I didn’t see the hotel until I was already past the exit off highway 101, which runs along the San Francisco peninsula from San Jose to the Golden Gate bridge. I grimaced and pulled to the far right lane, hoping for a close second chance exit. Millbrae Boulevard is next, but it is about another mile down the road. The area is new to me, so pulling off and rounding onto a residential street (not a frontage road; inlets from the Bay run alongside 101 to the east) I was a bit anxious that the surface streets back south wouldn’t be a straight shot to my destination.
Four-day weekends are a rarity in the cube-dwelling universe. Usually when they happen a Significant Holiday is taking place which translates more often than not into plans being made with only partial consent of all parties involved. For once my alternating schedule of Fridays on and Fridays off had meshed with a fairly innocuous Monday-falling federal holiday and the result was four days without work. I hadn’t squandered the days; in the span from Thursday night to Monday evening I had planned a dinner with Dr. Mac, HB and , Ryan‘s wedding, some work for Bosslady; some quality time with Nik and, of course, KublaCon with Lister.
Kublacon was to be my second gaming convention. My first had been back in February where I had sort of re-entered the world of tabletop gaming after a long stint where my gamer tendencies had been forced to subsist on video gaming alone. My experience then had taught me things about myself, but more importantly it had been fun. Enjoyment is something I strive for; I have a valued opinion that too many people settle for activities that are only marginally interesting to them and then spend a lot of time complaining about how bored they are. Boredom is my arch nemesis. I feel life is too short to sit around wanting for something else to do so when I find something I like, I go for it.
The Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport is a tall, circular building surrounding an enclosed atrium, high windows stretching from the ninth floor down to the lobby level which splits into a dining atrium area and a convention or ballroom floor below. Already late from a stop to examine a broken server, I hurried in, lugging my backpack overloaded with heavy game manuals, dice and binders stuffed with graph paper. I descended the steps from the registration area and lobby to the ballroom foyer where the convention staff had set up their registration tables.
I am apt, in situations like this, to merely find the closest line that has formed and get into it before completely surveying the situation. Typically this results in me being in the wrong line, but one of these days I will select the correct line first and be halfway through before I realize I’ve accidentally done myself a favor. In this case, I’m not in the right line since I’ve pre-registered so I ducked out and wandered up to the alphabetized pre-reg table and was handed a bag with a convention book, a name badge on a shoddy lanyard and had a bright orange plastic wristband wrapped around my left arm. I was instructed to keep the band on for the duration of the convention, which is going to be interesting since I need to depart the convention at one point to attend a wedding and I’m not sure this gaudy orange is really going to make a great accessory for formal, wedding-appropriate attire.
I’m supposed to be meeting Lister here, so I begin to bumble around the convention areas, trying to keep an eye out for my friend. You might think that a guy like Lister, who stands probably 6′ 2″ or more and has a linebacker’s build, would be fairly easy to find. I suppose that may be true in a typical crowd, but gaming conventioneers are not typical in any way. Aside from the full-costumed LARPers and dozens of interesting games being played in the open gaming area, the Dealer’s room which is adjacent to the open gaming tables and will later be cordoned off with massive partitions set into ceiling tracks and it emits a steady beacon of hypnotizing energy that draws me in and keeps my head down and eyes locked on thousands of bargains, homebrews and rare imported games of all shapes and types. It is difficult to search for someone when you see three end-to-end tables stacked with polyhedral dice of all shapes and colors.
Eventually I am able to build up a tolerance to the retail floor and I began to walk the convention rooms, up and down several halls poking my head into various rooms, mostly full of staff preparing for the weekend’s games. Some of the rooms look interesting and I find myself getting distracted again. I had to make at least three complete circuits of the Atrium and Lobby levels before I finally saw Lister across the room in the beckoning Dealer’s area, and after a bit of maneuvering through the growing crowd I managed to make contact and exchange greetings.
My travels around the convention areas hadn’t even touched on all the places where games were being held or would be held. After a brief stop in Lister’s room to collect Whimsy and one of Lister’s gaming buddies (Audrick), we headed back downstairs to see about getting into a game of Necromunda. The miniatures gaming area had some impressive (and some decidedly non-impressive) terrain boards set up, but no obvious place to play our game. With a shrug we wandered back into the open gaming area where we all fell under the spell of the seller’s wares.
Less than half an hour later we had probably dropped $400 between the four of us. I had found a copy of Blood Bowl boxed set for $40 cheaper than retail, completely new and unopened. Lister located a fistful of historical games and assorted boxed sets on sale and Audrick had gone nuts with some impressive looking games including Twilight Imperium, a gigantic box which looked to be a sort of SF space-setting Axis and Allies. He also picked up a French game in a wooden box called Master Thief.
We ambled over to the open gaming area and tried Master Thief. The game is something like the kid’s card game Memory, with some interesting play mechanics and a very nice presentation including a wooden drawer box, plastic gems and velvety gem pillows. Each turn the players choose a different role (Smuggle, Jeweler, Master Thief, Detective, etc.) which determines the play order. Each role has a different action they can perform on the 12-drawer box. Some can put gems into the box, others can take gems out of the box. Most players can twist the box’s levels (think Rubik’s Cube) or flip the box over. Each drawer has two sides so the idea is to open a drawer with jewels on the appropriate side for whichever role you’re playing. The game is pretty fun and didn’t seem to be overly hard core, so I imagine that even casual gamers could really enjoy it. It certainly looks impressive and we got more than a few passerby stopping and remarking on the game.
