Ambercon Northwest 2010, so how'd that work out for me?
Pretty well. Awww, who am I kidding, it was great! Like usual.
Anyway, this is how it went down. Getting in Tuesday evening was silly and I won't do that again... It was nice to be able to work a full day Tuesday, but getting in too late to catch the bus, so that I could pay for a hotel room and a fancypants breakfast the next day, was silliness. Live and learn! Also, I didn't have enough time to pack, so I took more clothes than necessary; but it was mostly fine.
As for "schmooze front desk for sink", I chatted a small amount with the night lady at the front desk (same lady for the past decade or more, apparently!), who said that they didn't assign the rooms in the Ambercon block, but all the rooms had big "do not change" tags on them... Turned out the room I had was sinkless, but next year I will make sure to send in money and requests for the room I Dearly Love in time to not miss it. And I trust that whoever had it this year is in a joyous drunken stupor right now and thus busy forgetting the number. ;)
Wednesday I slept in, had a leisurely iPhone/newspaper breakfast, and then walked a mile over to Walmart (the only grocery store or drugstore in the area. Damn shame). I surprised a tiny snake on the back path that leads from the parking lot to the school/playground to the north. It was brown, about 9 inches long, a baby. Long lighter brown racing stripes; probably a garter snake. It wriggled off into the brambles. There was a squished roadkill snake a few paces further along that was probably its brother. Anyway, first wild snake I've seen since leaving Colorado, and I was really pleased.
Picked up some bananas, cream cheese, bagels, whipping cream for coffee; also white long underwear which worked perfectly as hose for the Trafalgar Experiment. Came back and at last connected with people (Murray W, Emma S, Erik F, ?) by the time-honored tradition of Wandering into them while at the Black Rabbit Bar (en route to getting ice to cool Purchased Dairy Things).
Matador pre-con dinner: successfully sat next to cool people and talked to cool people. The drinks were kinda bland, IMO, but turned out to be hella strong. Am reminded by neat post from Felicity of how I was impressed by the way she and her friend Dan were there for the first time knowing noone, and went around brightly meeting people! Dan I got to see again later and was happy to game with; Felicity I did not see again except passing in the hall; she mentions in her post that no one asked about her hair; I do remember seeing it one day when she had it in a Santa Lucia style and I was impressed by that, too.
Retired to stress about games?
Thursday was sleeping in, then breakfast at the bar with John N? Shortly followed by marriage of Seana McG and Louisa McG. V. sweet. Adorable crying with emotion from Louisa. Gorgeous dresses. Bubble wand still with me. :) A bit more game stressing, then. Fleeing to con registration party at 5 for potential volunteering, but other people had that well in hand, so I took the time to get some wine and start chatting. Around 6 off to Power Station to get food to go, with J.P. B; back just in time to eat food and hear announcements. Was great plan. There is completely, utterly ridiculous terrible photo of me doing my part to be groupie of Iron GM Jeremy Z shortly before his Troubles.
Then Ben B's game "When The Bough Breaks"! With Katja C, Keith A, Derrick S, John H, Lee S.
"So basically there is this Psychic Maelstrom and all of you are knocked unconscious as -Fiona- dies in your arms." - Ben B to Sabina (played by Katja)
"No one has told me that anyone else is massacring people aside from Touve...?" - Ben B
"I mean, the blinding, surprising nature of this attack--teleported in, glance, then massacre..." - Ben B
"When you said mayhem, you only meant [killing] people worse than you?" - Sabina to Merrick (played by John)
"Simon is dead." - Sabina
"Simon is dead? You killed him?!" - Florimel
". . . He was killed." - Sabina (with the audible ". . .")
