greg Ketter's Dreamhaven booth was selling a lot of gaming material for 50% off, which was a deal I had to take advantage of. I bought a copy of GURPS: Traveller, which I've wanted for several years. I kind of lusted after a hardback copy, but decided that softcover was good (and cheap) enough. I also chatted with Greg a bit. We'd seen each other at MnStf meetings, so we were familiar enough to talk, but I doubt he knows my name. We talked about him trying to clear his stock of gaming stock, and whether or not this damages his relationship with Neil of Phoenix Games. I said that the two stores really reinforce each other at their current Lake & Bryant location, and Greg agreed. We also talked about how hard it is for stores like his to stay in business, and how some famous national SF bookstores have already gone under -- The Other Change of Hobbit was one that he mentioned. I also mentioned that Ruminator Books (the once-Hungry Mind) had recently gone out of business. A major difference, though, between those stores and Greg's is that he seems to have adopted well to the coming of the Web. He said that a large portion of his income now comes from web orders. I doubt that Ruminator or The Other Change of Hobbit were as web-oriented as they should have been.
I still had some time to kill before the first panel I wanted to go to, so I went to the 22nd floor and checked out the gaming rooms. It was pretty much dead, except for a few Magic: The Gathering players. Disappointed, I returned to the lower regions of the hotel.
This was my main complaint about Convergence. There were a fair number of games already scheduled, with people who'd signed up, but there really wasn't any way to get a pick-up game going. People were walking up and down the halls, many of them looking for games, but actually getting together a game this way was pretty much impossible, short of wearing a sandwich board saying "Please ask me for a pick-up game!" I later had some ideas on how to remedy this, and have given my suggestions to the folks who have the power to change things. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
I then went to my first panel, which was "Torture, Maim and Kill: How to Handle Your Players". I went to a lot of gaming panels. Since coming back from Taiwan, I've actually had quite a bit of exposure to SF fandom, in the form of MnStf meetings and Minicon, but not enough gaming. I've finally managed to get together a Spheres campaign, but it was pretty shaky there for a while, and I still haven't gotten my fill of gaming.
The panel was good. Lots of funny anecdotes were shared, and there was a good combination of wisdom from the panel and interaction from the audience. It all largely came down to "As GM, you are the ultimate decider of what goes on in your games," but there were some nice riffs on it and some people in the audience got good ideas for what to do with their unruly/obnoxious players.
Then, I went to opening ceremonies. I met Dave and we sat next to each other. In all the cons I've gone to, I've never been to the opening ceremonies -- I've always thought they'd be kind of dumb or pointless, or just had better things to do. I've talked to Dave about his work with opening ceremonies and plays and whatnot, though, and wanted to see what it was like.
It was actually quite hilarious. Tim Wick came on and addressed the audience as Paramount stockholders, and told us he was going to show us some ideas his staff had come up with for the ailing "Star Trek" franchise. He showed a series of vignettes, all mixing Star Trek and various other goofy things. There was "Reservoir Targs," a brilliant Tarantino take on Star Trek. There was "Humans in Space," an excellent retelling of Trek tropes using muppets. There was a great Sam Raimi take-off with a red-shirted guy getting chased by a phaser beam. There were lots more, too. I can't remember all the bits, but they had the whole audience in stitches. They had DVD's of the bits for sale, but I didn't buy one because a) I don't have the money and b) my DVD player is region 4. I'll definitely go to more opening ceremonies in the future.
The opening ceremonies finished, Dave and I set a time to meet later, and we split up to wander. I'm pretty sure I went to the consuite sometime in here. The consuite was quite good overall throughout the convention. They never ran out of pop that I liked (root beer or Dr. Pepper), and they frequently had real, good food available. Chili, coldcut sandwiches, vegetables, cheese... I never had to pay for a meal but still ate pretty well. I even saw some people eating 小廚師 鴨肉方便麵 (Duck instant noodles by Little Chef). It was amazing seeing a variety of instant noodles I hadn't even seen in Taiwan. I don't think I'll miss Chinese food in the US -- it's actually pretty easy to find.
