Con Tales

I'm hooooooooooome.

Okay, so I barely slept last night, between nerves and lurgy. Still got up, got stuff together and headed out to Dragonmeet with the rest of the team. The taxi ride was nice, all things considered, and when we got there, corone was kind enough to help dodgyhoodoo with one of the boxes he was trying to haul in. Our trader's stall was huge; in a good area and right next to Travellers, which was kind of neat. So I went out shopping and, after my usual Dice Scoop adventure (they make us use a proper cup now, but I still got 1 d4, 29 d6s, 18 d8s, 6 d10s, 3 d12s and 19 d20s), picked up some great stuff (which I must now remember to take off my Amazon Wish List). I got the Clanbooks for Ventrue, Toreador and Tremere. I also got the Dark Ages book on House Tremere, back when they weren't Wyrm-tainted undead. And then I checked the sign-up sheet for my game. One person, who is apparently starting up an indie games store in Reading. I met him while I was chatting to a nice man named Kevin who was manning the stall selling Deleria and a neat-looking non-collectible card game called Horrific. So the morning session did not go ahead, and I was not happy AT ALL.

The afternoon went a little better, and we made a few sales, but best of all was when not one but two magazines came up asking if they could do reviews. One asked for us to send a PDF copy and said that we should consider them if we want to publish scenarios or errata in a mag. We also got approached by Team 8, a company who, for no charge, run other people's games at cons, and someone telling us about a weekender in Leicester sometime in April next year. Which was a laughable idea, considering how slow business was. cholten99 turned up and seemed impressed, but corone was too busy to take a peek at the stall, which was a bit of a pity as I was keen to see what he thought of it, but never mind.

We sold all the "Signature Trait: Geek" mugs (I get the feeling those will be very popular at cons in future; must print more next time, and less of the others), and several of the books. To my surprise, bibliogirl and her rotwang made an appearance, purchased a book (thanks, guys!) and hung out around the place for a little while for a chat. A couple of other familiar faces turned up, though I can't for the life of me remember exactly where I know them from. And, thankfully, I got enough people signed up to run the demo game in the afternoon. That went fantastically -- as seems usual for the few games of Affils I've run, one character winds up taking the de facto leader position because no one else makes any sense, several characters end up at each other's throats, and one character takes a straight left-hand turn into true Affiliate "Simple. Inventive. Nasty" territory. In this case, "Simple. Inventive. Nasty" involved a sabotage tactic to make a power drive leak explosive green goo, a silenced Para-Ordnance, remote-control locking of every door in the building bar the one our assassin was escaping from, a runaway sprinkler system and, in the end, the destruction of an entire building. They were wonderful players and if all groups are even half as good as them, I'm looking very forward to the next con.

The Affiliates bear no longer lives with us, though. He was given to a very good cause, though -- a charity auction for rare stuff. I can order another one, though; it's not like I gave them Clue or anything.

I survived Dragonmeet 2005! What's more, I think we were a success! I mean, poor SLA Industries got two people signing up for a 14-person game, and the whole convention seemed emptier than it was last year. I think we did very well for an unknown, looking at it objectively. Now we've got reviews coming in (one of the mags already has their review copy), a bunch of people who might turn around to their friends and say, "Hey, how about we play this new thing I found at Dragonmeet?" and general exposure. I think the ability to participate in the Undiscovered Authors novel competition is a small price to pay for this kind of thing. Then again, I'm now exhausted and am looking forward to the arrival of curry and a nice hot bath. Not bad for the lurgy-infected, though, huh?