The Weekend Convention

I have decided I am going to go to the RPG/Wargamer’s convention this weekend; we were planning on running 12 hours on Saturday, and the players have definitely decided that we are (I have no say in these things), so I’m only going to go on Friday night, with a couple of the fellows (players). It will be the first time I’ve attended a convention of this nature since 1989 (other conventions, yes, but not RPG).

I don’t expect to have a good time.

I do expect to see a lot of crap for sale, and to hear a lot of nonsensical bullshit pitched for the benefit of the community, and to hear those same sappy speeches as people get up and thank everyone and flatter everyone and generally act like typical middle class boobs with regards to why we’re all there. I will roll my eyes until they ache, no doubt. It is one of the things that always sickens me at these events – can’t we just fucking play? Do we have to hear the organizers pound their puds on the microphone?

But I’ll escape to the lobby for those things, possibly out of the building altogether from time to time. I don’t expect to play in any games (unless my players really insist on it), I definitely don’t intend to buy anything (what would I buy?) and I think there’s a fair chance I’ll be disenchanted with the degredation of the community as I’ll see it.

Why don’t I want to play in any games? First and foremost, because I can’t be bothered with a character I know won’t exist after a single running. Listen, if I want to have one night of fun, I’ll go to a bar, find a hot chick, bring her home to my wife and watch them go at it. That’s as much of a one-night stand as I’m interested in. Besides, there’s the whole thing about having to put up with someone else’s rules, someone else’s angst, someone else’s philosophy. Sorry, if it isn’t evident from this blog, I’m an enormously intolerant person. I might get a few ideas from some gaming tables if I see something, but I don’t need to play to get that.

So why am I going?

It was suggested that I make up some businesscards with Tao of D&D and hand them out, to push up interest in the blog, but that seems awfully cheesy and I won’t be doing it.

I do expect that I’ll get some material for this blog – things to bitch about, details about behavior and such that will reawaken my experience from years ago and remind me ... oh yeah ... why I so hate such events with the burning fever of a thousand cholera victims. There’s a certain visceral pleasure to be derived from ritualistically casting out the ‘true believers,’ digging them out in their lair with the intention of raising the light of intellect and crying, ‘begone cancerous filth.’ I used to do such things in the days when I visited Pentacostal churches.

MOSTLY, however, I am going because I am hoping for that one really good conversation with another discontented soul who has also gone to see the soulless masses fritter and cavort with one another. Some other entity with a world, a bad attitude and an interest in digging down and talking about the subject. These are the sorts of rare persons I sometimes meet at Sex trade shows or at special campus lectures ... people of my ilk who also want to meet people of my ilk.

If I come back and say that I had a good time, you will know that I found such a person.