![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberIn a quest to meet more gamers, I realized Thursday that this weekend held ConQuest. I looked at the map on the website, and this morning I got a really good cup of coffee (I was very surprised) at a local greasy donut place and drove over there, my vague recollection of the map leading me to the hotel as swift and directly as a bird. I pulled into a parking space on the street just large enough for my very small car, the closest possible free spot to the hotel... These are things that bring me joy.
Found the registration, got a badge, flipped though the book, asked the registration people, and discovered to my further pleasure that even though I'd happily slept in and it was past 11, the signup box for afternoon games was still available. So I listed three choices on the basis of "large numbers of other gamers to meet" and "light and fun", dropped my sheet in the box, and went off to the dealer's room.
I was mostly looking for Deadlands stuff, or other "basic books from systems I've heard of that aren't WoD or DnD". Came up totally blank—but there was a guy selling wads of dice. Such glorious dice! Oodles and oodles of sparkly, shimmery, jewel-like Platonic solids!
I swear, I got into this hobby to justify my purchases of pretty dice.
Anyway, I didn't have enough d12s for my Deadlands character...
Let me just pause to say that the d12 is the best of all possible dice. It rolls the best, it's Platonic, its sides are interesting pentagons, they're big enough that it comes solidly to rest on them, 12 is a number of mythic significance, it's like a 20% bonus for a digital creature... I'm tempted to make an entire game Just to give the d12 its due. Hear that, game designers on my friends list? One word: d12. :D
Anyway, so I was rolling dice around in my hands, comparing color and depth of sparkle, internally chortling over the richness, when I catch some dialog between the dicemaker and the guy standing next to me that involves Deadlands. I perk up, turn to him, and smile. We end up talking, and it turns out that he's one of the guys who created Deadlands, Shane, and he's just moved to San Jose from Virginia to work on the computer game City of Villians (sequel to the lauded City of Heroes). I'm thinking I should try to hook him into Deadlands oneshots with my ftf group; he seemed quite nice and oddly clever, quite like the guy we (coincidentally?) lost to Virginia many years ago. Anyway, I told him how much I enjoyed the game.
I searched the rest of the hotel (running through my head the whole while, "Geeks!"), and then observed the sheet being taped up to tell us who'd gotten into what afternoon games. I'd gotten into the Slay Around the Clock game, "High school in modern-day Santa Cruz, where the students can seem even scarier than the vampires -- especially to a Slayer from the 1950's bizarrely reincarnated in an android body. And now something is killing the students during the day as well, leaving only slimy spots instead of bodies." I figure, androids, vampires, goo, Buffy, where can you go wrong? And then I looked at the GM name, "John Kim." Um, I thought. I bet that's the same one who posts on the Forge. Gonna have to get to this game on time...
Filled the intervening time with lunch (Madeline: Should I go eat with that guy who got his lunch at about the same time and who's also alone and who's not bad-looking? Brain: Hm. Body: lurking in a corner surveilling Brain: He's wearing urban camo army pants. Madeline: Right you are, lunch alone. Sir Robin's Minstrel: And running away, and chickening out...) and then an auction which finally got around to gamebooks, which generally went for about a buck a piece. I picked up something called "Wehrmacht," a shrinkwrapped diceless game of "feudalocracy", I believe. I mean, with a tagline like, "Dice can't save you now!", how could I resist?
Thence to the Buffy game, where I took the character of the gorgeous dense surfer dude... Prefaced pretty much every line of dialog all afternoon with "dude." "Dude, I don't think it's legal to hit people with your car and just ditch them..." Great fun accent, v. easy.
Ah, but John Kim... Bit of internal dialog: Madeline: Hey, this John Kim guy, whose brain I admire, is also handsome, funny, and well-mannered. Brain: Sa-weet! So I was having little trouble being outgoing and cheerful. It was many hours before I was glancing over as he clasped his hands and we had the following bit of internal dialog: Brain: Wait, he's wearing a ring on his left hand... The ring finger. Yes, confirmed. Madeline: Dammit!
Ah, well. So, deciding not to suggest the group go grab dinner together after the game ended, I bravely turned my tail and fled, which did end up working out, as about 10 minutes after I got home Sam and Rezaul arrived to collect my housemate, E, and we all went to the Metreon in San Francisco to see "Hero." Before that, very good sushi eaten family-style, and Sam and Rezaul and I got different kinds of sake (cold, this time), and I got to taste theirs, and sake really is all good.
