Con-In-Review: Aggiecon (and Jonathan Coulton: Untied)
So I apologize to my rather stoic readers who look forward to my con-in-review posts. I was lax this year in staying up till 3 am to log the various activities of the con I attended this past weekend. Excuses could be made but really, theres no point. I am shamed. After this last post, I shall submit myself unto the void.
Naaaah. Just teasing ya. Here we go: Aggiecon 41: Night of the Living Con.
So Aggiecon 41 ran from Friday to Sunday. And I am somewhat sad to admit that I did not attend Friday. While I ususally take off work, I had learned that Jonathan Coulton was visiting Texas Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And while I could make it to Friday or Saturday concerts, I could not make it to the Thursday concert. This meant that one of the Con going nights was going to have to be sacrificed. So Friday was picked as the least offensive day to skip Con. So I have nothing really to report about Friday. So I'll report about the Jonathan Coulton concert instead.
Arriving at the concert there was a line all the way around the block just to get into the bar. Apparently the entire concert was sold out. Luckily it wasn't too cold waiting. Downtown Austin, Texas is an interesting place in general. I saw three people while we were walking who, if I were the judging type, I would have stereotyped as fleecers/hobos looking for easy marks. Instead three of them conversed on the sidewalk using sign-language that I couldn't quiet read. That was kind of cool.
So in reality I didn't go to the concert to see Jonathan Coulton. I mean I did. But in reality who I was really there to see was Paul & Storm. You may remember my post about my previous concert, if you were on my friend's list back in 2009 and how blown away I was by the pair of comedic musicians. Well they were in awesome form Friday night as much as the prior concert. More panties were thrown. Cookies were shared. The minion list has gone digital with texting to join. It was highly amusing.
Jonathan Coulton however, receives even more points this time. Last year when I first saw him in concert his intro was a little lackluster. Like he was tired. And while the comedic happenings of his guitar string breaking mid song caused some humor, I didn't get the impression he was a very good at touring. This time, however, he slipped into both his songs and his comedy extremely well. The only mess up really the inhaling of some spittle and an untied shoe, which led to myself unofficially naming the concert: Jonathan Coulton: Untied.
So Friday night I got back about 3am. Didn't get to sleep till 3:30. And had to rise again at 8 to get to my first game of Aggiecon. This game was a Vanished Lands game for the RPG company I work for. One of my co-workers was running the game. I was in charge of making the pre-gen characters. Sadly I only got about 6 of them fully fleshed out background wise, and the other 10 concept-ed but none of them filled in with stats. To make things worse I ran out of paper to print them all out at home at about 9am. The game was at 10. So I called the GM and said: "I'm going to our local printer place but it doesn't open till 10am. So you're going to have to stall till I can get the sheets printed." Which is effectively what we ended up doing. I purchased Kolaches for everybody at the game, arrived 15 minuets late when the GM was finishing a description of the world And the game ran smoothly for the most part. Everybody seemed to have fun.
So this is where the con begins to go a little sour for me. After arriving at con I fetched food and drink for the GM from ConSuit, then went to reg to get my badge. They didn't have a badge for me. But they made one for me pretty easily. I also noticed that they didn't have a signup sheet for my afternoon game I volunteered to run for them. This required them asking me to go to ConOps to fix. Which I did. But in reality they should have sent a runner instead of asking me to do it.
The other major problem was that tabletop gaming consisted of one room with 6 tables. This actually wasn't bad, except that it was combined with Open Gaming. Which meant regular con goers basically wandered into the room and setup shop to run their games. So when the second slot games came in to run their games, there were no tables available due to games running overly long and opening gaming games. So officers had to come in and ask players to leave tables. I ended up getting set with a table that had one particular irate player who did not want to play my Arkham Horror game, insulted it saying it was a waste of time, and generally was a pacifist ass to me when I asked him to finally move so I could setup. That being said I got my game running, four people ended up joining us and we started about 30 minuets late, and finished an hour and a half over time, which technically wasn't over time as I asked for the 2nd slot as well incase the game ran long. Everybody who played seemed to have a good time and the players ultimately ended up winning.
Saturday evening was spent hanging out with old friends either in their hotel rooms, in the hallways, or in the hotel bar. Since my game ended late, all the other con functions were more or less shut down except for the preparation for Rocky Horror Picture Show, some sort of concert, and random gaming. Ultimately I stayed out until about 1am and crashed as soon as I got home since I had a game at 10am.
