Cellular Smoke Signals

I rolled into San Fransisco Area early Friday, and went and hung out in the city with my cousins (pizza, museum and cupcakes) before heading out to San Ramon and the convention. Getting there an hour late due to my cell phone dying about two instructions from me finding the hotel. Meh. Should have charged it overnight in Reno when I crashed for the previous night.

So... DDC. My first one. The only reason I would return it because I have family and friends in the area I'd like to see more often.

Let's start with getting into games:
1) I could handle the "lottery" method if they assigned and notified you of what games you got into more than 10 minutes in advance. That's utter BS. I'm not planning a weekend around a series of "Maybe I'll be able to play that so I won't make other plans" crap. If you put in the lottery and ALL the assignments were made and notified early that morning, it'd be cool.

2) Open gaming was cool, being able to reserve a room was nice, but again - if you want to set up an ad hoc game of friends you have to either plan on note trying to sign up for a Con Game, or hope everyone missed their lottery chance but you won't know until ten minutes before it started.

3) Eight hour slots... while it sounds cool, you pretty much lock in one game a day and almost forgo seeing panels. I'd rather a more standard 4 hour Con-Game slot to actually open up the day to other stuff.

Of the one game I got into I think over half did not 'sign up' but were walk ins. That SAYS something. Mostly, that their method is for crap. I'd almost rather pay to guarantee a game is being played. Almost. Hard to say which method I like least.

Anyways... I played in SuperPheemy's Alien Wars game. I love Alien Wars - it's such a cool setting. He ran an Apocalypse Now knock off scenario that went rather well. We had a good, dynamic group that brought in a bunch of different styles, everyone stuck to character - right down to conflicts and such - without ruining it for everyone. The scenario didn't finish out, even at 8 hours, but I think too many cool encounters were dropped into the game, and sometimes we took a little longer than we might otherwise have in a 4-hours slot to make a decision.

I played a bunch of Carcassone and Wings Of War with my friend who I sharing a room with. Wings Of War is a cool little WWI airplane dog fight game, simple card based actions. It was good to see him, as the last time I saw him was a 36 hour jaunt out for his wedding over a year ago.

Hung out with the Hero Guy - thanks to for Archermoo for the drink, and Darren for the poker game (I am a terrible poker player). Checked out the Champions book, looks very nice, I like the full color hardback books. Can't wait to see Star Hero done up this way. Checkout the Martial Arts copy Steve printed up for the con, that book is gonna rock on toast. Got pics of Kazei 5 (Jason immediately gave me a Review Copy, so expect to see that before the month is out) and the Kamarathen stuff at the Hero Booth.

Also, got a cold somewhere in the middle of the weekend. Yay. Drove home, and got some really neat pictures traveling at 80 MPH through Nevada, Eastern Utah (Western Utah I still hate driving through) and Wyoming. I love the high plains in Wyoming, they look so cool.

And... that's that. Dunno if I'll return to DDC or not in the future.