Intercon G

Intercon G Picoreview: Damned Good

Very fun convention.

Had a nice smooth ride up with zrealm, drcpunk,crash_mccormick, and with ebartley driving.

Checked in, relaxed for a bit, got into costume, and went to Deadfellas, where I was playing Gregori, a comparatively young (<100, mostly mortal, even) necromancer. Deadfellas was fun -- though I was a bit hosed -- given a mystery plot I had few leads in and fairly little recourse (I could probably have kicked the crap out of my opposition, but I didn't know exactly how good my combat number was), a desire to join a group I had -fairly- little pull over and which was mostly interested in a plot I couldn't help with, and to top it off, another little problem that took most of my concentration. All that said, with a fair amount of requested GM hand-holding, I managed to deal with two out of my three issues, make inroads on the third, and make some decent alliances with the other necromancers in the game (even if I did do a bit of showing off late in the game which might have screwed me on tuesday morning if I couldn't get the truth believed).

Went to the room, and insisted on staying up 'til 3AM trying to bleach the beard I'd grown for the Girl Genius game. Didn't do a half-bad job of it, either, though I really needed time for one more full application of the "bleach".

Saturday morning, I played in Girl Genius. Much fun, despite the problems the GMs reported later -- the key indicator (ie, player enjoyment) was quite high. Highlights included the Jaegers, being (as Othar) an utter tool, tussling with the Jaegers and with Gil, and, particularly, 'tricking' a Jaeger into "winning" a game of Dungeon Poker (ie, getting locked and abandoned in the castle dungeon) and winning a point against the Perfect Construct ("you and your traps kill innocent explorers!" "I haven't killed anyone." "What about the dessicated corpse in the upper dungeon?" "I haven't killed anyone -recently-!"). Was very interesting trying to strike a balance between Othar-as-annoyance and being a gentleman (or I'd have had to change my cards -- and I did make cards) and letting other players have their fun in peace.

After this, we had to prepare for -- and more particularly, recruit for, our game -- Hot Tub Full of Magic (a minimalist, but tightly written political game with a pretty neat resource management mechanic at its core). We had two players signed up, and had ended up recruiting a third, Caitlin, twice (she signed up by email, and then we recruited her again when she asked for "I've never done this before -- help!" before finding out her name and that she was already being counted among our players). 3 wasn't really enough, though it was close; the game really needs seven characters to run, and while we're willing to cast GMs to make a game work, having all but three characters played by our four GMs is a bit much. I went down and tried to recruit, but had little luck. To our fortune, however, Caitlin volunteered to go down and recruit, and brought back three male players! Along with one who showed up while we were out, and another woman who wandered in (who may have also been connected to Caitlin) a third of the way into the game, we ran with -8- players -- meaning we only needed GMs to play three relatively (sort of. Lisa and Beth played their roles as low agency PCs; I split my time between an infodump PC played as an NPC and as GM; Stephen stayed a full-time GM) and had a full cast. The game ran well, too.

Cutting here; it's been too long and I forgot this draft existed. There were more games, though, including the Dance and the Dawn (fun game, fun dancing, got to dance with Bess again; the setup included a lot of "read our minds, or ignore what we seem to have written to go by feel instead" to win, though) and the Other Other All Batman Game (pure chaos, lots of MENKS, the bad guys lost at the end.).

Conterpoint

Good con. Lots of cool music.

Got to sing Mal's Song back at vixyish.

Jen Metkiff from Wild Mercy was very cool. Good music too (from the whole band, not just Jen).

On Sunday, got to noodle on Jen's harp for a good long while -- it's a gorgeous 34 string floor harp, made so that it's in a perfect position for playing while standing flat. I want one. And an extra-dimensional case, so I so I can take it cons and have somewhere to put it. And lessons, so I can play it properly.