Back from Charlotte

And ConCarolinas was a blast. Let me regale you with what happened.

Friday I arrived at the train station in Richmond a little closer to departure time than I would have cared for. Not that it mattered, as the 79 Carolinian was running a bit late. It ended up running later on the stretch between Petersburg and Rocky Mount, in part because of two northbound trains which had right of way on a couple of single track stretches and partly because the heat of the day forced the train to go slower so as to prevent the tracks from expanding. So ultimately I arrived in Charlotte about thirty-some minutes late. Not that it mattered too much. Due to a smash-up in Knoxville messing up traffic, arymetore and witchcat07 only got to the station a few minutes ahead of me and hadn't had time to check in to our room. So I had to skip out on the intended pick-up game of Munchkin Cthulhu I had arranged earlier with some of the Savages. Most of the rest of the evening was spent wandering around get a feel for the layout of the con.

Saturday morning started off with going down to the room set aside for gaming panels which Clint had arranged for a gathering of Savages at 0800. We jabbered on about Savage Worlds and otherdoc did this monologue where he's an archbishop who preaches of salvation through coffee and warning of the Devil's insidious creation known as decaf. Sean Patrick Fannon also made a surprising announcement about an upcoming Savage Worlds license. Since he'll deny knowledge of it, I won't say the name of the property, but it's one that you never would have thought a license could be obtained for.

A little after 0900 I wandered into the Media Room where they were showing The Terror of MechaGodzilla. According to the schedule, making MST3K comments were welcome so I took it up on its offer. One of the lamer monsters was this dinosaur type kaiju whose main power appeared to be flapping his tail (which had a fin on the end) to create a superwind. Naturally, due to the direction the breeze came from, there were several cracks made about beans and Mexican food. Afterwords, I headed over to the Dealer's Room to blow away over two hundred bucks on gaming stuff. Among the items I got were copies of The Flood for Deadlands Reloaded, Necropolis 2350, The Hellfrost Player's Guide, The Explorer's Edition print of Necessary Evil, 12 to Midnight's Last Rites, and the base set of Arkham Horror.

At 1100 I arrived at a panel on the subject of the rising sales of fantasy books and similar decline for science fiction books. While many interesting were brought up, one I don't recall hearing anything on competition from TV. After, there are plenty of science fiction shows available, but classic fantasy is almost non-existent in the medium. However, they may have brought it up, as I had to briefly skip out due to the fact that the bag holding my purchases was beginning to disintegrate.

At 1200 I went to a panel discussing the upcoming Hobbit movie and talked of all the things we're hoping for and dreading. Casting apparently is still unknown except for the obvious names like Ian McKellan and Andy Serkis.

At 1300 I went to a panel on Gamemastering 101 in which Clint and Sean were participating and picked up some interesting points. At 1400 I went back to the Media to sample Grenadier. However they were still showing another anime called Pumpkin Scissors. While the name is pretty stupid sounding even by anime standards (and the rationale for the name given in one episode still has me scratching my head), it piqued my interest enough that I'll probably add it to my Netflix queue.

At 1500 was a game of Munchkin I had signed up for. The guy who was running it was a bit late and gave us the option of either regular Munchkin or Star Munchkin. We chose the latter. I almost won the first round too. I was at level nine and had drawn a monster I could beat. So naturally they started piling on the monster enhancer cards until its level was slightly higher than was beatable for me. So I played my ace in the hole and threw down the We Come In Peace Speech card, which subtracts five from a monster's level. But a nasty surprise was in store for me when someone then played the ...And Its Clone card, effectively doubling the monster's level. I avoided getting completely screwed though when I rolled a six for my Run Away attempt.

At 1900 I wandered around aimlessly and returned to this vendor I saw earlier who had some Kolchak comic books for sale, of which I purchased a few. 2100 was suppose to be the start of a Munchkin tournament, but the guy who was going to run it was MIA so I spent the rest of the evening wandering through one of the gaming rooms looking at some of the games. One guy showed me the Gold Edition of Frag which looked interesting. However, he said its no good unless there are at least three players and no one else was coming up. Another was this kaiju themed game which looked interesting. But the rulebook for it was intimidatingly thick and I didn't feel up to playing it cold.

Sunday morning at 0900 I went down to the Media Room where they were showing Star Blazers. I left partway through the second episode mainly because there was this one kid who kept talking. So I wandered over to the panel on The Now of Gaming. Seeing as how this was a Sunday morning, it was poorly attended. In fact there were more panelists then audience members (just me and one other guy). It then segued into the panel on World Building. Afterwords I headed back to the Media Room where they were showing Grenadier. However I found it not to my taste and left after one episode. I ended up in the Dealer's Room again and purchased a Call of Cthulhu campaign book called Spawn of Azathoth. then I rejoined Ary and Witchcat who were playing a game called I Drank What? at the Empire Games demo table (which they ended up buying). Once done, it was good-bye to Charlotte and a long trek up to Virginia.