Tales from The Red Road--Gamehole 2015

I did not go to this con last year with the rest of my partners from Eldritch Enterprises; I was not going to spend 8 hours in a vehicle going to Wisconsin in Nov.; it just seemed counter-intuitive, ya’ know? Wisconsin, November, Winter—not necessarily ingredients for a happy recipe. And I have had to face the fact that I am just too damned old to do these trips alone anymore; too much danger of nodding off on the way home and such.

This year, I had my favorite accomplice in mischief and mayhem for my boon travelling companion, The Mad Mage, a.k.a. Jim Wampler. Jim and I have now made several con treks together but have not yet strangled one another, run out of BS stories or otherwise grown to loathe and despise each other. In other words, good travelling companions not married to each other; a rare distinction, in my mind.

In terms of route, this trip was a no-brainer; I-74 W through Indy and on to Bloomington, IL; from there I-39 N to Madison. None of the crap associated with having to go anywhere near Chicago. (Alas, no Chicago dog at Corky’s, either.) With the construction on the bridges on I-65 being the incredibly horrid situation that it is (poor Lafayette is damned near embargoed) we were not going through that again.

Eight lo-o-o-o-ng hours after departure, we arrived in Madison. (I spent the trip in an elastic, wrap-around  back-brace. I’m not too sure but what it would have been less painful without it.) Good old Dennis got us to the Clarion with no trouble (I have the voice of Dennis Hopper downloaded to my GPS). Jim went off to his solo room upon check-in a couple of floors above where I was rooming with Frank Mentzer in a nice little suite with kitchen amenities. So far, so good.

Now comes the only gripe of this tale. It is true that there was a covered passageway from the hotel to the Exhibit Hall. It is also true that it was one damned long walk. When I go back, which I most certainly will probably do if asked, I am going to look into one of the little motorized scooters like Tom Wham and Jim Ward had; we can have races and pari-mutuel betting.

On Thursday night, the Con had organized a bus for a bunch of us Special Guests (their distinction, not mine) to go out to see the warehouses of ACD, one of the larger game distributors. It was a bit overwhelming as the place is huge; wall-to-wall, nearly floor-to-ceiling games and game stuff. And, we got anything we wanted wholesale. I picked up a promising six-player (Provincia Romana) and an odd little card game about who’s the better person based on the gifts you give at Christmas. (There are six of us in my twice-monthly boardgame group; I am always on the scout for good games for 6.)

When we had sated our gaming appetites, it was back on the bus to satisfy another appetite. We were whisked off to a reception at the Free House Pub where we were treated. Thanks, Alex. There was a time when I could have punished you for that, but those days are long past; I no longer drink like a fish, nor eat like once I did. Alas and alack…

The con had a very respectable Dealer Area, and I saw independent designers with a table all over the place, showcasing their games. The hall seemed to do a good business; every time I could get by it held a respectable crowd. I found another 5-player eeuro-game based on trading in the Med that was marked down 75%. At that markdown, if it is a stinker I am not out so much.

My first game was Friday at high noon. Somewhat out of character I had entered this simple minis game into the schedule rather late in the process, so it did not get much face time and had a scanty sign-up. Too bad, because the few that did sign up seemed to have a good time.

A few years back, WizKids came out with their sailing CSG Pirates (of every body of water we can think of)…. The hook to this CSG (Collectible Strategy Game) was/still is the pretty ships, hundreds of them. The rules were awfully simple (some might argue to reverse those two words), about what you would expect from something this entry-level. In Gygax Magazine #3 I published my upgraded rule set called Master Mariner. [1] The rules could be favorably compared to Chainmail in complexity. The game went well; the two sides swanned about a bit trying to get position, closed and ended it in about a four turn bloodbath. Most satisfying. I have plans to run this game at any con I drive to, and already have plans on how to make it bigger and bloodier.

RPG’ers continue to surprise me in the ingenious ways they can come up with that get them wiped out. I ran three RPG’s: two TPK’s and one survived through my magnanimity. In one of them which I had run at least eight or nine times they found a whole new, never-before-tried way to get slaughtered. Seeing this, all new waus to die, is part of what keeps me coming back to the table, as well as writing.

