My weekend at ConnCon

Between running the bar, chasing after my two year old, and trying to open a new restaurant I haven't had a whole lot of free time for anything let alone gaming away precious hours. But last weekend the stars lined up and I was able to make it up to ConnCon for just over 48 hours of bullshitting, boozing, and board gaming. The three B's! Here's how it went down.

Not two minutes after picking up my registration packet, I was recruited for a game of King of Tokyo with F:AT all-stars Matt Loter, Steve Avery, Billy Z, B Styles, and Josh Look. Not two minutes after that I had been killed off. But I digress. The game was a hoot, ending with Steve slamming the table and screaming 'I'm the king of Tokyo!' It really set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

And the 12 year old Elijah Craig I brought down set the town for the next game. Capo; one of Steve's prototypes. This one was a real blast, chock full of shit talking, alliances made then shattered, assassinations, and reprisals. I placed a close second to Josh Look's first, losing out by one respect point. It needs a tiny bit of polishing, but this is one fun game, especially with a group like we had. Looking forward to playing this one again.

Got a few light games in before my 7 o'clock slot of Merchants and Marauders. I won, but it wasn't easy. The game went on for four hours before I was able to put it to bed. Then it was time for Pretty Pretty Princess. The less said about that the better, but suffice it to say I was not the fairest of them all. I was close though! 

Got a few hours of sleep before day 2 started with me and some pals trying to figure out Carson City which was alleged to be easy to learn. We gave up and got in two quick games of Pandemic which we lost handily. Grabbed a bite to eat and it was time for a one shot RPG session of Trail of Cthulhu. I used to play Call of Cthulhu years ago and had really been wanting to try out this system. I wasn't disappointed. My fellow investigators were hardcore roleplayers who got waaaay into character which was a bit daunting at first, but wound up being a lot of fun. I'm hoping to run this sometime soon. 

After this I grabbed a game of Alcatraz: The scapegoat, which seemed cool and had really amazing artwork but was sort of wrecked by the guy who was teaching it. He basically just told us how to optimize each move and would be all like "No, no, what you want to do is..." when you tried to make a move on your own. Dude wasn't even playing! 

Got a burger at the bar then met up with Loter for a not so quick session of Summoner Wars where my ass was handed to me. Then he, Josh Look, a guy who's name I forget and I played back to back sessions of Wiz War. I could have played this one all night. What a blast. Nothing but lightning fast fuckery and plenty of laughs. Octavian, Billy Z and B Styles were playing Hight Frontier behind us while we were hurling spells at each other. That map gave me a headache just looking at it. It looked like a periodic table on acid. These guys played for hours and from what I understand it came down to the toss of a d6.  Hilarious.

My night session of Cosmic Encounter was cancelled and Avery broke out a cowboy themed card game prototype that no one seemed to know what the hell was going on in. As Avery had made himself scarce we bagged it pretty quick and after a shit talking and tequila shooting session Shelly broke out another card game prototype where players vie to create and complete the nastiest possible sentences. It might have been all the tequila and beers, but this one had me laughing so hard I woke up the next day feeling like I'd been doing crunches all night.

Speaking of waking up, about 90 seconds after dragging my hungover ass into the shower the fire alarm went off and the building was evacuated. I went outside with soap in my eyes, found some buddies and once they let us backinto the hotel we grabbed a quick game of Airlines Europe, which was a lot better than I though it was going to be. I won by about 20 VP's and then it was time for Mansions of Madness.

Octavian ran this session, and was an awesome keeper. The game although almost shanghaied by one of the players was a blast. I'm pretty sure we played one of those POD expansions and we barely made it out alive. I'd like to play it again for sure, but given the setup time and the length of play I don't see why people wouldn't want to just play a one off session of the Call of Cthulhu RPG with pre-generated characters instead. After the game I said my goodbyes, Octavian gave me a lift to the train station and it was back to New York.

I really had a great time last weekend, so psyched I was able to make it up. I love this site, but you just can't beat actually hanging with some of the characters you meet here electronically. Real fun bunch of folks. I was hoping to try Eclipse and/or Mageknight while I was there but the times never seemed to line up.  What are you gonna do.  It was great meeting and hanging out with everyone I'd never met, and great to see the folks again that I had. Hope to make it up again next year.