C2E2 2013 Roundup

UPDATE 5/26/2013: So after rereading this post today, I realized I'd neglected to expound on a lot of key stuff. Some of it I will save for a future post, as I'm having trouble bringing over some of my shaky Cloverfield-esque video, but for now I've expanded the Cosplay section of this post a lot, including a video of the Silent Hill nurse disturbing GenCon.

Today is a very special post.

A titanic post. And not because it's a lumbering, arrogant compensation-device bound to hit the biggest humiliating force of nature in the ultimate example of post-industrial hubris. It's a titanic post because it's huge.

Today's blog is about my impressions of Chicago Comic Entertainment Expo (C2E2) 2013. In a lot of ways, C2E2 was the final impetus that got me back to blogging here on the Nerdery. It's a fantastic convention here in the Midwest that has grown by leaps and bounds since it started in 2010. I'd heard about it in previous years, but never really felt the pull to go. That was largely true this year, too. Despite how much I'd loved attending Fire and Ice, I knew C2E2 would be vastly different and the basement-dwelling homebody nerd inside kept telling me I didn't want to go to such a vast, impersonal convention. Plus, I hate going into the city, and it'd be expensive, and a dozen other chirps of procrastinating unambition from the drowner within. No, I wouldn't go, and I was pretty certain I'd be a happier nerd for it.

That worked well enough until my wife happened to win a pair of weekend passes to C2E2 from a local radio station. Whoa. My cheapskate crutch snapped under its own weight as now the only real cost of C2E2 would be entirely volitional--I'd only spend money if I couldn't keep a steady grip on my wallet. So we'd be going, I reluctantly agreed. Reluctantly still, because that infernal pasty guy who never leaves the game room still wasn't that excited about going. But he was okay with doing research. And research is what did him in.

"It's a titanic post because it's huge."

Just looking over C2E2's website was enough to melt away the pasty contrarian in a wash of pure white fire. Hundreds of artists in Artists' Alley, a huge swathe of the convention floor dedicated to tables for artists from all sorts of comics, each with prints to sell and commissions to take. "Oh, I do love the artwork," crowed the little drowner, rubbing his clammy murderous hands together. "Maybe I could get something with the Avengers in it--or Ms. Marvel. I likes Ms. Marvel..." The creature's resolve was already cloven. Then I went over the guest speakers and panels. "Marvel vice presidents and editors talking about future of comics?" he drooled into my inner monologue, dropping his articles like a slob. That was a sign of weakness, as even the demented internal voices of the Nerdery's fragmented subconscious are grammatical sticklers. Once I clicked on the featured guests, the fight was done. "Ron Perlman?! Hellboy?!" screeched the drowner in helpless fanboy giddiness as I dropped my blessed silver claymore down on his clavicle, splitting him wide. There would be no second thoughts, no hesitation. I would meet the Perlman and would make his signature mine. Oh yes, I would make his signature sit on my Hellboy Director's Cut and it would be most sweet.

And so I went from being staunchly opposed to going to being ravenously excited about the proposition of meeting the man who is the hub of my Movie Web (it all begins and ends with Ron). Not even the brutal and graphically rendered slaying of my slacker subconscious could allay my enthusiasm for leaping into the unknown and coming out with my trophy in the form of Ron Perlman's handle scrawled on my DVD set.

Seriously, my mouth is watering right now.

So I went after all. The first day, Friday, I brought my 14 year-old brother in law because my silly pregnant wife was having a sympathy attack over my two year-old who'd been sick that week. Seriously, the sympathy attack is one of the most illogical and destructive beasts of living with a pregnant woman--and the sympathy never flows towards you, either. It pretty much always opposes your enthusiasms and has water in its eyes even when 'everything is fine'. Bah, I didn't have time for that on April 27--that was my day to capture Ron Perlman's script on my tomes of Hellboy! So I picked up my brother-in-law and we rode the train down into the city, while I gave him a primer on the birds and the bees of comics, Nerdery, and what wonders we would inevitably see (since I knew so much).

"That was a sign of weakness, as even the demented internal voices of the Nerdery's fragmented subconscious are grammatical sticklers."

Saturday my son was feeling better--actually, my son was feeling better on Friday, but after a day of sympathy attacks my wife was feeling better--and so I took the missus with me on the continuing nerd fest while my son terrorized my parents for the day. It was great, and we got to see even more awesomeness, despite being hamstrung by my wife's over-encumbering pregnancy. Although I did find that drafting behind her made navigating the dense crowds of the convention much easier--no one wants to bump into a strange 8-month pregnant lady at a nerd gathering.

Then on Sunday we brought my son. Decked in a Spider-Man hoodie and wide-eyed over the spectacle of getting to ride a train for the first time in his life, and into a tunnel no less, my little sidekick was beside himself with manic joy at the con.

It sucked.

For those of you who are considering bringing a toddler to any convention, let me prepare you for it. First of all, the ladies will constantly be complimenting you on how cute you are with a blonde-haired blue-eyed toddler in your arms. And it is cute. Guys will say it's awesome to see your little Web-head going fwip-fwip to show how he uses his web-shooters. And it is awesome. You'll also have to lug a thirty-five pound snatching kleptomaniac around all day, wrestling him into your arms while he donkey kicks your junk in an effort to get to the toy retailers' alley or to sprint ahead of the line to sit in the Mach 5. You get to watch his hands so he doesn't yank people's hair as countless strangers with fascinating heads pass within claws' reach. Yeah, maybe it is cute. But it's also a pain in the arms, back, and gonads, and people give you funny looks for every tantrum he throws rather than thank you for restraining him from ripping their redheaded wig off at the scalp.