The con seemed to me to very well run; the organizers seemed to have a really good handle on things. They had a special little refuge for us Guests that was quite nice and very welcome. I saw lots of minis games of various stripes, lots of boardgames, a plethora of RPG’s (some a bit too many too tightly crammed into too small an area), Chris Clark had his Starship Bridge thingy that seemed to be quite popular, there was a special painting area and Dan “the Bard” Marcotte had a Bard Camp set up. (For those that don’t know any better, he’s not some dude wandering around trying to look like a Ren Faire luterist. He writes hilarious songs about RPG’ing that only a player could pen. Check him out online.) The Fight in the Skies Society was very visible (they have a killer banner) and many, many biplanes were riddled with bullets. There was a huge DCC tournament that featured much bloodshed and was enjoyed by all the combatants; one-on=one mayhem reigned.

There were a bunch of seminars and panels going on that had quite a few interesting topics and many, many game authors were present answering questions about their games and talking about new stuff coming.

The consortium that puts together Gamehole Con should all spend a small amount of time patting themselves and each other on the back for a job well done. OK, that’s enough. It was hard to credit that this was only their third convention, so smooth was the operation I saw. I had a hell of a good time, saw old friends and made new ones; can anyone reasonably ask for more from a con?

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[1] Several years ago I had submitted them to Wizards, where they supposedly sat un-looked-at in two different persons’ file cabinets. When I finally tracked them down, through three different employees (two had left), I was told WotC was not interested. Oddly enough, their last releases and expansions were about 80% of what I had submitted. As far as I am concerned they were lifted from my submission and the Hasborg can try and sue me over them. 

What we really meant—Pt. 1--AC

In recent weeks I have found myself, as part of an exciting new project I have embarked upon, doing a lot of synopsizing what some have come to see as complex or confusing concepts. One example that springs to mind is the old stat known as Armor or Armor Class (AC). In OD&D it was a really simple system that ranked plain old street clothes as AC9, while at the other end of the non-magical spectrum was plate mail and a shield at AC2

If Hit Points (HP) are considered to be your ability to avoid/evade a mortal blow (which they were in OD&D), then AC was how hard you were “to hit” (in this case threaten your well-being to some degree).

“To Hit” is another term that does not exactly mean what it seems to mean based on just the words. Confused yet? Consider “the Mountain” from Game of Thrones on HBO. This is one HUGE dude encased in metal. If three or four puny (normal-sized) guys attack him, chances are that their weapons will actually make physical contact with The Mountain lots of times; this is not what is referenced in “To Hit”. Of those several physical contacts, only a small proportion of them will actually strike with a potential to do actual damage; i.e. pierce the armor at a weak point or joint, or slice or pierce some flesh. Those are what are winnowed out of the combat to be represented by the To Hit number.

Back t0 AC; something as small and ephemeral as a pixie or sprite, or small and quick like a stirge would be somewhat difficult to simply swat out of the air like an over-sized wasp. To simulate that facet of their being I make them hard “to hit” by giving them a very good AC.

(OD&D had a descending AC system starting at 9 and going down; other systems use an ascending system, where 1 is street togs and 7 or 8 is really buff. Readjust this in your head to match your system; the concepts remain constant. Something slow and ponderous, such as a pachyderm, would be easier to strike, but the thickness of the skin somewhat mitigates this as well as the high number of HP an elephant or mammoth might have.)

AC does not always indicate what is being worn. AC is a combination of several concepts, not only the weight of the metal being worn.

To maintain perspective remember this: we were trying to bring miniatures to the table top. Several of the seemingly complex considerations and calculations were second nature to miniatures gamers. We tried to abstract a lot of what was second nature in minis to a whole new milieu—Table-top Role-playing (and this before it was even called role-playing).

Once this concept is grasped in the abstract, it then becomes more clear why extraordinary attributes can affect AC, or otherwise make the PC harder “To Hit”. These same attributes also can grant the PC more HP, all in recognition of how that last, fatal blow is just that, fatal. I have never counted anything more than “dead”; hit 0 HP and you died. Whether or not your PC can be Raised or Resurrected is another matter entirely. We had PC’s brought back from dead several times, although not always with absolute best results.

But anyway, that’s what we meant.

Gamers & Their Toys: Of Dice & Men*

The cliché of the frustrated golfer chucking his putter into a water hazard after a missed “gimme” or wrapping his wedge around a sapling after yet another shanked chip-shot is fairly well known. Archers discard “arrows that miss” (as though they maliciously acted), and anglers will leave an expensive lure hanging in a tree “… cuz it wasn’t catchin’ nothin’ anyhow”.

