A Day for Catching Up on Con Reportage

Ok, so I've been a bit busy having fun and stuff and have not fulfilled my blogging duties. Herewith, an attempt at making up for that.

On Thursday morning, when Roscoe and I were getting ready to leave for QuestCon, Grace was in one of those long distance mind meldy things that the Ten Thousand do every so often. This meant that she was pretty much unaware of anything going on around her, so I gave her a kiss, Roscoe licked her hand, Ben patted her cheek and we told Annie & Lily to tell her we loved her and would call her soon. Then we were off to catch the bus to the train station.

The train ride was fast and uneventful save for a group of Centaurs who had been partying all night to celebrate their soccer team winning the regional cup. They were singing and laughing and telling some off color jokes about their opponents, but otherwise were pretty good passengers. I cut Centaurs some slack, having one as a brother and all.

The convention is held at the Presidio Community Center and the Traveler's Joy hotel across the street. The hotel and several other hotels, inns and guest houses in The City By The Bay are full up with con goers, which is normal for this con. As with many other conventions, this one is also virtual, too. The estimate is that, aside from the 5,000 real world attendees, there are another 75-80 thousand attending via the internet and Dream Draught. I can tell you that there are a shitload of Dream Pixies here and I know each one is linking to at least 100 people.

After checking into our room, which the ever exemplary staff of the hotel had provided with a toilet adapter seat for Roscoe, we went and got our badges and swag. This year's t-shirt has a great picture of the Alaska Adventure quest finale. That giant bear going toe to toe with the Ice Troll is still an eye popper.

Other swag included a code for the "Midnight Screening" of the Madness On The Edge Of Town quest that will go live for the rest of the world next Tuesday, a totally cool animated mini of The QuestMaster, a coupon for a free slice of pizza from Damn Good Pizza and a bunch of free preview cards for upcoming quests.

We met a bunch of friends for lunch a couple of hours later at Silver Lotus, the great PanAsian eatery in the hotel. Much planning of questing parties was done and much great food & drink was consumed.

After that, Roscoe and I were off to give our lectures: "Online Gaming For Those Without Opposable Thumbs" for him (which, by the way, was SRO) and "Mining The Movies For Quest Ideas" by me. Mine was full of great questions from the audience and Roscoe's turned into a sort of think tank for internet interfacing for non humans who can't or won't use Dream Draught.

The rest of Thursday is best summed up as: going to seminars/lectures, talking, questing, drinking, eating and even a bit of sleeping.

Friday was more of the same, with Roscoe being on the "No Love For Terminator World" panel and me being on the "You Got Humor In My Danger!" and "Tips & Tricks For Faster Quest Design" panels. Roscoe also disappeared to go on a "walk" with GiGi, the cute little Pembroke Welsh Corgi he met last year. Yeah, sure, a walk:)

Today, it turned out that Roscoe and I both had places on each others panels. "The QuestWorld Year In Review" was, as always, an impassioned mix of love letter and bitchfest. "What I Should Have Done Differently" was both cringe inducing and hilarious. Best line: "In retrospect, I shouldn't have tried to activate the Demon Computer on AngelWorld while going into labor with twins".

Now, in about 20 minutes we'll go have dinner, then Roscoe will be going off with a group of non humans to tackle the "Steam Versus Dragons" world, while I'll be part of a group of seven fools attempting the Speed Challenge in "Rock & Roll Death" world. We'll be up against 19 other groups worldwide. Best time so far for this event is the 6 hours 22 minutes 18 seconds, scored by Team Battle Axe out of New Zealand last year.

And so we are now off for seafood and libations.