We Came to Geek...
We stayed, I think ultimately, for the friendship.
There was always going to be more than a touch of sentimentality about the last of the incomparable Tentacles conventions, but by and large a certain West Germanic stoic undemonstrativeness about it all was maintained. Early on, though, Loz sounded quite a poignant note in absentia in a rather touching letter expressing his thoughts on the con, and the community. It then rather blew that with a load of self-indulgence about "Vice-Lozzes", and then the organisers were back to rambling on about other matters, but perhaps best we didn't gaze at our collective navels for too long, anyway.
Unofficial pre-Con get-together on Thursday, featuring the first tranche of what seemed to be Charlie's Eternal Barbecue. I think this was the point at which I deployed my "Rittersalad" joke, to tumbleweed and the lamentation of the womenfolk. Laid-back meet-and-greet, with various people trickling in as the evening went on. A bit after midnight, I decided to trickle out back to my hotel, which was not an entirely straightforward exercise. Very dark night, so I decided that going down the path/steps would be not unlikely to break my darn fool neck, and even walking down the road was a little fraught, since it has neither pavement nor streetlights for the initial stretch. Flopped into bed, to be shortly woken by the thunderous sound a freight train right outside my window. Oh yeah, they'd put me a storey lower than last year, and on the river (and hence railway) side. Too tired to be kept awake by them for long, though.Up to the castle just before lunchtime, though not fancying the cafeteria fare much, "lunch" ended up being a weissbier and a pretzel. Stahleck lunch tends to basically look like a remix of "what you had for breakfast" (brotchen, cold meat, cheese), and "what you'll be having for dinner" (soup and salad), so I planned to keep my powder dry on that, and top up with snacks, BBQ, runs down to the town for "nommer eins mit alles" (the traditional "kebap"), and cafe pizza later on, as required. I ended up not doing the kebab run at all, which seems a terrible lapse from tradition. More yakking, more people arriving, infoshrine opening up, falling back to dorms, and soon enough the programme proper was kicking off.
GRAHQ seminars: I turned up to collect my books and chinwag with some people in the Rittersaal, but ended up doing more chinwagging in the cafeteria and the courtyard rather than staying for any of the actual seminary bits. I hope I didn't miss any vital public service announcements I haven't managed to osmose elsewhere. Oh, and I played a game of Race for the Galaxy with Sandy. Turns out this was supposed to be a "teach the beginners" game, so the first-timers used basic worlds with the default starting hands, while Sandy and I played "stud", as Prof. Petersen put it, with expansion pack worlds and random hands. Unmitigated disaster for me as a contest: ended up dead last on a mere 20 points (the winner on relatively modest 30), after being well and truly "out-rare-earthed" by Ivesy Junior. What a troublesome lineage all 'round! Still, good to uphold the boardgame-a-Sandy tradition. He was also playing Dominion on a similar basis. Turned up for "Greg's Rambling Hour": of the four Staffordian one-man-panel programme items, three of them seemed to be bordering on the interchangeable, though this seemed to end up being the "general philosophising, not necessarily in a Gloranthan context" one. In any event he seemed to be in excellent form for all of them, so no complaints from me on any mere scoping quibbles. Then off for about four hours of further gabbing, as the crowd progressively thinned until there were less than half a dozen of us to call it a night.
Saturday morning wasn't too much of a rude shock, though the sight of the tabletop game "signup scrum" at that hour was rather striking. Perhaps a case of more attendees than usual, and no more games, judging by how quickly they filled up. I decided not to compete in that particular meta-game, and to keep on going to the cafeteria. After I'd gotten some breakfast and tea in me, stat, there was Generic Greg Seminar #2 (this one being in the Rittersaal and being the one most resembling the "Lore Auction" of yore), followed after a bit by Sandy on the origins of the CoC game -- which I thought I already knew, but there was lots of extra bits and pieces that were new to me. By this stage the first of the freeforms was up and running; this was Jeff's game set in and around one-or-other of the Crusades, which actually looked like quite a lot of fun. Had the vague after-the-fact thought that maybe I should have signed up for at least one of them, but was content enough without, and didn't really want the hassle of costuming, or the vague sense of guilt about not bothering. (Typically people are fine about it, but it always feels like 'letting the side down' when others have turned up in such splendidly silly raiment.) Lots of setting the world to rights with Jamie and Matthew, which after dinner turned into a game of "Zombie Cinema" in the cafeteria with those guys, Joerg, and Julian. Ironic, that, since I was studiously avoiding Sandy's "Terror Movie Fest" at roughly the same time!