And to top it all off, when my son saw a perfectly realistic Spider-Man posing with other people, he was totally speechless. The shrieker gasped and his slack-jaw look of wonder had all the pronouncing power of an old fish. Just flapping lips, wide-eyes, and a faint press of air that could only vaguely be translated into words.

"Hey, who is that, Bucky?"

"Spider-Man."

"Well then, call him."

"Over here, Spider-Man."

"No, Buck, he can't hear you. You gotta call louder." A small pinch on the thigh, trying to either throw some sense into him or encourage him to narc on me to the red and blue hero.

"Spider-Man. Spider-Man come 'ere." As faint as ever, though plaintively urgent this time.

"Hey, Spider-Man! Can we get a picture?" I called out as the cosplayer turned his back and began to move on. I trotted up to Spider-Man and showed him his quiet doppelganger. My son's arms swung wide and he pitched his body forward to embrace Spider-Man and transfer into his arms.

"Spider-Man," he said, voice now contentedly smaller than ever as my wife and I got some of the only pictures of him both awake and still from the whole day. When that was done, he hugged Spider-Man around the neck.

"Bubye, Spider-Man. See you later."

Yeah, maybe it is awesome. But I still don't recommend it.



In the interest of breaking down my impressions into easier-to-digest chunks (yeah, right, like I do that), here's the major categories of attractions at C2E2 that thoroughly enchanted my weekend.



Celebrities

There was a tremendous amount of star power at the con. Convention veterans like Burt Ward and Julie Newmar were there, as well as a bunch of stars from The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Felicia Day, Sam Huntington, and Patton Oswalt were also there meeting fans and signing autographs, but the biggest three in my esteem (other than The Man himself) were the Babylon 5 trinity: Bruce Boxleitner, Mira Furlan, and J. Michael Straczynski. I'm actually a very belated fan of Babylon 5, only recruited through Netflix Instant Watch, so I didn't have any signable goodies for them. If I did, you can bet I would've hit them all Friday morning after stopping off at Ron Perlman's table.

Ah, Ron. I was pleasantly surprised that going straight for the autograph tables immediately after getting to the con Friday morning was the way to go. There were hardly any people at all getting autographs yet. Except for Ron. Out of maybe 40 fans getting signatures at that point, I'd guess that twenty of them were in line for him. I felt perversely proud of Mr. Perlman for it.

"I would meet the Perlman and would make his signature mine."

Now, I had a really stupid pact in my mind to be charming and erudite when I met one of my cinema idols. There was a vague scenario sketched in my mind where I could say the right words that would get the celebrity to want to strike up a friendship with me and go play wargames or something. Unfortunately, the Ron Perlman fan in front of me was a svelte She-Hulk wearing booty shorts and a tattered tank top, so by the time I got up to the front of the line of fans all I had really determined was that I should not make an ass of myself. See how that went with my poignantly-remembered transcript:

Taking my Director's Cut in hand, Ron says, "Where would you like me to sign it?"

"Right there on the front," I answer dryly. At this point, I'm thinking: Man, his head is really a normal size. Yeah, I know. Somehow, over the years of seeing him tower over other actors in these grand roles, I'd gotten the impression that he'd make me feel like Frodo's scale double once I met him, never mind the reality that he's only an inch taller than me. So for an awkward silence, I just chanted: Don't talk about the size of his head, Ben. He will totally go Angel on you if you freak out on him. Be cool. So I was being cool. I was also suddenly aware that I was standing in front of Ron Perlman and I wasn't talking--not cool! "I really love the video commentary on this set. Your comments are especially well-informed and they show how well you know and appreciate the material," I say, silently complimenting myself on not sounding like a lunatic.

"Yeah? You know, I don't think I've ever sat down and watched the video commentary since we recorded it," he says with a smirk. Ron can smell loon.

"Really?" I ask, idiocy welling up within, boiling over. "Well, if you want to watch it you could borrow it. I'm going to be here all weekend." Now, I had thought that would be a clever way to ingratiate myself to the celebrity, still clinging to the delusion. Of course, I went home and started blogging zombie party favors, so you know the story doesn't work out that way.

"Oh, that's okay," Ron said with that Vincent smile. "I'm pretty sure I have a copy at home."

Oh my giddy-odd. Did you really just say that? He probably thinks you're a loon. Just get the picture taken with him and go.

"Mind if my brother takes a picture of us?" I say through the stupid-stupid-stupid in my throat.

"No problem," he says, magnanimous in the face of demented fanboy.

Wow, his hand is like not really warm or cold. It's a just right hand. Shut-up! Don't say anything but thank you!

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Ron Perlman's frakkin' shaking my hand!!!

