by tibahn
I played SO. MANY. GAMES! This year, I feel like I had the true con experience (you know, the one that everyone always talks about, where you meet awesome new people and are able to unleash your full geekiness without fear of incredulous stares or ridicule...the one where you play games until the wee hours of the morning, bleary-eyed and delirious, then wake up four hours later and do it all again). I discovered this year, what I missed out on last year...people!Now I won't say it was easy for me. Most of Thursday I spent roaming alone, despite my best efforts. I picked up the top three games on my list (Bruges, Robinson Crusoe, and Vivajava) within the first five minutes. This left me with tons of time to browse and discover all of the hidden gems of the con. Luckily, there were many to be found! I demoed a bunch great games and a few that were not so great. I played way more games in the board room this year and even participated (and won) in a King of Tokyo tournament! Oh Space Penguin, you complete me!
Since it was one of my pre-Origins goals, I dedicated some time to talking to designers and publishers. It was hard not to feel starstruck. As weird as it was talking to people who I only knew via podcasts and game boxes, it didn't take long for me to realize that they are all gamer geeks just like me (only slightly less awkward). With that in mind, I worked up the courage to attend the Dice Tower dinner (and before you ask, no, I did not talk to Mr. Vasel). I did, however, meet Pete Fall and Frank Alberts from the Game Salute team, which as it turns out, is just as good.
Pete and Frank got me to try out Werewolf for the first time. This is a TERRIBLE game for someone like me and I was very reluctant...rightfully so. Our first game took three tiresome hours! Werewolf is a game that depends a lot on people's personalities and we seemed to have a couple of jerks in our village. The second game we played was not much better. Now I recognize that both the games I played in were unusually torturous and long (not quite sure what that says about me), but even still, I will probably never try Werewolf again. That's the bad news. The good news is this awful game forced me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to make some new friends. Just like a natural disaster, a traumatic game can bring people together, bond them for life. May be slightly over-stated, but the truth is I spent the entire rest of my con with the people I met in that horrifically disastrous Werewolf game!
Pete, Frank, Julie Hurst, Ben Shulman, Jeffrey Norman Bourbeau, and Jeremy Anderson made my con an unforgettable experience! I almost feel bad about killing them all, as I was a werewolf (muhahaha). But seriously, it was awesome to be surrounded by such talented and intelligent people who share in my gaming obsession! I finally had that "These are MY people" feeling that I was missing last year and I'm hoping that this will be my new normal for conventions. No more lonely roaming!!?!
Stay tuned, my next post will be about the games of Origins and my new found love of Unpub!
Follow me on Twitter @IneptGamer
http://thesociallyineptgamer.blogspot.com