The first bit of a report on ACUS 2008
ACUS! That was seriously fucking entertaining from start to finish. Making a note here, huge success. I would actually recommend it to people as distant as here in California. A large part of the fun is discussing your games and characters with other people at the con... You see everyone all the time, eat with random people because most anyone with a con nametag is going to be smart and entertaining, and thus get the fun from several different perspectives. The base assumption here, that the games are generally fun, is nearly a theorem. And yet for all the people you chat with, there are still people to meet years later: frex, this year I finally got to game in person with RF and the Kunkels; and I met totally random new people who had even so been going to the con forever, like Barbara B; and brand new people like the younger David McC.
The con will be changing its committee like a hand of 5-card draw traded in for another five from the deck... Instead of Ray L and a2macgeek and various other people I don't remember about, we'll get John S and tlatoani and edwinvoskamp various other people I don't remember about. I don't reckon that liable to downgrade the fun potential.
The hotel, which I was rather dreading, was fine to good. Not so dessicating as the first year, for whatever reason. Stairways were nice to dash up; 5th floor was quiet and just what I'm accustomed to from all the stairs at home and work. Good water pressure. Found a comfy spot on my bed and a reasonable pillow, and slept well pretty much every night, sharing a suite with fine people who were not annoying or sloppy or snore-y. They were awesome in positive ways, too: fun to talk to when I was there, attracted other cool people, all around spiffy. Free hotel-provided drinks were weak, but free... Free breakfast allowed me to carry off all the fruit and raisin bread I liked, for later in the day when it was a plausible breakfast time for the Pacific timezone. Lunch and dinner were kinda grim, but the fridge let me store good leftovers from offsite. Free coffee in hotel rooms was actually pretty darn good.
My trip out went about right, aside from having to wait twice the necessary time for the AirBART, as the first drove away while I was trying to find a change machine that would give me the one more dollar I needed, having discovered that I only had two in my pocket. At least the machine that gave me a $3 BART ticket didn't give dollar coins in change. Or nickels... I remember the time BART pulled that one on me, the bastards. Slept on the way to Chicago... Chicago Midway airport, to my approval, has interesting leather armchairs to wait in instead of the usual cramped line seats, so you have personal space and can rest your arms on armrests without battling for the priviledge.
However, Midway was the first place I noticed being out of the Pacific Coast, when I got lunch from the place that had some variety in food offerings (vs pizza), but which didn't offer anything green aside from iceberg lettuce. I got bland breaded white meat chicken stuff with only ketchup to put on it. It was kindof a surprise. I hadn't realized that I've come to expect a salad to contain a variety of different leaves, and for there to be sauces available from many different cuisines. I really did expect that even in an airport I would be able to get something like a Mandarin chicken salad. I'm reminded of a tiny bit from "Intolerable Cruelty":Wrigley: Uh, I'll just have a, um, salad, please. Um, baby field greens.
Nero's Waitress: What did you call me?
Wrigley: Uh, no, I-I-- I-I didn't call you anything.
Nero's Waitress: You want a salad?
Wrigley: Yeah. Do you-- Do you have a, uh, green salad?
Nero's Waitress: What the fuck color would it be?
Wrigley: Why are we eating here?
Nero's Waitress: What's his problem?
Miles Massey: Just bring him an iceberg lettuce and a mealy tomato wedge smothered with French dressing.
I mean, there was also good food. I had a very nice thing at a Macaroni Grill one night, and I saw a variety of ethnic restaurants.
Anyway! As for the con itself. I started with Edwin V's "ShadowWorld", which is an ongoing world with various missions which are con oneshots. Fun seems to come from exploring the world Edwin has thought up, and being all tactical? I'd talked a fair amount before with Eric T and came up with a character who worked pretty well; thanks to Edwin reworking the points, she was a strong booster that made others very cool, and so people weren't so annoyed having to get her up to speed. I was tired, and couldn't pin down the drawling "If you have a paper tail don't go into the kitchen" Texan character feel I was hoping for. Hadn't had time to read up on the long game history before the con, but had been given abilities that only came with months of training, in which the character would have been bound to have picked up key info that I didn't have... So that was a bit awkward, as it was info she needed to know to not die. Thank goodness Rain D was willing to admit to being out of the loop, so I could remora on her big infodumps without it being totally selfish. Also, I heard later from conversation that ShadowWorld games in general don't get rolling quickly, and our game settled on something to do very quickly, so the infodumping section was perhaps a useful bit of a refresher and at least a replacement for the arguing about what to do section. And Eric T loves providing info, so he at least seemed very entertained there.
Within the game, Kat L got quickly trapped, which for me was convenient as various people demonstrated the sorts of things that they could do and the sort of problem-solving attitudes that they brought to get her out in a pretty low-pressure environment. I got to be both in character and useful meta-ly as a "TchTch come on now stay on target" kind of person. A la, Even if this would put you at risk of getting corrupted, you'd do it anyway to save her, so there's no point fretting endlessly about whether or not it's corrupted; or We negotiate with insane computers with the people willing to risk soul corruption we have, not the people willing to risk soul corruption we wish we had.
Seemed less likely than I'd worried to forget to say the magic words and die horribly, which was nice; I'd been a bit daunted by the constant talking about ShadowWorld that I'd heard in past years. The game ended relatively early, when after people dropping from exhaustion one by one eventually everyone crapped out. So I wasn't the tiredest person there, hurrah, and I got a taste of it all and then got some decent sleep. Picked up a couple of quotes:
"You poke it? The black absence of the astral plane?" - GM to Lan Parker
"They pause for a few seconds and then explode outwards in a stream, running at you." - GM re: Beathag's roses
"I make myself scarce. I think I'm faster than a plant." - Howard Storm
Cast:
Beathag von Lüneburg (Kat L)
Gail Weathers (Lorraine D)
Howard Storm (William G)
Lan Parker (Irene S)
Miguel Fortuna (Eric T)
Sunrise de Braganca-Gibran (Simone C)
Maria Delgado Ortiz (Madeline F)
Van Mohlis (Erik F)
Friday and onwards later.