Artists

Walking through Artists' Alley is a real chore. And I don't simply mean because it's super-crowded navigating the rows of tables and aisles choked with fans to find the artist you're looking for. I mean because there's so many awesome pieces of art on display. Each table sports a dozen or more display pieces, and then they have entire portfolios of art prints that you can pick up right there. I really liked chatting about the art with the creators--especially the couple that were really impressed by the details and elegance of their work. Even surrounded by fans, they were genuinely impressed by viewers who saw and loved the details. And then there's the great commission prices for artwork. You can watch artists at work on those commissions, sketching iconic characters in real-time while you chat about the latest scandal in nerd interests. You know: Star Wars being ruined for kids these days, the New 52, and Michael Bay. Yeah, it's definitely a part of the con where I could envision spending an entire day next year. (Oh, did I mention I am definitely going next year? Spoiler alert: I'm going next year.)

One of my favorite pieces of art was one I found on Friday, by Stephen Bryant. I was drawn to his table by his painted covers, in particular a piece called "The Power of Three" featuring Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and Liz Sherman. Having just come down off my I-met-Ron high, I picked it up right away and started talking with the artist and assistant as I went through the rest of his portfolio. Then I found my favorite picture of the con. Entitled "Iron Man: Dreaming Big", it featured a young boy lost in a thick volume of Essential Iron Man, with a image of the cinematic Iron Man floating above his head, springing from his imagination. Oh, I love that piece, and so that got added into my impulse purchase as I gushed to my brother-in-law over it and proved much more socially competent with Mr. Bryant than I was with Ron. Then, joking as I realized I was breaking my own personal promise to 'not spend that much,' I grabbed a print from Stephen for a friend whose birthday was coming up. It depicted Deadpool in Eddard Stark's classic "Winter is coming" pose. The best part? I had been at the con like two hours and already spent almost as much money as I would've on the two weekend passes. Oops.

So then the rest of our time we spent in Artists' Alley on Friday was ulterior-motive scouting. For those of you who aren't married, that's when you look for products to show your spouse to make them assume you must've spent a lot more money than you really did. "Hey, I know I picked up three art prints, but if I was really out of control I would've picked up a dozen. See? Look at all this great art I didn't buy...Can we get that one, too?" So on Saturday we grabbed another 5 or so art prints, this time impelled by my wife, and we really only stopped because of failure to visualize where they could go in our house.

Artists' Alley: totally worth a day on its own. Don't go there at all if you don't want to spend money. Just don't.

Panels

The panels were great, and varied from intriguing and intellectual to creators having mass love affairs with their fans. The rooms where the panels were actually located, however, were harder to find than a matte surface in Abrams' Star Trek reboot. If you're going to the con for the first time, know that all of the panels are held upstairs, and--while there are stairs leading up inside the main convention floor--the stairs you want are actually up the escalators before even entering the main floor. Yeah, those other stairs just lead to a sort of island food court that is designed to fulfill the same function as the Lost Woods in the Zelda games--be as confusing as possible in a confined, closed space.

The panel with the Marvel leadership was great, and since that was a Friday panel, I had the pleasure of sharing it with my brother-in-law who was pretty ignorant of all things Marvel that weren't in the last batch of movies. (I say was pretty ignorant because I think he went home that day a genuine Marvel fan.) It was a great time that made me proud to be a Marvel fan. In a fairly packed room, the Marvel heads were funny, personable, and showed they not only knew their fans as an abstract demographic but also were able to read us as a collective batch of Midwest nerds sitting in front of them. I loved it, and by the time I left they had sold me on Marvel Unlimited and gotten me excited for the upcoming Project Gamma.

But of course, my absolute favorite panel was Ron Perlman's Q&A on Saturday. In a massive hall filled with probably fifteen hundred people, Ron fielded questions direct from fans in a frank, crassly charming hour or so (too too short). There were a lot of good questions asked, and it was clear the room was full of true fans. A couple of fans just gushed over Ron more than ask questions, and he handled it with hilarious and dirty back-talk. He even shared a few details that I'd never heard before, one of which was clearly a tender subject for him, so it all felt intimate despite being so grand. I wanted to ask him a question or two, and I would have done so, but by Saturday it had dawned on me how dumb I came across the day before. So I kept my trap shut.

An aside: my wife would tell you that at one point I got quite animated and pointed to some random fan thinking he was Guillermo del Toro popping in on the Q&A, but that's ludicrous. First, I totally never said that. Second, I don't get dumber the closer I get in proximity to Ron Perlman, but I might get more loony. Thirdly--and I'm not admitting anything--but it would've been an awesome publicity stunt if the director of some of Ron Perlman's biggest movies, including his next one Pacific Rim, had just shuffled into the room and stolen the show for a few minutes, right? I mean, it's not a totally dumb idea. But I never said that, so it's all just my wife's gravid eccentricity.



Cosplay

Oh my, the cosplay. I'm going to have a lot to say about this in upcoming posts, so I won't go into much detail about what cosplay is or anything other than to say that I was overwhelmed by how much good cosplay was on display at C2E2. And I don't just mean hot costumes. I'm talking about people with cinema-quality outfits, or with realizations of costumes not yet seen in live action that absolutely blew me away. Even before getting into the main hall on Friday morning, there were at least a dozen people I wanted to take pictures of. I snapped a few, but not nearly as many as I would've liked. Partly because I was keeping an eye on my brother-in-law, and partly because I was certain that I'd see all of the really good cosplayers in the costume contest they'd have later that night. In short, I was a putz. Don't be a putz. Take tons of pictures. Because you will see hundreds of awesome, well-done costumes, and the contest itself was only 30 people. Granted, I saw great cosplay on the stage, but I missed out on great photos for second-guessing myself.

