Game Convention in Surrey
Nov. 22nd, 2010 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauThe day after Remembrance Day I went over to swingin' Surrey for "BottosCon": a wargame convention organized by one Rob Bottos, who had been asking me to attend for a few years. It was held at the Compass Point Inn by the King George Highway, which hardly means anything because to me, Surrey looks like an enormous strip mall criscrossed by highways.
The hotel was adequate and they had enough space for the con in one of their two downstairs ball/meeting rooms: the last two years running there was a furry convention in the other ballroom, and guys told me that furries would wander into the room in costume, look at the fat nerds playing their complicated games, and wander out again. The hotel staff were pretty upfront about how they liked our crowd better. This year the furries had had their convention the weekend before; I've been told that next year the two coincide again so, I'm definitely planning on going!
I met Michel Boucher, a guy with whom I have been corresponding and trading games for several years. He is from Ottawa, but his daughter lives out here so he makes a combined visit. He's helped me a lot over the years with practical suggestions and in making a French translation of the rules to my game on the French Algerian War. It was great to meet him finally! Here we are playtesting a game I just started work on the week before, on a hypothetical second invasion of Lebanon by Israel in the near future to stamp out Hezbollah:
But honestly, a good digital photo cannot be taken of me - it's as if a hidden Photoshop filter or macro slides in place, a filter that would have the name "Moronify" or "30% Drunk". And I am not as fat as I look in that photo. Here are some better ones:
Better picture but my mouth is open, as usual
Listening to Wilhelm
What could he have said to make me my grab my head like that?
He doesn't look as if he cares....
Making notes, revising on the fly - "no, don't do it that way, do it this way!"
More note-taking but this one shows off my widow's peak to greater advantage, as well as my bad posture and gracefully rounded shoulder-humps.
We also played Hearts and Minds, an interesting newish card-driven game on the Vietnam War, and I got several people to play Guerrilla Checkers with me. Everyone said they had never played anything like it before. I sold a couple copies of my games, and about $100 of other games I had been trying to hawk on Boardgamegeek, so my hotel was half paid for. I bought a copy of Combat Commander: Europe, which looks to be very interesting.
What a nerdy time I had of things! It was great to meet people who had heard of and liked my work, and I talked for hours about game design with some other designers. I got an invitation from an organizer to attend Dragonflight, a gaming convention that has taken place in Seattle in August for the last 31 years.
The only bad part was finally succumbing to a cold I had been successfully fighting off for a week (something Akito had brought home with him from school). It was the hotel air conditioning, it always gets me in the end. I took Monday off sick and I'm only just now out of the woods, a week later.
The hotel was adequate and they had enough space for the con in one of their two downstairs ball/meeting rooms: the last two years running there was a furry convention in the other ballroom, and guys told me that furries would wander into the room in costume, look at the fat nerds playing their complicated games, and wander out again. The hotel staff were pretty upfront about how they liked our crowd better. This year the furries had had their convention the weekend before; I've been told that next year the two coincide again so, I'm definitely planning on going!
I met Michel Boucher, a guy with whom I have been corresponding and trading games for several years. He is from Ottawa, but his daughter lives out here so he makes a combined visit. He's helped me a lot over the years with practical suggestions and in making a French translation of the rules to my game on the French Algerian War. It was great to meet him finally! Here we are playtesting a game I just started work on the week before, on a hypothetical second invasion of Lebanon by Israel in the near future to stamp out Hezbollah:
But honestly, a good digital photo cannot be taken of me - it's as if a hidden Photoshop filter or macro slides in place, a filter that would have the name "Moronify" or "30% Drunk". And I am not as fat as I look in that photo. Here are some better ones:
Better picture but my mouth is open, as usual
Listening to Wilhelm
What could he have said to make me my grab my head like that?
He doesn't look as if he cares....
Making notes, revising on the fly - "no, don't do it that way, do it this way!"
More note-taking but this one shows off my widow's peak to greater advantage, as well as my bad posture and gracefully rounded shoulder-humps.
We also played Hearts and Minds, an interesting newish card-driven game on the Vietnam War, and I got several people to play Guerrilla Checkers with me. Everyone said they had never played anything like it before. I sold a couple copies of my games, and about $100 of other games I had been trying to hawk on Boardgamegeek, so my hotel was half paid for. I bought a copy of Combat Commander: Europe, which looks to be very interesting.
What a nerdy time I had of things! It was great to meet people who had heard of and liked my work, and I talked for hours about game design with some other designers. I got an invitation from an organizer to attend Dragonflight, a gaming convention that has taken place in Seattle in August for the last 31 years.
The only bad part was finally succumbing to a cold I had been successfully fighting off for a week (something Akito had brought home with him from school). It was the hotel air conditioning, it always gets me in the end. I took Monday off sick and I'm only just now out of the woods, a week later.
