This weekend was KublaCon. Non-geeks may want to skip this part. Actually, non-geeks may want to skip this site, but if you insist on staying the best I can offer is fair warning.

I only have two anecdotes of a non-game-geek variety which I will share now, at the top of the post, so those who don’t care about the specifics of Type-P Magic: The Gathering tournaments or comparisons between Settlers of Catan and Catan The Card Game can get to the stuff they might be able to stomach and leave the rest to those who care about such things. Or at least those who don’t need help sleeping.

Nik and I had been at the con for less than ten minutes, checking in and parking and so forth. The electric buzz that only the hardest core geek will ever get from merely being in the vicinity of dozens of games had started to sizzle my bones and I was getting eager to wander the Dealer’s room and start some kind of game. As we stepped into the elevator from the atrium level a thin brunette wheeling an oversized suitcase pinned the doors from closing completely and bustled in, a flurry of nervous energy and caffienated exhuberance.

“Oh my gosh!” she gushed. “Are you two here for the thing?” I was perfectly clear as to what she was referring to: It isn’t exactly as if KublaCon’s presence in the hotel is particularly subtle. Even if they didn’t plaster posters and flyers and advertisements all over the lobby and atrium levels, there is something decidedly unusual about a cluser of over one hundred readily identifiable geeks hunched over tables, scowling in intense concentration at a plastic soldier and a vinyl wipe-off mat covered in hexagonal lines. It’s something you can’t readily dismiss, at any rate.

But Nikki misunderstood the woman. We hadn’t checked into the con yet so we were lacking the lanyard name badges and bright pink wristbands that would mark us as one of “them” for the duration of the con, that made Nikki’s reply completely believable. “Uh, no,” she said.

Immediately I knew what was about to happen. I suppose the right thing to do would have been to stop the whole conversation there and correct Nik’s mistake and prevent the inevitable. But instead I let the woman’s bullish conversation style have its way and sat silently with a half bemused, half agitated smile on my face while she ploughed on.

“I saw all these guys with ponytails, and I didn’t know what was going on! So I asked the hotel desk and they said it was some kind of—” her voice lowered to a conspiratorial stage whisper “—Dungeons and Dragons? A convention! I guess they all get around and just… play these games! Oh my goodness, can you imagine? All these old guys acting out sword fights all weekend long?” She laughed then, a breezy and genuinely amused laughter. I stood against the cool elevator glass and regarded her as one might a gnat that you’ve intercepted trying to make a beeline for your ear canal. I wondered briefly if I should spare her embarrassment and try to get off the elevator with a minimum of fuss. What harm could it be? She had her laugh—she would have anyway, with or without our presence.

I wasn’t personally offended. You can’t engage in a hobby or activity the likes of role-playing or video gaming or computer programming or even rock climbing, motorcycle riding or scrapbooking without enduring a certain set of preconceptions which may or may not directly apply. It comes with the territory, and you can either let it get to you and ruin your enjoyment or you can learn to let it roll off of you and ignore what may in fact be an outright negative perception. Since to me, gaming is all about having fun, I do so in spite of the perhaps strange looks or naive questions. People can even be downright insulting but you know, that’s fine. I don’t play role-playing games or Warhammer to fit in with the cool kids, I do it because it’s a hoot and a holler. You spend your life trying to impress everyone and you end up hating yourself so my attitude is whatever, man.

But at the same time I don’t want to push my opinions on how awesome the newest GURPS sourcebook is or try to drum up a conversation with a random person on the bus about whether the new dual lands that hit you for a point of damage in Magic are a fair trade-off for the imbalance of the old-school Beta-era dual lands. I can enjoy my pastimes in relative peace so long as I’m not acting like some kind of geek recruiter. My philosophy, such that it is, basically dictates that people who are interested in games of this nature will drift to them naturally and trying to evangelize on their behalf is good for nothing more than some awkwardness at best or downright hostility in the worst case.

I had just made up my mind to stay quiet and let her get off the elevator when Nik piped up, “Oh, yeah! We are here for that!”

The woman’s expression was almost amusing. It lasted for only the briefest of moments but it summed up the essence of social agony, noting that she had firmly planted her foot in her throat and that she had been mocking the very event that had brought us to that very elevator. It is good for her, then, that she seemed to be a breezy and generally care-free person because she bounced back with impressive quickness. She touched my arm in a gesture of—I’m presuming—apology and reassurance as she laughed, hysterical anew. “Where’s your ponytail?” she giggled. I fought the urge to whip off my hat and point out that I was currently incapable of growing such a follicular delight and assuring her that were I able to, I probably would indeed have long hair. Most likely pulled back into a ponytail for convenience’s sake. I also bit my tongue to refrain from expressing how much I detest being touched by people I don’t know. My social discomfort grows, not unlike the Nothing from the Neverending Story, with each passing day and at this point the best I can do to contain it requires that I suffer in silence lest I become some caricature where my personal quirks are broadcast to the populace at large and illuminate a beacon whose light reaches the corners of the Earth declaring me a Freak for all to see. Unlike currently where the light is relegated to a small flare or a dim flashlight.