I don't think anyone suffered more for their cosplay than this girl. Chelsea from Lionheart Cosplay and Makeup Effects went as a female Carnage--the insane symbiote that makes Venom into an occasional hero by comparison. She had white-out contacts, painful-looking dentures, and that latex tongue hanging from her jaw. Probably the greatest crime about the whole affair is that a lot of the fabulous, scrupulous details of her costume were really hard to notice and appreciate from a distance. When I talked to her after Friday's contest, it was clear that the entire getup was exhausting her in real-time. Lionheart, indeed.

The greatest thing about the fantastic cosplay at conventions like this is that it's by far the most social aspect of the experience. You might not have any interest to talk to some random comic book guy, but when you see someone dressed up as a perfect Hudson from Aliens, or the Red Ranger's T-rex dino-zord, or frakkin' Captain Planet, you just have to talk to them. I myself really enjoyed dragging my shy brother-in-law to the side of the stage after Friday's cosplay contest and talking to some of my favorite cosplayers from the night. I won't go into too much detail, but I'll say I met some really cool people that I hope to meet again and even feature on this blog in the coming weeks.

One of those people was Courtney from Cosplay4UsAll. She dressed up as the nurse from the horror game series Silent Hill, and in that costume she won the crowd's approval for best cosplay in Friday's costume contest. Besides having a great costume, she also had far and away the most disturbingly accurate twitch-walk that perfectly emulated the horrors from the Hill. The contest's MC (I believe her name was Trin) simply wigged out as Courtney shuffled up onto the stage, and as we all cheered I'm pretty sure she was planning an escape route. I love the roleplay aspect of cosplay, and the fact that Courtney stayed in character for her stage walk was fantastic. Included below is a brief video of her creeping around GenCon 2012. Even after the show, when I met her and the rest of the family composing the Cosplay4UsAll team, she stayed disturbingly mute. It was only when we I started talking about video games that she had to break character to brag on some of her Mass Effect and Borderlands cosplay as well. Even then, she kept it hushed so other people wouldn't see her talking. Great people, and I'm already working with them on another project. Filmatleven.

My brother-in-law, being a typical high school boy with little or no knowledge of true Nerdery (I mean it, some of his honest questions absolutely killed me--like when he asked if the vintage Captain Power toys were from the 60s), really loved this Deadpool cosplay. Wise-cracking, uber-violent, and gun-toting, Deadpool is a fun Marvel character that is known for breaking the fourth wall with almost cartoony antics. So when this cosplayer, Michael, dressed as the "merc with a mouth" he went over-the-top, and was naturally pitch-perfect as Deadpool. A scratch-built 60-pound cannon, Deadpool's "The Solution" was a big crowd-pleaser. At least it was once it got assembled and lugged up onto the stage.

Finally, I was really impressed by the large number of quality Iron Man costumes at C2E2. Friday alone we saw at least three or four Iron Man cosplays that were good enough to make you do a double-take. I found it particularly fun when we stopped to have a bite to eat and an Iron Man tromped through the food court area, liking stalking up on a blonde or a cold one. Or looking for a mechanic to help him take a bathroom break. Either way, it was one of the nerdy little moments that was ridiculously common at C2E2--like seeing Ms. Marvel in her Warbird outfit resting her heels while munching on some celery. So mundane and disarming. So priceless.

And yes, I like Ms. Marvel. Shaddup.

If you were thinking about going to C2E2 before, it should probably be a foregone conclusion now. It's a fun convergence of a lot of nerd elements, and the chance to rub elbows with so many nerds in such uninhibited surroundings alone is worth it. Also, keep an eye out for more pictures and a lot more coverage on cosplay as Nerd Butter in the next week or so.

Fire and Ice Roundup: 2012 and 2013

Today I put to rest another post that's been lingering for far too long. Last year, just after going to Fire and Ice 2012, I pledged to give a more detailed discussion of the convention... later that week.

Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen.

So now, having been haunted by that particular failure for over a year, I've added another victim to my unfinished business: Fire and Ice 2013. This actually works out pretty well, as in 2013 much of my time at the con revolved around the games that I'd volunteered to host. Since I didn't do this the first year, it makes for a good comprehensive perspective of the small gaming convention.

This review I'll break up into the types of games I've played at Fire and Ice, and a brief run-down of my specific experiences.

Role-Playing Games

I've mentioned in the past that I love being able to play several RPGs in one weekend. It's a great way to try out different game systems and with players of diverse role-playing styles. This second part is really fun and unique. You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation. Of course, playing with new people presents its own difficulties, too. You need to spend a lot of game time feeling out the others' play styles and expectations of the game, and it's easy to fall back more on humor than you would otherwise do in a typical session.

"Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen."

