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April 01, 2004
Ambercon US 2004 Report
Funny, I've never done one of these, but I felt inspired by Jack's example.
The last time I went to an Ambercon was 2001. I missed 2002 as a side effect of an extra week of holiday that I received in Hong Kong as a result of a visa mix-up. I missed 2003 because I couldn't justify the cost while I was unemployed. Being able to go to this year's Ambercon, then, was a tremendous lift to my spirits as I could see friends that I had not seen for three years. It proved to be as fun as the others, though I've noticed changes in my tastes in the intervening years.
My con started Wednesday night, when I hopped my redeye flight from LA, through Chicago, to Detroit. I didn't get enough sleep, and what I managed was fitful, so I wasn't in the best of conditions by the time I arrived. After waiting for Barbara, my rideshare, to arrive, we headed to the hotel. Time of arrival was right around noon.
Since my roommates for the con had yet to check in, I had to tough it out elsewhere until they did. Much thanks to Barbara for letting me crash in her room, especially since I fell asleep on her partway through our conversation about online Amber gaming. Sorry, Barbara, I was running on less than three hours of sleep.
The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur of settling in, figuring out where to get Internet access (yay, wireless!), and purchasing food for the weekend at Meijer's, where we ran into two separate groups of con attendees. Go figure.
First slot Thursday evening was "A Ghost Story," with Rae W. With only three players, there was a lot of face time in the game, though that was mitigated by a lot of out of character schmoozing. The game was a lot of fun and brought the campaign to a conclusion. A new power in the multiverse was created and my character, Kincaid, and Steed walked away with shiny new magical weapons and imprinting to a multiverse-hopping power. This sets up future episodic games, which Rae had decided to run instead of "A Ghost Story."
Friday was a full day for me, starting with a riotously funny game of "Fortune Favors the Bold (Again)" with Sol F. It was grand swashbuckling fun without the extremism of the "Blaze of Glory" series. It was also great to play with Chris Kindred for the first time and to spend quality time with Bridgette Ruggles's new boy, Isaac. Carla Arnoldi looks a lot like Alyson Hannigan was meant to look.
Friday's afternoon slot was Chris Kindred's "The Black Watch," where we discovered just why Chaos lost the war. Without a clear chain of command, it was just... chaos. Altogether, the group wasn't so bad, except that a few actions by Mercutio really made things messy. While I enjoyed the game, I think it could have turned out better. The best moment, though, was the amusing parallel to The Lord of the Rings, when the Black Watch, a group of nine representatives from each major house in Chaos, was sent forth from the Thelbane (a tower) in black, riding wyverns, to seek out and bring back three people who were bearing a package. I'm decently sure this was not pre-planned by the GM.
Friday night, I played in J. P. Brannan's "Shadowforce Oberon." It was more serious than his previous outings with "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and was enjoyable for that, though the group took a little while to warm up to it. At times I wonder if the super-silly stuff is really the sort of thing I should be going for. I had much better luck with the semi-silly stuff this time around and really enjoyed the serious game I was in
Saturday morning was the serious game, "Undertow." Simone Cooper rode herd over 20 people, comprised of 8 assistant GMs and 12 players. I enjoyed this game immensely, both during the game and in the lead-up to it over email. A lot of preparation went into this game from all involved and the preparation showed in just how well the gameplay went. There's been talk that this game may be continued at a future con and I would gladly rejoin it was.
On a personal level, this game is the one that I find each con that reminds me where the bar is for the excellent GM's. Among the company, I felt that I was the weakest in that regard and could use a lot more work to play to their level. It will be interesting to see where things go from here. I think I want to get some more GMing opportunities in before next year.
Slot 6, the Saturday evening slot, I took off to spend time with Wendi and Sean Frost, who no longer come to the cons, but who were great friends from previous cons. Dinner was absolutely wonderful and we had a nice long chat with lots of laughs. I missed them dearly and it was so much fun hanging out with them that we didn't notice we had "gone over" on time. They had expected to head home at 9, but didn't leave until 11. I think I might have been able to sow the seeds to get them to come back to the con in the future, though, if only for a day.
