ConQuest SF 2006 has come and gone. I walked away from the con very happy with my experience. I wrote a review of one of the games I played in, which you can find here. As for my review of the con itself, here are the top five most memorable bits, sorted in no particular order.

1.) ConQuest SF 2006 ran smoother than I thought it would. After the “email of doom” was sent out (you know the one that told all the GMs they had to run for eight hours but could only run six hour games and said that we would all be running three games to a room as though that was something we wanted), role playing at CQ looked like it was taking a turn for the worse. I know plenty of GMs (Good Omens or not) that were quite peeved and I feared it would make for a poor convention. Wow. Was I wrong! This year was the best ConQuest yet. Games filled up, players got into games, and in the end, albeit due to the fire marshal ordering it, we only had two games to a room. My hat goes off to Steven Dunn and Gerald Rouse for keeping the RPGs running as smoothly as they did and an extra special thanks to Steve for getting my Gnome Impossible! game re-listed so that I got to actually run it.

2.) Kids are great. Kids are evil. Kids have way more energy than I do. Kids want an outlet for their emotions just as much as adults do. Kids are great. There, I think that sums up my X-Kids game. If this doesn’t make any sense, let me back up a bit. At the request of CQ and the Young Player coordinator Becky Thomas I ran a young player game this year at CQ SF. Mike Bogan did as well and from what I saw when I walked in on his game and his review afterwards, his game was excellent. My experience? I ran for five girls, ages 11 to 14 and the mother of the youngest, thus being my first game with all female players (and six of them at that). At first I experienced a lot of what I could only label childishness. Several of the characters (Bobby, Rogue and Kitty) had romantic interests and two of the others (Pete and Angel) had deep ties to their family. Add to that some of the characters having qualities like “Super Hot” and “Pretty” and you can imagine the initial reactions: “Ew, I don’t want to date you.” “Well I’m breaking up with you.” “I don’t like boys” “I want to be Wolverine!” “Can I play Storm?” Despite this cynicism we started the game and I assured all of the players that they could completely ignore their character’s love interests (romantic or platonic) if they chose to do so. What happened next? We had a great game, that is what happened. To my surprise the kids became very passionate about the story. I was a little disturbed at their propensity for violence against humans (after all they are mutants, any one of them could kill any human or even many humans with little effort) but eventually they kept each other in check. What surprised and pleased me the most was that the youngest player (11) was one of the most imaginative and actually played to her character’s flaws. She was playing Bobby who was noted as a bad judge of character (he gives everyone a chance). In the scene where they met Raven Darkholme (previously Mystique) it as her character that decided “Yeah, we’ll trust her” and moved the plot along perfectly. So, come Kublacon 07, you’ll find me back in the YP room.

3.) The disappointment of missing a game you wanted to play in (see my last article about Kubla) is absolutely nothing compared to the disappointment of cancelling a game you were going to run. On Saturday morning I got up two hours before my Gnome Impossible! game. I ate breakfast and then went to the room and started setting up my table: Props, character sheets, adventure, laptop (for music), dice, etc. I sat and waited while I watched Rich’s table next to me fill up and eventually start turning away players. With me was Patrick, the one player who signed up for the game, Greg E. who said he would play in it if I needed someone and Cil Taylor who was hanging out while I waited. And waited… 45 minutes later I still has no players and found out from Steve that Patrick was the only one who signed up for the game. I had spent 30 hours writing the game and the characters and another 6 hours play testing it and I felt mortified. I understood the circumstances. I was going head to head with Rich’s World of Darkness game and Kevan’s Werewolf game, while I was running a Gnome focused Iron Heroes game. It made intellectual sense to me why their games would be filled up turning away players and I would have to cancel my game but emotionally I was a train wreck. I consolidated my self playing several fun card games with the folks mentioned above and told myself I would run it at DunDraCon, but nothing really took away that feeling of disappointment. I felt like an artist who creates his masterpiece and nobody comes to look at it. I assumed by the next day that I had gotten the rotten feeling out of my system (especially after running my X-Kids games and having a full table) but Greg Mathieson astutely noticed that I was still upset about it. Upon his suggestion I relisted the game (again with much thanks to Steve Dunn for not only relisting it but also encouraging players to sign up for it) and end up running for not six but seven players. The game ran two hours over and was pretty much the highlight of the con for me. So to this I say, if there are GMs who run games just so they can get into a convention for free, I don’t understand them. A well run game is just about the most satisfying thing I can do, and a poorly run game or one not run at all just fills my soul with sorrow. Sorry for the melodramatic phrasing there, but its true.

4.) Swag is fun. Conquest SF marks the pinnacle of Good Omens swag. This convention we had dice bags, Good Omens shirts (in red, black and pink), business cards, “Good Omens Killed My Character” pins, and our latest creation, custom d10 dice with “GO” in the “0″ place. The great part about dice is that when you order them in bulk they are cheap enough you can just give them away. And give them away I did. Whenever I saw a player walking around in a Good Omens T-shirt or wearing a pin I made sure to thank them for sporting our duds and gave them a GO d10. I know a single d10 isn’t much but between me giving out dice and other GMs handing them out at the games, some our players walked away with a decent collection of them. Sometimes I feel a bit like NASCAR having the Good Omens label all over me but so far everyone I’ve given a shirt or pin or die to have been happy for the swag. Swag rocks.

5.) We give Exotic Massages. We do? Well apparently someone thought it would be a fun joke to put fliers up all over the convention advertising exotic massages in room 6096 (the room all the Good Omens games were going to be held in). While most of us thought this was pretty hysterical, it does make me wonder if picking our room was coincided (possibly because it was the room number that looked closest to 69) or some kind of practical joke on Good Omens. If it was, thanks for the laugh, I just hope it was done out of humor and not hostility. Either way, get ready for “Good Omens Gave My Character and Exotic Massage” pins next year!

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