The time has come to speak of that which I should do every year. Origins. The gaming convention of choice amongst my group. And once again it was a great excursion. And this time, we brought pictures.

This year we back in a van. It was a sweet little ride, one of those Windstars with lots of AC and comfy chairs. The only drawback is that it's a bit small compared to the larger fifteen-passenger's we've used before. But myself, I enjoyed driving this lots more (except for the torrential rainstorm that had me nervous as hell). Also, we were smart enough to take the interstates this time, avoiding the 'shortcuts' we used a few years back.

It was good to be there once more. We have done this particular hotel, this particular convention center four years in a row now. We know the locale, we know a lot of the people. The 'regulars' as you would have it. I suppose we've become regulars. We've even kept in touch with those we've played with before. There was a choice between which LARP to play in, so we contacted our 'peoples' and tried to sway them over to our side.

We thought the LARP we played in was pretty damned good. Yes, we felt that we 'won' or at least kicked a lot of ass in the game. But you know, that's not the real reason to play. Yes, there is the spirit of competition, but what I'm looking for are good scenes, good interaction between characters. Memorable scenes with tension involved. And of course, conniving and secret plans, alliances, and betrayals. That's what makes for some great games of Vampire.

Of course there was a downside to the game. Some of the players. See in a game where there seems to be a definite winner (and even the Storytellers proclaimed the Sabbat as winners), there must be a loser. And some people just aren't cut out to lose graciously. We had this wrap-up session the last night of the game where some of the plots were revealed, we got to do Q&A about the game, and so on. It's a typical occurrence. But to some of these people, it turned into Bitch-Fest 2000. 'My character should have been more powerful.' 'You didn't do influences right' 'This storyteller was cheating in their favor' 'Wah, wahhhh'.

You know, I help to run a LARP, and the things are massive undertakings. These convention LARPs have around two-hundred or more players for three intense nights of gaming. And they have approximately seven or eight storytellers to handle this. They bust their ass while they are there, they spend overwhelming amounts of time preparing for the event, they sacrifice what fun they could have playing other games to run something for the group of us. And how do people repay them? Bitching and whining. We tried really hard to express our good feelings, because honestly we enjoyed ourselves. Maybe it's just differing levels of maturity amongst the players.

I'm sure some of them were complaining about paying to play and then not enjoying themselves. A valid point, but it could have been a lot worse. You see, Wizards of the Coast are the fiends who run this convention and some of the other larger events. Wizards deals in lots of products, but they're not too experienced on the LARP mindset. So when they saw an event costing fifteen dollars to play and it lasted for three nights, they presumed it should cost fifteen dollars per day. For a point of reference, the badge to get into the Con costs forty-three dollars. And Wizards, never known for their beneficience, wanted to make us pay that much. The sad thing is we would have paid the amount if forced to (actually we had some evil contingency plans, but I shall not speak of them here). We wanted to play that much. For some of us, this Con was the only real vacation we get during the year, and the LARPs are a big part of that fun. Luckily enough of us raised our voice and sent communications to WotC about their heinous pricing policies. The prices were lowered, and many rejoiced.

Let's see, who were some of the special guests worth mentioning? Of course, I talked to Tony DiTerlizzi once more. I can't wait to see the work he's doing for the upcoming 3rd edition AD&D Monster Manual. He did fantastic for the Planescape art and his work beyond that has gotten better and better. An actress who played on early segments of Babylon 5 was there (maybe more info on her). And then there was Spike.

James Marsten plays one of the antagonistic vampires (the few that survive) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Spike is cool, with his punk / cockney accent, short spikey hair, and straight-on evil attitude. He puts the screws to the characters on occasion, but unfortunately he's outclassed by Buffy and her butt-kicking ability. So anyways, he was there as a special guest of the Convention, and hey, since we're playing in a Vampire Larp, why not let him come play a part? We were expecting him to be a central character for a night, perhaps he was secretly an enthusiast of the game. Not likely. They handed him a dull scripted part to read out to us, sans mic, sans interaction with any other characters. And even though the man is cool, and he's a good actor, the intrusion on the game was largely felt to be unimpressive and unneccesary. I was much happier meeting him, shaking his hand, and possibly getting an autograph. I think it really drove home the point that 'this is a game, people - he only plays a vampire on television.' He might not even enjoy the role that has garnered him a bit of fame among our subculture. Who knows? Of course, I can still remember the kickass job that Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead, Hercules, Jack of All Trades) did in the Deadlands Larp. Totally improv. Totally Bruce having some fun.

I know I've focused on a few of the negative aspects here, but I should really stress that we had a good time. Yes, some people have tried to sway us to come to DragonCon next year instead, or to possibly attend GenCon. Maybe as a change of pace, maybe something new. But we like Origins, and it's becoming familiar to us. As long as it doesn't become the mundane trip of the year, I bet we'll continue. And who knows? My LARP crew may one day run one of these big events. And we can have Denise Richards and Jennifer Lopez be some vampire characters. Now, that doesn't sound too bad.

B.Mooney