Origins 2015!

Origins! Woo!

Yeah, I know. GAMA doesn't do administrative stuff well, their software is weird, etc. Don't care. Still love this con, and attendance was up this year, so that's great to hear. Let's see some pictures!

This year was special because my son Kai was in attendance, and ran his first con game. So we picked him up from his last day of school on Wednesday and hit the road.

We stopped at Grandpa's Cheese Barn on the way, because obviously. 

We got to the con and unloaded the stuff for our booth, and then I went to go fight with registration about exhibitor badges.

Michelle doing booth assembly. 

See, here's the problem. If you want an exhibitor badge, you have to wait until those become open to register. Which is great...if you don't plan to sign up for any events. I do want to sign up for events. That meant I had have them cancel my badge, cancel my events, sign me up for a new badge, and then sign me up for my events real quick. It worked, it just took a long time. But we got it sorted and the folks at registration were really nice and patient.

Back to the booth, then: We couldn't get it entirely set up, because most of the flooring hadn't been delivered. See, funny story, UPS randomly decided to deliver half of our flooring to our house in Cleveland, rather than the hotel that we'd specified as the delivery address. So...huh? But, Amazon and UPS worked with us, and got stuff shipping down to us. So we set up as much booth as we could...

TRAVIS IS A MONSTER.

  ...and fucked off to get dinner.

We got dinner at Bare Burger, a lovely little place across the street from the convention center that serves (you guessed it) burgers, many of them made from bison or wild boar. Very tasty food, though I think the staff isn't used to Origins. When I walked in, I just had Kai with me, and the host said, "two?" And I said, "no, eight, they're just not here yet. Actually, we're both four people." He just kind of blinked. I said, "dude, it's gonna get a lot weirder than me this weekend, best be ready."

Kai contemplates burgers.

Tim & Travis.

Anyway, dinner done, we went back over the convention center. I walked Kai around a bit so he knew the lay of the land, including the giant inflatable sheep.

You thought I was kidding?

And then he had his first game, which was Are You a Werewolf? I wound up playing, too, because I had nothing else going on and why not? AYAW is an Origins staple; we also often play it at our holiday party, though there are some differences. The Origins folks have everyone pat their legs during the night so that you can't listen to movement and try and figure out the werewolves that way (not that it mattered, as loud as the room was). I always find that weird, because it's not like there's anything else to go on, not if you don't know the people and know their tells. Ah, well. It was fun, I got eaten by werewolves, and then we headed back to the room for rest.

Thursday!

Eee!

So, first thing was finishing booth set-up before the hall opened. We got the flooring and got the booth completed, and I think it looked pretty nice.

Buy one of each!

The booth from the other angle.

Thursday I worked the booth, and then had an afternoon Chill game that didn't happen because I didn't get players. Bummer. So I wound up wandering the dealer's room a bit. Kai had a game earlier in the day...

I believe this would be the infamous "anime weird ninja school" game where they give out candy.

 I found Tim doing demos in the booth...

GHOST PIRATES.

 And Jerry in his booth...

Sellin' books. 

But that night, after dinner, Michelle and I went to Games on Demand, and there was a crazy line of people to get in.

Like a Cedar Point ride.

We wound up playing in a game of Feng Shui 2nd Edition, which was lots of fun. I was a magical cop named Stephen Wei, and lots of fun Jet Li-esque shenanigans were had. Michelle was a sorceress thrown forward in time to handle some Chi weirdness. We fight crime!

The games was really well-run, I think. There were a couple of moments were the GM paused to explain things for a bit too long, but it wasn't an ongoing problem, and the fight scenes (which are important to Feng Shui were evocative and quick-paced). This was run through Games on Demand, and they have yet to disappoint. My Grade: A

The GM, some sheets, my pen. Very minimalist. 

Then sleep! Then Friday!

Friday was the day that Kai was going to run his game of Cat. I was supposed to be free until 2 so I could be with him for his first hour of the game, but my GM got sick and lost her voice, so I had to run two Chill games back to back. Which was somewhat exhausting, but hey.

I segued directly into my second game of Chill, which also went well. That finished up about six, and we had some time to wander. Kai was supposed to be in a game of Mammoth Catan, but Origins fucked the schedule up, so that got cancelled.

Looks cool, though, dunnit?

 We saw a "rocket ship" made of balloons.

Sometimes, a balloon is just a balloon. 

We were supposed to play The One Ring that night, but that got cancelled, so we crashed out instead.

Saturday!

First thing: Kai and I played in a game of Barbarians of Lemuria retooled for Thundarr, the Barbarian!