There is a very old saying that goes something like “It is a poor workman that blames his tools.”

But we gamers do it a lot. Gamers want to feel a mystical connection to their dice; that their dice are “with them” and provide good numbers when needed.

Gary Gygax was quoted several times about dice and our connection to them. The gist of his comments had to do with DM’s rolling dice more for the sound they make than anything else. In OD&D, that can certainly be true. I have often picked up a couple and ostentatiously rolled them to get a quibbling party of adventures re-focused.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I wrote a completely tongue-in-cheek article about dice lice. The wee, tiny critters live in the spots or numbers of dice. They live on dead skin cells and dust, with the occasional comfit of felt or velvet lint. Too much direct sunlight could be deleterious to their continued well-being, so games were better played at night or in the basement. If you were “feelin’ the same vibe”, they would give you the number you need. If you had angered or neglected them, well, whatever happened, you had it coming for the callous treatment of your platonic solids.

While I am not saying it has never happened, I will say that I have never known a bowler that named his ball or an angler that named a lure, nor a carpenter that named a hammer. Hold that thought.

We might have a favorite hammer or driver, or have confidence in a given lure type or color, but that is a preference usually arrived at over time in most cases.

Fishing lures and dice have a lot in common. For one thing, they rely on eye-catching colors. There is a saying amongst us fisherman that new lures first have to catch the fishermen; it requires testing to see if they actually catch fish. The manufacturer only cares that it is purchased. Fair enough. The same is true today about dice; they come in a zillion colors and combinations and are made to various standards. I myself own only one set of dice that I absolutely trust to be accurate; a trio of icosahedrons certified to be accurate by the Japanese Standards Association and manufactured in the ‘70’s.

Lest you think that these weird fetishes are the purview of RPG’ers alone, let me assure you they are not. I used to play Fight in the Skies (now re-titled Dawn Patrol) a lot, and only flew if I had my three FITS dice: two black with white spots and one orange with black spots d6’s. I still favor black dice with white spots and numbers; pouring all those sinister dice out on the table at the beginning of the game is a big psych-out sometimes (along with my thoroughly deserved reputation for TPK’s at cons; it’s like letting the condemned see the axe beforehand).

In Jolly Blackburn’s delightful comic, The Knights of the Dinner Table, the protagonists are sometimes slaves to their own dice and dice superstitions. They name some of them; certain dice types (colors, speckles, streaks, etc.) are considered to be intrinsically classier or better or more reliable, which we all know is bunkum. Don’t we?

What happens when a given die, usually the overworked and oft-maligned d20 (icosahedron), goes “sour” and starts delivering horrid results? I have heard of some rather interesting rituals designed to get back the die’s mojo or punish it.

Sometimes at cons you will see a single die, more often than not the d20, sitting forlornly in the center of an empty table. This is a severe form of “dice-shaming”, as though being exposed to all the con for providing poor numbers on crucial rolls will somehow rectify this behavior. Alternately, they could have been purposely abandoned so as not to infect/curse the rest of the dice in the bag.

Then there are those that resort to capital punishment by drowning, being smashed to smithereens with a hammer and death by microwave radar. The first is pretty much self-explanatory; chuck the offending die into a large body of water. Insofar as drowning, how exactly do you drown something anaerobic? Just askin’…

I have met several gamers that claim to have done variations on the second; some refer to it as decimation, a not-quite-correct usage of the word. The tales go generally that all the dice are lined up/taken out of the bag, the miscreant is isolated and subsequently smashed with a mallet or hammer. One guy claimed to put a few shards back in the bag to “serve as a reminder”.

Not solely limited to SF gamers is death by microwave, wherein the die is bombarded with energy waves until it forms a puddle. Make sure that speckley die contains no metal flakes; they can arc-out the magnetron (according to one tale I heard).

Oddly enough, I ran across a third method to enact dice reform that does not involve any dice losing their existences. The big question for you to answer is: Do you believe bad dice can be rehabilitated? A company called Etched It has presented us with a more humane option; their Despicable Dice Dungeon. https://www.etsy.com/listing/249858884/despicable-dice-dungeon?ref=shop_home_active_1&campaign_label=convo_notifications&utm_source=transactional&utm_campaign=convo_notifications_010170_10683759063_0_0&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&email_sent=1443461274&euid=ZO1vWioH9hRON_3t-5susWXrs_fx&eaid=31138463749&x_eaid=bc279336ff

Disclaimer: I have not met these folks and have no financial interest in their operation. But if you want to tell them you heard about it here, I'm cool with that.