What first brought me to Fire and Ice 2012 was a conversation with Kurt Wilken on the GURPS forums at Steve Jackson Games' website about running a one-shot GURPS Thundercats game for a local convention. My enthusiasm for both GURPS and the Thundercats led me to bring my wife and son to the small Wisconsin convention in search of games, and Kurt's GURPS Thundercats happened to be in the first slot for that Friday, too, making for an easy integration into the event. His game was GURPS lite, which is pretty essential for a con (remember my intro to GURPS), and he had a lot of fun with the cartoon characters that made it enjoyable. So much so that the next day I had to join his GURPS Justice League game as well, which was probably even more fun despite my distaste for the DC Universe--and it was probably helped by the fact that the Justice League game had five players who were a bit more into the game than the two others who sat in on the Thundercats game. The one minor note of disappointment, however, is that I was looking forward to seeing how another GM tackles the complexity of GURPS, since I've never played the system as PC before. Much to my chagrin, Kurt's style was largely the same as mine--thanks a lot! That teaches me sooo much.

The past two Fire and Ice cons also gave me a chance to try a number of new RPGs, too. Last year I'd also played a game of Deadlands, which felt to me like a compromise between the Serenity Cortex system and D&D. The setting is fantasy-steampunk-western, where Jules Vernian devices can be used by divinely-blessed gunslingers to fight off Apache werewolves. Yeah, it's that crazy. And I don't think a stranger has ever made me laugh harder in my life. The Deadlands game was played during the last slot of the night, and as such we got pretty crazy flogging our characters through the climax of our zombie-infested vampire ghost town. Literally, in the case of one of our players, who played an older preacher who could literally call down brimstone from on high. In order to bring his six-barrelled shotgun to the enemy, he had to whip his mule-spirited horse into a frenzy that was punctuated by hoarse-drawled homiles screeched in a perfectly evocative and ridiculous pitch. The game itself wasn't  interesting enough for me to seek it out, and the setting felt like a cliche pot-pouri, but it was magic hour with our improbable crew that night.

"You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation."

One of my favorite games from last year was a session of Mistrunner, which remains the most capably run RPG I've played in anywhere. Mistrunner is actually a small independent RPG system and unique setting that was released this past year, and at Fire and Ice 2012 we were being led by the game's designer, Glenn Buettner. Set in a future, devastated version of Earth where magical races suddenly entered the world and destroyed everything familiar, this game avoided the traps of a typical fantasy RPG. There were no humans, and the limited amounts of steam and old tech meant that it had a little more refinement than a medieval RPG without the unrestrained insanity of the Deadlands game. The game system itself was interesting and easy enough to get a handle on, but the pre-made PCs were so well done it's hard to tell how much control players have over character creation. Pretty much all of the game's characters were magic users and/or casters, which is not something I like, but that worked in this system. Magic in the game basically revolved around tapping into pools of magical influence over your specific element--fire or water, etc. You watched Captain Planet, right? Except in here Mr. Buettner really rewarded creativity, and our magical improvisation was key to resolving the different fights. I opted to play a troll mistrunner--the Ma-Ti of these Planeteers. I know--I got stuck with heart? When I don't even like being a magic user? Well, this particular troll was awesome. As a mistrunner, I was the guide for our group through the magical fog that dominates the setting, and I had physical control over it as well as an astral ability to tap into the mist realms connected. Or something. I just loved that Mr. Buettner gave us a chance to buy gear in the beginning of the session and let my troll pick up a perfume  bottle with an atomizer, which I used to materialize steps in the air, projected like shotgun blasts, and used to detonate a giant spider's head from the inside out. It's just too bad that we weren't supposed to kill that spider--but that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog.

This past year, at Fire and Ice 2013, the only RPG I played was a game called Microscope, which is a super quirky anti-RPG. You don't assume the roles of characters, there's no dice-rolling or stats, and there's no one GM. Instead, armed with note cards, pencils, and in an exercise that reminded me of my fondest memories of theater at school, you take turns fleshing out a timeline. It's very much a high concept game that is designed to help brainstorm settings and chain of events for proper RPGs, but if you're like me and too anal to consider giving up your GM reins to let the players collectively create your setting, it might just be a fun novelty instead.

Board Games

The board game scene at Fire and Ice is great. There are tons of tables devoted to games of all types, and if not there's a big library of games that they loan out to people looking to try out something specific that isn't part of a scheduled event. They even have little "looking for players" signs that you can set up on a table beside your game to let people know that you don't have any friends want to beat some new people have available seats. At Fire and Ice 2013, I dropped in on a pickup game of Axis & Allies (where I led the Soviet forces to resounding victory and much mocking of the high schooler commanders of the Axis powers), and I used a sign to get a five player game of Marvel Legendary started--which was frakkin' sweet.

"...that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog."

And the con is a great place to play new board games. There's no better way to learn a board game than to simply sit down and play it under the direction of a player who loves the game. At Fire and Ice 2012 I played the massively popular game Eclipse when it was sold out in most of America, and that was a fun stretch for me. A Euro-style board game with its sights set on Twilight Imperium's throne, Eclipse put us in command of sci-fi human empires looking for a reason to sponge out our fellow players from amongst the stars. I liked the fleet customization aspect which let us change our ship's abilities as the game progressed, but I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom. I'll stick with my good old Twilight Imperium, but it was a might fun game to play.

Similarly, I'd never gotten to play a game of Memoir '44 Overlord before Fire and Ice 2012. I have Memoir '44, and recommended it in my Memorial Day post, but the Overlord variation of the game is epically prohibitive to set up spontaneously. You need two sets of the game, a lot of space, and exactly four people on both sides of the table--three players each commanding the left, right, and center sections of their side's forces, and one honcho calling the shots for all three. I got to play as the grand marshal of the German forces in our epic game, and I'm proud to say I got my Jerry subordinates butchered terribly. All in terrible fun.