Found the registration, got a badge, flipped though the book, asked the registration people, and discovered to my further pleasure that even though I'd happily slept in and it was past 11, the signup box for afternoon games was still available. So I listed three choices on the basis of "large numbers of other gamers to meet" and "light and fun", dropped my sheet in the box, and went off to the dealer's room.
I was mostly looking for Deadlands stuff, or other "basic books from systems I've heard of that aren't WoD or DnD". Came up totally blank—but there was a guy selling wads of dice. Such glorious dice! Oodles and oodles of sparkly, shimmery, jewel-like Platonic solids!
I swear, I got into this hobby to justify my purchases of pretty dice.
Anyway, I didn't have enough d12s for my Deadlands character...
Let me just pause to say that the d12 is the best of all possible dice. It rolls the best, it's Platonic, its sides are interesting pentagons, they're big enough that it comes solidly to rest on them, 12 is a number of mythic significance, it's like a 20% bonus for a digital creature... I'm tempted to make an entire game Just to give the d12 its due. Hear that, game designers on my friends list? One word: d12. :D
Anyway, so I was rolling dice around in my hands, comparing color and depth of sparkle, internally chortling over the richness, when I catch some dialog between the dicemaker and the guy standing next to me that involves Deadlands. I perk up, turn to him, and smile. We end up talking, and it turns out that he's one of the guys who created Deadlands, Shane, and he's just moved to San Jose from Virginia to work on the computer game City of Villians (sequel to the lauded City of Heroes). I'm thinking I should try to hook him into Deadlands oneshots with my ftf group; he seemed quite nice and oddly clever, quite like the guy we (coincidentally?) lost to Virginia many years ago. Anyway, I told him how much I enjoyed the game.
I searched the rest of the hotel (running through my head the whole while, "Geeks!"), and then observed the sheet being taped up to tell us who'd gotten into what afternoon games. I'd gotten into the Slay Around the Clock game, "High school in modern-day Santa Cruz, where the students can seem even scarier than the vampires -- especially to a Slayer from the 1950's bizarrely reincarnated in an android body. And now something is killing the students during the day as well, leaving only slimy spots instead of bodies." I figure, androids, vampires, goo, Buffy, where can you go wrong? And then I looked at the GM name, "John Kim." Um, I thought. I bet that's the same one who posts on the Forge. Gonna have to get to this game on time...
Filled the intervening time with lunch (Madeline: Should I go eat with that guy who got his lunch at about the same time and who's also alone and who's not bad-looking? Brain: Hm. Body: lurking in a corner surveilling Brain: He's wearing urban camo army pants. Madeline: Right you are, lunch alone. Sir Robin's Minstrel: And running away, and chickening out...) and then an auction which finally got around to gamebooks, which generally went for about a buck a piece. I picked up something called "Wehrmacht," a shrinkwrapped diceless game of "feudalocracy", I believe. I mean, with a tagline like, "Dice can't save you now!", how could I resist?
Thence to the Buffy game, where I took the character of the gorgeous dense surfer dude... Prefaced pretty much every line of dialog all afternoon with "dude." "Dude, I don't think it's legal to hit people with your car and just ditch them..." Great fun accent, v. easy.
Ah, but John Kim... Bit of internal dialog: Madeline: Hey, this John Kim guy, whose brain I admire, is also handsome, funny, and well-mannered. Brain: Sa-weet! So I was having little trouble being outgoing and cheerful. It was many hours before I was glancing over as he clasped his hands and we had the following bit of internal dialog: Brain: Wait, he's wearing a ring on his left hand... The ring finger. Yes, confirmed. Madeline: Dammit!
Ah, well. So, deciding not to suggest the group go grab dinner together after the game ended, I bravely turned my tail and fled, which did end up working out, as about 10 minutes after I got home Sam and Rezaul arrived to collect my housemate, E, and we all went to the Metreon in San Francisco to see "Hero." Before that, very good sushi eaten family-style, and Sam and Rezaul and I got different kinds of sake (cold, this time), and I got to taste theirs, and sake really is all good.