The con will be changing its committee like a hand of 5-card draw traded in for another five from the deck... Instead of Ray L and a2macgeek and various other people I don't remember about, we'll get John S and tlatoani and edwinvoskamp various other people I don't remember about. I don't reckon that liable to downgrade the fun potential.
The hotel, which I was rather dreading, was fine to good. Not so dessicating as the first year, for whatever reason. Stairways were nice to dash up; 5th floor was quiet and just what I'm accustomed to from all the stairs at home and work. Good water pressure. Found a comfy spot on my bed and a reasonable pillow, and slept well pretty much every night, sharing a suite with fine people who were not annoying or sloppy or snore-y. They were awesome in positive ways, too: fun to talk to when I was there, attracted other cool people, all around spiffy. Free hotel-provided drinks were weak, but free... Free breakfast allowed me to carry off all the fruit and raisin bread I liked, for later in the day when it was a plausible breakfast time for the Pacific timezone. Lunch and dinner were kinda grim, but the fridge let me store good leftovers from offsite. Free coffee in hotel rooms was actually pretty darn good.
My trip out went about right, aside from having to wait twice the necessary time for the AirBART, as the first drove away while I was trying to find a change machine that would give me the one more dollar I needed, having discovered that I only had two in my pocket. At least the machine that gave me a $3 BART ticket didn't give dollar coins in change. Or nickels... I remember the time BART pulled that one on me, the bastards. Slept on the way to Chicago... Chicago Midway airport, to my approval, has interesting leather armchairs to wait in instead of the usual cramped line seats, so you have personal space and can rest your arms on armrests without battling for the priviledge.
However, Midway was the first place I noticed being out of the Pacific Coast, when I got lunch from the place that had some variety in food offerings (vs pizza), but which didn't offer anything green aside from iceberg lettuce. I got bland breaded white meat chicken stuff with only ketchup to put on it. It was kindof a surprise. I hadn't realized that I've come to expect a salad to contain a variety of different leaves, and for there to be sauces available from many different cuisines. I really did expect that even in an airport I would be able to get something like a Mandarin chicken salad. I'm reminded of a tiny bit from "Intolerable Cruelty":Wrigley: Uh, I'll just have a, um, salad, please. Um, baby field greens.
Nero's Waitress: What did you call me?
Wrigley: Uh, no, I-I-- I-I didn't call you anything.
Nero's Waitress: You want a salad?
Wrigley: Yeah. Do you-- Do you have a, uh, green salad?
Nero's Waitress: What the fuck color would it be?
Wrigley: Why are we eating here?
Nero's Waitress: What's his problem?
Miles Massey: Just bring him an iceberg lettuce and a mealy tomato wedge smothered with French dressing.
I mean, there was also good food. I had a very nice thing at a Macaroni Grill one night, and I saw a variety of ethnic restaurants.
Anyway! As for the con itself. I started with Edwin V's "ShadowWorld", which is an ongoing world with various missions which are con oneshots. Fun seems to come from exploring the world Edwin has thought up, and being all tactical? I'd talked a fair amount before with Eric T and came up with a character who worked pretty well; thanks to Edwin reworking the points, she was a strong booster that made others very cool, and so people weren't so annoyed having to get her up to speed. I was tired, and couldn't pin down the drawling "If you have a paper tail don't go into the kitchen" Texan character feel I was hoping for. Hadn't had time to read up on the long game history before the con, but had been given abilities that only came with months of training, in which the character would have been bound to have picked up key info that I didn't have... So that was a bit awkward, as it was info she needed to know to not die. Thank goodness Rain D was willing to admit to being out of the loop, so I could remora on her big infodumps without it being totally selfish. Also, I heard later from conversation that ShadowWorld games in general don't get rolling quickly, and our game settled on something to do very quickly, so the infodumping section was perhaps a useful bit of a refresher and at least a replacement for the arguing about what to do section. And Eric T loves providing info, so he at least seemed very entertained there.
Within the game, Kat L got quickly trapped, which for me was convenient as various people demonstrated the sorts of things that they could do and the sort of problem-solving attitudes that they brought to get her out in a pretty low-pressure environment. I got to be both in character and useful meta-ly as a "TchTch come on now stay on target" kind of person. A la, Even if this would put you at risk of getting corrupted, you'd do it anyway to save her, so there's no point fretting endlessly about whether or not it's corrupted; or We negotiate with insane computers with the people willing to risk soul corruption we have, not the people willing to risk soul corruption we wish we had.
Seemed less likely than I'd worried to forget to say the magic words and die horribly, which was nice; I'd been a bit daunted by the constant talking about ShadowWorld that I'd heard in past years. The game ended relatively early, when after people dropping from exhaustion one by one eventually everyone crapped out. So I wasn't the tiredest person there, hurrah, and I got a taste of it all and then got some decent sleep. Picked up a couple of quotes:
"You poke it? The black absence of the astral plane?" - GM to Lan Parker
"They pause for a few seconds and then explode outwards in a stream, running at you." - GM re: Beathag's roses
"I make myself scarce. I think I'm faster than a plant." - Howard Storm
Cast:
Beathag von Lüneburg (Kat L)
Gail Weathers (Lorraine D)
Howard Storm (William G)
Lan Parker (Irene S)
Miguel Fortuna (Eric T)
Sunrise de Braganca-Gibran (Simone C)
Maria Delgado Ortiz (Madeline F)
Van Mohlis (Erik F)
Friday and onwards later.