ConQuest Report

Why I Invited a Strange Man to Spend the Night in My House After My Wife Left Me to Spend the Weekend With My In-laws.

First, I offer to my readers the party line from the ConQuest website: "Over 900 people attended ConQuest 2000 at the Clarion Hotel in Millbrae California over the Labor Day weekend. We had 57 miniature, 87 role playing, 52 board, 23 collectable card, 6 live action role playing as registered games. That does not include open gaming or the wonderful selection of seminars and demonstration games. Our special guest was Bill Trost, lead world builder for EverQuest. From all reports everyone had a lot of fun and played a lot of games."

Now the caveat: I visited as much as I could, but I'm a role-player at the core, so large blocks of time were spent experiencing new (to me) RPGs. I make no excuses for not spending time on what might have interested other people, although I do regret missing some events I later heard about.

And the plug: Go visit ConQuest's website at http://www.con-quest.com. I had a great time visiting people and playing games. If you live in the Bay Area, or happen to be in the area next Labor Day Weekend, do yourself a favor and stop by.

It all started on Friday afternoon, Labor Day Weekend, the first big rain of the fall season in California. A nightmarish, two-hour long drive to get from my workplace to the Con, which was only 30 miles away. Some idiot has flipped his taxicab on Highway 101, causing the left four lanes of the 5-lane northbound highway to be cordoned off while a helicopter flitted people/remains away. I heard about the details later; I got off the freeway as soon as I was able, and still only got to the Con an hour after it started.

A nice fella greeted me at the hotel parking lot as I drove in, welcoming me to the Con, pointing out where to park, and informing me that I wouldn't be charged for parking. Wow. My spirits perked up almost immediately. I parked and walked through an employees entrance into the main lobby, where the first sights and sounds were from the open gaming area, set up with about 30 tables. There was some confusion when I stopped off at the con office, and then at the registration desk to pick up my badge and schedule--they hadn't registered me properly, but that was cleared up inside of 10 minutes. I did walk around the rest of the weekend with a badge that proclaimed me as E.P. Healy, but I figured that could only be a good thing. :)

As an aside, parking was much more difficult on Saturday and Sunday. I managed to get parking in the lot on both days, but I'm sure many others were not as lucky. The new site for next year should alleviate a lot of the parking problem.

My first thoughts, as I wandered about the lobby, and floors 2 and 3 of the hotel, in which the Con had reserved all the meeting rooms, and a row of suites, was, "Now THIS is a Gaming Convention." On Sunday, (I discovered that the meeting rooms on the 4th floor were also allocated to the convention. Wowza.)

Don't confuse a Con like ConQuest with a Con like GenCon. GenCon is a games convention; ConQuest is a gaming convention. Don't worry, I got a perplexed, even slightly alarmed look from Scott Bagley, the RPG coordinator for ConQuest, with that statement. Here's the difference:

My mental picture of GenCon, which I have never attended, is that it is a time and place for game companies to hawk their--new--wares, schmooze each other and their customers, and incidentally, cater to gamers as well by demoing products or wooing them with old favorites. GenCon is a corporate showcase which happens to include space for gamers. Many gamers going to GenCon tend to focus on fan-boying their preferred companies for signatures and questions. I therefore call it a games convention. It's about the games, not the gamers. By the companies, for the companies and the industry.

ConQuest, on the other hand, is a gaming convention. You won't necessarily find new products debuting here. Yes, this year they had Bill Trost of EverQuest giving a few seminars, and Rob Stone, the author of the Agent X RPG, put on a live-action adventure. (I missed both these events, due to a wedding I had to attend; no regrets for attending the wedding.) I did manage to attend a Universe RPG session hosted by the people who were trying to republish the game system, or so I gathered, from what they were saying. I also spoke to a gentle-voiced gentleman in a turban, whose name I didn't catch He was demoing a board game to be published by AEG early next year. But that seemed to be it. The open gaming area was larger than the dealers area. This was not a Con that you could expect game companies to attend for the express purpose of selling their games. Most people were there to game and have fun first.

ConQuest exists to provide space for gamers. Space to gather, to meet other gamers, to try out new games you haven't heard of before, or to revisit old favorites, and not (necessarily) to part with your money for more games, but rather to play the games you have with like-minded folk. By the gamers, for the gamers and the industry.

