So anyway, I'm at OrcCon, the first
Strategicon of 2001. It's a pleasantly large
convention, which is nice, as the last 4 or 5 have been pathetically small. The convention started on
Friday and goes through
Monday, but most of the convention is uneventful, and the whole weekend is only worthy of one write-up altogether.
First, I had some significant difficulty with having other computer room staff helping me to get on the Network. I had a network card, but none of the drivers on the Win98 CD worked with it. The one person who is considered to be the Network Expert in the computer room was unwilling to help me with my difficulties - he was too busy playing games to bother with something in his supposed area of expertise. As a result, I was somewhat put off, and disinterested in playing computer tournaments.
On Saturday night, I hosted a Scavenger Hunt. It went well, all things considered, but I was greatly surprised that almost all of the teams managed to find something for every item on the list. It made me aware of how easy some of the items were; I'll have to come up with more challenging ones for the next convention.
On Sunday("Today"), I played in a convention for one of my favorite board games, RoboRally. The game was being run by somebody who decided to take the convention heading, RoboRally Extreme, a little too far. The first round took almost 4 hours; the final that he set up involved 9 boards, 6 flags, and 8 players. This promised to make for an extremely long game.
After some heated complaints and arguments, I convinced him that it was too much. He took away one of the flags, which STILL made it far too long. However, he would not be swayed to simplify it more, and we began the game. It took over six hours for the first person to win, and I was close behind him. I would have been in second place shortly after him, but several players took it into their heads to try to foil me - never mind the fact that they were more than two full flags behind me, and were sacrificing any chance of taking third by doing this. As a result, it took me two hours more to reach the final flag. The entire tournament took over 12 hours - during which time, I could easily have played four other tournaments, or ten Computer Room tournaments! Monday morning, I took this complaint to Board Game HQ, and they agreed that 12 hours was far too long for RoboRally. There are some other board games that take that long by their very nature, but RoboRally shouldn't be one of them.
Monday was largely uneventful, as I woke up very late, thanks to RoboRally. I collected my winnings for computer games, and spent them on a Video Girl Ai CD in the dealers' room. I still haven't listened to it, but I will sooner or later.
I hope the next con, Gamex, is better...