Sunday morning: that bit rougher than the one before, to be strictly fair, but more brotchen and cuppas and I was in Generic Greg Seminar #3! This one was a little less structured that the previous one, and himself run on a full extra hour, and seemed to be in fine form. Have to listen to the podcast to remember what anyone actually said, mind you. Then we forcing a grimace for the (last! sob!) annual ritual of the noon photograph. After that I wandered down to have a quick look at Greg's latest incarnation of the Pendragon Battle System, and ended up playing the whole thing. One or two rough edges, I felt, but a lot of fun, and a bit improvement over the numerous previous incarnations, I felt. (If Greg or Suzanne are reading this, yes, I owe you some cogent comments, ASAP, I'm getting right one that!) Early evening, was back out in the courtyard, drinking in the beautiful upstream view of the Rhine, and chewing on the taste of pre-nostalgia that was getting ever more tangible. Just a couple more programme items and it would be all over. Can I really have been to twelves of these already? Can this really be the last one? Such blandly cruel facts assail the truth in our hearts, that we want it to go on, and on... But all things must come to an end, and so will this, soon enough.
Greg Reads. Definitely not the same as the previous three seminars! Greg teased us twice, firstly telling us there'd be a Q&A on the reading, then by not quite finishing the chapter! It was a good 'un, on what seems to have been the very first self-consciously experimental HeroQuest, by Harmast starting off by heroforming Yinkin, and switching identifications in mid-ritual. Read with quite some vigour by FGS, and raised all sorts of 'mythic mechanics' questions in my mind. But Greg was off like a shot at the end of the slot this time, I think to sample some of Charlie's latest culinary extravaganza, a massive multi-bird roast turducken-and-then-some. Got to sample this later on myself, and very nice it was, too. Cheers, Chef Krank! Then everyone staggered upstairs for the tail end of the auction, and the closing ceremony. Quite a bit of restrained emotion on show at both. Helped shift some chairs for the '80s Disco while the book-burners made free with a copy of Daughters of Darkness, IIRC Mr Corrigan doing the honors with this chequebooks and the disposable lighter this time. Then in a flood of fake fog that would do either Kahar or Cthulhu proud, the Rittersaal was a-quake to three records with Midge Ure's imprint on them, and 47 by various other guys in too much hairspray and makeup. And so it ended, not with a bang, so much as with a series of whimpers from music lovers, though quite effectively drowned out by the volume.
Survived until Monday. Just about. Seemed to end up singing random songs around dawn with Joerg, Nick, the matthewcole delegation, and some unfortunate jackdaws. Dragged self out of bed for breakfast and getting-the-heck-out-of-Dodge a couple of hours later, and was seized by a stomach-queasying coughing fit. A kindly vicar intervened with a mouthful of coke, for which I was most grateful. I shall try to bear this unselfish act of charity next time I'm tempted to say something fatuous about Anglicans (which is fairly often, I must admit). Then it was a gardual wind-down from there. One contingent of us stayed in the castle courtyard, while another group made a lunch run down to the town. Normally there seem to have been more people staying over in the castle for the following day, but when I wandered off around six PM or so it was just Chris that was left, leaving early the next day for the "big" airport. Perhaps people didn't want to linger too long, knowing that the ritual was over, the barrier between the worlds had closed again, and it was all over.
So long, fellow Tentacles, and may we all have as happy a meeting again: some other time, some other place, or under some other banner.
