Silvervine Games : Svg / Origins2008ConReport

The Abbreviated Origins 2008 Con Report

Hello Faithful Readers,

Due to some unforeseen circumstances and medical conditions I don't have time to write a full and detailed report about Origins. However, I'm going to outline what all happened and try to get as much information as possible into the report.

Preparation

I've called this the origins that almost wasn't, mostly because there were a lot of interruptions and changes in the time leading up to origins. This is time that I normally use to prep everything, write up adventures, get props, practice with Ed and Alec and whoever else gets dragged along. Still with all the delays, new jobs, medical conditions in relatives, and general ennui related to all this we got a good showing together. There were a few last minute saves. The quick character creation guides showed up from the printers the night before origins and we had to repackage them all on the fly. Everything came together though and we made it there ready to go.

Thursday

We were all really tired on the trip down, but talked and had a good time. It was Alec, Brian, and I in the car on thursday. Ed came down thursday evening. Our first stop was the dealer room to try to pick up some interesting props for games. As luck would have it someone was selling off their homemade warhammer 40k scenery. We picked up an altar and a few pieces of terrain that looked like sandstone floors. They came in really handy and provided some great atmosphere. I'm all stoked to make my own scenery and setting pieces now.
We had a no show for the first game on thursday, but pretty much expected that. We got some new people in some other games. A father and two sons played in one and came up with one of the most broken uses of Permanent Ability ever. I'm not going to say what it is, but it has convinced me to write a nice sidebar about GM's having full control over what permanent ability does and does not work with. We had a few returners from last year. A guy who played in one of Alec's games and his brothers and friends. There are many stories about the Airbending Acting Ninja Canadian Moose. The guy who played that had wonderful cinematic descriptions of exactly how his moose was sneaky as a ninja.
Rob and Melinda, two of my friends, took us to eat at Otani on Thursday night. I thought it was closer to the convention hall, but it was a few miles out of Columbus proper. Ed showed up while we were there, but we reconnected with him and played a Dread game based on Alice in Wonderland.

Friday

On Friday our games had a steady flow of people throughout the day.
Scott and Meg, two people who tried Silvervine out last year, showed up and made characters. Scott's bull mastiff dogblooded flamenco dancer was hilarious. His pistola's and dance off with the head of a rival flamenco dance school were excellent. They drug some of their friends into other games, and were part of the doubled assault of the undead game on Saturday. More on that later.
After another trip through the dealers room I broke down and bought myself a Utili-Kilt. Lots of people commented on my goggles and that gave me an opportunity to shill to them. So I bought the kilt to get more comments and shill more. No, I bought the kilt because Matt keeps pressuring me to drink from drinking horns in a kilt. No, I bought the kilt because I've got no shame. Yeah, that one sounds right.
Ed left on Friday evening, but was there throughout the day. Alec, Brian and I played another game of dread. The dread game was interesting. There was a person there whom we shall only refer to as FISH. Fish didn't quite get dread. He was over-exuberant and incited hate and rage (out of game) from a lot of the players. He had to make pulls to prevent other people from trying to kill him in game. Still it was a fun game, just not suspenseful and evocative like a lot of dread games are.
On Friday Ed discovered that Origins did a write up of Silvervine on page 129 of their on-site book. It pays to get events in early. We also discovered that the breezeway tables are first come first serve. Not all, but some. I think we might try to stake a permanent claim to some of those next year.

Saturday

Saturday didn't start off too well. A guy running a game in our conference room (Delaware A) kept shutting the conference room doors and I kept opening them. His reasoning was to block out the loud music coming from the coffee shop, but we wanted them open because people kept thinking the room was closed. We got in a little fracas. I talked to the coffee shop people, they said they would turn down their music, but proceeded to turn it back up louder. He shut the door again, someone else came in and opened it on their way in, he shut it again, words were had, con staff was almost involved. I really would have liked to hear his explanation of why he felt it was right to shut the doors to convention rooms where people are trying to find games. Still, keeping a calm head we talked to the coffee people again and got them to actually turn the music down. Things were dealt with peaceably. The gore started later ...
Games throughout the day went well, and when it came time for our final assault of the undead game (a fun filled romp through hundreds of zombies), we noticed that a horde of players were sitting around waiting. We had 16 extra people show up. Some of them left, and we tried to see if others wanted into catastrophy in the clouds. Nope, zombie killing was their aim so we joined up two tables and Brian and Alec took one group through one path through the city while I took the other group through another path. They met up at the Big-bad and we merged initiative orders. I ended up running the boss fight again for just Daniel and Jeremy. They felt a little let down by some story necessary elements and wanted to take on the big bad at full power. I accommodated and ran a second, almost killing them game. That was the second game in which something almost killed their incredibly broken characters. Characters in Silvervine might be a little broken, but the enemies can be too. It's all about effective power use.
Brian had his first taste of Con GMing and I got to watch his GM cherry pop. He ran one or two other games, but this was the time that he went "Ah! I get what it is to be a GM!". Later that night we went to a GMing seminar run by the Shadowrun guys we played the DocWagon game with last year. It was fun and informative. I'm going to write a gnome stew post about it once I get some time.
Later in the night Alec, Brian, and I went to play a Twillight Rising game. We thought it was the zombie rising, but I'll take cthulhu on shoggoth action any day. I had a run to the generic area to get enough tokens to pay for us all. Other highlights of the night were talking with the owners of the group who ran it, and the cute girl who was GMing the event. I made her laugh by describing the horrible signing of the wraith we encountered as being like "Tom Waits, but with melody".
Later in the night Alec and I bummed around the board game room. Apparently, and keep in mind that Alec has known this for four years, you can borrow board and card games from a booth there and play them in the room. Yeah. That would have been helpful on friday night when Brian and I were wandering around. Of course, we could have read signs and stuff as well.

