So I have a confession to make: I was in high school once. And other than playing video games, I had very few actual geek hobbies. There was one big one, however, that my friends got me into and I eventually roped my family in.
Autumn and Neal were engaging in it. And I wanted in.
Sunday
Walkin' On The Sun
Behold perfection on a table...
Yeah, I was all up in the Hero Quest as a lad. Looking back on it, it has a good number of faults, like perfect, serious play on all sides being inherently boring and the basic rules being a tad restrictive, but the immersion and level of engagement is hard to beat.
Also, anyone who recognized from the picture that they had the board set up wrong is my new best friend. I haven't played this in years and was pointing out mistakes like that.
I jumped in on the second game after the Barbarian took off. Autumn grabbed that role while I took over her Wizard character, Bowie. This worked really well, since these specific roles prevented perfect, serious play. Autumn's character is suited for leading the charge into battle, which she totally didn't want to do, while the Wizard needs to stay behind and play support when I was dying to open doors and fight orcs and stuff.
Bowie was basically a dick to everybody, abandoning Autumn's character, making the Elf heal Neal and pretending that he's doing anything productive. His best move was walking into a recently-cleared room, searching for treasure, drawing a wandering monster, resisting the initial attack in epic fashion... then running like hell to let everybody else deal with him.
When it was announced that the room was closing soon, the EW sprung the end game on us, presenting us with the guy we were supposed to rescue... and opening an unexplored wing of the dungeon and a legion of evil trying to prevent our escape. We were destined to meet at the entrance and they outnumbered us. Since I was closest to the entrance, it was pretty clear what the strategy was. Bowie was going to pull a Gandalf.
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
It was awesome, and totally worked. Autumn got our escort to safety just as Bowie died honorably, destined to be revived as Bowie the Glam. If my old set is still at my parents' house, there is serious talk about getting a group together to play this.
After all that excitement, there was no way we were sleeping, so we headed to the video game room for more competition. Somehow, we ended up in the rhythm gaming section and I was asked to play DDR. Stupidly I said yes, even though I'm well out of my prime and it was 2:30 in the morning.
I mostly owned it, but I was barely capable of walking after three songs.
In need of something I could do while sitting down, we played a game of Mario Party before going to bed around 4 am. Last night, which involved an entire run of a Zelda game, I went to bed at 5.
It was harder to wake up Sunday morning, possibly due to cumulative sleep deprivation. Plus we had to get our stuff out of the hotel, plus I had to set up the table PLUS I had a panel at 10 to be semi-alert for.
Only one of those things came to pass. I set up the table, but left my stuff in the hotel to throw in the car after the panel. The panel itself didn't actually happen either. Nobody showed up for the fanfiction panel as there had been another one with a much more decent time slot Saturday afternoon (presumably one that the panelist put work into). A couple people turned up for Geek Music 102, and I had brought my laptop just in case, but it wasn't working so I nixed that idea as well. Besides, it gave me more time to finish checking out... and getting Jeff to get his stuff out of the room.
Even cosplay chess had to beg people to participate/observe. And there wasn't a ton of cosplayers in that either. Not really smart putting that on the day when nobody cosplays.
Nick goes from Kero to Keroro.
Since Scott had already left and Matt had some panels he wanted to check out, I was riding solo at the table for most of Sunday. Since I was still wearing my staff shirt and staff badge, people were often under the impression that I was staff. When somebody turned in a lost-and-found item, I had to follow due process and take it to the right people. I asked if someone at the Daisho table could watch our stuff while I was gone.
When I came back, I was reminded that it was April Fool's Day.
Daisho's people were not only watching our table, but hawking Geek.Kon more aggressively than I ever had. Incidentally, all day Sunday, instead of the normal cycle of pictures, the TouchPad displayed our website's April Fool's joke. But that wasn't all...
No Brand, naturally, was hawking Daisho. Guess there was only one thing for me to do...
Register for No Brand! Someone actually did on my watch. It was awesome.
While No Branders hawked Daisho's wares, Nick Izumi demo'd the Is My Roommate Dead Stick. He wasn't quite sure what to do when he poked me and I was actually dead.
The table didn't last long once Daisho vacated. I had one last Floor Manager shift to get to. Since the con was pretty much over, it was even easier than previous shifts. I ended up settling into Main Programming for Closing Ceremonies because why not?
Laura, Steve, Michelle Ann Dunphy and Lanipator go Vogue.
The con grew yet again, drawing more than 1400 and settling in nicely with No Brand and Daisho size-wise. It's weird thinking of a second-year con as one of the old guard, but they've gained so much ground in such a short time it's hard not to. I received a request to run NTAO there and I couldn't think of a reason why I shouldn't. The crowd seems to be large and savvy enough to support it, so why not?
These VAs are awesome, BTW. Their flights weren't until later, so of all the stuff to do they get into a game of Pathfinder. Since Michelle voices Ayane (along with Margaret) in Persona 4, I kinda feel bad that my current playthrough of it is with the other Sun link girl.
So that was that. I turned in my radio, directed some people around for a little bit and said some goodbyes. I really wanted to stay for the dead dog party, but it wasn't going to be until 10:00 pm and I had a 90-minute drive and work in the morning. I settled for Arby's with Jeff and new staffer Jesh and returned to see if there was any teardown work I could help with before I headed back.
Nope, clearly they're all good. I'm outta here!
