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| Origins 2004 |
| Origins, once again. That magical time that...isn't quite DragonCon, but is bigger than MarCon. Actually, I quite like Origins. Sure, they snubbed Orpheus (and indeed all of White Wolf's products) for their awards, but I'm so far removed from that drama that I can just enjoy the fact that it's a big gaming con in a city that's very accessible to me. The con techincally ran from Thursday to Sunday, but there were people around on Wednesday as well. I was one of them. My friend Andrea and I drove down to Columbus and checked into the room, where we discovered the ironing board set up. |
| So, from there, we ambled down to the main part of the convention center. Note the massive line, even on Wednesday (pic at right). |
| The White Wolf booth was in the larval stages, so we went in and unloaded boxes for a while. Wasn't a very long while, as I had a Vampire: The Requiem game to run. The Requiem promo games went in rounds: 9 round one games, 6 round 2's, and one finale. Six players each, with 2 moving on from the first two rounds. Anyway, with that little bit of exposition out of the way, I like to give you a picture from that first round. I'd like to, but I can't. I forgot to snap one. Imadoofus. Instead, enjoy these quotes from that game. So, after that, Andrea had signed up for a Vampire: The Masquerade game that night, but was tired and headed back to the room to sleep in preparation for the other zillion games she'd registered to play. I took her ticket and played a sexy female Toreador martial arts expert in a goth band made up of vampires. (No, I didn't create that character.) The game was a collection of every trope that every Vampire player has seen (except for the little girl Malkavian, but keep reading), but we were all verteran gamers, so it was pretty cool. I didn't regret playing instead of sleeping. Picture at right, quotes here. |
| Sun goes down, sun comes up. Kylee arrived Thursday, and I took a picture of her standing in front of the window (at right). We chatted for a while and then headed back down to the convention center so that she could get her badge (silly goose didn't pre-reg again) and I could visit the now-completed White Wolf booth. |
| While at the booth, I took some pictures. No shock. |
| The booth in all its completed glory. |
| Kylee with Michelle Lyons. |
| My brother, Jon, and Morgan. |
| Justin trying to pull Chad's foot off. |
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| So after that silliness I had another round 1 Requiem game to run, so I skedaddled from the booth and got my game on. Much like the first game, the players jumped headlong into combat and stayed there (the theme, I said later, seemed to be "Two hours of ass-beating"). Picture at left, quotes here. |
| We just kind of hung around for a while after that, and then it was time for the Zombie party. I'm a big fan of zombie movies and RPGs, and Twilight Creations' Zombies!!! board game is very much up my alley. So the Zombie party, where you can gamble for plastic zombies, drink and listen to loud music, is double-keen. Some pics from that party: |
| A Zombies!! board. Keep what you kill. |
| A guy in a mask. Not, to my knowledge, a zombie. |
| Some of the actors from the original Dawn of the Dead. The nurse zombie is the lady on the left. I recognized her right away, as scary as that sounds. |
| Folks in cool clothes (left) and the drunk pirate we were playing poker with (right). |
| At the end of the party, I think I'd racked up just shy of 250 zombies. The winner had over 700, but there were still prizes left. I walked away with their Shopping Maul expansion for Zombies!!, which made me happy since it's the only one I didn't have. Rock on. So then, to bed. Friday morning, I woke up knowing I had 3 games to run. That's daunting. I began the day by snapping a "candid" picture of Kylee. |
| We then ventured downstairs to obtain the elixir of life...coffee. Andrea was off to the pool to play a LARP called "Prawn". Kylee bought me a copy and it definitely looks like something I'll check out next year. |
| So then I ran the first of the round 2 Requiem games. In the first round, they played mortals; this time, they actually got to play vampires. Less combat, more investigation, although they certain didn't shy away from the rough stuff. Picture at right, quotes here. |
| After that game, I had a couple of hours to kill before my Dark Ages: Fae game, so I headed down to the food court to snag lunch. On the way, I saw: |
| Stormtroopers and robots. |
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| Morgan, selling cookies. |
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| Scarred Lands developer Joe Carriker |
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| A quick group photo. Back, from left: Andrea, Morgan, Jon. Front, from left: Heather, Chris, Kylee. |
| Imperial troops, grabbing lunch as well. |
| And, Pammit and Shaun. Pammit is wearing my hat. After lunch, I had to head back over to the gamin' area for Fae. Somewhere in there, Heather changed into her Got Matt? shirt for the cheeky picture below. |
| Once over in the gamin' area, I caught Morgan giving sweets to my players and Kylee dressed like a Jedi (below left and right, respectively). And then I actually got to run my game. |
| This made the fifth time I've run this particular game. Maybe it's getting a little tired for me, but then, it's never gone the same way twice. I think the players were also a little more tentative than others (and maybe a little tired, too); the game didn't "pop" as much as other times. But folks seemed to enjoy it, and to like what we did with Fae, so that's all good. Group pic below, quotes here. As a side note, the "ukelele" quote actually came from the next table over, not from our group. |
| So then we met up with Matt and Sybil (both of whom also play in my Orpheus chronicle) and headed out to get dinner. Heather, Chris, Matt, Kylee and I all walked to the place, because some dingus said it was close by. Ha. We took a cab back. |
| Matt and Sybil |
| Weirdos making out with statues. |
| Origins 2004...continued here! |