Miniatures Games

For 2012, I played only two short miniatures games, even though a full third of the game floor was devoted to Heroclix, Warhammer, and Warhammer 40,000 tournaments. Not wanting to miss out on the clix action, but not yet into it myself, I played a fun small intro scenario of the out-of-print Mechwarrior Heroclix game, which was an intuitive but difficult-to-master variation on the core clix system that added a second clicker. For those of you who don't know, the clix system is basically a model on top of a decoder-ring type setup the size of a bottlecap with character stats on it. As your characters take damage, you click the decoder towards their death, and the stats change to reflect diminished abilities or building desperation. The Mechwarrior game was fun, and the appeal of getting into a fully fleshed out game appealed, but I just wasn't that into the figures and scale that I felt conflicted a bit with the system. But, by the time The Avengers came out three months later, I was totally primed to start collecting Marvel Heroclix. So boo-yah for guerrilla marketing.

"I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom."

For Fire and Ice 2013, I actually led three games of space fleet battles in the miniatures gaming section. Playing a personal variation on Colonial Battlefleet, I let players command the ships of the show Battlestar Galactica against each other in scenarios modeling the Battle of the Tylium Asteroid, the Attack on the Resurrection Ship, and the Rescue on New Caprica. I love Colonial Battlefleet and hope to talk more about it, but for me the highlight was busting out my painted models and impressing people with a really good looking game, even if the rules are virtually unknown.

Well, that's it for a very late addition to my blog. One more plodding step towards being up-to-date and ever-timely.

Psssh. Like that's ever going to happen.

Nerd Bread and Butter: Conventions

Nerd Bread and Butter: There are a lot of things that go into making a nerd. Nerd bread describes things that are absolutely necessary to qualify for the title. The corollary, nerd butter, deepens the nerd experience to something much more profound, much like butter does to bread.

So today marks another "should've blogged this a long time ago" entry in my current sprint of posts: conventions. Now, a convention (or "con" as they are invariably known) straddles the dividing line between Nerd Bread and Nerd Butter. On the one hand, cons are still an alien and intimidating thing to a lot of long-standing nerds. I myself didn't go to my first (sorta) con until 2005, and after that it was years until I went to another (which ended up being my trip to Fire and Ice last year). But cons are definitely an integral part of any nerd experience, and there are such a wealth of them in America (and elsewhere) today that you can find a con catering to just about any particular interest--many without traveling that far, either.

But there is an element of Nerd Butter, to be sure. Cons are still seen as a niche or elite event for a particular classification of nerd. For instance, I can have a Sideshow Collectibles Smeagol statue on my desk flanked by 3D printed ODSTs at three different scales, but once I mention I'm going to a convention over the weekend, I get the raised eyebrows and chin-nod:

"Oh, you're one of those guys."

"That's right, I'm that kind of nerd. I'll wear it on my work badge until I can get it tattooed on my forehead."

A large part of this is probably the slanted coverage of conventions in popular media. To most people, cons are places for nerd-kinky cosplay (because that's practically the only kind that gets shown) and insanely awkward over-enthused smelly fanboys gushing over genre celebrities. As you might guess, this isn't particularly accurate, and it doesn't even come close to capturing the spirit of a lot of cons out there.

What are Conventions?

Conventions at their core are about social interactions. There are a number of shows and/or conferences out there that masquerade as conventions and vice versa, but for the purpose of this article a con is an event where a minority tries to pool resources and interests into one event at a singular time so that they can be the majority in one small sphere. If a con is more about mere commercial previews, sales, and formal showmanship than it is about connecting nerds together, it might as well be a show. Or a Games Day--ouch! burn heretic, burn! And if a con is more about events and panels, it might as well be a school workshop. No, the core and highest aspiration of a true con is to be a distillery of local nerds, letting them ferment just long enough to make a truly lasting impact on each other through networking and shared enthusiasm.

Did that last metaphor circle around to the stinky fanboys stereotype?

Types of Conventions:

There are several types of conventions. There are commercially organized ones that revolve around the products of the organizers. Some of the big hobby game companies are starting to do this a lot more. Mantic Games, Games Workshop, and Fantasy Flight Games all have several conventions a year focused on their products' demos and tournaments. Now, since these commercially-run conventions are about getting more players buying more of their stuff, I considered these sorts of conventions the most watered-down experience for cons. And, for me, the only con of this sort I ever went to I found to be the most unsatisfying. Then again that was Games Day and so it might have just been the start of my anti-Games Workshop roots finding their soil.

There are also commercially sponsored conventions, and since this is what San Diego Comic Con falls under, it's probably the most recognizable category of con. These ones are organized and run independently, but with a good number of sponsors behind various panels, events, and guests they bring to the con. Other cons I'd put in this category are C2E2 (Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo) and Gen Con. Any one of these cons offer a large array of activities and opportunities to explore different hobbies. There's also a large commercial presence at any con like this, but the diversity usually means that you don't have to notice it unless you want to.

