More than any con I can remember before, I was really looking forward to Warpcon XIII. I don't even know why - maybe because changes at work have made descriptions involving the words "gruelling" and "drudgery" replace ones containing "easy" and "good hours" and so I really needed a break, especially after the dark parody of a holiday that was Christmas. Preparation for forthcoming events in life and no small amount of purchasing of out-of-print RPG goodies on Ebay had placed me in the old and unpleasantly familiar situation of not having as much disposable income as I'd like, meaning no luxurious bed-&-breakfasts with full Irish fryups in the mornings, infomercials all night and undead cockroaches in the shower, no pouring of zany-named cocktails in Perudo dice cups down the throats of anybody unfortunate enough to cross my path, and although I love taking the train to cons this too would be expensive enough to consider skipping if possible.
Pixies, heroic Events Officer of DCU's increasingly less infamous gaming society STOCS was in contact with Warpcon to arrange transport and accomodation and the like for the society, so myself, Humbug and Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught piggy-backed on this by getting booked into the same hostel. This was a Really Good Thing, the way Warpcon arranged to take care of all one's travel-and-accomodation-and-con-attendance needs - a load of hassle and worries off one's shoulders. Although we did have to hassle Pixies instead, at least he got to pass the buck along.
Due to the truncation of last summer's holiday to China that I'd been saving up all my holiday-days for, I ended the year with a whole pile of them left over and occassional emails from my team leader telling me I really should use them up before February or March, allowing me to happily take the Friday and Monday off from work. Humbug was in a similar situation, and Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught figured he could bunk off work early on Friday with his dad's big car and whisk us down to Cork in time for the evening games. So when Friday did indeed roll around and bags had been packed with changes of underwear (my, aren't we the high-falutin' con attendees), the omnipresent Perudo set and some tequila choccies that looked interesting we were pleasantly surprised to have Mister T arrive at the house at half one instead of his pessimistic 3 o'clock we'd been planning on.
Having locked and loaded the car's CD changer with an eclectic variety of music ranging from the singalongtastic collection of James Bond themes to remixes of Commodore 64 computer game soundtracks via modern punk and old-school blues, it was determined that it was 160 miles to Cork, we had a nearly-empty tank of gas, a full pack of Jaffa Cakes, it was still daylight and we were wearing reasonably non-smelly clothes. A quick stop into the local fuel-vendin' iron remedied the lack of petrol and Creme Eggs, and after that it was nothing but the open road for the next who-knows-how-many hours, apart from all the traffic jams that is.
Despite the best efforts of the box of Jaffa Cakes, eventually hunger started to catch up with the crew of our E-Class vessel (apparently that means "quite big" in car talk) and in some nameless hick town a halt was called for leg-stretchery and pizza-consumery. It was in the vicinity of six o'clock at this stage, we hadn't made near as good time as we'd hoped, and despite a discussion where the similarity between drivers' license penalty points and D&D character hit points was pointed out long and loud, speed limits were adhered to by the valiant Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught. At last we pulled into the carpark of UCC, docked the vehicle and made for the building where the con does be. Alas the big flight of steps of yore seem to be gone, which is a pity because they were cool - access is now via the downstairs area. We got to the con hall and were immediately accosted by all-new STOCS P.R.O and token attending committee member Suzanne, who hastily sorted out our relationship with the front desk types, ensured we knew the story with accomodation (it was all sorted, apparently, and suspiciously smoothly at that) and took off back to her game of Settlers of Catan. We forked over the appropriate amount of money for weekend entry, received our bags of ads, called by the table the rest of the STOCS crew, who'd come down on the bus, had staked out for themselves, and hit the trade stands that were already set up and doing business.
Aaahhh, the trade stands. Almost all of them had collections of used stuff, and as I already own just about everything currently in print that I particularly want this was where I was looking. The stand by the door was primarily D&D stuff, but the next one along had some interesting items - the Twilight 2000 play manual and referee's manual, each for a quid sterling being what jumped out at me immediately. Although I already had two copies of Twilight 2000 paid for and awaiting arrival from Ebay (one of them's a gift for somebody, okay?), you can't go wrong at that price, so I snapped those up. They also had some mint-condition D&D campaign maps that Humbug noticed were of the set that our old DM used, and had been looking for the eastern one of forever (since his dad threw out his own copy of it, at least). They were a considerable 30 Eurobucks each, so it was decided to mull it over rather than buy them on the spot.
