Rochester Gamers Community

Saturday, August 15th
Lack of sleep is taking its toll. Today we ended up going back to the hotel earlier after an evacuation, but more on that later. We started the day once again in the Rio room for a game of Maori, and then a game of Stone Age. The former is a new game that is easy to learn, and the latter is in my personal library, but Curt wanted to try it.

I spent a good deal of time today remotely dealing with car troubles that my wife ran into in Lexington, KY. This is further complicated by the need to catch a plane on Tuesday. With Sunday in the way, the new transmission we are going to need will not be ready in time, so its a complicated dance of musical rental cars I had to setup all while dealing with a hysterical wife. While I was dealing with this joy, Curt and Nate were able to strike up a lengthy conversation with Tom Lehmann (Race for the Galaxy). Sounded interesting, but I only poked in from time to time.

Anyway, I broke away to eventually wander into a game of You Robot by Asmodee, and then to lunch. At this point Curt and I decided to try a random event, and so we used our remaining Generals to get into a game of Martians Attack, or something like that. It was a terrible game and we were playing with idiots at our table.

Then back to the Rio room for some pizza and a couple games of Dominion: Intrigue before I got pulled away again for an hour or so of phone fun about the car. Our group got together again and we played another game of Castle for the Seasons, and once again enjoyed the play. At this point Curt and Kevin started a game of Zooloretto, but Nate and I bowed out. Then for some inexplicable reason we played a game of Ra: Dice Game again, which I still think is silly and pointless.

So we were milling around and the fire alarms went off. Are you kidding me? They had to evacuate the entire convention center while about 12 fire trucks showed up to deal with what apparently was a kitchen fire in the pizza kiosk on the main concourse. Being tired we decided to use this as an excuse to go back to the hotel. We passed the craziest game of Red Rover I have ever seen as hoards of gamers were calling various people to cross over Illinois Ave, a major 4-lane road.

"Red Rover, Red Rover, send Steam-Punk Chicks over" There is just something gratifying to hear that chanted by 50 or 60 geeky gamer types all in unison. Hillarious!

At the hotel, I was astounded to find that Curt had never seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Joss Whedon), so I fired that up on the laptop. I'll never get tired of watching it.

Down to the lobby for another playtest of Nate's game, that he has now titled "A Dangerous Business". I got completely smoked, but that does not mean its a bad game. Nate has a talent for game design I think. He should be proud of this game. Although very raw, it has the makings of being quite good. If you are reading this, ask him to playtest it. I think it would do good to have more plays from other people. We rounded out the night with another game of Fruit Basket Upset (Kevin's game creation). I still dislike it, despite winning handily. Its a completely randomized trump based game, and when you can completely check out your brain and still win a game by tripling up your competition, you know something is wrong.

Tomorrow is going to be a short day for me. I am getting picked up in a rental car shortly after lunch. I'm not expecting much to happen in the morning, so effectively, the Con is mostly done for me. Another good year.

Summary of Games:
Maori - Try
Stone Age - Buy
You Robot - Deny
Martians Attack! - Deny
Dominion: Intrigue - Try
Castle for the Seasons - Buy
Ra: Dice Game - Deny
A Dangerous Business - Try
Fruit Basket Upset - Deny

Game of the Day goes to Castle for the Seasons.
Game of the Show goes to Royal Palace.