Some tips for surviving a convention:

* Wear comforatble and sturdy shoes! You’re likely to do a bit of walking, and having shoes that don’t support your feet very well is a bad idea.

* Stay hydrated! Soda is good for the sugar and caffeine boost to keep you going, but water is better for you in the long run.

* Make a plan! At least have a rough idea of what you’re going to do, and make a reference sheet with the important information you can fold up and stick in your pocket to look at on short notice.

* Eat when you can! For short periods of time, it is possible to trade food for sleep. As one person I met said, “Two meals a day and six hours sleep, or six meals a day and two hours sleep.”

* Have fun!

Today was my big “sightseeing day”. I spent the morning wandering the convention, taking pictures of the hall, events, and that sort of thing. Rather than squeeze it all in here, I’ll put together an “Origins Gallery” for you to peruse (it probably won’t happen until I get home next week).

I ran my last session of Journey to Lang today, and it went really well. I had a full table of eight players, and we all had a great time. Here’s a pic:

(Back row — left to right): Tiffany Ragland, Tom Prevendoski, Gregory Park, Kathy Czechowski, J Scott Eubanks, Diane Donaldson, Josh Harrison.
(Seated — left to right): Laura Gardner, Ed Czechowski, Scott Wood

Well, off to grab some dinner, and get ready for my LARP this evening! Catch you later!

So… blogging the con is a bit harder than I thought it would be. Here’s a brief rundown of yesterday:

10:00 — I play in the first round of the Mage: The Awakening demo tournament. The game does virtually nothing to expose the mechanics of the new Mage, it is actually a “prelude” style game; one of the characters is awakened at the end (the only surviving character — and it wasn’t mine). It was fun, though, and I got the chance to meet Matt McFarland (aka “BlackHatMatt” from the RPGnet forums), one of the writers for the new Mage. I am voted to go on to the next round, but a scheduling conflict with my Saturday Earthdawn game prevents me from actually attending.

12:00 — I cruise the dealer’s room. I see (to my amazement) copies of the new Mind’s Eye Theatre books from White Wolf. They weren’t supposed to be out until the 17th of this month. I learn that they had a limited run (about 200 copies) printed and shipped specifically for Origins. Since I have pre-ordered my copies already, I do not pick them up. I do pick up Exalted: The Authocthonians, Werewolf: The Forsaken, the Mage: The Awakening Demo pack, and “Issue 0” of the new Exalted comic book.

I also pick up a huge stack of swag from the Atlas Games booth — the new Ars Magica supplements, Unknown Armies Second Edition, and two supplements for that.

I make plans to return the next day to pick up packs of dice for Mary, and fill out our Dork Tower, Nodwick, and KoDT collections.

13:00 — I run into James, who says he is about to call the hotel to find out if the books were delivered.

14:00 — Just as we’re about to get under way with the seminar… James arrives with a CafePress box with the books! Huzzah! The seminar goes smoothly, and we actually spend a couple of hours afterward talking about various things with the attendees. Sadly, there was no sign of Andrew & Tiffany Ragland (who planned to be there for the seminar).

19:00 — I run session #2 of Journey to Lang. I get three players, all of whom are familiar with Earthdawn. The game goes pretty quickly, and we’re out of there by 21:15. I take the opportunity to hike down the road…

21:45 — I arrive at the Renaissance and manage to get involved with the second night of the Requiem LARP. My character gets on the Prince’s bad side pretty early when he is found making out with somebody else on the table in the Prince’s boardroom.

00:45 — I get back to the hotel after the LARP and give Carlton a call. They’ve managed to hook up with Andrew & Tiffany, and are at a bar just down the street. I hoof it over, only to find that last call has already gone. We head back to the Doubletree, and find the bar there just closed. Andrew gives a wonderfully persuasive speech to the lady at the front desk (they had travel troubles getting to the Con), and she convinces the bartender to get a round of beers. We then sit up for the next several hours talking shop.

04:00 — Finally turn in.

I am now getting ready to head out for the next day. I need to hit the dealer’s room, run my third session of Journey to Lang, and get ready for the last night of the LARP. In the middle of this, I will probably have to catch up with Andrew and Tiffany, and meet one or two of the other people who are coming in for tonight.

I have a whole bunch of pictures, but they’ll have to wait until later. Stay tuned!

Just a quick update before I head out to grab some breakfast and head on up to my first event of the day.

The Requiem LARP last night was very cool. The premise was this — it was set in 1937, and the Prince of Columbus had opened his home to visitors; there was a large refugee camp on the outskirts of the city and the feeding was good. We were all playing pre-gen characters (with only the roughest of backgrounds), arranged into coteries, and given a few general goals to work towards.

My coterie were the “Revivalists” — a nomadic group of kindred who traveled around under the guise of a religious revival group. The leader of the group was a Lancea Sanctum, and ended up as an old-time southern preacher always talking about the power of the blood of Longinus, and the dark gifts he had given us.

My character in this little group was Strecksherr — a Mekhet Carthian who acted as the coterie’s business manager. His main goal was to make money, and take lessons from the group to help out the Carthian movement.

Anyhow… I can go on and on here, and I need to get going.

On tap for today — Mage: The Awakening at 10, the Earthdawn Seminar at 2, and my second session of Journey to Lang at 7. Updates later!

So the first 2/3 of day one are over with. I’m back at the hotel, getting a little bit of rest before getting ready and heading out for the Vampire: Requiem LARP tonight.

My Earthdawn session — Journey to Lang went well this morning. I had six players; four of them were more-or-less familiar with the game, one had played a bunch of Shadowrun, and so knew about Earthdawn, but had never played it, and the last guy had never played it at all.