There was always going to be more than a touch of sentimentality about the last of the incomparable Tentacles conventions, but by and large a certain West Germanic stoic undemonstrativeness about it all was maintained. Early on, though, Loz sounded quite a poignant note in absentia in a rather touching letter expressing his thoughts on the con, and the community. It then rather blew that with a load of self-indulgence about "Vice-Lozzes", and then the organisers were back to rambling on about other matters, but perhaps best we didn't gaze at our collective navels for too long, anyway.
Unofficial pre-Con get-together on Thursday, featuring the first tranche of what seemed to be Charlie's Eternal Barbecue. I think this was the point at which I deployed my "Rittersalad" joke, to tumbleweed and the lamentation of the womenfolk. Laid-back meet-and-greet, with various people trickling in as the evening went on. A bit after midnight, I decided to trickle out back to my hotel, which was not an entirely straightforward exercise. Very dark night, so I decided that going down the path/steps would be not unlikely to break my darn fool neck, and even walking down the road was a little fraught, since it has neither pavement nor streetlights for the initial stretch. Flopped into bed, to be shortly woken by the thunderous sound a freight train right outside my window. Oh yeah, they'd put me a storey lower than last year, and on the river (and hence railway) side. Too tired to be kept awake by them for long, though.Up to the castle just before lunchtime, though not fancying the cafeteria fare much, "lunch" ended up being a weissbier and a pretzel. Stahleck lunch tends to basically look like a remix of "what you had for breakfast" (brotchen, cold meat, cheese), and "what you'll be having for dinner" (soup and salad), so I planned to keep my powder dry on that, and top up with snacks, BBQ, runs down to the town for "nommer eins mit alles" (the traditional "kebap"), and cafe pizza later on, as required. I ended up not doing the kebab run at all, which seems a terrible lapse from tradition. More yakking, more people arriving, infoshrine opening up, falling back to dorms, and soon enough the programme proper was kicking off.
GRAHQ seminars: I turned up to collect my books and chinwag with some people in the Rittersaal, but ended up doing more chinwagging in the cafeteria and the courtyard rather than staying for any of the actual seminary bits. I hope I didn't miss any vital public service announcements I haven't managed to osmose elsewhere. Oh, and I played a game of Race for the Galaxy with Sandy. Turns out this was supposed to be a "teach the beginners" game, so the first-timers used basic worlds with the default starting hands, while Sandy and I played "stud", as Prof. Petersen put it, with expansion pack worlds and random hands. Unmitigated disaster for me as a contest: ended up dead last on a mere 20 points (the winner on relatively modest 30), after being well and truly "out-rare-earthed" by Ivesy Junior. What a troublesome lineage all 'round! Still, good to uphold the boardgame-a-Sandy tradition. He was also playing Dominion on a similar basis. Turned up for "Greg's Rambling Hour": of the four Staffordian one-man-panel programme items, three of them seemed to be bordering on the interchangeable, though this seemed to end up being the "general philosophising, not necessarily in a Gloranthan context" one. In any event he seemed to be in excellent form for all of them, so no complaints from me on any mere scoping quibbles. Then off for about four hours of further gabbing, as the crowd progressively thinned until there were less than half a dozen of us to call it a night.
Saturday morning wasn't too much of a rude shock, though the sight of the tabletop game "signup scrum" at that hour was rather striking. Perhaps a case of more attendees than usual, and no more games, judging by how quickly they filled up. I decided not to compete in that particular meta-game, and to keep on going to the cafeteria. After I'd gotten some breakfast and tea in me, stat, there was Generic Greg Seminar #2 (this one being in the Rittersaal and being the one most resembling the "Lore Auction" of yore), followed after a bit by Sandy on the origins of the CoC game -- which I thought I already knew, but there was lots of extra bits and pieces that were new to me. By this stage the first of the freeforms was up and running; this was Jeff's game set in and around one-or-other of the Crusades, which actually looked like quite a lot of fun. Had the vague after-the-fact thought that maybe I should have signed up for at least one of them, but was content enough without, and didn't really want the hassle of costuming, or the vague sense of guilt about not bothering. (Typically people are fine about it, but it always feels like 'letting the side down' when others have turned up in such splendidly silly raiment.) Lots of setting the world to rights with Jamie and Matthew, which after dinner turned into a game of "Zombie Cinema" in the cafeteria with those guys, Joerg, and Julian. Ironic, that, since I was studiously avoiding Sandy's "Terror Movie Fest" at roughly the same time!
