Origins 2011

Last year, Tanner and I attended Origins for the first time. I was going as part of the D20 girls, and Tanner was going because he wanted to binge himself on games. We had a pretty fabulous time, so we were definitely looking forward to this year’s trip. It’s really nice being able to remain close with someone you’ve dated, especially when that means you can continue to beat their ass down in games. Yay friendship!

(Tanner would like it known that he won 50% of the games, so perhaps *someone* is taking a few creative licenses with her claims of ass kicking)

Origins isn’t going to get a day-by-day breakdown, because honestly, I was working most of the time, and that cannot be interesting to read about. So here’s an overall blurb about it!

The drive up was nice – we stopped in Tamarack for dinner, which was fantastic. West Virginia is really pretty but Ohio roads suck balls. If anyone ever asks you to road trip through Ohio, run away as fast as you can.

Working for GAMA was pretty neat, my first day I helped with the guest breakfast, which was fun. Basically, you pay for breakfast, and you get to eat and hang out with some of the con guests, which is prime time to pick their brains with all those questions you didn’t get to lay on them at their last panel. It was a nice way to interact with the guests, much more intimate and low key than you normally get. And I got to see my friends Tim and Anna and Ed and Destini! The rest of the day, I was in the game library, so I got to play a bunch of award nominated games. Oh, the grueling labor…  “Zombie Dice” was cute:

Roll three dice at a time, eat brains, do not get killed by shotgun!

and “Last Call” was a big hit. 

Compete with your friends to see who can make their drinks the fastest and most efficiently!

I also worked in the theme bar Saturday night, where we played my new favorite game “Three Dragon Ante” (sort of the love child of Dungeons and Dragons and poker)

The rules don't condense well, so let's just go with "play poker with dragons!"

Gambling games bring out the worst in me, as you can tell by my (wooden monocle) dastardly villain moustache!

 and I got to talk to a lot of cool cats and was introduced to a fun and silly little card game called “Godzilla Stomp!” 

Throw down a semi-random card! Get points! 

It wasn’t all fun and games though! I manned the volunteer booth for a day, and as you might expect, there weren’t a ton of people wanting to sign up to volunteer while they were rushing from one game to the next.  The Secret Service showed up and jammed everyone’s wireless (including cell phones) as they ushered Vice President Biden to a speech at the convention center, so I was promoted from “gopher” to “messenger pigeon”. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to sprint through a convention center in a corset, let me tell you, it’s not quite Baywatch-in-slow-motion-sexy.

The highlight for me was running a game demo in the miniatures room for Faultline Studios, called DADOS. It’s Spanish for “dice”, and it’s a fairly simple strategy/luck game where you roll dice and place them to try and “win” a tile by having the most points on it at the start of your next turn. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins – but some of the tiles help you and some of them don’t, so it’s a gamble as to which tiles you try to win. It’s the kind of game that’s easy to learn and tricky to play well – there’s a few permutations in strategy, and a lot of it depends on your opponent as well.  And, I may or may not have gotten owned by a 9 year old.

Tanner’s views on Origins were somewhat different, since he was attending as a regular person having fun. In typical concise Tanner fashion, his review is thus: less people and less free stuff than last year (from when Rio Grande Games was sponsoring the board game room, I guess?). Still a really good supply of games to play, still a really good dealer room. Not as much interesting scheduled stuff. Good panels. Really cool miniatures set up. Got to game with people from last year, which was cool. Less going on at night and everything shut down earlier. Had a lot of fun and the attendees were really nice. Recommended games: Fiasco, Confusion.

Thanks, Tanner!

Also interesting is watching Origins work on accommodating a younger crowd – this year, the theme was “steampunk”, and there were so many more costumes than last year! It probably helps that steampunk is one of the few genres of costuming that’s comfortable to sit and game in for several hours…

Anyway, we had a good time, and we’ll be back next year! To everyone I saw at Origins, I wish we could have had more time to hang out! You must forgive my workaholic  tendencies. V_V

Till the next con! <3