Finally, there are the hobby-scale conventions. These are conventions without any high-profile sponsors, often organized as much as a community event as anything else, and they normally feature groups from the scores to hundreds rather than the big commercial cons' which often have thousands of guests. This sort of con really lends itself towards open gaming sorts of conventions--such as Fire and Ice, or dozens of other small cons going on all across the country every month. They usually sport a few local vendors for sponsors, and since they are more localized events you're a lot more likely to meet people in your immediate sphere than the larger cons which tend to pull people from all over.

Conventions I've been to...

As I said earlier, conventions are a relatively new part of the nerdery. Way back in the day I took my future wife to Games Workshop's Games Day, and while I enjoyed it quite a bit, I didn't feel compelled to attend any of their future events. This was kind of nailed to the ground for me by the fact that Games Workshop has pretty consistently ground my bag the wrong way with nearly every decision they've made for the past ten years, but I digress. If you're into only one or two of Games Workshop's products, I imagine that Games Day could easily be a let down. But if, like I was, you're into multiple games and love seeing new models and have lots of available product thrown in your face like a bad alley in Las Vegas, then by all means, it is a blast.

Then last year I began attending Fire and Ice, and with my family attending Fire and Ice 2013 this year as well it is officially an annual family tradition. It's small compared to what you expect from cons based on popular representation--filling up a warehouse-sized room with tables of specific games, open game tables, and local hobby shop vendors. But in a con of that size it's still amazingly easy to find yourself lost in all the options if you've got an appetite for playing a large variety of games (board games, miniature games, role-playing games, and even the occasional video game gets brought in). For a lot of people who enjoy playing epic, involved board games like Twilight Imperium, it's probably one of the only places you'll get a chance to play a full eight-player game.

This past month I attended C2E2 for the first time. I've long been out of the active comic-reading loop (a long and heart-rending story I'm sure I'll blog about eventually), but my wife won two weekend passes and, though reticent, I couldn't pass up the chance when I found out Ron Perlman would be a celebrity guest for the weekend. Now, while saving a few details for my upcoming Con Roundup of C2E2 2013, let me just say that it was awesome. Like a cross between New Year's Eve and a good first date, there's lots of elation, awkwardness, pledges to do more, and at least a little willful denial regarding embarrassing moments that totally never happened. I'm going to make C2E2 an annual thing.

Conventions I'm going to (someday)...

At the top of my list of conventions I need to attend is SDCC, the San Diego Comic Convention. It is the closest thing to prestigious when it comes to this topic, and if every half-baked Youtube channel and television network in the country is going to cover it in some degree, then I need to go to there to vet it myself. Wow, that sounds pathetically pliant and puerile, doesn't it? Oh well, hopefully my frakkin' awesome alliteration will ameliorate that assertion. Alright, seriously, I'm done now.

Gen Con is another one I've been meaning to go to for some time now, and with it being so close to where I've lived the past quarter-century, I really have no excuse to have not gone already. Other than being a homebody. And cheap. Okay, so I've had some excuses in the past, but these days they're starting to thin out in the face of getting old. Old, I say. Old. But yeah, it sounds like a lot of gaming fun that might be too much for the kids, which means that if I go in the next year or two I can make the wife stay at home sitting on the nest while I nerd-it-up in Indiana. Hmmm, I really am running out of excuses not to go...

There are others, but the long and short of it is that I lean towards the cons that promise more chances to dive into hobbies that I find it difficult to indulge in on a week-to-week basis. Video game heavy conventions appeal to me, since I am a big video game fan, but they don't seduce me the way a chance to play four role-playing games in one weekend does. Or the glittering opportunity to meet Ron Perlman and totally make a jackanape of myself. That kind of stuff I can't resist. And, with a new hobby of mine on the horizon, I foresee a whole new level of nerdiness drawing me out to more conventions in the future. Filmatleven.

Budget-Nerdery: Fire and Ice Convention

Budget Nerdery: I've often said that nerdery is about enthusiasm. And let's face it: enthusiasm can be expensive. Fortunately, experience is often a good way to help curtail expense and find great ways to enjoy yourself, indulge a lot, and still spend only a little. So let me share some experience so you too can enjoy similar hobbies without spending too much. That is, without spending more than is necessary...you still might spend a good deal, but that's not my fault.

This past weekend, the wife and my sidekick joined me on our first family vacation. I've always been a homebody when it comes to the typical beach/resort/clubbing vacation. I enjoy doing different things with my time off. Such as writing, painting, and fleshing out the fantasy medieval economy of my current RPG campaign. Nerdy things. So we treated ourselves to something special--our kind of special. A nerd smorgasbord, with sprinklings of several new experiences cemented by some of our favorite hobby game types. This was found at the Fire and Ice Convention in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It was awesome, friendly, and full of all sorts of activities and games that we utterly devoured like a pair of ravenous wolves tearing into a defenseless Cheese-head granny.

I'll be enumerating many things that I enjoyed about this trip, but one of them that really struck me was just how much enjoyment the three of us were getting out of our weekend for such a good deal. So here's a quick-but-total itemization of our expenses for the weekend, so you can appreciate similar opportunities in your own area. Heck, if you're anywhere near northern Wisconsin this time next year, you should definitely consider joining us.

