Umbral Echoes Blog

Whew. Finally through with convention season. Why is it that we so often need a vacation to recover from our vacations?

This year’s festivities were confounded somewhat by a database issue at work that I’m still dealing with now, to a lesser extent. Suffice to say, it was my fault, and is the biggest screwup I’ve ever made in my professional life, intensified by a perfect storm of other bad things happening. But, we’re mostly recovered from it, and mistakes are the best teachers.

So in this post, I’ll go over some of the fun times at GenCon.

This year involved more dicebagging, of course. Frank even set up a website for it… though he never approved my account and I’ve therefore been unable to load pictures. I also convinced Lydia to eat three hot peppers at Steak n’ Shake, for the low price of paying for her meal. I think you’ll agree that it was worth it. Or perhaps I’m just a sadist.

Along the lines of discussion, the question was asked, “What is the least compensation you would accept for macing yourself in the face?” Talking about the chemical here, not the medieval weapon. Initially the thought was, “Would you mace yourself in the face for X dollars? What about half that?” And so on. But it evolved into questions such as, “Would you mace yourself in the face to temporarily be changed into a member of the opposite sex for a day? What if part of that was that you’d be a poorly-endowed member of the opposite sex?” In this discussion, I learned that Lydia is secretly very blatantly a sexual misogynist.

The White Wolf party was a bit more strict this year, actually requiring invites at the door. But, as always, it was an open bar, and this time it was split into two sweat-drenched levels of fun. There was an impromptu photo shoot. Word to the wise: whenever someone says, out of the blue, “Are you ready?” the answer is, without fail, “Bring it ON!” Except envision that said in Brock Samson’s voice in your head, then do your best impression of it. Suffice to say, I was made to remove my shirt and bite random goth chick’s neck. Pictures might or might not be forthcoming on the White Wolf website, depending on the laziness of the people involved in the photo shoot.

Note to self 2: stay away from drunken bisexual dudes. Next time, it will end in blood.

The after-party with the White Wolf folks was somewhat low-key, but we brought the DJ along for the hell of it anyway. Afterward I had to deal with a drunken bitch (drunk to the point where she literally couldn’t walk) who insisted that she was all right to drive not only herself, but a couple of other people who came with her, home. Sometimes I hate having to be the good guy. That one ended up being a couple hours of hassle, and me letting her stumble off to try and find her car. I thought about calling the cops to detain her, but honestly I don’t care that much.

I’ll keep the roleplaying stories to a minimum, since that’s only interesting to a select crowd (and also, I was only in two games this year). Dustin ran an Exalted LARP that was a continuation of games from previous years. My character was on trial for killing the person who was likely to become Empress. Part of the game was that each character was given a motivation/goal for each scene, and in the trial scene my character’s goal was to bed one of the members of a certain house/clan. Long story short, there was really only one option: the judge herself. I came a breath away from managing it, too. Note to self: follow instincts always, without question.

Dustin also ran a Seventh Sea game. This system, for those not in the know, is made of pure awesome. It’s a game set in Renaissance times, normally centered on piracy. It is epic to a sometimes-silly level, and has such rules as: your character can never die, and when you do something awesome, you get extra “drama dice” for it. The game itself involved undead sheep invading what was supposed to be a child’s birthday party, in a mansion. I think that just about sums it up.

Met some cool new people over the weekend (Michael, Christine, others whose names I forget), which is always fun. Drank a lot less than I expected. At the White Wolf party I was making a conscious effort not to drink myself into a stupor. Which, in hindsight, was a mistake — drink deeply or taste not, and all that. There was only a brief respite (or it felt brief, anyway) before it was time to go sprinting around in the woods in 95 degree weather while wearing plate mail armor and beating on people with padded weapons. More on that later, though.

Two people dropped out of the DragonCon room last minute.  So, if anyone reading this is needing a room at DCon, we’ve got 2 slots open, 3 if we want to push it (go ahead and giggle).  We’re in the Marriott, so it’s convention central.

Also, I apologize for the lack of real updates recently.  Sometimes there’s not enough going on to write about (without trying to make the mundane into something interesting anyway), and sometimes there’s so much going on that you don’t have a free moment to breathe.  I plan to make a post about GenCon, and running around in the woods at 6am like a maniac.

I was hanging out at Stephen and Amanda’s place the other night, and Amanda tells me that Stephen was trying to get her to play World of Warcraft.  I paused and just blinked, confused.  Why doesn’t he just play himself?  Well, apparently he used to like watching his roommate play when stuff was going on (raids, whatever), but things liek the grinding and the travel time just bored him to tears.  So he’d just say, “Let me know when you get to the place,” then he’d come watch.

This struck me as pretty interesting, and I realize that I’ve done this myself in the past.  My Louisville crew used to be really into EverQuest, and though I never once played the game, quite frequently I’d come over and just chill at their house, munching on some Taco Bell and watching them raid.  It was vicarious gaming, and it actually kept my interest pretty well.  I’ve done this with roleplaying and console gaming, too — just take it in as someone else plays.  Granted, it’s not quite as fun as participating yourself, but there’s also much less of a time (and monetary) investment.  So while it seemed very odd at first, upon further thought it makes sense.

But regardless of the fact that it makes a weird kind of sense, I still find it pretty funny that Stephen asked Amanda to start playing WoW so that he could watch.

I just thought about this again, and it’s a slightly disturbing thought to me for some reason: I’ve been on the design team, and am listed in the Concept and Design section, for three White Wolf core books (Mage: the Awakening, Changeling: the Lost, and Scion: Hero), yet I’ve only ever played one of them (Scion), and I only played that once.  I’ve never even completely read through the others to see what they turned out like.

If I were to find that one of the designers of a game never played the final product, I would be pretty surprised.  And a little let down, if I were a fan of that game.  But honestly, I’ve had little time to roleplay recently, and recently I haven’t really been inspired to do so.  I’d love to get a regular Scion game going, but most of my friends here are enamored with D&D, and my second group is on Exalted (which is one of my favorite games).

When I do something, I do it.  When I used to play Magic, I had the rules for every card memorized that was in the tournament type in which I competed.  When I played Mage: the Ascension, I knew the rules forward and backward (I think Ian is the only person I’ve met who knew the rules at least as well as I — hi, Ian!).  I’ve had a problem playing Exalted lately, because I don’t know it nearly as well as I used to.  I can’t really stand to do something halfway.  So I end up just not doing a lot of things, because I know I don’t have enough time to devote to doing them well (or at least, what I consider “well”).

But I digress.  I suppose my overall point is that I feel somewhat like a hypocrite for having helped design games that I’ve never played, and in all likelihood won’t (though Changeling does seem really frackin’ cool, so I’d at least like to try it some time).  I feel… almost a sense of obligation there.  Or rather, as if I’m shirking an obligation.  Is that weird?