We had a good time; my dice were pretty hot at one point, and a handful of berserk cadaver men went open-ended on several rolls, knocking out the troll Sky Raider. The party changed tactics, ganging up to take out one enemy per round, and managed to avoid actually losing anybody.

The final battle in the session (against a pair of corrupt obsidimen) went very quickly (which was good, because we were running up against time at the end there). The archer scored the highest die roll of the session in that fight, doing 43 points of damage in a single hit.

I did learn a few things from running the session, which should make the next events go more smoothly.

Pictured (from left to right): Theresa, Poorht, windling Thief; Dylan Norris , Targ Boneslicer, troll Sky Raider; Rob O’Meara, Corelian Sandilar, elf Archer; Dave Kirkhart, Norasu, obsidiman Warrior; Matt Johnson, Onnaro, obsidiman Wizard; and Linda O’Meara, Chiall Nevarra, t’skrang Swordmaster.

I also got the chance to meet Kathy (Charcoalgrin) Czechowski who I’ve known through the online ED community for a number of years. (I met her husband Ed, too, but I don’t think I know him from the boards.)

I also played a demo of the new Serentiy game, coming this August from Margaret Weis Productions. It’s an interesting little game, and while the session itself wasn’t great (due in part to a GM who wasn’t totally prepared, and some players who weren’t really playing their characters).

Still, I am intrigued by the system, and may pick it up when it arrives in August.

Well, off to get ready for my game tonight! I’ll give an update later!

Gearing up for the first day. I have my first demo in… two hours, and we’re taking care of the “5 S’s” — shave, shower, sh*t, shine, and shampoo — grabbing a bite to eat, and then heading out to the convention center.

Last night we picked up our badges, poked around a bit, and got an idea of where we needed to be for our events.

Quick update — the books are coming!! — we got an e-mail this morning that CafePress has shipped the copies of the EPC, and UPS tracking indicates they arrived in Columbus at 5:30am (or so). They should be delivered to the hotel sometime today.

After the trials and tribulations of getting these done… well, it will be nice to finally see them. I’ll post some pictures, just as I did with the demo version of the EGC.

Well… off to grab some breakfast, and get in a bunch of gaming!

After several hours in the air, we’ve made it to Columbus (along with our luggage) and have checked into the hotel. We’re getting ready to head up to the convention center to check in and get our convention information.

Of course, we did a touch of sightseeing before we headed out — here’s James and Carsten in front of Stephen King’s house.

The trip to Columbus was interesting… thunderstorms were moving across the area, and our first landing attempt was aborted due to turbulence and heavy winds. We circled for another half-hour or so, and finally came in behind the storm. A short cab ride later… we’re at the hotel and checked in.

Stay tuned for future updates!

Hello again. Just dashing off a quick update before we head out to the airport this morning.

Yesterday, we drove down to Massachusetts to visit Lou Prosperi (the former line developer for Earthdawn). We picked his brain, and had a very productive (if too brief) meeting with him.

We’d like to thank Lou (and his family) once again for his time and hospitality.

On the way back home, we stopped in at a restaurant and I exposed James and Carsten to the joy that is Maine lobster.

James has a mild seafood allergy (it makes him nauseous — tough luck for a guy from an island nation), so while he was eager to give it a try, he wasn’t able to eat more than a couple of bites. Carsten, however, enjoyed it, and it certainly didn’t go to waste — James ordered something else, and Carsten and I split his lobster.

We’re just packing up now, off to Staples to pick up the character sheets for the demo games, then over to the airport to check in and fly to Columbus. I plan a quick stop on the way — do the tourist thing and take a picture of James and Carsten in front of Stephen King’s house.

If you’re going to Origins, I look forward to seeing you there! If not, stay tuned… I’ll post updates about the convention, and what we cover in the seminar.

Well, the package from CafePress arrived this afternoon… sans the copies of the Earthdawn Player’s Compendium. They’ve been having some technical problems with the prinout, and James is in the process of trying to get the file size down small enough for them to run off a copy (or three) and overnight it to us in Ohio. If all goes well, we will have them for you to drool over at the seminar on Friday.

We did get the Gamemaster’s Compendium, so even if we end up not getting the EPC in, you’ll have some idea what the final books will look like. Here’s a picture of the new book:

PS — The final product will not be ring-bound. It will be hardcover (and a hefty one, at that — about 500 pages).

Well, the luggage finally arrived, which is a good thing. Of course, it didn’t arrive until after we had made a quick run out to Target to pick up some necessaries… but the airline delivered it to our door, so that’s good.

Had an enjoyable evening. A bunch of my friends came over, we had a cookout, drank a couple beers, and — after much persuading — my brother-in-law Sean managed to get James to try Dance Dance Revolution. Here’s a picture:

(James is the tall one on the right. The shorter one on the left is my wife, Mary.)

I now expect some sort of bloody Kiwi vengeance for publishing this picture.

Dammi gets in this evening, and tomorrow we drive down to visit Lou. Today will be spent finalizing the PCs for the demo games we’re running at the con later this week.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Jim got in this morning about 10:30am… but his luggage did not. We’re currently waiting for the next flight from Boston to get into Bangor (in about an hour) to see if his bag is on it.

Jim is currently napping — traveling a few thousand miles over the courseof twenty-something hours, and crossing multiple time zones is bound to take it out of you (especially when you only get about 4-5 hours of sleep during the trip).

We had a nice chat when he first got in, though. It looks like it’s going to be an interesting week.