2 Weekend passes: $50
A weekend pass gives you six raffle tickets for the daily door prizes and access to all of the weekend's game events. There's about two dozen tables devoted to board games of various types and lengths, a dozen for miniature games and card tables, and a handful of booths for role-playing games all interspersed with some vendor tables for several local hobby shops. I'll detail things more later, but for now here's a list of the games I played over the weekend: GURPS: Thundercats; Eclipse the board game; Mechwarrior the miniature game; a Dawn of the Dead miniature skirmish game; the SPANC card game; a session of the Deadlands RPG; a session of GURPS: Justice League; an epic game of Memoir '44 Overlord; and a soon-to-be-published RPG called Mistrunner. And that was with sleeping in and a big lunch on Saturday and leaving at four on Sunday.

2 Night stay, Super 8: $107.35
The Manitowoc Super 8 is ridiculously close to the venue site, clean, and well-maintained. The front-desk staff were nice and friendly, and tolerated the wife and I playing a late night game of SPANC in the lobby so our hellion offspring could terror-ass around the dining chairs and into the lobby and cook off a little Con-infused hyperactivity before bed.

Gas: $43.29
This is included for completion's sake, but we really only used about two-fifths of a tank of gas, as the trip was only about a hundred and ten miles for us. A word of warning for anyone traveling through Milwaukee to the Con, though: that vaguely urban center is actually a driving proficiency anomaly for the entire state of Wisconsin. While you can trust Cheesers to drive a good 10 miles over the speed limit on most rustic roads and cruise in the fast lane at 75-85 miles-per-hour, those who congest Milwaukee's arteries clot at no more than 60 mph--65 if you're lucky--in the fast lane. Practice your G-rated curse-words before leaving.

Pizza Ranch: $17.83
This place was great. It's a small chain of Midwest pizza buffets with great food, wonderful service, and a wonderful atmosphere that's rustic but still bright and clean. In addition to buffet staples and your typical basic topping pizzas (fresh and piping hot), they make specialty pizzas that have haunted the last ten meals I have had since trying them. Chicken and broccoli alfredo pizza, complete with creamy sauce that completely transforms the pizza slice. A tomato-basil pizza with actual whole slices of spiced tomato nuzzled beneath the cheese layer. And those were just the ones I could pack in three slices at a time before my gorram stomach and gaming schedule demanded we head to the Con and register. If you're ever within a twenty-mile radius of a Pizza Ranch, you owe it to yourself to swing by and give it a try.

My son, perfectly imitating my cheese-induced mania at Pizza Ranch

Taco Bell: $9.42
This requires almost no explanation. Gamers love the Bell of Taco. I love the Bell of Taco. In fact, I noticed that of the major fast food chains near the convention venue, Taco Bell's was the most busy throughout the weekend. Hmmm...nachos.

Wal-mart: $10.37
Mostly, this was to snag some last minute Imodium and Gas-X. Apparently, my beloved thought that my fellow gamers might appreciate these OTC stop-gaps after I spent two hours in the car, followed by a pizza buffet. To my credit, I hardly needed the latter, and the former was completely unnecessary. Really. And don't think it's gross--I'm really a companionably hygienic gamer. I just have trouble over-sharing.

Food bought at the Con: $9.75
This was for two or three quick meals between games over the weekend. The small-but-essential concessions menu consists of things like nachos, grilled cheese, burgers, hot dogs, and a bunch of sweets. They're all good and priced reasonably--which is to say, a bit more than what you'd pay in a grocery store, but less than what you'd get saddled with at a high-school or college sporting event.

Auction board games and books: $40
Gamers can bring their own games to Fire and Ice and put them up for auction, with each day serving as a separate round of bidding. It's a great way to quickly get exposed a broad range of new and old gaming gems, with a chance to peak at the components, too. For forty papyrus notes, we went home with games normally worth a total of $90 that we'd never have noticed otherwise. I'll let you know what I think of two of them--SPANC and Red Dragon Inn--in the coming weeks.

One-page sketch by Kurt Wilcken: $25
Kurt led the GURPS games I'd played in, and as a cartoonist he'd sketched out some character illustrations on 3x5 cards for us to use. After our GURPS Thundercats game he gave Abi and I the cards for our characters--Panthro and Liono, respectively--and I just had to see more. They'll doubtless all get posted up here on the blog when I get the full-page illustration, too.

Culver's: $13.63
Culver's chains are a staple of Wisconsin--they're frakkin' everywhere here. So it was only a matter of time before our weekend saw us at a Culver's location. Plus, I'd forgotten to get some fried cheese curds, so I guess we'll be hitting up a local Culver's this week or next.

Buffalo Wild Wings: $20.55
At the end of a long, full weekend, we decided to splurge one last time and get some "tatonka" as I like to mumble whenever we pass by. It seems like every time we want to get some beedubs to-go, however, it falls on a Sunday evening and we have to deal with crowding and a longer wait than usual. Oh well, epic weekend anyways.

Total: $347.19
After this inaugural weekend, we've decided to make Fire and Ice (and Pizza Ranch!) an annual family outing. It's fun, special, and quite cost effective for a family to do. Kids five to twelve get into the convention for just ten or fifteen dollars a head, as I recall, and the food at the convention is a convenient way to save hassle and money. We probably could quarter our food expenditure by eating at the Con more, and certainly will in the future.

In any case, I hope you've appreciated this purely mercenary break down of the experience. Later in the week I'll post more about the games and my experiences and impressions of them. But for now: I'm pooped.