Around this time, I went to the Blade Runner for Dummies workshop. It was presented by a nice guy who's a linguisitics hobbyist. The workshop was really about Cityspeak, but it was really really about conlangs (constructed languages). Complaint #2: several of the panels I went to had nothing to do with their titles, and almost nothing to do with their descriptions. I'm sure this kind of thing is difficult, and there isn't really any way for the convention staff to make people keep their descriptions accurate, but Minicon seemed to do a pretty good job of it. Complaint #3: the presenter had us (the audience) doing worksheets to figure out our sound changes, but was very unclear in explaining how to do fill them out. I saw Sharon Kahn there, and being the logical person she is, she got pretty frustrated trying to figure out what the workshop was about.
But in spite of these problems, the workshop was still pretty fun. The idea of projecting future sound changes based on what we'd like to see happen is very interesting. Sharon also gave me a bit of ego-stroking. The presenter was telling everyone facts about some languages to help us choose what sorts of sound changes we wanted, and one of the languages was Cantonese. As the presenter started to kind of stumble and state a few misnomers, Sharon pointed out that I speak Mandarin. I proceeded to natter on about Mandarin and the other Chinese languages, and then read off a list of words in Mandarin so everyone present could get a sense of what it sounds like.
A woman named Linda was helping the presenter give the workshop. She was dressed as Pris, which was a nice touch. She said a bit of Japanese at several points -- I think she's currently studying it. After the workshop, I hung out with the presenter, Sharon and Linda, chatting about sound changes, empathy, Mandarin and Japanese. Linda seemed intrigued with my Mandarin, so I talked with her a bit and gave her a name card, and we resolved to chat more later.
We went our separate ways. I wandered aimlessly, soaking up the con atmosphere. Ah, half-hour breaks between panels -- a great idea.
My next panel was "Geek Mating Rituals", aka romantic anecdotes from geekdom. It was quite funny -- the panel was all very witty people. This was the first time I saw Melissa Kaercher in person, though I was glad for the name card in front of her, since she had just come from her "Living Dead Girl" panel and was doing a very good impression of a zombie.
Someone on the panel had brought along puppets in case they needed to demonstrate any of the more lewd anecdotes that were sure to come up. Sure enough, the puppets got a fair bit of use. The panel was very funny, mostly consisting of ways not to get a geek girl to go out with you.
Next, I went to the 22nd floor, hoping against hope for a pick-up game. There weren't any, of course. I was also realizing that the consuite gaming area, on the 2nd floor, was where real pick-up gaming was going on. But there wasn't any real way to connect with people, even there, so I decided to make a sign. I plopped down in an available room to make it. As I was doing this, someone came in and asked me if I was playing Paranoia. I seemed to have chosen the Paranoia LARP's main room to make my sign. I told the guy that I wasn't playing, but he didn't really believe me, because a) he was late and so didn't really know all the other players and b) he was playing Paranoia, so he was paranoid! I assured him that no, I really wasn't playing, but then, paranoia is a very hard weed to remove, and I'm not sure if he ever really believed me. I posted a tiny little sign on the 22nd floor and (predictably) didn't get any results.
While I was posting my sign, I chatted a bit with DuAnn, who was the very friendly badger working the 22nd floor. She had signed up for the 11 pm -- 4 am shift, so she clearly needed some company! We talked a bit about my Mandarin, and gaming, and her study of Thai, and the con, and other things. She's a really nice person. I started to kind of zonk out, though, and I needed to meet Dave, so I gave her a business card and said goodbye. But then I thought that she might need something to entertain herself there, and even though the con had Pounds o' Dice to rent out, I thought she would probably find herself bored at some point. I asked if there was anything I could get her; she requested a newspaper from the volunteers' table on the 2nd floor. I went down to find it, getting a few weird looks (there weren't any other people at the volunteers' table, and I'm sure I looked like a thief), and returned it to her.
I think I also saw my brother at some point in here. He had told me he'd be dressing as Spider Jerusalem, so I'd been looking all over for the green-and-red sunglasses. I finally recognized him not by his costume but by his walk; he was dressed as a zombie of some sort. It was pretty cool to see him, and he was having a good time. Molly, his girlfriend, wasn't there at the time, though. We resolved to hook up later in the con, and I went off to meet Dave.
Neither Dave nor I were ready to go, so we set another time to meet and split up again. I wandered around, finding bits of food (some cabana party was serving marbled bars -- mm!) and seeing what there was to see. Most of the action was parties at this point, and I didn't really know anyone, so I continued wandering.
