Another Year, Another T-Con

So T-Con was this past weekend. I was Volunteers Coordinator, because I Was Needed. The job was riddled with problems. First, I only got six volunteers, and most of them went away after setup (which was still a Herculean task, and still required half the staff to pitch in). Next was that even if I did, all the con's radios seemed to have vanished, so when there was a job for a volunteer to do, I couldn't communicate effectively with them, and was forced to ask the rest of the staff to flag them down when they were seen -- assuming, of course, that they recognized the total strangers that showed up. Teardown was even more of a problem, because I had only one volunteer; I ended up being a mere grunt for the most of it.

All this meant that I didn't get to enjoy the con as much as I liked. I barely saw George R. R. Martin, for instance. Worse than that, I didn't get to see many of my old friends at all, particularly the old Spielers. There were some good moments -- ursulav was Awesome, and I went to one of her panels. I later bought some art from her; she does lovely work. The mixer on Friday was decent, if a bit awkward. I knew very few people there. Overall, I think my staff shirt was also a bit offputting, in many places; methinks I'm not gonna wear it next year.

I played a zombie board game that one of the RPG GMs brought, The Last Days of something or other. It was interesting; it deals less with killing huge hordes then specific scenarios (Steal The Truck and Escape Town, Destroy The Cursed Objects, etc.). Despite the game's size (and price), the scenario we ran went pretty fast, about 45-60 minutes. I think maybe the guns in the game are too powerful; someone with a revolver can blow zombies' heads off at range pretty damn fast.

Main Programming was OK, though I had to leave before the Plectrum concert to run my D&D session. The game went well -- a pretty big helping of character development instead of plot revelation. This plus an accidentally overpowered Random Encounter meant that plot took a backseat this week. That's OK. The characters need some fleshing out, and I need to get a handle on what the hell I'm gonna do with them later.

Auction was great. Would have been greater if I actually had more than 5 bucks, as there was some nice stuff in it, including an old copy of Acquire that would have been neat to run. As it was, I dealt with jochanan for a small and curvy sword he got as a set from the auction. It's nice decoration, though with the curves and the serrations, it seems to be more trouble than it's worth to make it functional. I could be wrong, however.

And that is that. I went home and relaxed for a while afterward. I'm supposed to hear about a job this week. We'll see how it goes.