What a clever idea. Perhaps a few days in Dice Jail will bring them round. For serious failures I could see where two weeks in solitary in the bottom of the bag might just do  the trick. Would it not be better for “Ole Rosey” to get a second chance after a stint in the cubical hoosegow than be melted to a puddle of goo? It would certainly be cheaper, because as we all know, if you have a set of “matched” dice, e.g., a 4-, 6-, 8-, 12- and 20-siders all of matching material, the remainder of the set becomes sort of superfluous once it is incomplete.

With all of our harsh reactions when the dice let us down, this offers a more temperate response. Come on, it’s not as though our  dice are inanimate, unthinking platonic solids of various material and compositions incapable of any actions on their own, is it?

*I salute all the ladies that play; you weren’t in the book title I am parodying

The Undervalued and Often Overlooked Art of Editing

One of the overriding tenets of playing OD&D back in the very earliest days of the game (mid to late 70’s), particularly if you were the DM, was that anything is fodder for the campaign. Let me clarify that; good campaigns were a pastiche of every neat idea someone else had back then. As we were groping our way through the dark tunnels of ignorance then, we cobbled together every good idea we had read, seen or heard into our campaign’s framework.

I “borrowed” from Tolkien, Leiber, Anderson, Carter, deCamp, Burroughs, Howard, the Grimms and any other writer that had an idea I liked. We did not consider ourselves thieves as what we were doing benefitted no one but ourselves and harmed no one.

There were no pre-packaged adventures (or modules) until Judge’s Guild started publishing; we did not value them very highly at TSR and we were content to let them do so under our license. We did not even approach the idea at TSR for some two years, give or take, and then it was for a different reason, but also the same underlying reason: money.

We did not see the money-making potential at first. We only did the G Series so we could continue to make money with our huge convention tournaments.

I take a little flak now and then for being something of a fly trapped in amber; I play OD&D as I played it in the 70’s. Even though I mid-wifed AD&D, I stuck to my “little brown books” (the digest-sized original three and the four supplements) and have seen no reason to change.

In the two decades I was out of the industry, I was not reading any of the RPG stuff coming out. I stuck to boardgaming and minis, refusing even to run an RPG here in Cincy for my friends. I did a Rip VanWinkle; I missed out on all that transpired during that time. I missed all the “Edition War” crap. I missed scads of bad “next-best-great game” hopefuls. I also did not read anybody else’s ideas. (When I wrote Curse of the Weaver Queen, my partners were leery because of previous Lolth modules which I had never seen, let alone read. I did it anyway.)

Recently, I briefly relented and thought to see “what the other guys are doing”. I can tell you something they aren’t doing: they aren’t using skilled editors. It has recently been my displeasure to look at a couple items by a couple of respected authors/designers who have had wide success in the past, as well as a handful of efforts by newcomers that looked promising based on the settings. Where is the editing? For that matter, where are the proofreaders or copy editors?

I will not make the claim that either I, or my companies Eldritch Enterprises or Celtic Studios, are perfect in this regard. I am sure that someone has found a typo or two by now that we missed. We peer-review every EE release; that means that all three of the other partners vet every manuscript, proof every galley and scrutinize every layout.

Some of the recent products I have tried to read look like they evaded SpellCheck; the idea that anyone that knew what they were doing edited them is risible.

Yes, as most reading this know, I am/was an “Editor”. I hold the skill in high regard. The first job of an editor is to understand what the writer is trying to express; if he or she can’t “get” something, chances are scores more won’t either. This is not ego or hubris; this is what editors do first. They seek the germ of the idea and then ensure that it is understandable. If, or when, they find a rough (or missing) patch, their second-most important skill is to be able to smooth out the rough patches and create new ones to knit them all together, in the author’s voice.

Some of the articles I published in my various magazines (Dragon, Little Wars and Adventure Gaming) are as little as 30% author and 70% editor. Some of those early authors learned from what we had done and later became really good writers; others never noticed. In all cases, we strove to keep the articles in the author’s voice.

(Secret: Some of us writers don’t always write well on any given day. We might think it was good, but not that day.)