I'm pretty sure it was Friday that I managed to get into a game of Munchkin. Munchkin is a very silly game of playing RPG's the way muchkins do -- with no concern for other players and with only personal gain as the goal. I'm not that big into games that are highly competitive, but it was good fun anyway. Dave took a shot of me playing at some point.
Later, I ended up in House of Toast. While I was waiting for my toast, I saw Melissa Kaercher, still in full zombie makeup from her "Living Dead Girl" workshop. I recognized her because she had been in the "Geek Mating Rituals" workshop and was identified by name; otherwise I would've had no idea who she was. I introduced myself as the person who'd written to her from Taiwan and apologized for never having taken pics of the Cthulhu Coffee slogans in front of CKS Memorial Hall like I'd wanted to. She was very friendly in spite of being one of the living dead. We chatted a bit, I asked her how to pronounce her last name (it's "kursh-ur"), and then got my toast. I had one piece with chive cream cheese and one with something else. I ate the something else first, and then pondered whether or not to finish the chive cream cheese one, carrying it around with me for about fifteen minutes. That's why I remember the chive one but not the other.
After that, I met back up with Dave and we agreed it was time to go home before we fell asleep. On the way out, we saw a guy badging with a great costume. He was dressed as a gargoyle, down to the skin tone and pedestal. Amazing work. Dave drove me back to my aunt and uncle's place -- he didn't even need directions! -- and I went to bed.
Saturday
Dave came to pick me up after some communication glitches on my part. We got to the con at around 11 am.
Again, I went a'wandering. I looked at the gaming floor to see what was going on -- just a couple scattered Magic games -- and returned to the lower regions of the hotel. I don't remember what else I saw before my first panel of the day.
The first panel was "The Matrix Rehashed". When I got there, pretty much on time, only two of the four panelists had shown up. Complaint #4: many panelists didn't show up on time, because apparently they had never been thoroughly informed that they were on panels. Nonetheless, this panel was pretty good. At the beginning, it was pretty much concerned with trashing the second and third movies, as one might guess. But some good points were made, and some very insightful observations were given. For example, I hadn't noticed that Neo's last lines in the first movie were "I know what I must do now" while his first lines in the second movie were "I don't know what to do".
Eventually, the two remaining panelists showed up. One of them was Sharon Kahn. The discussion then got really good. Sharon is a great panelist -- she's logical, has a great sense of when to talk and when to let others talk, is a thorough but compassionate arguer, and has a lot of really cool insights. She quickly stated that she was bored with merely trashing the sequels and wanted to talk about the meat of the movies. She was pretty successful in steering the conversation this way, too. Lots of cool insights came out of the latter half of the panel, and not just because of Sharon's help. The other late panelist is apparently a screenwriter hobbyist, and she had some very good ideas about plot archetypes. The audience had some cool ideas, and I piped up about gnosticism and other esoteric religions at some point. A woman in the audience seemed to take particular note of my comments here; we saw each other again later.
After this panel, I shuffled off to the consuite in hopes of getting some food. My timing was perfect, because I got there just as they were putting out sandwich fixings. Thinly sliced pepperoni, some kind of cheese, lots of mustard and dark rye, with a cup of root beer -- a perfect lunch, especially considering it was free!
I saw Dave again sometime in here. I had to apologize to him because I decided not to go to his Supermarionation panel; I had decided to go to "Roleplaying in the Modern World" instead. I really wanted to get the maximum number of gaming-related hours in, so Andersonalia unfortunately had to go by the wayside.
I also went to the 22nd floor to see what was going on. Again, not much was happening, though there was no shortage of people wandering around, probably some of them looking for a game. I looked at my little sign -- it was still there -- but realized it wasn't enough. I wrote up a sign-up sheet in hopes of making my plea for games a bit more apparent. I didn't know how to fill in the "Room" slot, though. Did I just choose a room, or did I need to contact someone to have something assigned? The badger there didn't know, so I went to Ops in search of the head of gaming, Dave Rust. They had a bit of a hard time finding him, but it turned out he was in the "Modern Roleplaying" panel, so I could just see him afterwards.
So then I went to the panel. One particular problem discussed was information overflow and instant access to everything. In modern settings, players often want (and expect) to get any kind of information they could possibly want on the Internet. The panelists and audience talked about how to work around this. At one point I piped up and suggested using the information overflow to drop hints and red herrings, as I do in Spheres.
