GenConUK - I'll be there!
For anyone who cares, I can confirm that I will be attending GenConUK after all this year. It was touch and go for a while because I wasn't sure of my financial situation and whether I could muster up enough to knock the accommodation out of the equation otherwise there was no way I'd be going.
GenConUK's been a bit of a love-hate over the years for me. It was my first con and it's certainly the daddy in terms of scale, but it's been a little shaky for a few years. Fortunately, last year really started to feel more like the first ones I went to, though the only reason I could get to be there was by mostly demoing Looney Labs stuff with cartimandua. Now, while that wasn't really a bad thing - I enjoyed it muchly - it meant that I did very little to no roleplaying. This wasn't a big deal at the time because I'd hit a bit of a malaise after almost exclusively GMing, not running any regular games, not playing in any regular games and mostly turning my gaming attentions to board games (like Fire & Axe, Risk Godstorm, Puerto Rico, etc), card games (like Fluxx, Illuminati, Gloom, Bang!, etc), and traditional games (like Shogi, Backgammon, Poker, Euchre, Bezique, etc.). For a few years about the only games I ran were mostly at the occasional convention (mostly Conception at the badgering of juleske &co.) but mostly I was going to conventions to demo Looney Labs, rack up points so I could get their games, and meet up with the friends I'd been making at conventions over the years. The only other time would be the occasional All Day Roleplaying events with RAWSOC.
In the past year, however, I've finally been getting back into active roleplaying, both running and playing. At this moment it's sitting steady at mostly playing games on Tuesdays (though I'll be running a short Cthulhutech filler soon) and running on Saturdays (normally Call of Cthulhu, but currently a Godlike summer filler which will become something else, maybe another Cthulhutech, maybe Elric, until October when I can get the Call of Cthulhu game back up and running again).
With Looney Labs having suspended (it's been a long time since it's been "temporarily") their demonstrators rewards program, I've been reluctant to spend an entire con demoing with nothing to gain. I love Looney Labs games, but I don't love it so much that I'm willing to pay to go to a convention to demo their games (which can, sometimes, feel like work when you really don't want to run Fluxx for the 100th time that morning) without getting anything in return. Where con organisers have been willing to give us a discount or free entry for us to be there, that's all the reason I need. I get something. Simple. I don't actually care where my reward comes from. When I run a scenario I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, so reward is a bonus. The first few hours or so of demoing is usually fun, but sometimes it begins to drag and I want to go wander and do something else but can't because that's the reason I'm there.
This year we decided to cut back on the amount of Looney Labs demoing we're doing, designating only the evenings for demoing. As a result I had to work out some other strategies and, frankly, accommodation is expensive otherwise. After Continuum, however, Mongoose Publishing got in touch and have offered me a spare room in return for me running some games for them. Problem solved! (...and awesome, though nothing has yet topped my Belgium Adventure - when are we doing that again?)
There is, of course, the horrible temptation to blow off everyone else: Looney Labs demoing, writing any other scenarios for the con, and to just run a few games for Mongoose and get on with playing lots of other games like the old days. However, while I don't actually need to run the maximum slots to get all the accommodation discounts I can get, I still want to do more than just run a few games for them. So while I might not be there every evening, I still intend to demo some Looney Labs (because, ultimately, I enjoy those inventive little games and I'm mostly dropping Conception from my demoing duties now that I'm running games again, because I get some of the best players there; so I feel I owe it to cartimandua to help some here, regardless, since I'd intended to anyway), I've agreed to run cartimandua's Paranoia game (which should be fun, and counts towards my Mongoose quota!) even though her Paranoia games are often my only chance to play the game rather than run it, I'm being asked to run some World of Darkness stuff (it'll have to be the old stuff, if they want it, though), and of course there's some Elric and RuneQuest. Even though I don't need to be that busy I actually kind of enjoy it. I only really started running crazy amounts of games to afford to go to GenConUK when it was in London because that meant a) I could be there and b) I'd get a free room at the nearby Hilton (which was comfy). This time I feel I can be just about as busy as I want to be without the horrible obligation of having to do too much. So long as the Mongoose guys are happy with the number of games I'm running, everything's A-OK.