Yeah. So we didn't know that the agent of Benedict we were killing was Fiona. Maaaaan... I was happy that I got a chance to use the effed-up coping strategy I'd built into the character, and massacre a bunch of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ben B started off this slot with a series of questions, in a style that Nathan later used in The Long Road: the instant character quiz, a way I haven't seen before of stabbing towards creating character history on the fly. Stuff like "Touve, tell me, who is the leader of the PC's team?" "Ian, how did Kaeso give you that scar?" I liked it, though I'm not yet in lurve with it. Would like to see a list of questions like that, where people are getting these from. Make them up in advance of each game? Interested in possibly turning the crank a bit, trying it out, refining it a bit. Sort of like Pit of Vipers; is the lessened system effect good or bad? Anyway, was entertaining. Touve perhaps character on most upward trajectory at end of game? Also turned out to be first in Warfare which is always entertaining. And nice of Maurice (Derrick S) to lose an arm for her. Name: was trying for something Norwegian since character was influenced in body type by Sister Norway from silly amusing webcomic I recently found; thought of Tove Jansson (I know she's Finnish), found her name was pronounced in a sound file on wikipedia, tried to spell it so that pronunciation would be more likely; failed, but Ben B did pick up pretty quickly on the pronunciation I was trying. Oh, also thanks to Kaeso/Lee S, who arranged that most of the massacring was of people who were arguably deserving of it, and thus pushed us across a Rubicon that lead to interesting things down the road. And it was nice that Ben B let us pull the same plan twice due to realistic confusion after the first time round! Also to put all the game cruft in one place (I didn't throw out the paper, so here it is), the note Touve left in a temporary safehouse that she was pretty sure Benedict would track down: "Prince Benedict:
I have the memory of being your daughter and Oda's. It seems impolite to presume on this. I was raised as an agent of Chaos.
It is my hope that some day there will be a reason for us to converse comfortably. Touve"
On way back to room, passed Lee B, but was not lured to drinking even though he had read my LJ and mentioned the perhaps unnecessarily skewed mentions of booze... Game to run the next morning, yanno.
Right now, though, it is late, and so I need to shower and then write up the rest later. Perhaps I would Benefit my Readers more if I were to actually put in paragraph breaks and arrange my thoughts in something other than stream of consciousness? Even include full sentences? Your Opinions Valued!
'I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts', he said. 'My name is Ryan; I inherited this post from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from http://zdashamber.dreamwidth.org/125637.html.
Anyway, this is how it went down. Getting in Tuesday evening was silly and I won't do that again... It was nice to be able to work a full day Tuesday, but getting in too late to catch the bus, so that I could pay for a hotel room and a fancypants breakfast the next day, was silliness. Live and learn! Also, I didn't have enough time to pack, so I took more clothes than necessary; but it was mostly fine.
As for "schmooze front desk for sink", I chatted a small amount with the night lady at the front desk (same lady for the past decade or more, apparently!), who said that they didn't assign the rooms in the Ambercon block, but all the rooms had big "do not change" tags on them... Turned out the room I had was sinkless, but next year I will make sure to send in money and requests for the room I Dearly Love in time to not miss it. And I trust that whoever had it this year is in a joyous drunken stupor right now and thus busy forgetting the number. ;)
Wednesday I slept in, had a leisurely iPhone/newspaper breakfast, and then walked a mile over to Walmart (the only grocery store or drugstore in the area. Damn shame). I surprised a tiny snake on the back path that leads from the parking lot to the school/playground to the north. It was brown, about 9 inches long, a baby. Long lighter brown racing stripes; probably a garter snake. It wriggled off into the brambles. There was a squished roadkill snake a few paces further along that was probably its brother. Anyway, first wild snake I've seen since leaving Colorado, and I was really pleased.
Picked up some bananas, cream cheese, bagels, whipping cream for coffee; also white long underwear which worked perfectly as hose for the Trafalgar Experiment. Came back and at last connected with people (Murray W, Emma S, Erik F, ?) by the time-honored tradition of Wandering into them while at the Black Rabbit Bar (en route to getting ice to cool Purchased Dairy Things).
Matador pre-con dinner: successfully sat next to cool people and talked to cool people. The drinks were kinda bland, IMO, but turned out to be hella strong. Am reminded by neat post from Felicity of how I was impressed by the way she and her friend Dan were there for the first time knowing noone, and went around brightly meeting people! Dan I got to see again later and was happy to game with; Felicity I did not see again except passing in the hall; she mentions in her post that no one asked about her hair; I do remember seeing it one day when she had it in a Santa Lucia style and I was impressed by that, too.
