Society for Aesthetic Deletions

Friday

Friday morning required me to walk a few blocks to the Omni Severin Hotel, which wasn't connected to the convention center by anything. Breakfast was done and I was ready for the walk, and got there with only a few minutes to spare. It was a writing seminar, called Details, Details, and run by a number of the TSR (or is that WotC now?) authors.

I should note something about GenCon writing seminars. I attended them regularly for years. Been to probably all of Kij Johnson's seminars over the years, and last year hit most, if not all, of Monte Cook's ones for outside of the gaming industry. I have been to them for so long that I can just about repeat everything that they're going to say.

This is not to say that the authors don't have good seminars. I was really looking forward to Kij's Basic Plotting seminar, using Chicken Run as the example (that was at 11:00 on Friday). It's just that I know this stuff. I just DO NOT put it into practice enough. I see the same people attend these seminars too, over the years. I don't stop and introduce myself. There's this older woman who I've seen, I think, since I started to go to these seminars years ago. I think she started to come with her son, or maybe a much younger husband. But now it's just her.

I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Maybe that I should get off my ass and start WRITING, dammit. I want to know more, but I also need to PUT IT INTO PRACTICE. *kicks self*

Anyway.

The Details, Details seminar was okay. Didn't learn a lot, but did pass off a few things for other people to use. Like David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries for a good way of looking at our every day things as if seen through someone else's eyes. I offered something else to the group as well, but I've forgotten what.

That was done at 10:00, and then I had a little time to kill before the 11:00 seminar at our hotel, the Kij Johnson Basic Plotting seminar.

But I neglected to mention one thing. Remember when I said the mall had no drug store? There were a number of places listed when I pulled out the phone book - a ton of Eckerd Drugs and CVS stores, but while their addresses were listed, they could have been in China for all that meant to me, as I had no real clue as to where I was in the city. I had planned on asking at the hotel on Friday, but fortune came first! While heading to the convention center, I passed a guy with a CVS bag in hand and a flat of Poland Spring water on his shoulder. Being that I was in dire straits, that we had a refrigerator in our room for waters such as these, and that I can be a pushy broad when needed, I accosted the poor gamer for the location of the CVS. He kindly stopped, put down his stuff and pulled out the map that someone had kindly given him, and showed me where it was.

So after my Details, Details seminar, I headed far down the blocks and found the CVS in question. I got my feminine necessities, a small flat of Poland Springs sports bottles (6 or 8 bottles, I forget which), 4 cold Diet Cokes in 20 oz. bottles, and 2 large (1 liter, I think) bottles of Fruit2O in Lemon and Raspberry flavors.

I headed to the counter, paid for all my stuff, then began the deathmarch back to the hotel.

You see, I had my knapsack. All of my purchases could probably have easily fit into the backpack, except for one thing.

I had my computer in there. My computer and its laptop sleeve, since I was very wary about leaving said laptop in the hotel room.

So, each hand held a bag full of liquid, and my backpack was secured with both straps on my back. Four, five, or six rather LONG blocks later, I turned onto the street that my hotel was on. And a few blocks more, I made it to the hotel.

Up in the elevator, 10 stories, and down the long hallway to our hotel room, dropping the nourishing fluid at last.

Only to find ... yes, I did not have my room key! Yes, stupid Julia had left it behind, on the night stand between the beds. A quick text off to Lou, and yes, he was playing his game, and wouldn't be done until 2:00, or some ungodly time later. I had a seminar coming up, and no time to waste.

I didn't even entertain the possibility of leaving the beverages outside the door. This was GenCon! Gamer heaven! Those beverages would be gone in a heartbeat if left unattended. And I had sweated, toiled, labored to bring them back to the room. They would not be abandoned for some other gamer to down in watery flavored bliss!

So, I gathered up everything again, this time better distributing the weight between the bags, and headed to the room where Lou was playing his Marvel SAGA game. I grabbed his room key, handed him a Fruit2O, and told him I'd give him his key back AFTER my seminar was over, since it was in the Marriott.

Then trekked BACK to the hotel room, put the water in the fridge, finally gave up on the idea of toting the laptop around (though maybe I did that later in the day), and after a bit of rest, headed down to the seminar, with BOTH room keys.

It wasn't until I woke up on Saturday morning that I noticed the bruises. Two of them, each about an inch above my inner elbow joint, one on each arm. And only a little bit later did I realize that they must have come from strain from carrying the waters around on Friday morning. They're gone now, but it was definitely an odd thing to see, when they didn't even hurt all that much. Ah well.

So, back to the seminar. I've been to the basic plotting one before, but she twisted it up because she told us that she didn't use the basic 7 piece story structure really, when she thought about it. *grins* Alas, she did not get to use Chicken Run, NOR Pirates of the Caribbean, since a significant portion of the audience hadn't seen it. There was even one woman who hadn't seen LotR:TTT yet, nor read the books! *sigh* But falling back to the good old tried and true Star Wars or The Matrix for examples where always good.

