So this past weekend was Pacificon “SF”. Although most folks wouldn’t consider Santa Clara part of SF, I was ecstatic to hear that there was going to finally be a gaming convention in the South Bay, particularly happy when it was a couple miles from my house and a reasonable bicycle-ride.
Registration was efficient and professional, I had my badge in 5 minutes (at 12:30pm Friday). Given the number of pre-reg badges, there were quite a number of folks attending. Sign-ups for games was far less formal or organized, but the folks running the RPG signup desk were quite gracious and willing to work out arrangements to get folks into games they might enjoy.
Friday 1-6ish was a 4E adventure where we were to sail a peace treaty proposal to the draco-lich to the south of the country. Unluckily, some players were into the “and I go do this on the side” sort of stuff and given that I was playing a Lawful Good cleric, I felt I shouldn’t get involved in the “arena fight” some other players signed up for. Needless to say, I spent most of the game watching and waiting, while that was not completely objectionable it was not exactly the best experience. The DM seemed nice enough, just one of those “willing to do whatever the players want” sorts who let the players get away with side activities. The second (real) half of the adventure was better, but short, and again was side-tracked because the same side-questers wanted to smuggle contraband on our vessel. Ugh.
Friday evening was watching Babylon AD with the spouse. Ok movie, had some great moments, had some mediocre action sequences (I don’t know if it’s a stylistic decision or just a budgetary one, but many action scenes where the editing disconnected action from reaction.)
Saturday 9-5 was probably the highlight of the weekend for playing (see below). An old-hand at DM’ing ran a 2E game where we were after the lost treasure of an undead pirate ship. Great fun exploring an island with some great encounters, both roleplaying and fighting. Also bonus was spending some time with a good gaming friend and his son in this game. I wish it lasted even longer.
Saturday 5, arrived at what was supposed to be a Keep on the Shadowfell session (I’ve not read the module and haven’t played it either, so I was looking forward to giving it a try.) DM never showed up (flake!) and the room was full of mostly teens who have never played 4E and at least one who had never played D&D ever. I felt bad, particularly as they would likely miss out on getting into anything that evening, so I ran them through the first part of a Dungeon Crawl Classic module (#2) that I am running some co-workers through nowadays. I even had to run and buy a battle mat and pens, but I was happy to do it and we all had a wonderful time! Surprised to see the 3.5E creatures mapped fairly well to 4E, although I changed one encounter to a hero/minion encounter (scorpions as the heroes and centipedes as minions) just to give the players a feel for an aspect of 4E that makes it unique.
Sunday 9-5 was consumed by what I consider a nightmare scenario. The game I wanted to get into was way-overfull so I crashed a “you play a dragon” game. The DM showed up late, and ill-prepared. One older player was always rules-lawyering (and arguing motivation and world politics) while the other split his time between distracting the DM with non-game chats and trying to keep his 5-year-old kid from interrupting the flow with suggestions (to the DM) as to how to approach the battle. The DM seemed nice enough, and he struggled some with control, but it was clear that most of the players were annoyed with the lack of pace and the constant bickering and chatter. Alas, it looked like the DM had some great ideas, but they were compressed into the last hour of gaming and generally lost to the aweful players involved.
For folks new to cons, expect one really bad experience…Whether it be a DM who is disorganized or players who are anti-social jerks or super-linear plots. Buck up, for every bad experience, you’ll have three good. Unless you are the anti-social jerk, in which case, get lost?
Relief, great relief, came at 5pm when I played Battlestations. We were the crew of the Enterprise (me as Nurse Chapel! :) in a mega-game. Four teams (three, since they didn’t fill all teams up) first had their individual battles, then combined at the end of the evening for a mass-battle against a droid planet. Lots of fun and new players learning the rules and playing their parts. Our GM and his son had been in my D&D game and they were wonderful to play games with. The last battle ended earlier than expected when a chain-reaction blew up all of the droid ships, ending the battle in a mass-loss. But we still had a lot of fun, and fireworks are always appreciated, even in-game fireworks.
Monday, things were slowing down but had an opportunity to play a 4E dungeon crawl. Even with all of the simplifications of 4E, I’m still figuring it out and greatly appreciate a decent game. More fun was had and the white dragon was dispatched quickly. I ended up generating a 3rd-level Tiefling Warlord, which was what I played at Polycon (but at 10th level) so it was nice to compare high-level versus low-level characters.
Overall, the con was excellent. Very well staffed (lots and lots of friendly and helpful staffers). My only minor gripes with the con are the scheduling of auctions and flea markets during gaming sessions, the confusing hotel layout, and the policy that they required the RPG rooms to leave the doors wide-open and some noisier groups and hall-talkers were distracting. Hopefully the con will remain in Santa Clara, I appreciate some local gaming!