Anonycon!

So, here's the thing about me and conventions.

I go to them. I stay so busy that I have no internet the whole time I'm at them. I come home and I'm either sick or just very sleepy. A new addition to this is that I have some hundred facebook notifications to go through before I'm caught up. The result? It takes me awhile to get back to lj.

But back I am! Anonycon was a wonderful way to spend my weekend, and continues it's status as the most enjoyable convention I go to. It's small, which I think is part of the charm--since this is my third year, the majority of the faces are familiar, and that makes the whole convention feel like a gathering of friends more than a gathering of strangers.

I went expecting to play/run maybe three slots. I'd volunteered to work the desk on Friday and go up early to help unload, which was a great way to start out the convention. Being there early and seeing folks come in meant the crowd grew slowly--and also meant that I got to learn a new board game, Race for the Galaxy, and play a couple hands of Teachu with folks like emilymorgan, banana_pants, banana_plants, and niliphim. It also meant that when there weren't enough players for the first Living Forgotten Realms slot, I was more useful to everyone at a table than at the desk, and I got to bring out Urtog for the first slot of the convention.

Saturday, I expected to play or run maybe two slots, and I started out the day with another LFR game, happily with some of the same people I'd played with the day before, as well as folks who I don't get to game with often enough on the home front. When the second slot came around, I thought I'd be playing again, but it turned out that they were short a judge for LFR. I hadn't actually prepped any adventures, expecting instead to run the last of the Xen'drik modules, but I realized that "Gangs of Wheloon" (by Andrew Schneider) was running, which I'd had the opportunity to run as a playtest months before. Given a little time to prep (and some very patient players, who waited while I looked things over), I got to run that adventure in a completely different way than it had run during the playtest, which was delightful. Hopefully the players had as much fun as I did!

Now sleepy, I had every intention of going back to my room and crashing for the night. I called up Nat Rowe (one of my Dogs in the Vineyard buddies, who'd also been my train buddy and at two of my game tables) and asked where he was going to dinner. Since he and his dinner companions (including hellpossum and lyster, who you may remember from a guest blog entry here last July) were still waiting for a table, they graciously expanded their reservation for me. And so I found myself at dinner with very excellent people with whom I'd corresponded but not previously met, and they very quickly convinced me that I needed to play in a Mutants and Masterminds game with them that evening. Since the time over dinner had quickly convinced me that I would definitely enjoy further adventures among their company, I joined their number as a femme fatale in an Indiana Jones inspired quest for the Spear of Destiny (and had exactly the fun you'd expect from hearing just that much).

Receiving very little sleep that night, I have to confess that I was relieved when I had no players for the Xen'drik slot the next morning. I played some more Race for the Galaxy with banana_pants, had a bottle of Coke, had a coffee delivered to me by the other Indiana Jones gang (who had slept in but heard the sleepiness in my voice when I called to find out what they were up to), and brought Urtog to another table of LFR (happily accompanied by the coffee-bearers). (Yes, you're counting right, that is in fact five games in three days, which is probably a tie for the limits of my gaming stamina--and better yet, I had fun at every table, which is not something I can always report.)

I also had some really great roomies in the hotel, which impacts sleeping in a negative fashion, but definitely enhances the fun of the convention. *waves at emilymorgan, spyscribe, militiajim, and niliphim* So, convention assessment: definitely a fun convention, and I'm already looking forward to next year. In fact, I'm sad that it's already over, because every time someone says Anonycon, I think of this:

And how can you not smile with that in your head?