Friday, July 31, 2009

Badges of Geekness

As noted in the earlier BoG post, there's just some things that game geeks know. I'm not talking about the stuff that floats freely about the spheres, but that which bubbles below the crust of the Geek world. The stuff that's above the crust tends to be non-worthy of a BoG (like knowing the names of the secret identities of the most popular superheroes). This is the stuff that even the non-geek surface dwellers find out, thanks to summer superhero blockbusters, etc. That kind of pop culture stuff is all above crust. No more badges handed out for that info!

Anything of "ours" that has been jammed into a digestable movie format or tv series just ain't that special anymore. When most of the residents of a retirement community know that Bruce Wayne is Batman, it's over for that super. Ask them who Hawkman is though, and you'll get the normal glazed over stare...

But this post isn't supposed to be about supers. That's not the angle of my geek. It's just that supers have probably made the most cross-over to the surface, and so provide the easiest examples. There's not a whole bunch of sword-n-sorcery stuff that has made this journey. I'm hazarding a guess that if it has, it has gone from novella to comic to movie (like Conan), the exception being The Lord of the Rings. Surface dwellers were exposed to Hobbits, Middle Earth, the Ring and the Fellowship, thanks to P. Jackson and Co. This knowledge will be reinforced when The Hobbit is released as a blockbuster, too. So, some of the special warmth of our coveted secret knowledge will be sent to the ether for mass consumption.

This just means we have to dig deeper for our sword-n-sorcery badges of geekness. Now, this post went nowhere to the point I was trying to make, which was about my BoG for my limited Tolkien knowledge. And, as this post is on the brink of blather, I'll bail out pronto, quoting some Gandalf...

Keep it secret!

Keep it safe!

(And I have no clue who Hawkman is...)

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Dexcon Aftermath!

Part two of my summer con trilogy has come and gone! Dexcon marks the halfway point between Origins and GenCon. Unlike those other two cons, this one is located in NJ and too, too convenient to attend. It's also a great rally point for all our home hogs.

Dexcon was the most successful con to date from an event standpoint. Thanks to all the support from The Prof, Willy the Too and Spointer, we were able to run three WEGS sessions simultaneously, marking the most number of players to be WEGS-ing it the same time (17 players). Sure, someone might be throwing down WEGS for mass amounts of people somewhere else on the globe, but I haven't heard of it yet (and if they are, let me know so I can sell them some rulebooks!).

At Dexcon, the WEGS arena is set-up at the hotel side entrance in front of a cascading wall of water. The area is just big enough to fit three large tables, the WEGS banner and the product table. It's a great area for passing traffic, but standing in front of a waterfall for twelve hours is enough to bring down a SAN% test. Luckily, some non-con attendee decided to take a swim in the pool late Sat. night, resulting in the waterfall being turned off all day Sunday.

The con ended with yet another amazing game: 99 Low Level Orks! This was the final WEGS event on the schedule, and, truth be told, I thought there wouldn't be any player turn-out for it. Sunday con games are usually a bust. Not the case this time! Thanks to The Prof's tireless recruiting tactics, we had to set-up two tables side-by-side and run the game for 9 players. The game took us all the way up to the close of the con (6 pm).

As you can tell from the tardiness of this post, it took a little longer to recover from this one!

Next stop, Gen Con!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Origins 2009 Aftermath!

Origins, the first of the big three summer cons, has come and gone! Thus the gap in my postings: a couple weeks prior to the con is prep time, a couple weeks after is recovery! Two remain, though: Dexcon, NJ and Gen Con, IN. The hardest one to prepare for is the first, after that it's routine pretty much.

GameWick Games had a corner booth in the center of the exhibit hall and, thanks to our friends and fans, was rocking all the time. The Bride of WEGS (as she is called by the King of the TTG), Willy The Too and Spointer were all on hand to assist with the demos, allowing me to stay sane amidst a sea of gaming hysteria. And then there was the Witthogs, who showed up everyday for the WEGS Power Play sessions (from 2 to 4 pm). Wicked, wicked fun!

At night, we convened at 9pm for our official convention events: these are the events that folks register for. These events were jam-packed every night, so much so that on Saturday we had to add a second session of Dingbitt's Dunge O' Doom (one session run by Willy The Too, the other by Spointer). I floated between the two tables as the disembodied Kreator/pit boss. I think that's the most players ever to wegzit in the same room, same time (just barely beating the single session at the Krystal Keep back in 2008).

All in all, a great way to start the summer con season!