Now, my dad used to watch Thundarr with me on Saturday mornings, and it was a show we liked. I didn't have time to show Kai much of it, but he got a sense of how it worked. He played Princess Ariel, I played Ookla the Mok, and we beat up a bunch of evil monsters and destroyed the Moon Men and saved the world. It was pretty awesome. The GM kept things moving and moved the spotlight appropriately, and, most important, he played off the 10-year-old at his table nicely; he didn't talk down to him or just tell him what to do (which is good, because Kai can have great ideas on his own if you give him a minute, but he'll go along with whatever folks suggest in a game otherwise). My Grade: A

Character tiles!

Fightin' rat monsters!

And then some lunch at North Market, and then I had a game of Chill to run, which went fine (got to see people I don't get to play with often, which is always neat).

And then more Chill! +Monica Valentinelli had asked me to run a game for her, so I gathered up some folks and we played a game of Chill in the Big Bar, at a Geek Chic table. I liked this game; it's quick and tense. I think maybe I will use it as a con game going forward. No PC deaths, though the monster used the Chill discipline at the end and threw everyone for a loop.

Captain America came to visit. 

Monica and Jerry review their mission. 

Bat Lord: Banished! Woo!

And then sleep? Naw, and then we sat up chatting and drinking forever. And then sleep.

And then Sunday! Sunday morning at Origins means only one thing: Clay-o-Rama! It was weird this year, though. I had eight people signed up, but only four showed, so it went really quickly.

Preparing for battle. 

So that was quick, and then back into the dealer's room to wander around for a while before it was time for tear-down.

Chill book, tokens, dice, and a character sheet. You know you wanna buy it. 

And then tear-down!

Rawr!

SMASH!

And that was Sunday. Monday, we were still there. We got everything packed up, and got on the road to Baltimore for a little mini-vacation, leaving the ruins of the con behind...until next year.

Wait...I still...function...

Character Creation: Cat

 OK, I lied again. I thought I'd have time to do a Vampire character before leaving for my folks', but, ironically, I've been developing a Vampire book all day and I didn't get to it. But lest you think I'm not serious about this "character a day" thing, I give you: Cat.

The Game: Cat
The publisher: Wicked Dead Brewing Company
Degree of familiarity: A good deal. I've run it a couple of times, and played in Jae's game at Origins a couple years back.
Books required: Just the Cat book or pdf. 

 

Right, so the basic idea here is that cats protect people from invisible monsters called "Boggins," and that they can enter our dreams to protect us. Also, dogs came up second in the contest to protect humanity, so while some dogs are OK with that, some are still bitter.

Basically, people have two approaches to this game. They make their own pet cats, or they find an archetypal cat and make that. Last time I played, I played Happycat of I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? fame, and spoke LOLcat the whole time, which was a lot more fun than I'd normally admit.

This time, though, I'll play the kitten I owned as a boy, all growed up. His name was Marshmallow, because he was all white and I was, like, 6.

Step One: The Traits. Cats have six traits. I get to prioritize one as Best, three as Strong, and the rest as Good. Let's go to work!

I want Marshmallow to be a clever cat, so I give him Face as Best. That means he gets a bonus of 5. I also want him to be pretty, so I assign Strong to Coat. Marshmallow is a runaway, so I'll put my other Strongs into Legs (for the actual running) and Tail (for magical escapes). That leaves Fangs and Claws at Good; he can fight, but he's not great at it.

Step Two: Names. Cats, as Mr. Eliot tells us, have three names. The first is the given name, the one that people use - I've established already that it's "Marshmallow" in this case. The second name is the cat name, that other felines use. Marshmallow is called "Fiend" by other cats. He's called that because he usually stays with a family long enough to solve a particularly nasty Boggin problem, and then he buggers off, often leaving a child heartbroken.

Hey, it's not his job to make 'em happy, just to kill the Boggins. You want to be happy? Get a dog. Want to be safe? Call a cat.

Finally, he has a secret name, but since Marshmallow never told me, I can't tell you.

Step Three: Reputation. Cats have titles, and these can give me bonuses in certain situations. I get seven points of Reputations, and no one Rep can start higher than three.

Well, the biggest Rep for Marshmallow is "Save 'em and Leave 'em." He's known for getting the job done quickly and then vamoosing, so he gets bonus dice when that would help him (say, convincing another cat to let him sleep over, since he won't be staying long).

Since he's a white cat and he stays so pearly, I put 2 points into "Never Dirty." And finally, since he's so businesslike about finding and killing Boggins, he gets a "Never Sleeps" Rep at 2.

What's interesting here is that he's got this rep for killing Boggins, but he's not that hot in a fight. How's he do it? (Hint: His name is Fiend. He can talk Boggins into anything, even getting into the dryer.)

Step Four: Lives. I have 9 lives, until something bad happens.

 

 

And that's it! Tomorrow I'll do Dread and Wednesday I'll do Prawn, since those are both basically sheet-less. Then Thursday I'll do Vampire. Friday I don't know that I'll be in any shape to do a character, but if I am, I will.