I see this appalling trend as bringing down the level of the whole FRPG field; the crap is outweighing the good stuff and threatening to suffocate us all in mediocrity and banality. I haven’t seen stuff this sloppy (some, certainly not all) since the heyday of the over-enthusiastic, sloppily edited and self-proofed fanzines.

This is THE DARK SIDE of self-publishing. Any tool with a printer can call himself a writer. Any tool that can work InDesign can now call himself a designer or layout specialist.

What they lack is well-written, easy-to-understand-and-play content. Just chucking a handful of ideas, some thoughtful and some not thought out at all, and a garbled setting into a manuscript won’t cut it.

The purpose, or usefulness, of good editing is to provide or ensure clarity and understanding. You simply cannot hope to have the latter without the former. The biggest pearl in the world can remain hidden in ordure if you can’t see it. For myself, I prefer not to rake my fingers through it to find the pearls.

I went to Gatlinburg and got a rock

Disclaimer: While I do not hate country music, there is only a little that I like. I really hate overly-commercialized tourist-y areas. I would rather vacation on Edisto Island, SC, than Myrtle Beach. (MB is pretty, but ohmygod, the crowds.) So where did Cheryl plan a little mid-week vacation for us? Gatlinburg TN.

For those reading this unfamiliar with that locale, it is in the Smokies and is really three small towns strung out along Rte 441, also known as The Parkway: Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and the aforementioned Gatlinburg. Pigeon Forge is the home of Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s version of CW Disneyland.

From what I know of the area and its history, Dolly coming in and doing what she did (bought up an old park that was on its last gasps and heavily revamped it) breathed new life into the area and revived all three towns. That’s cool; I have always liked Dolly, ever since she did the movie 9 to 5. I begrudge her nothing.

That said, I must admit that the whole area is really strange, like it is caught in some sort of incongruity-loop. The attractions vary from the ridiculous to the unexplainable to the just plain weird. In between there are almost as many go-kart tracks as there are fudge shops (a goodly number of both), interesting crafts-men and –women, and a bizarre fondness for making fun of all the stereotypes of mountain folk; everywhere you turn there is “hillbilly this” and “hillbilly that”.

We had a few great meals at recommended restaurants; the Apple Barn blew me away when they brought warm apple fritters with a cup of fresh-made apple butter as soon as we were seated. That beat the heck out of a bowl of salsa and corn chips, let me tell you. Their chicken and dumplings were superb. Then there was the Old Mill; I ordered the meatloaf, figuring on a couple of hefty slices; I got what looked to be an individual  meatloaf that had to weigh a pound! We made killer sandwiches the next day for lunch.

I’ll take you on cruise down 441…(not necessarily in the correct order) The coming weekend was the Rat Rod Rally, an annual gathering in Pigeon Forge of hundreds, if not thousands, of old cars, pick-ups, hotrods and other strange wheeled vehicles. They were parked facing 441 up and down both sides facing the Pkwy. There were some incredible rides; the trade-off was that the speed limit seemed to have been reduced to 17 MPH as everyone gawked at the cars. There were folks tailgating and just sitting in camp chairs facing the street watching the traffic, a good deal of which were old and interesting.

Some of the various theme restaurants seem pretty bizarre; even more bizarre than the Ripley’s attraction with the upside-down front façade. The Titanic does not, in my mind, bring to mind fine dining renown. In my mind, it brings to mind images of screaming and panic, people behaving badly and heroically at the same time. It does not make me yearn for a chicken-fried steak. Maybe I have a quirky stomach, but an atmosphere of impending doom does not make my mouth water.

Then there was the Stampede. I like watching trick riders and rodeo. I like eating. Somehow I missed the gene that thinks eating a meal at a table that is on the edge of the “arena’ is a good idea. No matter how much or how little you try, that fine dirt does nothing for mashed potatoes.

There were jousting eateries (more of that fine dirt seasoning), Arthurian/fantasy eateries and name brand restaurant chains were all represented, but one stood out as the oddest, at least to my mind. It was called Biblical Times; I couldn’t help but wonder if you ate fried pita, mashed chickpeas and yogurt off of wooden platters. Nahh, probably not. Loaves and fishes?

That part of the mountains is beautiful country; we were too early for any fall color. We took a ski-lift up Mt Harrison and listened to a three-man bluegrass band, took a cable car up the side of a different mountain. Ober Gatlinburg has two rides down the mountain; one a little sled in a cement quarter-pipe and the other fastened to a steel track/pipe. I thought it looked like a cool ride, but I couldn’t get Cheryl to do it with me.