The next stand was the most spiffy Impact Games, and apart from the dozen or so boxes of modern RPG stuff (I gave them a good going-over later in the con, and at least half of it seemed to be bloody d20) were a couple of shelves of old RPG box sets - my favourite. A preliminary scan revealed nothing of immediate note, but shortly after, as we were setting off to the Old Bar, via the bar in the convention building, I spotted something of a Holy Grail - a box set of Cyborg Commando, the Gary Gygax game that was marketed at the Gaelcon charity auction as one of the top three worst RPGs of all time in the world ever, and which I'd been trying to bid on but I was down the back and they couldn't see my hand, boo. Anyway, we hit the bar and got the drinks in and I sat cashless and agonising about whether to buy it or not. Eventually Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught handed me a fifty Eurobuck note and headed for the toilet, and although I resisted for about eight seconds before long I was forced to grab it and head back into the con hall. Imagine my surprise when the price on it said a mere six Queenpounds fifty, making for about a tenner, and I returned with it and Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught's money back for him.
It had come to our attention that the STOCS contingent didn't appear to be planning on spending the weekend hip-deep in rowdiness, and indeed a game of Settlers could last long into pub quiz time after which they may retreat to the hostel. So we called by the table again on our way to the pub quiz to inform them that we didn't know where the hostel is, so somebody would HAVE to come to the Bar to guide us. And sure while we were there we might as well have another look at Impact Games' shelves... OH MY GOD, they've got a box of Twilight 2000. Gimme gimme gimme. Some generous conversion on their part turned the 10 Queenpound pricetag into an asking price of 10 Eurobucks... so I had to have that too. And although this was the extent of my weekend's shopping, and despite its dreadful stupidity, I've never come away from a con feeling so utterly happy with my new purchases.
The pub quiz was taking place in the room down the end of the Old Bar, forcing us to split the party quite greviously. A curious fact became apparent when somebody remembered it - due to the moderately-deserved victory of a rag-tag pub quiz table containing both myself and Humbug at Vaticon, we were now the reigning Irish con pub quiz champions, and would continue to be right up until it was made official that we'd lost this one. And lose it we would. There seemed to be the correct amount of tables minus one in the pub quiz room, so we being the latest arrivals were left standing and being given out to by the question-askers for being too close to them. Forced to huddle around a bin, our final roll-call consisted of myself, Humbug and Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught, and Mark Cammy and his wife (!!) Sophie.
The quiz itself was standard stuff, decent questions with a couple of themed puzzle-things on each sheet, taking the form of something like "26 = L in the A" (and the answer would be Letters in the Alphabet). Unfortunately it was slightly militaristic and lacked atmosphere - there was a certain feeling of just-answer-the-questions-and-we-can-all-get-back-to-drinking. Actually that's unfair, it was pretty good. But it doesn't stick in the memory too well.
Anyway, as that was wrapping up (we came fourth, I think) Suzanne and her non-gamer buddy turned up to show us how to get to the hostel, where the rest of the STOCS crowd had long since beaten a retreat to to arrange flowers and try on dresses or whatever they were doing. A few drinks and a rules-light but confusion-heavy game of Zoom later the Bar was closing down, so we swung by Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught's car to pick up some stuff. When we got there he was rummaging for something and listening to Van Morrison, so I opened the door and bid him show us some of his vaunted swing dancing moves. So he pumped up the volume, marched across the carpark to a perturbed-looking Suzanne, handed her umbrella to her buddy, and swung and spun and twirled her about with more speed, energy and spectacularability than a Broadway musical.
Once that was dispensed with we moseyed toward the hostel, which was not the hideous drug-dealer lair of previous Warpcons, but a palacial big old house with a night access door, an ensuite bathroom in our dorm (which only contained four people, despite the six beds) and no strangers alternating between arguing and having sex in the lower bunks (not in our dorm, at least). We done slept us up a storm.