After the panel, I asked Dave how to finish the sign-up sheet (basically just pick a room that isn't already spoken for, he said) and talked a bit about the pick-up game problem. He was in a rush, though, and I didn't want to be too annoying, so we resolved to talk more later.
Memory is starting to fade as to what happened when, but I think I next happened to be in the consuite with Shauna, a cool person who's in MnStf. One of the meetings I've been to was at her house, and I noticed she had several books related to transgenderism, and that she herself seems somewhat TG. Well, I finally worked up the courage to ask her, and she said yes, she's TG. We plopped down and talked about all different kinds of things for an hour or so.
I next started looking for games again. There wasn't a panel I wanted to go to until 3:30pm, so I snagged a couple nice guys and got them to play "Groo" with me. It's a very fun, silly, overly-long card game based on the comic book. The best part of the game was that one of the players was a young-ish guy (about 14, I'd say) who got the Troubadour. That card doubles the strength of any armies the player has, so long as the player speaks in rhyme. I've seen people do it successfully in Taiwan, but never in the US. This young man did a great job of it. He made some really great rhymes, as well as some really terrible ones. At around 3:00 pm, they had to go to things and the game was nowhere near finishing, so we called it quits.
At 3:30 pm, I went to the "SF as Prediction" panel, partly because my friend Dave was on it, partly because Larry Niven was on it, partly because the topic is just really cool. The panel went all over the place, and often careened into audience members' personal sillinesses and excessive amounts about things that really don't have much to do with the topic at hand, but overall it was quite good. Niven got a chance to point out that he'd predicted flash mobs, and there was a lot of discussion about whether the point of SF is to predict what will actually happen, to prepare us for what might happen, or just to prepare us for change in general. Lisa Freitag, who's married to and runs Dreamhaven with Greg Ketter, had a great quote: "Making predictions about the future is like shooting mosquitoes with a shotgun -- you're bound to hit some of them."
After this, I needed to go upstairs and see if anyone had shown up for my posted game meet-up. No one did. Frustrated, I resolved to try to do more tomorrow, and instead went to another panel: "They Killed Gandalf!" I had to go just for the name, if nothing else.
It was quite a good panel, though again, much of it came down to "You, as GM, are god." People emphasized how important it is to be able to extemporize. Lots of anecdotes were shared, naturally. One person asked about what to do with destructively inventive uses of magic -- for example, if a character has a spell that creates a tiny puff of fire, what should the GM do when they decide to create the fire inside someone's head? People gave many solutions; I noted that it's really important for the GM to understand the physical principles by which the gaming world works. If the principles that allow magic allow creation of flames inside someone's head, then the GM must allow it. (Although the next question is, why doesn't everyone do it then?)
During the panel, I saw a woman in the audience whom I'd seen noticing me in the Blade Runner panel. After the panel, she approached me and we chatted a bit. She's an evangelical Christian in seminary -- thus her interest in Gnosticism -- but also a gamer geek. We talked a bit about her life. It's very hard for her to simultaneously deal with crap from her Christian friends about her SF interests while at the same time dealing with crap from her geekdom friends about Christianity. I think she takes it too far -- she's strongly opposed to paganism, for example -- but it was an interesting discussion anyway. Too many SF geeks are unwilling to admit that religion might get some things right. We exchanged contact info.
Again, I went wandering. Somewhere along the way, I saw a woman I'd double-taked about a couple times. She looked completely like someone I had gone to college with -- improbable in the extreme, since my college in an incredibly obscure school in Ohio. Nonetheless, I asked her what her name was -- Aerine, she said -- (kind of rang a bell) and where she'd gone to college. She said the same place, and I asked her if she recognized me. Yep, it was her! Amazing! Imagine running into a fellow gamer geek from college so many miles and so many years away in one of the biggest cons in one of the biggest capitals of geekdom... Well, okay, maybe it wasn't that unlikely, but still, it's up there. We chatted a tiny bit briefly, then resolved to meet again tomorrow, when we both had more time to spare.
While wandering, I saw lots of cool costumes. I had a very short conversation with one guy dressed as a Cowboy Bebop character: "Spike?" "Yes." "Nice!" There was a guy in a Village costume -- I didn't note what Number he was, though. There was a woman in a near-flawless Sailor Moon costume. (Well, Sailor something -- the purple one.) There were people in all sorts of cool costumes. I kind of wish I'd gotten more photos of them, but then, I'm not a big fan of gamer guys taking piles of photos of booth babes, and I think a lot of it is just fetishism without real appreciation.