My favorite line of the convention came out of this seminar. Kij off-handedly mentioned the Weasel of Destiny, and I just had to write it down. See, the Weasel of Destiny is the equivalent of the Great Frotzinator or the Chalice from the Palace or whatever it is that the hero (or heroine) needs to get to prove that they are The Chosen One. Whatever you want to call it. So why not call it the Weasel of Destiny, I ask you? I must work one into some writing bit somewhere. I just love it.

[That, and the Bunny Swallower from Sunday morning's FUDGE Bunnies and Burrows: Bunnies in the Big City game. Two best lines of the convention.]

After all that, I grabbed some water and soda, and hit the dealer's room and art show again. I had been by the art show earlier, but wanted to be back for 2:00, since there was a signing. My next game was at 2:30, so I would be cutting it close if there was a line. I had been by the art show earlier that day (brief wander-through), and now there was no time to continue wandering. (side note - they didn't ask anyone to check bags. Most unusual as compared to GenCons of the past.) Tony DiTerlizzi was the artist GOH, and he along with Holly Black were doing signings all weekend. I had brought my copy of Tithe : A Modern Faeire Tale for Holly to sign, and The Field Guide (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1) and The Seeing Stone (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 2) for both of them to sign.

The 2:30 game was not what I had signed up for. I sat at the wrong table. I had signed up for the BESM Anime Dungeon, since GOO is doing a d20 version of their game. But I had mistakenly sat at the BESM d20 table. When the GM pointed it out to me and showed me the table, I saw that our game had three players (besides me) and the Anime Dungeon group had at least 6, with two more folks showing up with pre-reg tickets, and the GM explained that the other game was supposed to only be a 2 hour slot, but had been mistakenly written down for 4 in the pre-reg, and the d20 game whose table I was at was 4 hours and likely would be difficult to run with only three players, I decided to stay. I played a Gun Bunny, and we also had a Magical Girl, a Ninja, and the guy who had played the Phoenix in the Jadeclaw game the previous night (he had the other character with the Fast Talk skill!) played L.O.G.R.U.S. (a big robot/mech) and the techie, two characters that fit together well and gave us a good set of characters to have a go at the scenario with.

The GM was ... okay. He obviously had a passion for the game, but it really seemed like he was making it up as he went along, which he probably was. That's okay, if you can get away with it. But he couldn't, quite. I still had a good amount of fun, but it did not make me want to go out and buy the game, which was frickin' expensive for the amount of rules. Though the art was very cool.

That got done early, and I met up with Lou at the Alcatraz Brew Pub, where he'd just finished eating. He had a 7:00 game, so we chatted for a bit while I ate, and then he was off. We'd decided to eat on Sunday night at Ruth's Chris Steak House and then head to see Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life afterwards, so I was given charge of finding out the time of the movie. I headed to the mall and the theater, but they had two times listed, 7:20 and 7:30. I texted him and told him 7:30ish, since the line was too long to bother waiting to ask. I figured we could call or something on Saturday anyway.

I watched some TV and then when Lou came back we hit the sack. Saturday, I had thought, would be a pretty free day for me, as I only had two games. Silly me.

Saturday

Saturday dawned slightly later than normal, as Lou had a 10:00 game, and I had a 12:30 game. So we slept in, and found out that by doing so, we really messed up our choices for breakfast. Well not really, but there was a line and a wait, which there hadn't been when we had to be up for 8:00. It meant Lou had to eat quickly and head to his game, and I had come to a realization.

I only had two games on Saturday, so I thought I had a pretty free day. But when you have a 12:30 game that lasts for four hours, and a 5:00 game that lasts for the same...it's not so much with the free time, is it?

I decided to do a more leisurely tour of the DR this morning, and ran into the very long line for signing at the Decipher booth. Ah yes, Sean Astin was coming in! A few turns around the area later, and he was there, signing. Having nothing for him to sign, I just walked within five feet of my dear Samwise Gamgee/Mikey Walsh, and managed to refrain from yelling "Goonies never say die!" A bit later, I passed by John Rhys-Davies' signing area, and though his line was shorter, I also didn't go for the autograph thing. Nothing to sign and besides, he'll always be Sallah to me. I was afraid I'd start speaking to him in lines from Raiders, such as "Asps. Very dangerous. You go first!" and "Bad dates."

I met up with Lou, who had actually fled his 10:00 game in terror. AEG d20 demo, with the original GM being overbooked, so a secondary GM picked up and moved a few players off to another game. But the world was based on the Warlord card game, and totally did not appeal to him.