As the woman exited the elevator one floor below ours, she did so with a casual wave and a “Have fun!” cry that really could have been mistaken for nothing but sincere. Nik and I exchanged glances and burst into laughter of our own.

Later, after long blocks of gaming sessions interrupted only by trips to the con snackbar for $1.50 canned sodas and cold corn dogs we decided to try and get a Real Meal. Unfortunately, unlike DunDraCon where the hotel is located in close proximity to a sprawling strip mall, Kubla’s host hotel has only a Mongolian BBQ joint and a Sizzler in reasonable walking distance. Lacking better options, we (somewhat reluctantly in my case) decided to hike to the Sizz.

Sizzler is the lowest of the low-rent steak places. Even the buffet-style Golden Corral offers a better selection of steak and salad options (and at better prices) and I would classify the average clientele of GC as “questionable.” Take that how you like. Sizzler isn’t exactly bad, but calling it good without irony or referring to something other than its food offerings is a long stretch. But when your other option is a hamburger from room service for $18.47 plus 20% gratuity and $2.50 service fee, well, sometimes you have to take what you can get.

The rest of our little group was all about the steak and all you can eat shrimp. Having had a hamburger for lunch the thought of another slab of overcooked red meat wasn’t appealing to me so I opted for a Cajun chicken sandwich that was perfectly edible and in some ways tasty although I felt the use of the word “Cajun” in the title was stretching the application of that particular word. Nikki, on the other hand, wanted the shrimp but not the steak and wasn’t really that excited about the all you can eat prospect. To put it into perspective, all Nikki can eat, on a typical day, is less than one-third of a normal restaurant portion. Even a skimpy restaurant’s portions can be enough to overwhelm her so the prospect of all you can eat is of dubious economic value in her case. The only other option that seemed like what she was looking for was found on the kid’s menu. I told her to just order that but she was nervous about it because they have big notices everywhere saying “Under 10 Only.”

The specialty menus at restaurants kind of baffle me. I’m talking about the Kid’s and Senior’s menus. They seem to make a big deal out of the age restrictions and yet the food isn’t really any differently priced if you look closely enough at it. The kid’s menu is often undigestable sludge but it is priced, in a volume to dollar sense, roughly the same as the adult menu. The prices are only lower because there is less of it. The same holds true for the senior menu at most restaurants and while a few may actually offer legitimate senior discounts that doesn’t really make that much sense to me because if you were to give older adults a discount (say 5% or whatever) why would they need their own special menu? Just give them the savings from whatever they order (I’m sure some restrictions would apply). So whenever I see seperate menus I have to really question why those things are cheaper and the only thing I can come up with is (ready for a shock?) they actually cost the restaurant less.

That being the case, why anyone wouldn’t be able to order those items is beyond me. If I just want a small snack at an eating establishment, why should I have to pay for the larger plate and be stuck with leftovers? The same holds true for the lunch menus: Offering lesser portions for lower price should be a universal option, not limited to age or time restrictions. It’s stupid.

But in this case I was pretty confident that they wouldn’t make a big deal out of Nik ordering from the kid’s menu. Why would they? And true to form they didn’t seem to really bat an eye at the register when two adults ordered one adult item and one kid’s item. Obviously one person was ordering out of the age bracket, but so what? Money is money, and the cashier gladly took ours.

Of course when we got to the table we were required to present one of our reciepts to the server, a distracted-looking middle aged woman with a lilting Spanish accent and a constantly harried demeanor. She snatched the tab off the table as she came by with the stalwart Sizzler Toast and glanced at it quickly. Then she did a double take and regarded Nik like a specimen in a petri dish. “Oh,” she said disdainfully, “You’re too… big!” The implication was that Nik was not deserving of a child’s entree since she was too grown up. I steeled myself for a confrontation but the constant pressure of a half-full section proved too much for her will to resist and she bustled off instead of continuing the thought. It was just as well but as she left Nik seemed a bit put off by the remark. There may have been under-the-breath grumbling, but Lister was talking too loud to hear it.