I eventually saw my brother in costume, too. He had his Spider Jerusalem costume on, and it was very well done. His glasses were really very good, despite being last-minute substitutions when the original pair got destroyed. The tattoos were right on, and so was the attitude. It was very cool seeing him in costume like that.
Even cooler, though, was finally meeting his girlfriend, Molly. That's her on the left, dressed as Spider's assistant. (I don't know the character's name, because I haven't followed the comic that closely in recent years.) Molly's actually a blonde. You can see more pictures of both of them at pirate-house.org. She's apparently pretty good for him, so she's very cool in my book. She seemed like a really nice person. I kind of wished I'd talked to her more, but I couldn't really think of anything else to say at the moment.
Later, I continued wandering. People commented on my Chinese name on my badge. One of my the few ways I allow myself to fish for comments is putting my Chinese name, 倪嘉雯, on my convention badges. One person asked me if it was Japanese, or could be read in Japanese. We talked a little about how most Chinese characters probably could be read in Japanese, but that didn't make them Japanese.
I saw some people playing a game of Twilight Imperium, which I've wanted to try since I heard about it. I asked if I could watch, and the one woman who was playing said it'd be fine with her if I helped her play. We didn't really know what we were doing, and the other players were all seasoned experts, but we had fun anyway. I certainly enjoyed the game. I've played Battlemist, a fantasy game more-or-less based on Twilight Imperium, so I know a lot of the basic concepts. Nonetheless, Twilight Imperium has so many rules that it's hard to learn on the fly, and the game went very slowly. It's a very cool game, though, with all the SF knick-knacks -- tech development, economics, senate voting, etc. It's actually kind of like Master of Orion.
During the game, one of the other players (Chris?) mentioned a long list of names, one of which was Jordan. I know that my brother likes to play Twilight Imperium, so I asked if the Jordan he was talking about was my brother. It was. What a strange, small world Twin Cities fandom is... Again, Chris said Jordan had told him a fair amount about me. My reputation preceded me, though I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
The game started to drag a bit. Partially Mostly because me and the woman I was playing with didn't really know what we were doing. People wandered in and out. I went to get chili for several of the players. It was really quite a good recipe, and it was free, too! Someone (Roy?) was actually eliminated from the game, and everyone decided to call it quits. (We didn't want to finish the game after con was over.) It was certainly fun, though.
Around the time the game was finished, Dave and I were thinking about going home. They were showing Jin Roh in the anime theater, though, so I dragged him to see it. We got there early. They were playing some extremely silly takeoff of a major series (Sakura Wars?). It was lewd and goofy and surreal. I couldn't really tell if it was a fan dub or official, but it seemed to be official, amazingly enough. When it ended, the projectionist announced that there were more of the series available, but he had to play the next item up (Jin Roh). Several anime fans whined. I really do think some anime fans are far too into cuteness and too disinterested in the depths anime can go to. Like any media, I guess. It's just sad that anime is being stereotyped, and that the people who watch it are stereotyping themselves.
Dave and I saw down to watch the movie. I'd seen the tail end several times, but never the beginning. It was quite interesting how they set up the back-story (riots in the 1950's and 60's lead to a fascist police force gaining power in Japan). A very interesting take on alternate history, human rights and other issues. Dave started to zonk out, though, so I suggested we go home, and we did.
Sunday
I had agreed to meet Aerine at registration before they opened up for pre-reg. I felt a little exbarrassed, butting ahead of everyone in the pre-reg line. Aerine was there, and had already prepped for her pre-reg duties, so we just caught up with each other for a while. She told me about her life and what she's been doing since college. She's married with a child and another on the way, and she seems to have a very happy life, if economically poor. She seems to have grown a lot since college, and is much more self-aware now than she was then. She said she missed my Hârnmaster games, which gave me quite an ego-rush. I had had a running Hârnmaster game for the last three years of college, and I was quite proud of it, but I'd never had anyone actually compliment me on it.
She also kind of pressured me to pre-reg for next year, but I explained that I am almost completely broke right now. She understood, and leant me the money! What a nice gesture! As she put it, this guaranteed that we would see each other again.
The pre-reg rush was about to start, and I wanted to go to a panel, so we agreed to meet at 11pm near the pool.