The next game I was involved in was Twilight Imperium. When I thought the game was like Axis and Allies, I was wrong. This game is far more complex than that. It took us at least an hour and a half to get through the first turn (from set up to the end) and the next two turns weren’t much quicker. After more than three hours of playing we seemed to finally be getting a rhythm down, but the hour was advancing and we wanted to get in a big ol’ game of Warhammer 40K before exhaustion overtook us. I think I’d like to try the game again when enough time is available to complete the entire thing but my initial impression is that the beginning stages of the game are kind of slow. It plays in many ways like a board game RTS, with resource management and a lot of advance preparation before any real war maneuvers or tricky diplomacy can get off the ground. Perhaps it is different with other races being played or when each turn doesn’t take an hour due to unfamiliarity, I don’t know.
Our game of 40K was epic: The unlikely alliance of Space Marines and Chaos versus a massive force of Necrons complete with monstrous C’Tan and a huge Monolith. It was 5:00 am before we got back to our rooms and we’d only made it through turn three. I don’t think the Necrons would have managed to avoid one of their special rules which makes them the automatic loser if they are reduced to 25% of their original forces, but Strahd (our Necron-playing buddy) gave it a serious go.
The next morning began early. The annoying whine of the hotel alarm clock roused me at a quarter to ten, giving me fifteen minutes to prepare for the Blood Bowl tournament that promised to take up most of the day. I wandered down the stairs, trying to avoid the bottleneck of the single bank of elevators which simply could not accommodate the comings and goings of that many gamers in a reasonable amount of time. The stairs led, oddly, down into the employee’s area. I wandered the back hallways, past break rooms and laundry services, eventually finding my way to the kitchens before turning back and trying the other way.
Walking through the cold hallways which had not been given the same luxurious facades as the public-facing areas, I regarded the concrete walls with their chipping green paint marking obscure directions with unspecific arrows. The passing employees barely cast me an eye, hurrying with their duties to make the day pass quicker. I finally found my way back to the lobby level, opening a pair of swinging doors into the calm chaos of a hotel in the midst of a convention crowd. The dull hum of voices blended with the crash of dishes and food preparation in the atrium cafe. The gurgle of water in the decorative fountain/waterfall was nearly drowned by the din of squeaking luggage cart wheels, the clatter of dice on a table and the ding of elevator direction lights.
A young man passed by in a loose shirt and breeches, three hefty leather buckles of his boots held the hem of his pants tightly against his shins and his greasy hair pulled back into a pony tail bobbed as he strode with a purpose borne of defiant self-awareness. Unlike the previous con where I struggled with the outward geekiness of the fellow convention goers, I almost didn’t notice him. Just another gamer here to enjoy the entertainment, to try and have some blasted fun between long stretches of responsibility, dull work and uninteresting requirements. I gave him a quick smile and a tiny nod of my head. He didn’t react much.
Down at the Blood Bowl tournament I came very close to defeating Lister. I played with Strahd’s High Elves in a stripped down variation (Blood Bowl 7’s) of the game and after launching to a quick 2-0 lead mostly due to Lister’s poor dice rolling, he crept back with some better strategy and a fortunate last-second touchdown run to end the first half. By the end of the second half we were locked up 2-2.
My team took a heavy beating in the sudden death overtime, dropping four players out of the game before turn 6. With less than half a team and only two turns to go before a chance to get them back, Lister pulled off another of his incredible last-minute runs to score the winning TD.
Down in the loser’s bracket, I played against another High Elf team (which he informed me was something of a rarity). He mopped me up. The final score was 5-1, but it really wasn’t even that close. I rolled and played poorly and every time I could possibly have rolled some way to help myself, I rolled the opposite way. By the end of the match I had one player left on the field, two dead and gone, one out for the next game and one who had been permanently removed from the game in the first half. Somehow I still really enjoyed it, in spite of the savage beating.
Down and out of the tournament I wandered the Dealer’s area again quickly and found a booster for my new Blood Bowl team (Orks) at a ridiculously low price and packed up to go. I found out later that Lister had won the tournament in the end, and since I had come fairly close to beating him, it helped soften the trouncing I took in game 2. As I bid adieu to the players and my friends, I left feeling exhausted but enthused. A fun weekend that wasn’t over yet, and I still had a whole day of relaxing to look forward to. I spent Monday hanging with Nik. We took a walk in the warm—finally summer-like—afternoon sun, watched lots of TV and DVDs and enjoyed a rare down day.
It is rare enough to find one day of pure fun, and rarer I find the older I get. How uncommon then, to find four days without worry or hassle and filled with fun and friends and family. I often feel that I forget to notice the high points of my life as they happen, forcing me to live in retrospect of happier times and wishing I’d paid more attention then. Today, after over half a week of high points, I’m happy still, and appreciating now.
Now, who’s up for a game?