That may have been the end of the intrigue, but then Nik started watching our friends mow through plates piled high with vegetable delights from the neverending salad bar. She started wondering out loud if she shouldn’t have opted for the salad instead of the kid’s shrimp. I told her she could go order a salad bar if she wanted but she stressed that she only wanted a single trip. I didn’t recall such an option so I offered to return to the front counter area and investigate.

The only thing the menu listed as even close to what Nik was looking for was a “Side Salad” which, lacking a description, may or may not have been remotely close to what she was looking for. So I identified a managerial-type employee and approached him in what I hoped was a friendly manner. “Are the ‘Side Salads’ a single trip to the salad bar or are they pre-made?” I asked. The manager looked at me with confusion and asked for clarification. “What I’m saying is that my wife wants just one trip to the salad bar, do you have something like that?” The manager responded by reaching beneath the counter and pulling out a salad plate and handing it to me.

“Here you go,” he said, “it’s no problem.”

“Are you sure?” I was skeptical. “I’m fine with paying for it.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.”

I gave him my most sincere smile and thanked him profusely. As I walked back toward our table I was thinking that maybe I was wrong about Sizzler. Their food may occasionally be a touch on the cheap side but at least the service was turning out to be pretty decent. Giving Nik a free single trip to the salad bar certainly constituded going above and beyond the call of customer service in my book. As I approached the table to give Nik her plate I noticed that our server was back and handing out refills and plates of food ordered by some of our dining companions, who had placed their orders earlier than we had. But as I approached and tried to hand the plate to Nik so she could get her salad before the entrees arrived, the server intercepted me.

“You need ticket for this.”

“No,” I started to explain, “I got it from the guy at the front.”

“I have to get a ticket.” She wouldn’t let go of the plate and we had started a kind of subtle tug of war with it. I surrendered the plate and pressed my point.

“Listen, I got this from the manager, he just gave it to me. He said it would be cool.”

“That’s not the way it works,” she stressed, a firm believer in order and structure.

I was trying not to get worked up because I knew I had gotten away with a coup by getting the free salad in the first place so losing it now wouldn’t be a great human tragedy or anything but I was so close to succeeding in my mission only to be hijacked by this wage slave with no real stake in whether or not I got free salad. “No, I’m just saying I got it from the manag—”

She interrupted, “You come with me,” and she began marching, plate in hand, toward the register. I followed, unwilling to concede defeat just yet. As she approached I noticed with disappointment that the manager was no longer milling around the cashier’s stand. A setback. The server approached the youthful-looking alternate cashier and started to thrust the plate under his nose, accusingly.

“No!” I said again, “It wasn’t that guy. It was the manager, the one with the black shirt.” Finally I seemed to say something that registered with her.

“Oh,” she said, now a bit dejected. “I’ll go find him.”

A few moments later she reappeared with the black-shirted manager guy who apologized and said, “I knew that was going to happen. But don’t worry, it’s taken care of now.”

I thanked him again and the server offered a mumbled and insincere apology and then bustled off to some other steak-related catastrophe while I wandered back to our table and finally delivered Nik’s long-awaited ticket to salad bliss. Our friends expressed their disbelief in the extreme tactics employed by the server we shared a good laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Eventually our food came and we ate; it turns out that Nikki was unable to even consume as much as a ten-year old as she left a few assorted shrimp on her plate as we patted our bellies and began the trek back across the street for more gaming.

On the way out I left our server a decent-sized tip.

For the entertainment.

Magic in the Air

Here are the games I played at this year’s Kublacon:

• DungeonQuest
• Fluxx v3.1
• Settlers of Catan: Travel Edition
• Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition
• Catan Card Game
• Magic: The Gathering

You may notice a couple of things about this list: One is that it isn’t, generally speaking, the most intensely geeky list ever. Aside from DungeonQuest and Magic, any of these games could be played at your average family game night.

And that’s okay. It may have been nice to play something a bit more gamer-y but we did that last year; one of the things about hard core games is that they tend to take up huge blocks of time. When a single game of Warhammer can last up to four hours and your average dungeon crawl in D&D takes five hours at least, you’re looking at a whole lot of time burnt on something that you could play on any random weekend. In my case at least I don’t go to cons looking for a bunch of new people to play with and while I don’t necessarily mind playing with strangers, unless I’m in a tournament or something there isn’t much I couldn’t do any other time except play a whole bunch of different games. So that’s what we did.

The other thing you may note is that I have Magic up there.

This is significant because it marks the first time I’ve picked up the game or spent money on the cards in over eight years. The last time I tapped a land for some mana was when I was 19 or 20… but back then it was on. I calculated my deck in those days to be worth upwards of $200, and that was when cards that are nearly unheard of today (Moxes, Black Lotus) were the hot commodities. Current drool-inducing cards (some would say the ones that broke the game) like dual lands were certainly not commonplace but were more or less readily available for the right price. I did a lot of trading and single-card buying to build my deck into the library-crushing machine that I wanted it to be.

