Condor 2010 - epic fail

Last weekend was Condor, a small local scifi and fantasy convention that I went to last year with the specific purpose of pushing roleplaying and other games at the convention. For the past four months I’ve been hyping the gaming at this convention at meetups, on forums and other events. I got game masters together and had 17 games over three days prepared. Unfortunately, only two of those games got played and most of the players were bored GMs.

I showed at noon on Friday. The gaming room was packed with 6 to 8 tables each with five players playing RPGA (Dungeons and Dragons organized play) D&D games which continued throughout the weekend. I had one table for play and one for putting out events. My partner, Kevin, showed up about 30 minutes later and helped out. His first event was at 2pm and my Doctor Who game was at 6pm. No one showed up to either but I was expecting Friday to be slow and I had fun playing pick-up games of Three Dragon Ante, Pandemic, and Settlers of Catan.

Saturday I got there right at 9am when the first games were supposed to go off but still no sign-ups. Kevin and I did some demos for D&D to pass the time. 2pm was the core time and I had five games planned including a Battletech demo by a group who drove down from Orange County and Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games playtesting his new D&D spinoff game. I got the Battletech guys settled and got one sign up for Goodman’s D&D game. We managed to get all the GMs and one player into that game. In the evening we did the same with a Star Trek rpg while another GM and I played in pick-up games of Pandemic and Munchkin.

Sunday was much the same with us grabbing people for Goodman’s follow up game from Saturday. After that I was so frustrated and tired I left. I’m not sure what I did wrong if anything and am currently trying to decide if I should try again or give up because this certainly wasn’t fun for me nor do I think it helped gaming in San Diego in anyway. There is also some other people planning a full gaming con for April so I might help them.

Birthday and Orccon 2010

Last weekend I went up to LA for Orccon with some friends. This was my third Orccon and is now a tradition. Saturday featured some great games starting off with Leftover, a game written by Mike Olsen, a friend of mine. Leftover is a Post Apocalyptic setting caused by the rise of Cthulhu like creatures who rise up and destroy the world killing 90% of the planet. You play one of people who survived, a left over and one of the few ways to survive to combine with the smaller, minion like alien creatures who are still around. It is an awesome game with some great ideas and we had a ton of fun playing it.

Next game was Dirty Secrets, a noir game that is describe as having on player and everyone else is a GM. Essentially, one person plays the investigator (which I got to play) while everyone else takes turn setting up scenes for the investigator. It was a lot of fun and amazing how a great story resolved from the strange mechanics and ideas of everyone involved.

In the evening I ran Conspiracy X 2.0, and alien government conspiracy game similar to X-files. This went over really well and I did something a little different. Instead of having everyone play investigators (the traditional way to play ConX) I made two of the characters play the people be investigated. This went over really well causing a lot of non-lethal conflict between the players.
I didn’t get much sleep (I have terrible insomnia during these cons) and had to run the new Doctor Who rpg that morning. I ended up with seven players and it was difficult to keep everyone involved. Everyone seemed to have fun but I think it could have gone better.

Finally, I played in an 80’s style Vampire the Requiem game with a bunch of teenagers. The GM wanted a serious and dark game while the kids just wanted to have fun a goof around being a cool vampire. Not a great mix. I ended up being a mediator trying to encourage the kids’ creativity while maintaining the GMs feel.
On Monday was my birthday. I didn’t do anything except catch a cold which I am just now getting over. I did beat Final Fantasy VII, the first time I actually beat one of these games even though I’ve played them all.

Whale Watching and another D&D round table

A few weekends ago Stephanie took me out on a date night. We went whale watching. This was my third time whale watching and probably the best as we saw lots of whales. At one point they even came up about 20ft from the boat on the side we were standing. It was a lot of fun as I enjoy being out on the water.

After whale watching we went to a restaurant called Solare that was nice. The best thing about it was they had little tomatoes in the bread.


This last weekend I did another Dungeons and Dragons round table meetup that was just as successful as the first one. This time we charged $5 so it didn’t cost us anything and we were able to have a raffle for some nice dice. Everyone had a blast and it was good advertising for Condor con in late February in which I’m in charge of games.