Until exactly the right time the following morning. Breakfast was included as part of the deal! Now this was living. We could even upgrade to a fried meal as well for a token fee. Unbelievable. After the hostel we'd been cursed to spend eternity in as payment for past misdeeds during previous Warpcons, this was beyond fantastic. So following some relaxed shovelling we forged our way toward the con once again, planning on getting some actual gaming done this time around.
Warpcon has a spiffy three game slots on the Saturday - morning, afternoon and evening, although the timetable offered no clue as to what that translates into on a clock. Morning, of course, and given this year's con director generally goes by the handle "The Beer Fairy", begins whenever it begins, so there was no problem getting a place in one of the morning games - I chose Call of Cthulhu by Gar Hanrahan, because his games are always great. Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught is a large fan of Gar's games and made a point of getting a seat at the table Gar was GMing - a wiser move than I'd have expected, as when my table's GM eventually showed up, he was hastily reading the scenario and loudly declaring that he'd only been given it five minutes ago but that fortunately it had a how-to-run-this-scenario-without-reading-it sheet.
Unsurprisingly, this game didn't go particularly well. I ended up with the muscle character, which I wasn't in the mood for, and the fact that the other characters decided everything was on a need-to-know basis, and I didn't need to know, made things less interesting again. I don't know if the scenario itself was any good because I never got to find out what was going on or why we were doing anything. As much as it legitimately pains me and makes me feel like a begrudging git to fault Gar Hanrahan, who as far as I can see is not and has never been anything other than an eternal fountain of light and wonderfulness, who tirelessly and ceaselessly performs fantastic deeds far above and beyond the call of duty or sanity - dude, you live in Cork and play Call of Cthulhu with a group, would it have been that hard to have some GMs prepped and ready to roll in advance? Perhaps the fault lies with (and indeed it should, there's no reason the writers should have to do even more work) the RPG coordinator or something. Please people, for freak's sake, let there be no more last-minute GMs in our cons. I've been one and it sucks - it's not fair on the players, the GM or the writer.
Fortunately karma evened things out, as in the afternoon I signed up for Mark Cammy's scenario Reboot. He'd been nervous about it because it was his first time writing a game for a con in seven or so years, and the first blurb printed by Warpcon for an early flyer gave away large chunks of the surprise which was integral to the scenario (fortunately none of the players had read it), but I figured it'd be good and made a point this time of getting on the writer's table (although the other GM seemed to have done his homework and really liked the scenario and was enthusiastic about it, so that's good). The scenario was really well put-together, and designed so you could use either the FUDGE or World of Darkness system (we used FUDGE because none of us had tried it before) and the scenario was great and a lot of fun. To say anything about it would spoil it, but go download it and play it, it's great. Unfortunately one of the players sat down at the table and promptly went asleep, which was a bit freakin' inconsiderate - but fortunately it didn't matter.
Eventide brought an Adventure! scenario where I was most chuffed to discover my character was a stereotypical English butler. The bloke playing my boss knew where it was at too, which made it even better - at long last, the opportunity to raise an eyebrow and say "Yes, sir. Very droll, sir." as many times as possible in three hours. The scenario itself was fun too, although the ending was a bit lame - of special note was the excellent pseudo-scientific theory behind the workings of the dastardly weathermachine, the fact that it had real physics behind it and seemed to make sense on some level really added volumes to the proceedings.
From there myself and Mark Cammy ventured back to the Old Bar to meet Sophie, who was propped on a barstool and armed with a tale of some guy who had come up to her to try to chat her up, and when she had said "Ay am wayteeng for may usband" (she's got the best accent ever) he apparently launched into the old if-I-had-a-wife-like-you-I-wouldn't-leave-her-sitting-on-her-own-in-a-bar routine. Before long Humbug and Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught filtered in, but the place was filling up and although we had a good area for the forthcoming charity auction, there certainly wasn't room for the rest of STOCS so they occupied the back of the room until they went back to their flower-arranging.
The charity auction itself was hosted by Some Guy From WARPS and James Wallis of Hogshead, who were pretty good, although maybe they played up the fact that their wares were crap a little too much. Also they were operating against a very definite time limit and so the prices didn't get as high as they would have with more taunting and heartstring-tuggery. There wasn't anything up for grabs that interested me, but a respectable 6000 Eurobucks or so was raised. Most of what I remember was complaining about how hot and standing I was though.