A quick sampling of the games being played in the open gaming area over the entire weekend:

DnD3E (of course). Every one of these events was jam-packed, overflowing with players, eager to see what the system could and couldn't do, and what everyone else thought of so-and-so in the new schema of DnD.

Zertz, a clever anti-go, checkers-hybrid strategic game for two players, published by Schmidt.

Mystick Domination, a non-collectible tarot card game I couldn't figure out by watching. The players seemed to be having a little trouble as well, but I left them and moved on.

Slasher, a CinemaCard(tm) game published by Precedence, which was fleetingly amusing, with some flawed rules, or at least flawed rules-interpreters.

A prototpye of a boardgame (tentatively named Dwarven Dig) to be published by AEG early next year. In its prototype stage, it was utilizing Icehouse pieces, which was what piqued my attention in the first place. The final version will no doubt use its own pieces.

Carabande, a carroms-derived racing car game, where players flick their round car tokens around a smooth wooden-pressboard track. Great fun to watch and play!

Axis and Allies, Battle Lines, WizWar, Plague and Pestilence, Robo Rally, Lunch Money, and many, many others.

In some of the gaming rooms over the weekend:

A wonderful Bitin' Off Hedz tournament sponsored by GameCon and Cheapass Games, with a 4x original size board assembled by Michael and Lynne Eckert, who are part owners of GameCon. Big rubber dinosaurs were used in the race, and the winner received a gold-spray-painted rubber T-Rex trophy, complete with pedestal and brass tournament name plate. They plan to revisit the tourney at Manafest.

Speaking of rampaging beasties, Sunday morning had a room dedicated to Monster Smash, or Play-Doh Wargaming with kiddies. I had great fun seeing the winged, blobby, creepy and crawly, multicolored monstrous creations of both the adults and the children. Trust me when I say it was usually tough to tell the difference. :)

In the miniatures room, I saw a beautiful feudal Japan setup for a Taiko game, which included a palatial estate/fortress being harangued by 2-3 opposing forces with support troops approching from one compass point. There was another setup for Flintlock and Tomahawk (what looked to be a Armies and Native Americans scenario), some Battletech setups, and a fascinating aerial combat game in which planes and clouds were suspended on clear plastic dowels and each player was equipped with an LED box to indicated end of action formulation sequences and wooden tabletop aircraft cockpit display mockups that actually held their stats and action markers. One Starship game in which there were two giant yellow-dusted styrofoam rings in the center had me wandering off wishing I had a bag of cheese curls.

I did notice in the miniatures gaming, that younger players tended to congregate at the more fantasy-oriented tables (Warhammer, Necromunda, etc.) rather than the traditional simulationist wargaming tables, such as Taiko and Flintlock and Tomahawk. I had the distinct feeling that traditional wargaming was slowly fading. A bit sad -- but then, this is only one convention. New blood may be more prevalent in traditional wargaming at other conventions in other areas.

And I personally played:

TORG: "The Lost Armory", on Friday, run by Jeff Kesselman. A very entertaining scenario, partly due to the fact that three of the six players were TORG veterans, and the guy playing the Victorian Big Game Hunter was a romantic hoot. The system looked quite complex from the GM's standpoint, but it was a blast for the players. Very little number crunching, a breeze to pick up and play, with some very inventive roleplaying incentives incorporated into the system--namely, the Action Cards. Although the player's as a whole seemed to be trigger-happy gung-ho types, making life very hard for my Nippon-Tech Negotiator, the puzzles in the scenario were quite thought provoking. If you haven't played it TORG before, and you happen to note Jeff's name as a GM, well, I guess I needn't say more.

All Flesh Must be Eaten: "They're Magically Delicious!" on Saturday, run by Catherine Klikoff. The GM had us running from minute one, and was surprised when 4 of us ended her 10-hour adventure in 5 hours by running out of town. We were, of course, jubilant. We had survived! The others were not so lucky, being blown up by character clumsiness, killed in compassion or consumed by the terrorizing zombies. I mean, think about it, really--you're being chased by zombies every time you go out onto the street and you expect that town rumors are what's going to be going through your head? Get serious. We fled in terror like the self-serving beaten dogs we were when one PC, for no apparent reason, popped an NPC's head open with a bullet from his handgun. I personally fail to see the long-term potential of a game like this, but I must admit, it was extremely fun.