If you like driving go-karts, this is a great place with lots of venues and every kind of track. NASCAR has a big driving attraction there that looked really interesting. It is probably a good thing that my son and his family were not with us; we would have spent a fortune on those karts trying to kill, err, beat each other. Hell, I probably would have had a stroke.

The only attractions rivaling the karts for numbers were the miniature golf venues. Monsters, farms, one up a mountain that you had to ride an incline to get to, every climate-theme except Arctic, it was there. We played three rounds over three days at the same venue that had three different courses and a great multiple-rate.

You could not force me back there in-season at gunpoint; off-season it was a nice drive and we had some good times.

Oh, the rock? Well, when you live in the mountains, rocks are something you can expect to have a lot of, virtually lying around everywhere you look. We walked into a place called The Sandman in the Old Mill area. They dealt in rocks, primarily flat-sided rocks, and they have a sand-etching machine. They have combined perhaps the oldest communications format—drawing on a wall, with the newest—a computer-controlled etcher. They photo the rock you are considering, then allow you to see whatever you want etched on it on the screen, and they have bunches of different fonts, dingbats and icons. We found an unusually colored stone and had it engraved, already knowing exactly where it was going in our back yard. When we got it home, it was perfect. 

Gettin’ Legal in the Mile-high city

I recently had occasion to do a couple of novel things; well, sort of novel. We’ll just call them cool …

First, I flew 1^st Class for the first time since ‘Nam. Getting boarded first means you get to sit in your bigger, wider, more comfortable seats and watch everyone shuffle in line to their tiny, cramped seats. Until the other day when I did it, I used to shuffle by those same folks in the front of the plane and wonder what the big deal was. Well, the big deal is you get a more comfortable seat at the price of now being the one stared at. I hope I never looked that resentful, ever. The food is much too “healthy” for my tastes; if you don’t eat yogurt or cereal with skim milk, you are out of luck. Coming back the lunch was some sort of pasta all mixed into a bunch of vegetables that were all disguised with some sort of opaque dressing, topped by some strips of chicken with grill marks so perfect you suspect they have been stenciled or branded on. The tomato juice was good, nice and tomato-ey. I resisted the urge to get hammered in flight; who drinks that early in the morning, or in the case of the return flight, mid-day, except lushes? Even if the booze is free? (Coming home on leave during the war was different; then, you drank anything they were willing to give you, and thanked them most profusely.)

Another thing I did was the reason I was in Denver. A producer sent me tickets to come there to be interviewed for a film/story/documentary-thing they are making. I will keep their confidences, as they have asked me to and so say only that it involves games and gaming. (Well, duh!)

It can be both intriguing and painful, dredging up memories from 40 years ago, but worth it in the end. The funny thing about rooting around in memories that old is that they have a habit of dislodging odd memories that then come back several hours after the question was asked. Let me state the obvious: it really, truly sucks to be the last guy alive from the original crew. (On the other hand, the distinction does mean that I still breathe, not a bad thing at all.) I realize too that I have an obligation to answer questions about that time as fairly and honestly as I can. The historian in me demands that I do it, even though I realize that I could, if I was wired that way, take credit for stuff with nobody to gainsay me. Howsoever, those danged nuns instilled in me a set of values that prohibits my doing that.

And now to that “other” new thing I did, that I am sure some of you have been wondering when I would get to. I went to my first legal pot dispensary. Talk about a dream come true… I thought I was dreaming. Walking into it reminded me of Amsterdam, except way better. They scan your ID and then give you a number, like at the deli. When your number is called you are allowed into one of the showrooms to so your browsing. We stopped at LivWell-Enlightened on S Broadway; I have no way of knowing how big or small they are compared to other retailers and I did not get an extra bud for this plug. Ask for Amber, she’s a sweetie. After asking her for a recommendation or two, I selected a gram of Zeta Sage #1, a most satisfying sativa strain, and an equal portion of El Diablo #1, a very wonderful indica strain. The potencies were purported to be 18 and 21%, respectively. They were both just tasty as hell. The privately-owned building we did the filming in and hung out around the whole time had a very nice little balcony on the third floor that was about the same height as the canopies of the trees in the surrounding neighborhood. I spent a good deal of time on that balcony those two days. Here in Ohio, we have a ballot initiative on the next election that would allow personal use. I dearly hope it passes because the lack of furtiveness in CO is really relaxing. They are hard as hell on driving stoned, as well they should be, but just chillin’ at home? It’s all good in The Mile High City.