It was fun but let me tell you a simple, perhaps obvious fact: It was darned expensive. And it was relentlessly expensive. Each new set that came out offered a new opportunity for deck tweaking and scavenger hunts to find the perfect rare card to squeeze into a deck. It was neverending and after a while my wallet and my patience were stretched so thin that I couldn’t stomach it any more. As fun as playing Magic was, it didn’t work on a casual level. So I made the decision to stop and when I stopped, it was for good.

Sorta.

What drew me back to the game was basically an idea that had been around for a long time but had at some point evolved into a type of game that gave the flavor of playing Magic including deck construction and actual facing off versus an opponent but without the massive financial committment to building the best deck ever. And it even introduced some of the stakes that were originally designed into the game that had been all but cast aside during my deck-obsessed heyday: The ante.

The structure is called Type-P or Permanent Sealed Deck. Sealed deck tournaments have been around for a long time and usually involve each player grabbing a starter pack and any assortment of booster pack combinations the tournament coordinators wish to grant. Each player opens their new card packages at the same time and is given a finite amount of time to use the cards they got to build a competitive deck. Sometimes a trading option is introduced, sometimes not, but the end result is that it tests your ability to identify quality cards and puts your deck-building skills on display since you have to sometimes get creative in order to make a reasonable deck when the pool of cards to draw from is severely limited.

What Type-P does is try to take the flavor of the sealed deck and use it for longer than a single-sitting tourney. So there are standard Type-P decks which consist of an initial pool (or “universe”) of cards that is applied to all of these types of decks. There are of course certain rules and restrictions about what kinds of cards and how many of certain types are allowed but generally speaking the idea is to create a deck from a smallish number of initial cards and then play that deck against other similarly constructed decks for ante.

Each time you win, your universe or pool increases by one. When you lose, your overall universe decreases. You track your decks’ total cards which works to create handicaps for the games. For example if the initial universe for a P-Deck is 98 cards and you win twice your universe should be at 100. If you play your 100 card P-Deck (which doesn’t mean the actual playable deck has to contain 100 cards, only that you have 100 cards with which to build that deck) against a P-Deck that has lost a bunch of matches in a row and is pulling from a universe of maybe 89 cards, you theoretically have a significant advantage and therefore handicap rules apply (usually to the manner in which ante is settled at the end of the game).

This works brilliantly for people like me who enjoy the gameplay and the deck construction but don’t want to be involved in the collection aspect which is what generally drives the expense. And in a way using Type-P rules you get most of the flavor of Magic without all the headache of trying to either luck out and open a pack with just what you needed or going out and spending as much money on a single deck addition as you might on dozens of randomly packaged cards. Plus there is enough flexibility to the Type-P rules that as long as you have a pool of potential opponents who all agree on the base universe size you can expand the play style into any realm you want.

For example we all created standard Type-P decks for a registered game we played in for several hours. But that required that seven of the cards we had just purchased had to be randomly taken out of our pool to level the playing field for other P-Decks that used different types of starter and booster packs as the base. Those cards then became essentially useless unless we decided to start collecting again which I had no interest in doing. So instead we went out and each purchased a Fat Pack which included about 130 cards instead of the normal 98 and added our seven pulled from the original P-Decks for a starting universe of 137. So long as we play against other people with 137 card starting universes, it remains equal.

I spent a weekend playing Magic in a way that was far more enjoyable than I ever remember it being during the years I played it in high school and immediately after. I didn’t worry about mint conditions and relative card values, I didn’t fret over losing cards in ante (which actually makes the game a lot more fun) and I spent less than $30 total on a relative boatload of cards that I can continue to use as long as I like just as long as I find other players with compatible decks.

Viva Type-P.

Anyway, aside from a lot of Magic we also played the new version of Ticket to Ride, Märklin. If you’ve never played TTR, it’s a great European-style game with pretty simple but elegant gameplay that works well for all types of gamers. It’s basically non-competitive since for the most part you aren’t really given much opportunity to mess with other player’s strategies although you do keep score and there is a winner, during the game it’s mostly a series of strategic moves against luck, opportunity and your own gameplan.

Märklin introduces a few new twists from the previous games. For one it fixes the Ticket mechanic from TTR and TTR:Europe where once you completed your initial Ticket requirements, the relative risk versus reward for choosing new Ticket goals to complete was pretty minimal. You were usually much better off trying to get the longest track which kind of defeated the point of the game in a way. Märklin eliminates the longest track bonus and instead gives extra points to the player who completes the most Tickets, which I think is as it should be.

