thebitterguy

Just a note that I'm currently planning to attend TABSCon XX on September 12. There's a few fun and relatively easy games on the schedule I plan to attend. Currently on my schedule is BSG, Pulp City & Fantastic Worlds.

So, I dug up the Polaris website and looked through the panelist info, and it seems like the schedule is mostly comlete. So below the cut are my

( My Polaris schedule )

A few thoughts.

Saturday night's going to be busy. Boy, it's a good thing there isn't a large & popular event going on at that time!

Oh, wait. At least there's no fucking 1 am panels this year. Seriously, does the programming staff just hate me?

I appear to be alone on half of my panels. Including the one where I really, REALLY don't like the show. No one else seems interested in black superheroes or Scott Pilgrim. Just you wait! Hipster charm will win you over!

There's no sign that there's a Panels in Peril list, so I don't know what they'll do if I'm the only one interested.

I should re-read & re-watch the subjects of my panels, I guess.

So, yeah. Weekend was spent on the road, mostly. This past weekend was CanGames, which is at this point the oldest gaming con in Canada.

I drove up to Ottawa on Friday. I left later than I'd planned because I was arguing for a while with UPS about getting Cynra's replacement phone delivered. Some of the quirks of the delivery: They could not deliver it to my work location in Mississauga. They could not leave it if I signed the form. It could be picked up (by me only) from the Hamilton depot.

Thankfully, one of our neighbours would be home in the afternoon, so UPS was directed to leave it there. I'm gonna be writing a letter about this.

So. Friday was my Buffy game, set in 17th Century France. I was the watcher. We fought demons. Or Hessians. It kind of blurred after that.

Saturday was a game of Savage Worlds with the same GM. He was a very good GM, in spite of being occasionally somewhat under-prepared. And we didn't use minis in the Savage Worlds game, which felt strange since I'd always viewed it as a minis heavy game.

Game three was Desolation with jkahane. It ended in a total TPK because of a riddle misinterpretation, which is a bit more Play Dirty than I'm used to.

After con I met up with Gabe and his gf for Shwarma dinner. I had no idea about how Bank Street was completely torn up for repairs. We made our way down to Shwarma King, and I got the platter, which turned out to be a wee bit beefier than I thought it would be.

I'd done some shopping that day, and had picked up a bottle of the Life Potion energy drink. Since I didn't have lunch (but did have a delicious breakfast of huevos rancheros) I thought I'd try it. Bad idea. Kept me up until almost two.

Got up and checked out of teh hotel, but got to the con a little late, and found out that the GM (who I will go on record as saying is a douchebag) had given my spot away. Sure, as is his choice, but Mother Fucker, it's Sunday morning 9 a.m. Some of us gotta check out of our hotels and were up a little late the previous evening. Even if it wasn't doing anything fun.

I spent the rest of the day kibbitzing with some dealers and some possible guests. One of the dealers told me the story of how he'd gotten a box of used D&D modules that included a copy of the mythical "Up the Garden Path".

Also got Final Flight of the Santiago from Mongoose. Been looking for that for a while.

Back to work tomorrow. Actually looking forward to it for a change.

Well, this weekend is Transformers Con, a fan run celebration of Autobots and Decepticons, will be held at the Doubletree hotel on Dixon. It looks like a very cozy show, and will have a dealer's room as well as some guests, including voice actor Dan Gilvezan (Bumblebee/Slipstream/Peter Parker).

They're having a game night tonight, which I can only assume must include the Transformers Risk game. Good times.

Info can be found at TFCon.ca.

Xposted to toronto and thebitterguy.

{sarcasm}Someone should, of course, start a petition to complain that they're holding their con only a week before GI Joe Con. This is obviously their attempt at cornering the 80s Cartoon Toy nostalgia con market. {\sarcasm}

When I was at Gryphcon this weekend, I picked up a few contacts for people who might be interested in GX. One of the cards was for a nascent local gaming con Hammercon.

It's scheduled (at least according to the card) for October 17, and is being organized by Hammer Games, a gaming portal for Hamiltonians.

Sequential, which is always interesting, has announced that The 2009 Paradise ComicCon has been cancelled. I guess that'll teach them not to schedule events against Toronto Trek.

My favourite bit is how kev_the_mev did not quit working with Paradise to work on FanExpo, he defected. Man, I wonder how Orwell would react to that description of events.

I'm gonna take a jet to NY and Buy all these

Holidays are well planned this year, somewhat. I've got a few rollowers from last year that I got because my Christmas vacation got turned into a bereavement period, and I've got march break off (Hey, Ottawans! I'm coming for YOU!). I've got the two days prior to FanExpo off, and I've taken the Monday afterwards, too, so I can just relax. Maybe we'll stay for dinner after show and stay at the hotel an extra night.

I'm still trying to arange for the other few days of the year, and hoping I'll get holidays (Thanksgiving and Victoria day and Canada Day and all the other great holidays they don't celebrate in the Holy Republic).

I may just apply to get the Friday of Toronto Trek off. And maybe the Monday.

( Five Questions below here. )

Anyone got any info on gaming cons upcoming in Ontario?

I know CanGames is coming up on May 24. Is Baycon a go for this year? King Con in Kingston? Anyone know if Pandemonium is going to happen this year?

There's also the con in Peterborough at the library, right?

TCon seems to have given up gaming entirely, although Ad Astra is running it in that one room that it always runs in.

Am I missing any? Upstate New York or the Detroit Area or Montreal too.

I'm working on getting stuff together at GX this year. We'll see what's up.

So, yeah, busy freaking weekend.

Friday was the group party at the chain restaurant. I suspect that our table was actually squeezed into a spot between where two other tables would normally be, as it was tight getting in and out. It was enjoyable, although I really have to wonder what it is that convinced two different people this year that I apparently really like James Bond trivia. The steak was good.

Saturday was the quarterly Browncoat T-Shirt Shindig. It was fun, and I got my Liev Shcreiber Fan Club t-shirt finished with the addition of the dorsal slogan "Liev and let die". canker_cansion and I got to play some Race for the Galaxy until our knees gave out. The only available playing area was in the t-shirt hanging room, so we were squatting on cushions around the table while a forest of cotton t-shirts waved about us.

R4TG's core mechanics have a pretty flat learning curve. Once the base mechanic (pick an action) gets explained, what you can do will take the rest of the game to settle, but once the basics are there, you get a grasp of it fairly quickly (IMHO).

Everything went smoothly at the shindig, although the pizza run didn't happen. Maybe I should have taken that bull by the horns. And we watched the X-Files sequel, "I desperately want to believe this film doesn't suck".

Sunday was quieter, with some shopping during the day and the Hobbystar Holiday part in the evening. kev_the_mev got squished into a side seat, so I had to be his appetizer valet. Good night, overall, even if there weren't enough gifts for the gift exchange, and I once again ended up with candy. And enough popcorn to kill a man.

So, yeah. Not much rest this weekend, and I didn't fill up my my CPAP resevoir after getting home on Friday, so I had the lovely bloody snot on Saturday. Yum!

Cynra and I did get to watch the pilot of Leverage on Sunday before and after the party. Enjoyable little show. A little too in love with itself in that final scene, but overall fun. If they can keep a consistency to the capericiousness of it, it'll be good. And always good to see Christian Kane working again.

This morning, amusingly enough, I woke up at five and couldn't get back to sleep. That didn't get me off to a good start.