"Official GM For Hire" back in business? I've always told people that I'll GM for food and beer... nobody ever takes me up on that. I'm hungry.
GenConUK's been a bit of a love-hate over the years for me. It was my first con and it's certainly the daddy in terms of scale, but it's been a little shaky for a few years. Fortunately, last year really started to feel more like the first ones I went to, though the only reason I could get to be there was by mostly demoing Looney Labs stuff with cartimandua. Now, while that wasn't really a bad thing - I enjoyed it muchly - it meant that I did very little to no roleplaying. This wasn't a big deal at the time because I'd hit a bit of a malaise after almost exclusively GMing, not running any regular games, not playing in any regular games and mostly turning my gaming attentions to board games (like Fire & Axe, Risk Godstorm, Puerto Rico, etc), card games (like Fluxx, Illuminati, Gloom, Bang!, etc), and traditional games (like Shogi, Backgammon, Poker, Euchre, Bezique, etc.). For a few years about the only games I ran were mostly at the occasional convention (mostly Conception at the badgering of juleske &co.) but mostly I was going to conventions to demo Looney Labs, rack up points so I could get their games, and meet up with the friends I'd been making at conventions over the years. The only other time would be the occasional All Day Roleplaying events with RAWSOC.
In the past year, however, I've finally been getting back into active roleplaying, both running and playing. At this moment it's sitting steady at mostly playing games on Tuesdays (though I'll be running a short Cthulhutech filler soon) and running on Saturdays (normally Call of Cthulhu, but currently a Godlike summer filler which will become something else, maybe another Cthulhutech, maybe Elric, until October when I can get the Call of Cthulhu game back up and running again).
With Looney Labs having suspended (it's been a long time since it's been "temporarily") their demonstrators rewards program, I've been reluctant to spend an entire con demoing with nothing to gain. I love Looney Labs games, but I don't love it so much that I'm willing to pay to go to a convention to demo their games (which can, sometimes, feel like work when you really don't want to run Fluxx for the 100th time that morning) without getting anything in return. Where con organisers have been willing to give us a discount or free entry for us to be there, that's all the reason I need. I get something. Simple. I don't actually care where my reward comes from. When I run a scenario I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, so reward is a bonus. The first few hours or so of demoing is usually fun, but sometimes it begins to drag and I want to go wander and do something else but can't because that's the reason I'm there.
This year we decided to cut back on the amount of Looney Labs demoing we're doing, designating only the evenings for demoing. As a result I had to work out some other strategies and, frankly, accommodation is expensive otherwise. After Continuum, however, Mongoose Publishing got in touch and have offered me a spare room in return for me running some games for them. Problem solved! (...and awesome, though nothing has yet topped my Belgium Adventure - when are we doing that again?)
There is, of course, the horrible temptation to blow off everyone else: Looney Labs demoing, writing any other scenarios for the con, and to just run a few games for Mongoose and get on with playing lots of other games like the old days. However, while I don't actually need to run the maximum slots to get all the accommodation discounts I can get, I still want to do more than just run a few games for them. So while I might not be there every evening, I still intend to demo some Looney Labs (because, ultimately, I enjoy those inventive little games and I'm mostly dropping Conception from my demoing duties now that I'm running games again, because I get some of the best players there; so I feel I owe it to cartimandua to help some here, regardless, since I'd intended to anyway), I've agreed to run cartimandua's Paranoia game (which should be fun, and counts towards my Mongoose quota!) even though her Paranoia games are often my only chance to play the game rather than run it, I'm being asked to run some World of Darkness stuff (it'll have to be the old stuff, if they want it, though), and of course there's some Elric and RuneQuest. Even though I don't need to be that busy I actually kind of enjoy it. I only really started running crazy amounts of games to afford to go to GenConUK when it was in London because that meant a) I could be there and b) I'd get a free room at the nearby Hilton (which was comfy). This time I feel I can be just about as busy as I want to be without the horrible obligation of having to do too much. So long as the Mongoose guys are happy with the number of games I'm running, everything's A-OK.
"Official GM For Hire" back in business? I've always told people that I'll GM for food and beer... nobody ever takes me up on that. I'm hungry.