Sunday morning: that bit rougher than the one before, to be strictly fair, but more brotchen and cuppas and I was in Generic Greg Seminar #3! This one was a little less structured that the previous one, and himself run on a full extra hour, and seemed to be in fine form. Have to listen to the podcast to remember what anyone actually said, mind you. Then we forcing a grimace for the (last! sob!) annual ritual of the noon photograph. After that I wandered down to have a quick look at Greg's latest incarnation of the Pendragon Battle System, and ended up playing the whole thing. One or two rough edges, I felt, but a lot of fun, and a bit improvement over the numerous previous incarnations, I felt. (If Greg or Suzanne are reading this, yes, I owe you some cogent comments, ASAP, I'm getting right one that!) Early evening, was back out in the courtyard, drinking in the beautiful upstream view of the Rhine, and chewing on the taste of pre-nostalgia that was getting ever more tangible. Just a couple more programme items and it would be all over. Can I really have been to twelves of these already? Can this really be the last one? Such blandly cruel facts assail the truth in our hearts, that we want it to go on, and on... But all things must come to an end, and so will this, soon enough.
Greg Reads. Definitely not the same as the previous three seminars! Greg teased us twice, firstly telling us there'd be a Q&A on the reading, then by not quite finishing the chapter! It was a good 'un, on what seems to have been the very first self-consciously experimental HeroQuest, by Harmast starting off by heroforming Yinkin, and switching identifications in mid-ritual. Read with quite some vigour by FGS, and raised all sorts of 'mythic mechanics' questions in my mind. But Greg was off like a shot at the end of the slot this time, I think to sample some of Charlie's latest culinary extravaganza, a massive multi-bird roast turducken-and-then-some. Got to sample this later on myself, and very nice it was, too. Cheers, Chef Krank! Then everyone staggered upstairs for the tail end of the auction, and the closing ceremony. Quite a bit of restrained emotion on show at both. Helped shift some chairs for the '80s Disco while the book-burners made free with a copy of Daughters of Darkness, IIRC Mr Corrigan doing the honors with this chequebooks and the disposable lighter this time. Then in a flood of fake fog that would do either Kahar or Cthulhu proud, the Rittersaal was a-quake to three records with Midge Ure's imprint on them, and 47 by various other guys in too much hairspray and makeup. And so it ended, not with a bang, so much as with a series of whimpers from music lovers, though quite effectively drowned out by the volume.
Survived until Monday. Just about. Seemed to end up singing random songs around dawn with Joerg, Nick, the matthewcole delegation, and some unfortunate jackdaws. Dragged self out of bed for breakfast and getting-the-heck-out-of-Dodge a couple of hours later, and was seized by a stomach-queasying coughing fit. A kindly vicar intervened with a mouthful of coke, for which I was most grateful. I shall try to bear this unselfish act of charity next time I'm tempted to say something fatuous about Anglicans (which is fairly often, I must admit). Then it was a gardual wind-down from there. One contingent of us stayed in the castle courtyard, while another group made a lunch run down to the town. Normally there seem to have been more people staying over in the castle for the following day, but when I wandered off around six PM or so it was just Chris that was left, leaving early the next day for the "big" airport. Perhaps people didn't want to linger too long, knowing that the ritual was over, the barrier between the worlds had closed again, and it was all over.
So long, fellow Tentacles, and may we all have as happy a meeting again: some other time, some other place, or under some other banner.