Conventions – Llamafodder

I have a lot of thoughts about Big Bad Con, as an event, etc.

To start, they were strong and consistent in their messaging about masks, and followed up with emails the week before the convention reiterating expectations – including wearing an N95 or equivalent mask in all convention spaces. Right inside the main entry doors was vaccine check in, a separate station that checked your vaccination card, checked that you’d self-tested in the last day or two and were Covid negative, then issued you a wristband that the actual con check in staff looked for before handing over your badge.

On that topic, the hotel staff was all masked – and many local businesses unaffiliated with the convention (including customers and employees at the nearby Lucky’s supermarket, and the staff of both restaurants) were masked – so it was more a local norm than just the con attendees alone standing out as the sole people still wearing masks.

I arrived early – on Thursday this year, which made check in particularly a breeze, walk-up without lines for both stations. I checked in to the hotel and unloaded the car, then popped out for some grocery shopping [bagels and yogurt for breakfast, trail mix for snacks], hit the bank, and filled up the car for the journey home.

I returned in time for most of the Thursday night events, and I can see why my friends went out of their way to show up early in past years. There were 4 events on Thursday night, and I attended the last three – a fun “Hollywood squares” game featuring the various guests of honor and special guests, then a “D&D poetry reading” that was a cover for illicit Bingo (but not really) – well handled humor, with poetry and a live rickroll at the end, then Dinosaur Karaoke. The karaoke night was fun (though I departed about halfway through the two hour event) – a very strong early contender was a singer who’d written their own “as a Dinosaur” lyrics for Hallelujah, which replaced the “Hallelujah” with “chew right through ya” and the remainder of the song was similar feasting on prey substitutions… very well done.

The Thursday night events felt intimate – like the con organizers were entertaining their special guests, each other, and the rare people who showed up early. I can see why locals like Pat have talked up taking the extra day off work so strongly…even though there aren’t “real games” scheduled, what Thursday gives is an “insider” feeling to the con. (That was particularly useful to me this year, since I didn’t have the lunch connection with Fresnans scheduled.)

Friday, I headed across the street to the nearby Taqueria — they were overwhelmed and took 40 minutes to get to my burrito. (A few minutes after placing my order, they stopped taking orders altogether, and had the order taker hop to the back to help with the backlog.)

Saturday, I had a gap afternoon, since I hadn’t gotten into a prepared game, and didn’t want to hustle to try to get lunch and into a game on demand. So I walked to Broadway in downtown Burlingame, which had a great swathe of tempting restaurants. I decided on late lunch at https://www.fuumikitchen.com/. Their grilled eggplant was delicious – straight off the grill, no dipping sauces required. I had a pair of rolls – the Broadway was a good roll, but their Ice & Fire was delicious and subtle.

I didn’t need a scoop of ice cream at Preston’s Candy and Ice Cream, but it was good walk from the hotel… and delicious.

Enjoyed two games at big bad con today. The morning game was Sleeper on Glass Mountain, a Dungeon World scenario. It was a very interesting experience, significantly different if feel from my previous play in Fresno. The scenario was very exploration focused for the first 2 hours (few rolls and no fights), a frustrating middle where we couldn’t figure out how to continue our progress, then some interesting fights and conflicts that we rushed to get in before the session’s end.

Breakdown: The Breaking Point was the afternoon game. We made a tight squadron of paramedics, each with important challenges that threatened to derail our characters. The game started with a bang, with three of us coming off our third day of work, but staying after as a nearby school called in a three alarm fire – the chemistry lab exploded and the nearby wing had partially collapsed. So, exhausted, we rushed out to the school and split into two groups – to save children from the collapsed rubble of the school wing, and rescue another class from the burning chem lab. The rescue was a success, though we paid physically and emotionally. We then dealt with all of the messy drama that went along with trying to juggle lives alongside our work — for example, my character had to cancel taking his mom to her doctor’s appointment when the call came in… and woke up in the hospital, where Aunt and Mom were picking Kareem up… instead of the reverse. Great characters emerged quickly from play, and the tension only built as we put aside obligations to fill the short staffed positions…
(Breakdown is hoping to get a short print run to IPR for fulfillment this holiday season.)

Friday night, I went to games on demand and got to play Wildsea. It’s an interesting Forged in the Dark game with a few minor rules changes… But really, it’s all about the setting. It’s a deeply weird post apocalypse, but this apocalypse was the greening – trees a mile high have grown around the globe, blanketing everything.

It’s a fascinating world to explore, reminding me positively in many ways of Scum and Villainy. The setting is deeply silly but played straight; like the ships draw themselves through the tree tops with immense chainsaws, some of the PC races are a collective of spiders in a people suit, humans from our era who were trapped in amber and awake to this strange world, cactus people and more. The art is beautiful and evocative.

Saturday morning I played the Alien RPG, Hope’s Last Day. A great table, including an awesome android, Holroyd, who staved off a grizzly end for us many times, boldly throwing themselves in harm’s way to save the doomed colonists. The ending was bittersweet, in part because of a sleazy betrayal (by my character) at the end… But it felt very true to the universe.

Last Fleet: Cold War was probably my favorite game of the whole convention. It was very Battlestar Galactica in setup – full of juicy drama (and drama atop that!) , but it was really my fellow players who made it sing. We had dueling Admirals, an overwhelmed CAG who woke up in the bed of the Chief Engineer to kick off the game… plus family drama and hard decisions. The Corax were implacable, ambushing us at exactly the wrong moment… but trusting our corrupted Corax clone was the right decision when our foe ambushed us out of hyperspace while we were squabbling…
Really, I was a pure pleasure to be at the table. Our characters were mostly generated, with a few picks required to finish them off, and with some links to other characters already generated. We introduced our characters to each other in character… whew! And made up extra NPCs to share, who really had vibrancy from the word go – and totally messed up out lives. I played the President, and I still feel guilty about blowing my top and alienating my awesome Chief of Staff Julia…

Sunday morning I played The Dawn Of A New Era / X-men, a Tokyo Brain Pop system. We joked an hour in that we were playing a Spring Beak Issue, since we broke the power grid at the fence and got a trip to Savage Island resorts while the repairs were made. The system was a little too simple for my tastes, but the characters we made were fun, and the asides about the various “Professors” from the Xavier School who were chaperoning reflected a lot of love and lore from my fellow players.