The next panel was called "Make Your Own RPG," which sounded very interesting for people who are into homebrews, like me. It wasn't. Instead, it was basically the "moderator" talking about his own self-published system for an hour. He really did a poor job of moderating. He went off on about every tangent he possibly could, explaining things that needed no explanation and dropping information about his system where it really wasn't necessary. He also made rather poor eye contact, which is an unfortunate characteristic for a moderator. Several of the audience members (me included) and the panelists tried to steer the conversation to things less related to his system, but it was pretty hopeless. There really needs to be some kind of moderator screening process -- either they need to make sure that moderators are going to be neutral and not self-aggrandizing, or they need to make sure that panels follow their descriptions closely.
Next, I went to "The World's Dark Future," which was supposed to be a discussion of why US SF is usually very optimistic, while other countries' SF tends to be pessimistic. It wasn't; it was actually just a survey of non-US "genre" movies. I got to natter on about Chinese movies a bit, but it really had nothing to do with its title. One audience member kind of meekly asked, towards the end, why US movies tend to be more optimistic, probably in an attempt to salvage the panel in his eyes; I think this was not an isolated problem.
Following this, I went to the "At-con Post-mortem," a chance for con-goers to give their suggestions to the people who run it. I gave my suggestions re: using post-it flags to help people get games together. I wish I could've been more positive, but at least I was constructive. And people had already said all my positive comments: great food, great people, great costumes, very nice staff, nice variety of panels, etc. One of the last things I mentioned was that I was trying to get together an "Eat Poop, You Cat" game, and that anyone interested should come and talk to me after the panel. Unfortunately, no one did.
After that panel, there weren't really any scheduled events I wanted to see until closing ceremonies, so I decided to look at some of the things I'd been missing.
First, I finally checked out the art show. They were already packing it up, but there was still some breathtaking work on display. There was a great space artist whose stuff I'd seen at Minicon, and there were some amazing wood-burning/wood-dye pieces. There was a lot of cutesy pseuco-manga/anime style stuff, some with incorrent Chinese characters. I was tempted to leave a note for the artist, but didn't. There was a lot of really beautiful glassware and jewelry, and a lot of excellent paintings and drawings. Oh, to have money to spend on art...
I also looked at the Science room, which was really cool. They had a huge model of the Moon, which was quite fun to look at. They had a nice Newtonian telescope (a Meade?) set up, which was the closest I've gotten to a telescope in quite a while. I kind of wished I'd gotten to use it at night, but even just using it during the day was fun. They also had a nice Dobsonian set up. Things to buy when I actually have some money... A cute girl wanted to use the Meade, so I helped her stand on a chair so she could see something interesting.
They also had a lot of International Space Station items. There was a nice 3D simulation that allowed fly-bys of the space station, and a lot of very nice models. I saw a lot of models of the ISS's eventual form, but none of its current state, and commented on this to one of the people working the room. He pointed behind me, where they had an excellent model of the ISS as it is today.
Finally, they had a beautiful 3D model of the local interstellar neighborhood. A family friend of mine had had an even bigger one when I was young, and I've been fascinated by them ever since. I chatted a bit with the guy who was working the room about these kinds of models. They're apparently pretty hard to get these days; their real heyday was the late 70's or early 80's, before people could just do 3D on their computers. They're still pretty damn cool, though. I've long wanted to build one that shows speculative Oort clouds for different stars; it would be ping-pong or styrofoam balls of different sizes, probably mounted on dowels painted black. It might even be practical for Spheres. I could indicate Sphere control with sheets of mylar or something. The model they had on display was quite a rarity -- even if the rest of the science room had been lackluster, the 3D star model would've made it worth the trip.
I cruised past the dealers' room again. Greg had marked everything down 75%, which made other things very tempting. I got a copy of Earthdawn for 75% off its already-used price -- I think I ended up paying $2.50 for it. I also got two Dragon magazines containing Tom Wham games (File 13 and King of the Tabletop)for $0.75 each! Whatta steal! I don't think I've ever gotten so much cool gaming stuff for $4.00.
I also poked my head into the anime room. They were playing something I wasn't particularly interested in, so I left pretty quickly.