Naaaah. Just teasing ya. Here we go: Aggiecon 41: Night of the Living Con.
So Aggiecon 41 ran from Friday to Sunday. And I am somewhat sad to admit that I did not attend Friday. While I ususally take off work, I had learned that Jonathan Coulton was visiting Texas Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And while I could make it to Friday or Saturday concerts, I could not make it to the Thursday concert. This meant that one of the Con going nights was going to have to be sacrificed. So Friday was picked as the least offensive day to skip Con. So I have nothing really to report about Friday. So I'll report about the Jonathan Coulton concert instead.
Arriving at the concert there was a line all the way around the block just to get into the bar. Apparently the entire concert was sold out. Luckily it wasn't too cold waiting. Downtown Austin, Texas is an interesting place in general. I saw three people while we were walking who, if I were the judging type, I would have stereotyped as fleecers/hobos looking for easy marks. Instead three of them conversed on the sidewalk using sign-language that I couldn't quiet read. That was kind of cool.
So in reality I didn't go to the concert to see Jonathan Coulton. I mean I did. But in reality who I was really there to see was Paul & Storm. You may remember my post about my previous concert, if you were on my friend's list back in 2009 and how blown away I was by the pair of comedic musicians. Well they were in awesome form Friday night as much as the prior concert. More panties were thrown. Cookies were shared. The minion list has gone digital with texting to join. It was highly amusing.
Jonathan Coulton however, receives even more points this time. Last year when I first saw him in concert his intro was a little lackluster. Like he was tired. And while the comedic happenings of his guitar string breaking mid song caused some humor, I didn't get the impression he was a very good at touring. This time, however, he slipped into both his songs and his comedy extremely well. The only mess up really the inhaling of some spittle and an untied shoe, which led to myself unofficially naming the concert: Jonathan Coulton: Untied.
So Friday night I got back about 3am. Didn't get to sleep till 3:30. And had to rise again at 8 to get to my first game of Aggiecon. This game was a Vanished Lands game for the RPG company I work for. One of my co-workers was running the game. I was in charge of making the pre-gen characters. Sadly I only got about 6 of them fully fleshed out background wise, and the other 10 concept-ed but none of them filled in with stats. To make things worse I ran out of paper to print them all out at home at about 9am. The game was at 10. So I called the GM and said: "I'm going to our local printer place but it doesn't open till 10am. So you're going to have to stall till I can get the sheets printed." Which is effectively what we ended up doing. I purchased Kolaches for everybody at the game, arrived 15 minuets late when the GM was finishing a description of the world And the game ran smoothly for the most part. Everybody seemed to have fun.
So this is where the con begins to go a little sour for me. After arriving at con I fetched food and drink for the GM from ConSuit, then went to reg to get my badge. They didn't have a badge for me. But they made one for me pretty easily. I also noticed that they didn't have a signup sheet for my afternoon game I volunteered to run for them. This required them asking me to go to ConOps to fix. Which I did. But in reality they should have sent a runner instead of asking me to do it.
The other major problem was that tabletop gaming consisted of one room with 6 tables. This actually wasn't bad, except that it was combined with Open Gaming. Which meant regular con goers basically wandered into the room and setup shop to run their games. So when the second slot games came in to run their games, there were no tables available due to games running overly long and opening gaming games. So officers had to come in and ask players to leave tables. I ended up getting set with a table that had one particular irate player who did not want to play my Arkham Horror game, insulted it saying it was a waste of time, and generally was a pacifist ass to me when I asked him to finally move so I could setup. That being said I got my game running, four people ended up joining us and we started about 30 minuets late, and finished an hour and a half over time, which technically wasn't over time as I asked for the 2nd slot as well incase the game ran long. Everybody who played seemed to have a good time and the players ultimately ended up winning.
Saturday evening was spent hanging out with old friends either in their hotel rooms, in the hallways, or in the hotel bar. Since my game ended late, all the other con functions were more or less shut down except for the preparation for Rocky Horror Picture Show, some sort of concert, and random gaming. Ultimately I stayed out until about 1am and crashed as soon as I got home since I had a game at 10am.