You can't ask for a better day at Origins.
Rhonda and I wandered down to the tabletop gaming hall around 10:30am. Scott and Mike were already in a half-assed Spades tournament where only four players showed up. So everyone advances to the next round!
We were supposed to demo Portable Adventures, but our game organizer stayed absent (plane trouble, we later learned), so we tagged our tickets for a refund. An inauspicious start.
Lunch. North Market. Aloo Mutter.
The vendor hall opened at 1, so all of us dived headlong into the sea. Rhonda and I walked the entire show floor before buying anything... casing the joint. Our first game demo was Monkeys on the Moon. Very funny concept: technologically advancing monkey tribes and launching them into outer space. We bought it shortly after we learned one of the monkeys is named Rhonda.
Fantasy Flight Games has that Lord of the Rings trivia game I mentioned, so we veered back to their booth (after an great two-on-two Pokemon demo from the Nintendo booth... Eon Tickets coming to Toys R Us in July, by the way.) Rhonda and I demoed Loco, a cute little card game, and Mike showed up in mid-session. The three of us then tried out the LOTR trivia game, which I think my family will love. Rhonda took a trip, so Mike and I demoed Quicksand, a cool board game. By the time Noelle found us, I had committed to buying all three.
Scott and Shannon found some nice art prints, which the artist even added further sketching to. And as for Meg, I'm not sure exactly where she was during all this! Spending makes me spacey.
Took a little time to try out some of my purchases... So while Scott and Mike trampled through a box of Doomtown they'd gone halfsies on, we broke out Monkeys on the Moon. Unfortunately, there's way too much math involved, and a rather steep learning curve. The kind of thing where the first time playing just blows because there's too much structured weirdness to handle all at once. And forget about strategy. But I can see the game's charm once everybody at the table has the flow mastered. And as long as Mike is playing, I don't have to worry about the math.
One of my tasks for the evening was to deliver the Doomtown banner I made for the convention's Doomtown events. The first such game was Luck o' the Draw, a sealed deck/draft event. I hooked up with Andrew Davidson, former Doomtown World Champion and current Doomtown Council chairman, and set up the banner to draw in all the incoming players. Took some pics of the scene, with the players gathering under my banner. Last year, we had folding chairs and cinder block. This year, a flag to rally around. Tomorrow is the 2003 World Championships.
By 7, Mike had disappeared to try out Tile Chess by Steve Jackson Games (rescheduled), and Rhon, Noelle and Meg went to Looney Labs headquarters for some game-related crafting. Scott, Shannon and I watched the beginning of the Luck tourney before heading off to join the other half of the group. Which brings us to now, where Mike is holding a conversation with Andrew Looney himself, the game madman behind Chrononauts, Fluxx and lots of other goodness.
Plan: find a little something to eat, then bed down in one of the open gaming halls for some serious pre-tournament Doomtown.
