marconthoughts5

MarCon 2005: Sleep? Ha!

    MarCon time again, yo. This was supposed to be my baby daughter Teagan's first con, but Heather got called away to Pennsylvania on family business at the last minute, and so Tigger went with her. Ah, well.
     So, we left on Friday in good spirits. By "we", I mean the frutangs at right. Nothing of import from the trip.
     We got to the con, and I snapped the shot below of Ally transforming from her usual staid, reserved, conservative self (seen in the first picture) to her Con-Goin' Demon (at right). Then, y'know, we headed downstairs to grab badges and so on. Walking around, we found Robin and Branden, AKA "the Newlyweds". Pic below.

Wanderings continued. I had a game scheduled for 6PM, but we were early, so we eventually ended up back in the room. And lo, there was Pam, drinking ketchup straight from packets while Jeff looked on.

Laura, Bren, and a rat (I forget which one!)

Watching Pammit drink ketchup is boring, so I went back down to the gaming room and got involved in a game of Zombies!!! Always a favorite. One of my opponents was an octopus wrapped around a rubber chicken. The rubber chicken made hideous squealing noises. I'm not kidding.
I saw other strange and beautiful things while playing Zombies!!!

Squeak!

Congrats!

This was the Zombies!!! board close to the end.

And then she became a pirate. The end!

    So then it was time for my 6PM game. I gave the players a choice: Vampire: The Requiem or Werewolf: The Forsaken. The latter won nigh-unanimously. So, I passed out the sheets and they went romping through the Junkyard (which you'll find out all about in World of Darkness: Mysterious Places), getting into narsty fights and getting shot and stuff. It was boss. The Beast of Bethlehem from World of Darkness: Antagonists made an appearance, too.
     Two pics at right, one of us playing (that Ally must've taken when I wasn't looking, as evidenced by the fact that you can see the back o' my sleek, smooth head) and one of us after the game. Max won the prize, a copy of World of Darkness: Mysterious Places. He's having a geekgasm. Quotes here.
     So, after the game, I went wandering. I met up with people, wound up playing cards with a very strange individual, and then went to bed. Or tried. More on that score later. I would, however, like to point out this shot I took of the Big Bar and have you note that there's no blue haze in the air. SUCK IT CANCER JUNKIES.

This book is brilliant. Seriously. Buy it.

Anyway, I went to bed somewhere around Very EarlyAM, but didn't sleep because someone brought a chainsaw along and it was running all night. It's name was Alex. It belongs to Pammit.
Next morning, I rose at Way Too Early AM and headed to get coffee, and then to the gaming room. Note, there's really nothing going on that early, but something weird happened. Wait, first, look at this pic: Someone asleep in a teddy-bear's crotch. Hey, I've done weird stuff at cons, too.

    Anyway, the kid in the pic above tried to kick me in the nuts when I walked into the room. I said, "You can't do that. You don't even know me." He pointed at my badge and said, "Sure I do. You're Matt." "Fair enough," I said.
     Then he tried to sell me Mechwarrior minis. I seriously rethought whether or not I was conscious.
     Well, too weird for me. So I went and got coffee, and found Ally, who had screws in her hair. I took a picture. Then I headed back toward gaming, and found Jamie and Justin, two of my usual Werewolf players, building their...buildings.

Wow! The mask in the middle is really...OK, that's too obvious.

I had a game of Cat! to run Saturday morning, so I headed back into the gaming room and got set up. As I was doing so, I saw guys in masks, which happens often at cons.

    And then I ran the game! Yay!
     The cats discovered that the "office," which was where their workaholic humans spent all their time, was barred to their cat-magic because of the cat calendar on the wall. So they destroyed it. And the computer. And thus saved their humans from Boggins! YAAAY!
     Robin won a copy of the game, which the designer promised to send to her (she's holding mine in the picture). Quotes here.

So then it was time to play Exalted. We didn't do that in the main gaming room- hold it. First, a picture of a hot girl.

Ahem. Anyway, we didn't do that in the gaming room. We retreated to Laura and Jeff and Bren's room, sprawled out, and whooped spider-beastman ass. In the pic below, you can see Jeff chuckling as we get stuck to webs and bitten. Also, you can see the metric assload of dice needed to play this game.

Wish I could've brought my pet, but she's large and floppy.

Also, rats.

And snuggling.

And Keith, with a rat on his head.

    So, after the Exalted game, I needed sleep (having not gotten any the night before, BRAARARAG goes the chainsaw!). After all, I had a wedding to perform.
     Relax. I'm getting there.
     So, near the elevator at some point, I met Will Shakespeare with a guy's hand up his butt.

    And then I went and took a nap. No pics.
     But then I woke up, and this, this is the really exciting part! I went DOWNSTAIRS!
     OK, enough. I got dressed in my minister get-up (horns and all), went downstairs, met up with some folks in the bar for a quick chat, and then found the wedding space.
     You know, on a related note, I'm gonna start wearing those horns at cons more often. I got compliments and everything.
     Anyway, the wedding dealie: Branden and Robin were already legally married (Monday before MarCon, I think) but had their ceremony at the con. I presided. The wedding happened as part of a Changeling LARP, hence the weird outfits. And now, pics.

The groom.

The officiate, and Ally.

The ceremony.

The wedding party.

The officiate and the bride.

So, when all of that was done with, the night was still young (anyway, it was still night) and I knew that going to bed would be an unattractive prospect, what with the chainsaw and all. So I decided, for the first time, to play in the midnight Paranoia LARP. But first, a picture of a demonic child dressed as an elf.

OK, as a rule, I don't LARP, but I'm willing to make all kinds of exceptions for Paranoia. If you don't know about the game, Google it. You'll love it. It's fun. The Computer says it's fun. Do you doubt the Computer?
Anyway, this LARP is huge, and basically involves dying a whole heck of a lot. I was trying to "help" my comrades find a giant robot and destroy it, but my mission from my secret society was to make friends with it. Didn't matter. We never saw it. We kept getting blown up, sometimes by our own team, sometimes by other times. Sometimes by dumb luck. I spent a lot of time dead (no worries, they'll make more clones). Pics below.

Troubleshooters please report for termination.

Then I went to bed. Or tried. There were hijinks. They had nothing to do with the shoe that was evidentally orphaned in our hotel room (at right). Anyway, soon it was morning and I went down to the gaming room by way of the coffee shop. Robin was feeling the effects of sleep deprivation, too.

In my wanderings, I did see Hagrid again, but he didn't seem to recognize me.

Least he didn't try to turn me into a pig.

I also finally made it to the dealer's room, and snapped this pic of the Batmobile, bought Chrononauts from Looney Labs (which I highly recommend, and then headed back down to the game room to play something called Dragonstorm.

Turns out Dragonstorm is pretty lame. It's not enough like a card game to be a card game, it's not enough like an RPG to be an RPG, and artwork is pretty, but hardly mindblowing. Plus, it really feels like it's marketed to furries, or therianthropes, or some other weird subculture that I'm not part of. So, pass. (Though I've certainly played in worse con games. Ain't naming names.)
So in the halls, I saw....

...brutality...

...Max the Zombie...

Declaration of love. I wish I'd played this game.

...And then it was back to the gaming room for some card games before heading home! At right, you'll see Julia, Robert and Thad and some others I don't know playing something called Elixir. I have no idea. I didn't play it, but it sounded raucous fun. I'll try and find it at Origins.

And this is us playing Chrononauts. This is what it's all about, man. Getting together, geeking out, playing games, and having fun. Wouldn't miss it. See ya next year!

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