CHOOSE RANT

Title:   Origins '99 Day:    July 6th, 1999 Author:  Ruiner				Well, the group and I once again survived our yearly trip to Origins, and it was a blast. Our plane returned late Sunday night, and from talking to everyone involved, we all snagged around thirteen hours of sleep to recoup from the long weekend. Once again Columbus, Ohio showed us all a good time. Things were a bit weird this year with the convention. Sometime last year, Wizards of the Coast, evil overlords that they are, bought Andon Unlimited, the guys who put on the whole Origins show, along with GenCon and all those others. It was probably a good move for Andon, putting lots of money in its coffers. But over the past year, they've had to relocate their offices to Seattle, Washington and get things straightened up. There were side effects of this transition, such as my entire crew not getting their registration books until June, when the deadline was right around the corner. And there wasn't much in the book, because many of the game companies didn't make the new unannounced deadline to be printed in the pre-reg book. Of course, what are we going to do, boycott the convention? Not likely. Sure we could have switched up and gone to DragonCon in Atlanta, which was being held the exact same weekend (and don't get me started on the evil motivations behind that maneuver). That's not our style, though. I like having my badge say that this was my fourth year attending the Con. It's not as good as having it say 'Gamesmaster', but still nice. And really there wasn't a tragedy for signing up because we only had one primary event that all of us wanted in on - the LARP (more in a minute). Other games showed up for late registration, and we still got the jump on those by waiting in line. It wasn't a problem. I was fortunate enough to get my whole crew of six in on a Wraith: the Great War game under the line developer Rich Dansky. It was a neat setup that he hadn't actually run before. The game was called 'Van Richtoffen's Shadow' and it was fairly neat. There was very good pacing that unfortunately resulted in the end of one of my friend's characters, but that was still okay. Rich is a funny guy, lots more personality than some games developers that I've met. There was the funny moment when he left the table to get a stick with which to beat one of my friends for repetitive Jar Jar Binks impersonations. One thing that struck me as particularly nice was him being flexible with scheduling. Art and I originally showed up for the game at 8:00 am, which wouldn't be so bad except we had retired from the LARP the night before around three in the morning. Rich looked as tired as we were, so after a quick suggestion, we changed things around to play later. He seemed as pleased as we were even though I later learned he still didn't get any sleep that morning. Oh well. There was drinking involved the first night at the convention. My entire crew shared some drinks at Damon's and later at the hotel bar (the Big Bar on Second). That was the first time in my life that I can remember seeing one of the guys drink, and I've known him for twelve years now. We had the barkeep ask us where we were from because we were drinking like fish. I know I threw back many glasses, but it was surprising given that I've let my tolerance drop over the past year. Maybe that needs to change. Let me touch upon the subject of the Guest of Honor, Mister Jeff Conway. For the uninformed, he recently played Security Chief Zack Allen on Babylon 5, one of my favorite shows. His character was cool, but I guess that doesn't necessarily extend to real life. We've met many of the other guests at the past conventions. Mira Furlan and Jerry Doyle, both of Babylon 5 fame who were both extremely personable. Tom Clancy, esteemed military book author. And Bruce Campbell of Army of Darkness and Hercules/Xena fame. All these people were friendly and a pleasure to meet. And I must say that Jeff Conway let us down. I guess the first strike was the signing fee. Breaking the trend of the previous years, Conway was charging ten dollars for a signature and fourteen and above for signed pictures and merchandise from him. It's cool to meet someone involved in a show I liked and I understand that time is valuable, but are things so tough that you must charge someone for the gift of your signature? Maybe if you were a big screen star like Schwarzenegger, or if it were for some big charity I could understand the fee. But this looked like a straight up 'I need money' move. I will say this - his booth looked perpetually deserted, unlike the packed lines I saw for other signings over the years. My friend Raymond actually went up for the signing to acquire another sig for his Babylon 5 game. He said the man seemed a fake, acting cool and talking loud for everyone. Oh well, just because you're an actor doesn't mean you're a people person. So we give a thumbs down to Mister Kanicki from Grease, Mister Taxi, Mister What-Am-I-Going-To-Do-Now? Too bad we missed Walter Koenig who was there as well. He would probably have been a lot cooler. And the last topic I should touch upon was the LARP. Live Action Role-Playing, the game called Descent into Darkness. A cool post-apocalyptic game using the White Wolf system of Vampires, Werewolves and the like (oh my!). My group walked in as Sabbat, the 'bad guys' in some viewpoints. And we took charge. There were some others that had strong viewpoints for sure and helped us shape things our way, but I have to say we were a considerable driving force behind it all. It was great because the Camarilla seemed to be afraid of us. I'm sure they won't say so, but they stayed awfully closed up inside that military base of theirs. Anyway it was a great time for us. Lots of good role-playing, lots of fun combats. It was a good bonding time for my friends, and we met plenty of people that we intend on keeping contact with. This is the organization that my group intends to join and probably work with to run our own LARP. It will be good to be associated with other groups so that we can have world events go on and keep contact with others in the same campaign. All in all, it was another good convention for the year. Some of the people we met are trying to convince us to show up for 3 Rivers, another convention later on. I seriously want to do it if money allows. But until then, my time is spent and I'll just have to look forward to my own ventures for a while. And that's not so bad. B.Mooney