I then had to head off to my 12:30 game, which was 7th Sea, with a GM who ended up being from Bridgewater, MA, which is like a few miles from me. It was a fun game, and once I saw the pregenerated Vodacce swordsman, I knew he was mine. I love the Vodacce to *death*, and will play them over any other group in 7th Sea. I did promise myself to play a different character next time I play 7th Sea, though. The game suffered, alas, from two of the people showing up leaving before it was half-way done for supposedly a forgotten commitment. I think it was the guy (they were a couple) wasn't comfortable with the game/game system or something. They were expecting d20, and the girl even asked me where alignment was on the character sheet (the second time of the convention, I think. Maybe third.), and he was running the roll and keep original system, which I thoroughly enjoy. So in the end, there were three of us - the Vodacce swordsman, a Eisen mercenary, and a Vestenmannavnjar thug of some kind. No one played the Avalon or the Castillian, and our Montaigne and Ussuran had left. But it went well enough, and in the end I was voted the best player, so I got a free game supplement, which is always cool.

I rarely win these things, especially if I play with Lou. He is such a force of personality that he overwhelms me, and I'm left to pine away in his shadow. *laughs* Okay, it's not that bad, but he usually wins if we're in a game together.

I had been hungry early on in the game slot, and Lou's next game began at 2:30, so I convinced him to bring me some food (I'd be dead without text messaging at GenCon, by the way. It's how we communicated all weekend long, when we weren't in the same game together), and he did so. His 2:30 game was only two hours, but we didn't really have time to eat before our 5:00 game together, Masquerade Most Foul.

The game was full up with people, every slot was filled. It was an odd game; superheroes in Renaissance Italy, using a home-grown system, Four Colors Al Fresco, which has a very odd dice mechanic. But dice were not the main focus of the system, it was all about storytelling. I played Amiga Castanaveras, the "face" of the group who everyone loved and could do no wrong. Lou played Zephyr, the fastest man on Earth. He could run three times as fast as a normal man! Can you tell this was really low powered?

This could have easily been the best game of the convention. We had me, Lou, Lou's Victorian Supers GM from earlier in the con, a husband and wife duo who brought their cutest little baby boy (maybe a year old, year and a half) with them (and she had a great feel for her character, and was making the game a lot of fun), and a guy who could have been obnoxious playing an odd character, but he PALED next to the last member of our group.

Some people have no concept of personal space. Of what is allowed and considered "playing a character" in game, and what is not allowed and just plain inconsiderate. This last guy, playing Rana, the "frog prince," was one of the latter. He spent most of his time in "frog" form, and sitting on the shoulder of "Tinker," played by the mother mentioned above. This meant that he basically crouched next to the woman, leaning into her personal space, and generally making things uncomfortable. And every now and then, making a "frog-like sound" in his throat as he spoke. And, according to the woman later, he smelled, as many of these obnoxious gamers can.

At one point, the baby was on the woman's shoulder, and the "frog" had moved to the side where the kid was. Why, I don't recall. The baby was quiet, happy and sleeping, and then the guy let out one of his "frog noises." The kid woke up, screaming and crying. Eventually, the mother took the kid out into the hall to get him to quiet down, and while he did settle a bit, the father had had enough. They made their excuses, saying the kid wouldn't settle down, and left the game, which was unfortunate, as we weren't that far into it, just getting into the meat of the scenario, the beginning of the Masquerade.

I had to put up once with the "frog" on my shoulder, at which point my character turned to him and said, "You know, Rana, it's sad that you remain a frog, because otherwise I would dance with you," and then she wandered off to the dance floor. He immediately had his character turn back into a "prince" (aka a human), and the GM of course pointed out that he was naked, which got him out of my hair and kept him from crouching down beside me.

The rest of the game went pretty well. The game used Storypath cards as another random element, ways to guide the story in our favor by playing a card (which we would not get replaced) or by helping the GM/bad guys by playing it against us (in which case we did get a replacement card). I've always loved using cards to aid/assist in game play. It's one of the reasons I love Everway.

After that, we tried to find something to eat, as we were really hungry (we had totally forgotten to buy granola bars to eat at the con when really hungry. Next year!). Lou had a 10:00 board game (Zombies!!!, I think, though maybe Arkham Horror.), but all the food places were closed, or had really long lines. The most annoying thing was that all the food places in the convention closed at 6:30. Did they not realize how much money they could rake in by staying late? I managed to find one place during the game that had the last caffeinated beverage (a Diet Coke, drink of the Gods), but food was right out! I know there is the problem of paying people overtime, but maybe next year they'll think again.

The sports bar/pub in our hotel had a 45 minute wait, the kitchen was that backed up. So Lou headed out to his game food-less, while I headed back to the room.

On the way, I spotted the Starbucks mini-cafe in the far end of the hotel lobby, and figured I'd check there for something to eat. If I had thought of it earlier, I would have dragged him there, but as he had left and I was tired, I got food for myself (a salad, best thing for late night food) and a chai and went back to the room to eat. I realize now I should have gotten him a salad and brought it back to the room, at least. Ah well, he ate the brownies I had gotten at Starbucks earlier in the week when he got back, and then we slept.