Universe RPG: "Red Tape," on Sunday afternoon, gamemaster unknown. The person who was supposed to GM stepped aside for another fellow, who took about an hour to warm up (though the room never did) and ran us through an essentially diceless investigative scenario that was nearly an antithesis to the last two action-oriented games I had played over the weekend. I somehow got the impression that they were looking for the people who currently owned the license to the Universe RPG so that they could republish the rules for the game. I think they'd be much better off just publishing the background for the Universe RPG--we didn't use enough of the rules to make a system worthwhile--I think I made three dice rolls in four hours. Don't get me wrong--this is a great thing for roleplaying, but it means that I didn't really get an opportunity to experience the Universe system as such. I didn't get to finish this event for lack of time, and I left my business card with the GM so I could hear how it ended, but I'm not suffering much for lack of info so far.

Storyboard RPG: "Assignment #321: Research and Rescue" on Sunday evening, run by Gregory Mathieson. A sort of Ultraviolet meets All Flesh Must Be Eaten meets Special Ops, this scenario had the PCs working for a special agency as commando troops/investigators into the disappearance of two colleagues at an isolated town. As with most adventures of the genre, it progressed from basic stalled investigation to hectic gunfire and panicked flight of the protagonists. We apparently missed a clue again, leaving one of our potential rescuees to be exterminated in the post-adventure "cleansing" of the area. Sometimes I think it doesn't really matter how much prep time you put into an adventure--your players will always find a way to throw you for a loop. None of us gave a rip (out of character) about the abandoned colleague, but many of us stood up (in character) for the borderline bad guy NPC who helped us out. Very intriguing roleplaying experience.

Sadly, I expect the rates for next year's ConQuest to increase. Happily, I think it will be worth it. If you're in the Bay Area, or even a couple hours out of the Bay Area, you won't regret attending. Scott Bagley's goal is to get every RPG-er in at least one game of their choice, and to help keep them all happy for the entire con. He takes his job very seriously, and it showed. At least, I made it into all the games I signed up for, and there were 95 events with over 600 player slots to fill. I did hear of a few games for which GM's bailed without notice (mark my words, the fire in Scott's eyes is to be feared when he snarls that their kind are blackballed). I heard NOTHING bad about the Con management this year, except in regards to the CCG focus.

Scott acknowledged this. Although I saw quite a few CCGs being played in the open gaming area (Vampire, in particular), the actually CCG rooms were very sparsely populated. I only noted a Shadowfist tournament being planned for Saturday. Otherwise, that room never seemed to be filled. CCGs seemed to drag, and Scott and I mused on whether CCGs would just be another fad. I personally thought that, like the paperback book, it would never really go completely out of style. But that's another story.

Boardgaming and RPGs were the strongest points of this con, with Miniatures gaming and Computer gaming right on their heels. I saw a phenomenal demo of the Blair Witch Project, which uses the Nocturne engine, running on a P-III 700. The graphics were simply stunning--flashlights speared half transparent demonic creatures, casting shadows that flickered off pillars and walls. Counterstrike, a terrorist vs. antiterrorist team game based on the Half-Life engine drew crowds as well.

People and events I regret having missed:

Rob Stone, creator of Agent X RPG. But I did manage to meet his lovely wife at their dealers booth, where she was selling some very colorful and creative candles. If I hadn't spent a bunch of money on candles the day before at another store, she would have gotten my money then.

Matt Gaston, creator of Storyboard RPG. But I did get to play a Storyboard game on Sunday evening. A creative minimalist system, but unless you know your character very well, there's a lot of sheet-referencing during play to determine applicable die rolls. Not quite as elegant as it could be, but respectable, nevertheless.

Sisko/Cisko? One of the founders/cornerstones of Living Greyhawk for Northern California. I tended to stay away from the RPGA stuff, but after talking with Scott for a while, I underwent a slight mindshift. I'll have to speak at length with RPGA folks in the future to find out more about what they're doing and how they're doing it. Apparently, WotC is using the RPGA as a marketing tool much more agressively than TSR ever did. They're a pretty dedicated bunch, and I'd like to know more about how they're being used/abused these days. Anyone who's in the know, post your thoughts in the Forum.

Regrettably, I passed on the LARPS this year, and consequently missed both "slightly live-action" Paranoia events. Apparently one of them had people armed with no-mercy nerf weapons, which they were permitted to keep afterwards. If a player shot another during the game, the character had shot the other character (thus my reference to no-mercy). The other was set in submarine: a number of tables were pushed together, covered with tablecloths, and surrounded with computers after herding the players underneath the tables. Dim the lights, camera, action! I'm not much of a Paranoia player, but I will definitely get into an event hosted by one of those two GMs in the future.

