Another great convention…I hadn’t been to a Farmer’s Market (a San Luis tradition that is world-renown) so I had a hotel Thurs-Sat. Farmers was crazy crazy busy, bigger (what, like 5 bbq vendors now?) and more organized than I remember (last I had been was in college, probably.) Also caught Joe and Dean at the Polycon table and had a nice chat.
Friday morning, rode my bicycle around campus to remember old times (and realize how much I had forgotten about the campus, and how memory distorts over the years.) Friday afternoon, after reg, played a round of Illuminati (the classic). 8-player Illumanti is too many, we should have done two groups of four, but it was good to play it again after all these years. Cthulhu destroying the dolphins = good fun. Dinner with Doug, then Traveler. Alas, the Traveler GM didn’t have pre-gens so we spent a good hour building characters (but that is one of the better aspects of Traveler!) We had a lot of fun doing a rescue/escape mission and the GM was good at keeping the game moving, once we got through the generation.
Saturday morning played a round of Chronology then hooked up with an “X-Crawl” take on D&D that worked out well, even if we did get slammed by some nasty skeletons. A quick lunch, then Doug’s D&D session wherein I played a 4E character in a 3.5 world. Worked out well enough, but I would have loved to see more of the differences between the systems (I ended up not getting in a lot of the fights.) A little too much shopping and not enough chopping, but good nonetheless. Saturday night was a 4E D&D swashbuckling adventure, which also boiled down to a single big battle between us pirates (a captain, a cook, and a rogue) and a ship full of dwarves. Nice conversion (flintlock pistol using the hand crossbow rules, some addl rules for sailing and fighting on vessels, etc.) It was addl fun as one player hadn’t played before but she learned quickly and did well. Oh and I got my chance to play a warlord again, I love playing warlords…
Sunday morning, feeling fairly burned out, I played a good game of Circus Imperium and drove back to the Bay Area before the traffic got bad.
Reasons I really love Polycon:
- REALLY motivated staff, folks are always asking you if you need help, offering up suggestions, willing to get you something, etc. In the roleplaying sessions a “hospitality” staffer would come by and take orders for food or anything else we needed (scissors!) The quality of the staff cannot be overstated, they need not be ultra-professional (there were certainly mistakes made throughout) but they need to have a positive attitude and an interest in making good.
- Small-town small-con feel; always good to see players from past cons. Doesn’t hurt that I often see friends I don’t see any other times when I go to Polycon. The Saturday evening bbq, the auction, the odd-mix of dealers all lend to a unique Con experience. Looking forward to next year, where they’ll likely return to the dorms/University Union!
- No over-subscribed games, if anything they had too many games planned. But better that than having 40+ people try to sign up for a single game. (The paper sign-up sheets probably help some, it’s clear to see which games are booked and which are not.) I do find it interesting that a Con in Sacramento is limiting attendance, this is an interesting model that might work for conventions with limited space and enough games to book that space. Polycon wasn’t “booked to the gills” but attendance was good. I have to wonder how much the 4th of July holiday impacted attendance though.