Sonic Youth

Last Thursday I want to see Sonic Youth at the San Diego House of Blues. I had seen them once before when they opened for Pearl Jam a few years ago but I wasn’t able to get very close. When I saw them previously we had assigned seating and security would not allow me to pass a certain area even though maybe 10% of the crowd had shown up.

This time around the venue was much more intimate and we got right up to the stage. We stood through the opening band and then Sonic Youth came out. I must have been about ten feet from Thurston Moore (SY front man) and it was amazing. It is always cool to be close at any concert but for Sonic Youth it is a big deal as they do all kinds of crazy things to guitars including using a screwdriver, file, and violin bow.

They are also a fairly old band with most of the members pushing 50. However, I was surprised to find that most of the audience was around 20 making feel a little better about the following generation.

On another note I had a nice Christmas vacation. Stephanie and I didn’t do anything special. We stayed home or went to the movies during Christmas and New Years.

Thanks for Good Friend and Family

This Thanksgiving I went back to Las Cruces. I had a lot of fun spending the day with my parents and the evening with my estranged friend Adam. By estranged I mean that we were friends from the second grade (as well as being his best man at his first wedding) but when I moved to San Diego (in 2003) I didn’t tell him. The reasons are complicated but involve feeling guilty and the longer I waited the more guilty I became until finally I moved away. I later heard he was angry which made things worse.

We did not communicate for almost five years until I reached out to him through myspace. Things were smoothed over and we were friends on myspace/facebook and this Thanksgiving weekend we finally got to see each other again after six years. At first things were a little uncomfortable as we felt each other out but soon we were reminiscing about the past a lot I had forgotten. I had a lot of fun as we also played some video games and later Vampire the Eternal Struggle with Adam’s brother-in-law.

I also spent the day with my parents and ate a lot of great food from both old and new (to me) restaurants as well as catching a movie, playing some tennis and visiting a new national park on the Rio Grande.

Stephanie came down for two days and on Thanksgiving we hiked Aguirre Springs and then had a nice dinner with my parents and some of their friends. She then flew back on Friday (I stayed until Sunday).

Overall, a great Thanksgiving and I look forward to more great times with Adam. Hopefully I won’t have to wait another six years.

San Francisco

Over the past few days Stephanie and I went up to San Francisco to explore the city and hang out. We flew in Thursday afternoon and after and Bart trip and quick walk we were at the Hotel Mark Twain. The Hotel was really nice but was on the edge of the Tenderloin. We quickly discovered that if we walked down we went into the bad part of town but if we walked up we were in the shopping distract.

After getting checked in and relaxing for a bit we took a long walk to Haight/Ashbury area for dinner and to listen to a reading by Sarah Vowel who is a regular on the radio program “This American Life.”

On Friday we head out early to meet our friends Jonathan and Michelle for Alcatraz. The four of us headed over on the boat, hooked up to the portable listening device and got to explore and by explore I mean go where the man told us to.

Later Stephanie and I hopped on the Bart to Berkeley where we had lunch at Chez Panisse, a famous restaurant for foodies.

After the restaurant we met up with my parents and their old friends, Anne and Bill who I had known since I was six and can remember playing with their kids. We had a great time catching up, drinking beer and having all six of us squeeze into a medium sized sedan/taxi with Stephanie sitting on my lap and Anne on my dad’s. Anne couldn’t stop laughing and most of us were cracking up by the absurdity of the situation. Somehow we made it back to my parent hotel which was a short walk back to ours.

On Saturday we had breakfast with my parents. We then went to the farmers market at the Ferry Building. After we met up with Jonathan and Michelle to tour China Town and grab some Dim Sum for lunch. To completely wear us out we went to the SFMOMA, the modern art museum. After that we were exhausted and decided to stay in and watch baseball.

Sunday was geek day. Stephanie and I grabbed some breakfast and then we went our separate ways. I went down to Oakland where I met Jonathan and my other friend Erik (San Diegan who was working in San Francisco at the same, this trip was full of weird coincidences). We went to the big game store “End Game” and much gaming goodness was bought.

But that wasn’t enough for us so we headed down to Games of Berkeley and a third game store that I can’t remember the name. We then proceeded to beer and sandwiches and finished the geekiness off with a riveting game of Talisman.

After we had to bring the women back in so the three of us met up with Michelle and Stephanie at a pizzeria.

Overall a great trip. I recommend San Francisco to anyone, just walk up, not down.