Once that was out of the way, it was time for Club Warpcon, something I hadn't deigned to experience before, but this time around I was raring to go. Mark and Sophie retired like a respectable married couple, so myself, Humbug and Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught started following the crowd to somewhere we hoped the lead elements would know the location of. Halfway there Humbug decided that he wasn't on top form and didn't feel like attempting to drink until he died, and therefore shouldn't really bother drinking at all, and sold me his ticket and broke off from the formation to head for home base. So it was just myself and Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught that made it as far as Club Warpcon, which was in a nightclub place down an alley or maybe just a narrow medieval street. It had been reserved solely for Warpcon folks, which was nice, and the DJ was good, which was nicer. The music was comparable to Fibber's in its heyday in terms of quality, although I didn't recognise lots of it but other people did which must mean it's new. But there was old stuff as well, and with only the barest of prodding from the unreasonably energetic Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught I danced, for the first time in like four years or something. There was a couple salsa dancing just off the floor near where our drinks were, which prompted Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught to engage in some swing dance solo steps in place of the more traditional standing still that I favoured. Some guys who'd bought a life-size cutout of the Hobbits from the Lord of the Rings movies at the charity auction brought them out onto the dancefloor and made them headbang, too. And after a while, when the conversation was running thin, in walked my occassional consort and fellow ex-Irish-con-table-quiz-champion, the White Queen. And so with drinking and dancing and talking (insofar as you can talk in such a place) the night wore on, and although the White Queen told Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught that he's too quiet (almost definitely the first time anybody has ever thought that of him) much fun was had by all. Eventually it was time to head, so we plodded back to the most wonderful hostel, and myself and the White Queen had our usual argument as to the merits or lack thereof of Timothy Dalton as Bond (fortunately Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught was backing me up on this one, like that mattered), and before long it was time to climb over all the people sitting on the stairs talking about card games and hit our respective sleepin' irons.
Sunday morning, as is so often the case, rolled around much too soon, bringing with it the realisation that not only did we have to wake up, dress and eat but also pack everything and check out. Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught decided that after the previous evening's festivities he was a danger to himself and others, and so gave up on the idea of breakfast and went for a shower (in our ensuite!). I was content to let others suffer and sufficed with a loan of some aerosol de-stinkerisin' juice. We arrived for breakfast just as the rest of the STOCS posse was making ready to leave, so Suzanne arranged to buy us the morning-slot tickets of our desires. We dawdled for ages over breakfast, and they were still serving it past their official deadline (what a great hostel) so Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught was able to get fed too. It was a pleasantly full and warm group that trundled toward the final day of the convention.
The morning slot brought Brian Nisbet's scenario Irreality to Order for me, Garou for Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught and hanging around and shopping for Humbug. Irreality to Order was good fun, nice and open-ended although unfortunately due to the standard late-as-hell Sunday starting time we were running on a tight deadline so there was limited time for developing the inter-character relationships. Good game though, although in a reverse of yesterday's events this was to cause karma to bite me in the ass. Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught declared Garou to have been enjoyable, and after a weekend's procrastinisin', Humbug finally bought both those D&D trail maps and a shiny new D&D module too called Forge o' Fury or something like that, a dungeon crawl anyway with pictures of dwarfs on the front, so he was happy too.
The morning's predictably late start meant a late finish on those slots, so plans of grabbing some of the yummy pizza served just outside UCC's gates which has come to be regarded as the taste of Warpcon had to be postponed. Worse still, my plans of playing Gar Hanrahan's Blue Planet scenario were scuppered by its being sold out. I'd played his Blue Planet game last year and it was great, and the blurb for this year's one involving pirates and a treasure map had me frothing at the mouth, so I was pretty annoyed at myself for not having bought a ticket earlier. So I figured I'd plump for the World of Darkness tri-way - but that was sold out too. This went on for just about everything until I was forced to resort to AD&D. It was a near thing, I freakin' hate Dungeons & Dragons, but I figured the nostalgia value of THAC0s and the like would make it vaguely worthwhile. Alas when the game began it soon became apparent that we weren't playing AD&D at all, but some homebrew fusion between it and 3rd edition, and what we rolled didn't really matter anyway because we were being railroaded along in fine style. Now the game itself was okay, the scenario was varied enough to be somewhat entertaining but the blatant railroading (and lack of THAC0 calculation that I'd been looking forward to) combined with the staggering nine players at the table (some kind of administrative cock-up regarding ticket sales, I think) and the fact that the DM seemed to be racing the clock, to what I'm not sure, meant that this was my karmic punishment to counterbalance the morning's good game.