Märklin also adds a twist on the wild Loco cards by introducing Locos that can only be used to assist with long tracks (four or more spaces) and country-specific destinations that can be met as Ticket conditions with more than one completely separate track. But the most obvious new twist is the Passengers.

Each city on the map (Germany in this case) has anywhere from one to several numbered tokens which stack in order from highest on top to lowest on bottom. As you place your tracks you can choose to park one of your three passenger pieces on one of the connected cities and at any point in the game you can move them along your track (or hitch a ride on other players’ tracks with the help of special Passenger cards), collecting the topmost token on every city stop along the way. You can only use each Passenger once and the challenge is to get your Passengers into positions where they can collect the most points on their journey without waiting too long for some other player to come by and swoop on your high-point tokens.

I liked everything about the game except the Passengers which I felt were more of an annoyance than really anything else and didn’t add nearly as much to the game as the stations from Europe did. The fact that the Passenger cards are mixed in with the color-coded track cards also frustrated since at times (especially near the end of the game) you can be desperately searching for a specific card color and drawing a stupid Passenger card (of practically zero value near the end of the game when all the good routes have been well traveled) can mean the difference between a big points jump and no jump at all. Still, overall the Ticket to Ride games continue to be well executed and fun to play. I fully expect an Ultimate Ticket to Ride game eventually which incorporates all the best mechanics from previous editions on a truly massive map. Maybe TTR: Russia or something.

I want to make special mention of the Catan card game which was my favorite new game of the con by far, despite being only two player. It truly captures the essence of Settlers and, I think, in some ways surpasses the original board game in terms of strategic opportunity since a lot of success in Settlers stems from fortunate die rolls to collect the resources you need and starting locations play a big role in how well you have the opportunity to play throughout the rest of the game. Since those factors are eliminated in the card game (every turn yeilds some resource for all players in the card game and each player starts off on exactly even ground) it makes your execution completely paramount.

The Catan card game rules are a bit dense and after two games Nik and I are still finding new little gotchas and allowances we didn’t know about before but it’s worth the effort and completely engrossing, especially if you’re a fan of the original Settlers board game.

Finally I need to discuss DungeonQuest, the out-of-print favorite that I have played before but was only able to truly appreciate this time around since I didn’t have to spend the first forty minutes of the game trying to wrap my head around the various scenarios and rules lookup phases. This is in my top ten games of all time, easily. It is the ultimate “You Got Moded” game. Any board game where you can literally lose (as one of our players can readily attest to) on the first turn has got to be awesome. Our hapless compadre even started a new character because he died so quickly and a mere three turns after the first trap claimed his life he lost yet again on a freak Ruth-pointing-to-the-fence style call of his forthcoming die roll. That he didn’t know he was trying to roll anything other than the number he called only made it that much funnier.

I decided that I must own this game, but the fact that it is no longer in print, is pretty popular to begin with and was pricey even when it was sold in stores makes it an expensive proposition. I’m not quite sure I’m ready to drop $65 minimum on a game at this time. Still, if you want to get me something for my Birthday (in six months…), there you go. Perfect idea. Good luck finding it, though.

I’m serious. Good luck.

What Might Have Been

As fun as the con was, it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. One of our players had a registered Blood Bowl tournament that had no one show up so we abandoned the game. I was supposed to finish my Warmaster army so we could try that and I dropped the ball hard so that didn’t materialize. I was also planning on having a Shadowrun 4th Edition adventure ready to go but I got bogged down with so much other stuff to do that it floundered in the back of my mind until it got way too complex to be realistic, especially considering how much has changed from my familiar 2nd Edition rules: Trying to build a campaign around an unfamiliar system is pretty rough. I made some progress on a quickie intro adventure, more of a one-shot deal than anything else, but I never got around to creating any characters and it didn’t seem like the rest of the group was that into the idea of sitting around doing the pre-adventure stage thing so it fell through.

To an extent that means that the best laid plans were more or less ruined by my procrastination but I think we ended up with plenty to do so maybe next time. The key, I’m realizing, is not to have 600 things you want to do in the pipeline, but to choose one thing you absolutely want to get done and focus on that until it is finished. Then, if there is time left, you can move on to something else. When my pre-con to-do list included a GURPS campaign setting, a Shadowrun adventure, a whole Warmaster army painted, finishing touches on Warhammer 40K armies, a Blood Bowl team to paint and a prototype of a game idea I have to construct… well, the mere thought of all that was too crushingly impossible of a feat and so I did what all procrastinators do when presented with a mountain of tasks: I did something else entirely.

Live and learn.