Retired to stress about games?
Thursday was sleeping in, then breakfast at the bar with John N? Shortly followed by marriage of Seana McG and Louisa McG. V. sweet. Adorable crying with emotion from Louisa. Gorgeous dresses. Bubble wand still with me. :) A bit more game stressing, then. Fleeing to con registration party at 5 for potential volunteering, but other people had that well in hand, so I took the time to get some wine and start chatting. Around 6 off to Power Station to get food to go, with J.P. B; back just in time to eat food and hear announcements. Was great plan. There is completely, utterly ridiculous terrible photo of me doing my part to be groupie of Iron GM Jeremy Z shortly before his Troubles.
Then Ben B's game "When The Bough Breaks"! With Katja C, Keith A, Derrick S, John H, Lee S.
"So basically there is this Psychic Maelstrom and all of you are knocked unconscious as -Fiona- dies in your arms." - Ben B to Sabina (played by Katja)
"No one has told me that anyone else is massacring people aside from Touve...?" - Ben B
"I mean, the blinding, surprising nature of this attack--teleported in, glance, then massacre..." - Ben B
"When you said mayhem, you only meant [killing] people worse than you?" - Sabina to Merrick (played by John)
"Simon is dead." - Sabina
"Simon is dead? You killed him?!" - Florimel
". . . He was killed." - Sabina (with the audible ". . .")
Yeah. So we didn't know that the agent of Benedict we were killing was Fiona. Maaaaan... I was happy that I got a chance to use the effed-up coping strategy I'd built into the character, and massacre a bunch of people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ben B started off this slot with a series of questions, in a style that Nathan later used in The Long Road: the instant character quiz, a way I haven't seen before of stabbing towards creating character history on the fly. Stuff like "Touve, tell me, who is the leader of the PC's team?" "Ian, how did Kaeso give you that scar?" I liked it, though I'm not yet in lurve with it. Would like to see a list of questions like that, where people are getting these from. Make them up in advance of each game? Interested in possibly turning the crank a bit, trying it out, refining it a bit. Sort of like Pit of Vipers; is the lessened system effect good or bad? Anyway, was entertaining. Touve perhaps character on most upward trajectory at end of game? Also turned out to be first in Warfare which is always entertaining. And nice of Maurice (Derrick S) to lose an arm for her. Name: was trying for something Norwegian since character was influenced in body type by Sister Norway from silly amusing webcomic I recently found; thought of Tove Jansson (I know she's Finnish), found her name was pronounced in a sound file on wikipedia, tried to spell it so that pronunciation would be more likely; failed, but Ben B did pick up pretty quickly on the pronunciation I was trying. Oh, also thanks to Kaeso/Lee S, who arranged that most of the massacring was of people who were arguably deserving of it, and thus pushed us across a Rubicon that lead to interesting things down the road. And it was nice that Ben B let us pull the same plan twice due to realistic confusion after the first time round! Also to put all the game cruft in one place (I didn't throw out the paper, so here it is), the note Touve left in a temporary safehouse that she was pretty sure Benedict would track down: "Prince Benedict:
I have the memory of being your daughter and Oda's. It seems impolite to presume on this. I was raised as an agent of Chaos.
It is my hope that some day there will be a reason for us to converse comfortably. Touve"
On way back to room, passed Lee B, but was not lured to drinking even though he had read my LJ and mentioned the perhaps unnecessarily skewed mentions of booze... Game to run the next morning, yanno.
Right now, though, it is late, and so I need to shower and then write up the rest later. Perhaps I would Benefit my Readers more if I were to actually put in paragraph breaks and arrange my thoughts in something other than stream of consciousness? Even include full sentences? Your Opinions Valued!
'I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts', he said. 'My name is Ryan; I inherited this post from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from http://zdashamber.dreamwidth.org/125637.html.