How big is too big? Gaming Cons today

I am fortunate in that I get to go to seven cons every year. I start in Feb. at TotalCon, then CincyCon followed by GaryCon followed by Nexus, then NorTex then GenCon and wrap up with Gamehole Con in Nov in Madison WI. Every one of these cons has a certain vibe to it and is special in its own way.

The biggest, by a very wide margin, is GenCon with 61K attendees this year. The smallest con I go to is NorTex—the North Texas Role Playing Game Convention,aka NTRPGCon, with an attendance of about 350. (Full disclosure: They all put me up and some either reimburse for gas or send me plane tickets while some even give me meal money. I would not know how to go about appearance fees; I would be too embarrassed.)

NTRPGCon has about 10 attendees for every industry guest; Doug Rhea, the mastermind behind it, likes it that way. It is far and away the most laidback con of all the ones I attend, enabling wonderful conversations and interactions between all sorts of people, famous or not. It has an intense vibe of fraternity.

GaryCon has The Old Guard, a loosely defined group of former TSR staffers, that gets together each year at the con. As senior member, I am assembling them all at once for a group photo next con, before our ranks have too much more time to shrink. GaryCon is in Lake Geneva, birthplace of FRPG’s and has a sort of “pilgrimage to the source” aura surrounding it. Once there, it has a distinctively old school vibe of just a bunch of us gamers getting together to game. If you left your backpack out on The Virtual Porch in the morning, it would still be there, untouched, many hours later. It has that feel from the old days of “we’re all in this together”.

Nexus is struggling to find its niche; it is changing dates again for a better fit but seems to show some promise. I hope it gets past its teething pains.

CincyCon is my local con; 30 years ago we drew thousands, but not nearly so many nowadays. I want to see it get better and am trying out different things with them.

This will be my first time at Gamehole. Everything I have heard about it augurs well for its continued growth; being in early Nov. gives them an edge in that not much in the way of gaming goes on in Nov.

TotalCon is unique in that it has a long history, has had more than its fair share of ups and downs and takes over a very large Holiday Inn complex completely. Further, they have had a program embracing the children for longer than any other con I know of.

GenCon is just too damned big. Admittedly, I don’t game at GenCon-I work the Auction. But lots of my friends do game there and it seems that theirs’ is a mixed reaction this year. With venues scattered about downtown, and events such as True Dungeon having meticulous time requirements, I think a bit of dashing here and there is required a bit too often. GenCon is beginning to feel like that first week at college where you dash about like a headless chicken.

Then there is the commercial side of cons. All of the cons I attend have vendor areas; vendor table rentals and booth rentals constitute a meaningful portion of revenues. TotalCon and GaryCon have relatively small vendor rooms, although GaryCon’s may expand with the new venue. CincyCon has a smallish area and NorTex restricts their booths to the perimeter of a large open area. The point is, the smaller cons see the vendor area as an adjunct to the total experience of the con.

It seems to me that the driving purpose, the raison d’être of GenCon seems to be the Dealer Hall and the vendors. I have already complained bitterly elsewhere about the abusive way the floor-plan was derived--solely for the benefit of the vendors and to the detriment of the gamers, in my opinion.

GenCon used to be, and to a lesser extent Origins, the date we at which we aimed for new releases; it was the single largest confluence of that many gamers. There was but a fraction of the companies back in the 70’s and 80’s that there are now. I cannot imagine the pressure to succeed, to make or break your company, if it all depends upon the splash you make at GenCon. It is extremely likely that several great games or products get lost in the blizzard of releases every year because they did not spend a lot on the box or were overshadowed in their booth area by one of the mega-booths or any number of other good reasons. How can Joe Figamo, who has his entire life savings wrapped up in the best new game idea in decades, hope to compete with the smoke and mirrors of one of the big companies in his modest little booth with modest graphics and just a couple of products? He will be lost in the tumult. The next great “strange” game (just as D&D was certainly strange in ’74) may die at birth.

As for myself, I will continue to work the Auction as long as they will have me. If not for my involvement in the Auction, I would not attend any more. In no way, shape or form do I recognize today the first con I attended in ’74. In itself, that is neither good nor bad; I just don’t like what it has become, and I have all the other cons I go to that can feed my gaming need.