After the Anime room, I had planned to meet Dave for Closing Ceremonies. We went in and found a seat. What a great mass of geekdom was assembled in that room... Ah, fandom. Anyway, the closing ceremonies were quite fun. The Convergence board put on a skit ("Clue", as improperly solved by Batman), which was hilarious. Then they had the guests of honor come up and made announcements. They ended with another skit, the "Superhero Employment Agency", to introduce the various activities Misfits does. Not as funny as the "Clue" skit, but good nonetheless.
After that, the con was officially over, but there was still a lot to do. I hadn't gotten in even a single game of "Eat Poop, You Cat", and tried to drag people in to play. I arranged with Dave to meet at the consuite gaming area later to get together a game; in the meantime, I was going to try to scare up players. I went to the 22nd floor to see what there was to see. Several people were playing something in the Source's gaming room. Someone who seemed suspiciously like the owner of the Source was DMing. I watched their game for a bit. It looked like good ol' fashioned dungeon-crawling D&D. That's really not my thing, but they were certainly having a good time of it. I looked around at the Source's display of games. There was one, Runebound, that looked really cool. It's a bit like Talisman, which is based on one of my all-time favorites, Search for the Emperor's Treasure. I'll definitely get Runebound if/when I have some money.
I asked the people playing if they were interested in EPYC, but they weren't, so I went down to the gaming consuite area. I eventually got five other people who were near the consuite to play, so with Dave and me, it was seven -- an almost perfect number. It was quite fun, as EPYC always is. Someday I'll put scans of the results up here. Thanks again to Quility for introducing me to it! I'm now doing my best to spread the EPYC gospel around the known universe.
After this, I had arranged to meet Aerine next to the pool so we could talk more. We talked about her life a lot, and her husband and child. Her husband, Michael, is a very nice guy, and her kid seems very smart and sweet. We chatted a little about gaming, and I told her what a compliment it was that she missed my Hârnmaster games. We talked about current gaming, and I showed her my player handouts for Spheres. (I knew there was a reason I took those things with me!) She seemed impressed and possibly interested in joining my game. Eventually, she needed to leave (her husband was getting tired, and needed to drive all three of them back home). Aerine and I exchanged contact info and resolved to stay in touch, at a minimum so I could return the registration fee to her!
Dave came to meet me so we could tour the various Dead Dog parties. Last major complaint: There were several Dead Dog parties, but no main one, which meant that the partiers were spread out over the hotel, so the con went out with a fizzle rather than a bang. Dave and I went to Kruschenko's, where the Diversicon party was starting. (It was pretty much just us and the host, Eric Heideman, at the start.) We had a good time, though, discussing politics -- primarily the stupidity of Bush. Slowly, people started to trickle in and the topics changed to how (not) to put on a Worldcon, and the various Worldcon bids that had gone on over the years. Eventually, we started talking about NASA and private space programs. Eventually, though, Dave and I felt pretty tired and decided to leave.
As we left, I remarked to Dave that it had been a very nice con.
Final Thoughts
My complaints, for those not keeping track, were:
- Pick-up games were hard to find.
- Panels didn't have much to do with their descriptions or titles.
- Panels were sometimes presented very unclearly. That is, it was unclear what we, as audience members, were supposed to be doing.
- Panelists were apparently not informed when their panels started, so many panelists showed up late.
- Some moderators were poorly suited for the job. They didn't foster discussion so much as stroke their own egos.
- The Dead Dog parties were too spread out, so the con didn't end on the fun note it could have.
But overall, the con was a lot of fun. Here's what was good about it:
- There was great food. The chili was great and the sandwiches were great, and the food provided by the room parties was also great.
- I met a lot of intensely cool people.
- Jokes, silliness and skits made me laugh on a very regular basis.
- The elevators were pretty reliable, and rarely stinky.
- I played two games of Eat Poop, You Cat.
- I played my first game of Twilight: Imperium.
- I played Groo with a kid who really knows how to rhyme.
- I got an excellent deal on several games I've always wanted to have (again).
- Excellent conversations were everywhere -- I had more in a single day than I usually have in a week.
- Extremely interesting panels gave me a lot of cool insights about things I hold dear, like SF movies and RPG's. There were lots of good panel ideas related to gaming.
- I saw a really cool 3D star model.
- I met my brother's girlfriend and had some nice geeky conversation with both of them.
- I re-found a friend I thought I'd never see again.
It was a great con. There are improvements to be made, but then, there always are. I'll definitely go again next year.