What happened after that was rather bizarre and later attributed to being "just like Ian," which makes me wonder what that really means. Anyway, the story goes like this:
After saying goodbye to Wendi and Sean, I hopped over to the con headquarters where I eavesdropped on "No Meaner Name than Diplomacy" with David Golden, Simone Cooper, David de Jong, Guy Gascoigne-Piggford, Joe Saul, John Schippers, John and Kristen Schleick. The game looked like a lot of fun and I discovered that one of the guys running it was someone I had met in New York, but since everyone was busy, I didn't stop to talk.
Instead, I gathered up the room numbers of the other games and decided I'd make the rounds and see what others were up to. I didn't get very far. The first game on my list was "Morpheus Defiant" with James Arnoldi and Sol Foster. The only problem was that the game was not in the room that it was listed under. However, I heard game-like noises coming from next door. Thus, I walked in on "The Lords of Chaos" by Patrick Franklin.
I was immediately greeted with "... and a fissure opens and this appears. Describe your character." A pad of paper was tossed over to me and I was encouraged to write down my character's stats. I made up a character on the spot while the others continued with the scenario. Half the group sounded like it was from Farscape, but that might've just been from Kris Fazzari saying "Frell" all the time, and the other half seemed like a bunch of primitive arcane types. I joined in and basically took a background observer role until I could figure out a way to inject myself. My first combat action was to pee my pants, except I didn't have any pants. I was also invisible, though lightly coated with a layer of dust.
As quickly as this began, the group suddenly packed up and left to join another game, James Arnoldi's "Morpheus Defiant," in progress as part of the plot. It wasn't until this point that details fell together. Apparently, three players in the room had appeared just before I entered as a pre-planned player swap that would embroil both games into a single game. When I walked in, no one knew how many other people were involved, so everyone assumed I belonged there.
The beauty of the confusion is that it lasted the rest of the night and was the source of much chuckling and head-shaking. I hear the story was retold at breakfast, but I never woke up early enough to attend.
Sunday, I had two games, after missing the roundtable discussion with Guardians of Order about the future of the Amber Diceless line of products, after it is transferred to GoO from Phage Press. The first was "Force 10 from Avalon," again with Chris Kindred. This time around, we showed what a similar group of players might do with organization in mind. The group turned into a highly effective fighting machine and even surprised the GM with a "practice witch" that they wanted to train against before going up against the big bad witch in the plot. It turned out rather well, with lots of quotes, and could lead to more games in the future. Here's hoping it happens.
The last game I played in this con was "Brave New World Reloaded" with Rae Williams, though I jumped back and forth a lot between it and "To Live and Die in Texorami: The Good, the Bad, and the Unicorn," another Chris Kindred game. I'm not sure what to think about this game yet. It started off really silly, perhaps too silly for my tastes. Also, there are a lot of people in the game, certainly more than I'm usually comfortable with, especially with limited space. It was fun for the one turn that I had, before I had to run off to pack and spend some time chatting with Jack Gulick for the first time during the con, despite the fact that he was a roommate.
Thanks go out to J. P. for spotting me and Leslie Lightfoot a ride to the airport. If only the rest of my trip had been as easy. Put in perspective, it really wasn't that bad. I was stopped at security for having a Swiss Army knife, which had slipped through security in LA. Not willing to give it up, I had to check a bag, which meant that I couldn't get on my scheduled flight, due to check-in restrictions. I flew out on the next flight (delayed on both legs) and arrived home an hour and a half later than planned. Had lunch/dinner with Henry when he picked me up and pretty much slept the rest of the day away, after grocery shopping.
Altogether, a great vacation, albeit exhausting. Now, I'll just have to see if Ambercon Northwest is in the cards...
Posted by KinCross at April 1, 2004 11:28 PM