There were also FASA-sponsored Shadowrun events, as well as a Runequest Gilbert and Sullivan musical adventure, titled, "A Modern Mage, or General." Hoo-ah. Hope they run it again when I'm around. I heard it was one heckuva production.

People I did meet:

Mike Banks, editor of the Banner, the newsletter for the Bay Area Role Playing Society. I caught Mike as he was setting up his materials on a freebie table outside the convention administration office. A nicer grassroots gamer you will not find. His newsletter's been out for just over a year, and in its current state, it isn't going to win any awards, but he knows that. The purpose of his newsletter isn't to make money, but rather just one gamer's friendly gesture to every other gamer in the Bay Area. It helps keep gamers informed of local events, networks gamers with the stores and businesses who choose to sponsor the publication, and maintains Mike's own connections with retailers and game publishers. I'd say he's suceeded admirably. Check out the Bay Area RPS website at http://www.bayRPS.com. And gamers, take note: Apparently a subscription to his newsletter comes with a membership in Arpeegy, an online RPG retailer--and his subscription rate is half the price of Arpeegy membership. There's a deal, if I ever saw one -- if you want an Arpeegy membership.

Scott Bagley, who, at the age of 28, had to have a 17-year old teach him how to play D&D because he couldn't figure it out. From the day he got it, he was hooked, and he hasn't stopped since. He and a few other volunteers from Pacificon got together to form a convention in the Bay Area, and voila, ConQuest! He spends his Con days from 7:30 am to 2:00 am ensuring that every single RPG gamer who attends ConQuest is not lacking for a game to play, missing players, GMs, rooms, and any other problems notwithstanding.

Eric Krupa, the registration director for ConQuest tells me he's looking for ways to reach even more gamers. He's resorted to mailing lists recently. He got to 7900 gamers this year, and his goal for next year is to reach 15,000. If registrations are proportional to this year, expect ConQuest to explode (population-wise, that is). They'll need the extra space at Hyatt Rickey's in Palo Alto next year. This year they're bidding farewell to the Clarion in Milbrae. Eric tells me this is the first year of ConQuest without arcade games. My mental reaction is, "Arcade games? Who cares?" Apparently the lack of them had no discernable effect on the convention as a whole. Eric's a jaded sort, friendly as the rest of them, but with enough wit and suspicion to be cagey around the press. I ended up putting my pen down to talk to him.

And last, but not least, I met Jared Sorensen, Mr. Memento-Mori in the flesh as a co-victim in _All Flesh Must Be Eaten_. What a character. With his own website at http://www.memento-mori.com, he's got more than a few RPG creations peppered across the net. I'm surprised his head doesn't explode, it's so full of information and ideas. I hadn't even heard of half the Cronenberg movies he's seen, but then, that's what he does, much like I track the Simpson's. He dresses all in black and metal, looks like a character out of _A Nightmare Before Christmas_, and claims, "I am not a Goth." What a sense of humor. Obviously, I had to take him home with me so that he wouldn't fall asleep while driving the hour-plus back to his home in the wee hours. We chatted up a storm into the night, and headed back to the Con on Sunday after a good night's sleep and breakfast.

Oh yeah, if you'll read over everything I did this weekend, it ought to be completely obvious that I totally abandoned my poor wife. So she left me. Friday night I came home to find she'd made reservations for Saturday evening to visit my in-laws. Apparently quid pro quo was in order since I was abandoning her on a three day weekend to wallow around in gaming mudhole with "the unwashed masses," as we refer to those gamers who don't bother to shower for the entire time that they're at the con. (I'm too fastidious and anal-retentive to be one of those, trust me.) So on Saturday we went to a friend's wedding, I dropped her off at the airport, and then it was back to the Con for me.

Enjoy the Cons, but make sure the disinterested spouses are rewarded before and after, folks. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure they won't come back.

And if you plan to go to ConQuest, my advice is to preregister. Costs were $35 for the weekend, and $20/day at the door for Saturday and Sunday, and slightly lower daily rates for Friday and Monday. If you registered for ConQuest 2001 by August 21 of this year, kudos to you--it's only $30. I have no idea what prereg is at the moment, but if you're gonna be around, take advantage of it. I have no doubt the Confolk will put on a show to impress you next year, much as they did this year. Once again, that website is http://www.con-quest.com.

See you there next year!