Sunday

Final day. No show for the one game we had that morning. Wasn't dissapointed by that. We walked around the dealers room. I met rob balder of partially clips, got his autograph on two different pages of the book I bought from him. I bought some zombie stuff to give to friends, and we convinced Alec to buy a messenger bag with a hand painted Amaterasu from Okami on it.
After leaving the con we went and ate with the Tilting at Windmills crew. We ate at a place called Bucca Di Bepo, which is an interesting place to say the least. I'm very glad we didn't eat in the Pope room. The rotating pope head scared me a bit. It was great talking with the Tilting at Windmills crew, although we couldn't keep up with their never-ending string of family guy and venture brothers quotes. Wow I wish I had that good of a store and recall.
Finally, to top it all off, we had a long drive home. During the drive, Alec read a dissertation on cyberpunk from the beginning of the Tristat cyber punk game Ex Machina hat he bought. Seriously, it was someone's thesis paper on the Cyberpunk Genre and it was awesome. The tri-stat cyberpunk and the tri-stat Dreaming Cities (urban fantasy) have inspired me to run some awesome Mike Mignolia-ish games in the future.

Well that is pretty much what happened at Origins. There are a lot of details I didn't go into, like talking with the very very cute Clone # 129 about 7th son and audio books, getting continuously drawn to a squid sculpture done by Nigel De Sade, trying to work out playing Terrorworks with Jared the guy who dressed as the Joker through the whole con, and of course what I actually wore under my kilt. That's all I've got time for now though. We'll be at Gencon as attendees and then we will be exhibiting at the local Con On the Cob in october.

- Be Seeing You!

Links - Here are links to some of the cool things at Origins.

Twilight Rising and Zombie Rising. Zombie Larp - http://www.risinglash.com/
Pointed out to me by the cute clone 129 - http://jchutchins.net/
A very nifty looking local con - http://www.cononthecob.com/
The ever wonderful Tilting at Windmills Crew - http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net/
TerrorWorks - http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=109911960
Ex Machnia- http://www.amazon.com/Ex-Machina-Tri-Stat-Cyberpunk-Genre/dp/1894938011
Dreaming Cities - http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=2109&it=1

Pictures - Click on the pictures to open full sized versions in a new window.

Scott and Meg.	Some of the Tilting at Windmills crew.	Me and My Kilt. Red faced from laughing, white legged from living in Ohio.	Ed and Alec.	Brian gives THE look.
Jared, dressed as the Joker. We were going to play the Terrorworks airsoft game with him in the Joker makeup.	The Jenga tower of impossibility from the second dread game we played in.	Fish.	Fish and Brian. I think someone was about ready to kill Fish at this point. Not Brian.	Alec trying to find a good pull
Alec doing the heroic sacrifice that ended the game.	Avery, whose art is incredible. You will probably be seeing it in the book soon.	Chris, Alec, and Linda.	Chris. I hate his shirt. I lose THE GAME every time I read it.	Jeremy, on the left.
Prep for the giant Undead Assault game.	Prep for the giant Undead Assault game.	The hasty layout for the final battle for the giant undead assault game.	The Ogre with levitation.	The second group coming through the city and their mass of destroyed zombies.
Me kilted and goggled, meg, scott, and the guy who played Mogs, the S.O.B. drunken mage knight perfectly.	You can see Daniel on the left side of the picture, dressed in the yellow shirt.	An unsuccessful attempt at an artistic picture of our Twilight Rising game.	A second unsuccessful attempt.	A third unsuccessful attempt.
I realized that the other pictures were unsuccessful attempts and got pictures of our group for Twilight Rising.	Some more of our group from Twilight Rising.	And finally, Alec.