At this stage all that was left to do was to wait for the closing ceremony, ingeniusly slated to take place in the Old Bar rather than the kick-outy Student Centre. So at long last we hit the pizza place, fortunately arriving before anyone else from the con (it got quite a bit busier about fifteen minutes later). Although the quantity of food we got wasn't enough to completely fill my stomach to the point where food was backing up my throat, which would have been nice, it was real tasty and more satisfying than being mauled to death by a lion after staggering out of an explosion in an itching powder factory.
We propped ourselves against the bar with the rest of the STOCS gang, who were nervously trying not to miss the offficial Warpcon bus back to Dublin to await the start of the closing ceremony. Which was unexpectedly short and sweet. The prizes were doled out the way the Russians assigned rifles in World War II, and we walked away with prizes for Liam, one of the newbies, for his efforts in (I think) Garou, for Humbug for AD&D and for Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught for his firstest ever LARP (he was really happy with that). There was another classic closing ceremony moment as the con director awarded Colm Lundberg with the Spirit of Gaelcon award (it must be a Cork thing, apparently the Ubercon director referred to his own con as Warpcon at their closing ceremony). So once that was finished and the thoughts of people not heading home turned beerwards there was little else to do but hit the road for five or so hours of hot driving action, which terminated in north Dublin shortly after midnight.
Well like I said, I'd really been looking forward to this Warpcon, and it didn't disappoint. The games were in general decent, the shopping was great (for an Irish con) and it was basically lots of fun. Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught proclaimed that the games weren't as good as previous Warpcons, but the drinking was much better - perhaps we'll chalk that one up to having a Beer Fairy as con director, perhaps not. The prizes were pretty good, comprising one book you might want, one book you don't care about and one book you don't want at all. Everybody was happy with their shopping too - I had my out-of-print box sets, Humbug had his trail maps and D&D module that he spent most of Sunday browsing, Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught had picked up a copy of the new Hellboy RPG for himself and an old box set of Gumshoe as a prezzie for a friend of his, Mark Cammy had splurged on a bunch of books on special offer and was particularly pleased with a copy of Castle Falkenstein he'd procured, and the newbies had embiggened their fledgling dice collections. There was free breakfast bars, space to sit around because the RPGs weren't in the main hall (and nor were they in the faraway canteen) and James Wallis dancing with John Kovalic at the nightclub. On the minus side, there was those STUPID, STUPID scoresheets after the RPGs - our entire table for Reboot refused to fill them out in disgust, so there was no prize given for that game, and for Irreality to Order only one person filled it out, and he put his own name as number one so he got the prize (a perfectly valid tactic, but the system shouldn't exist in the first place). Why, freakin' why do they persist with using these gawdawful things? Also there were a few administrative problems that I've already outlined, like GMs being drafted as the game slot was supposed to be starting and extra players having to be fitted into the AD&D game. And oddly enough, the weekend lacked a certain bite because of the fact that it was all so smooth and comfortable, it wasn't like being away at all. But that can hardly be a complaint.
Definitely my best Warpcon yet. Well done, folks!
HUMBUG decided to keep those trail maps despite their utter uselesness, and ran that module shortly after. All the player characters died about a quarter of the way through.
SUZANNE converted her buddy to gaming, organised a Lunch Money tournament and complained that there wasn't enough drinking at Warpcon. Tiarnan the STOCS Dreadnaught reckons that STOCS is in good hands.
TIARNAN THE STOCS DREADNAUGHT learned that Leprecon is on Valentine's Weekend and having been promised that if he attends he'll be free for Valentine's Weekend indefinitely, has returned to his cryogenic slumber until Sillicon.
THE WHITE QUEEN slept through Sunday morning and caught an early train home, having played a whopping one timetabled game. Some time later she attended a black-&-white themed party dressed as a chessboard, which retroactively afforded her her moniker.
And as for the author... well, his story is just beginning...