ChrisTalbot.com

I've been playing board games heavily for long enough that I now groan when certain games are suggested. In some cases, I'll still play those groaners, but in a handful of cases, I'd rather sit out than play. Unfortunately, some of these games are ones that my most frequent opponents really love.

In all cases, I wouldn't say the game is necessarily bad. It's just not my thing. I either find it boring, not very fun or think there's a similar but far superior game available to play. Over my first handful of plays, I even really liked some of these games. Sadly, they wore thin quickly.

For instance, Rich, Christine, Dave and Jacquie all love Princes of Florence. Here's a game that I enjoyed the first two or three times I played it. The others still love this game, but although I will occasionally agree to play it, I'd often rather go do something else than play this game.

What turned me off Princes of Florence? It's difficult to say -- although this is something I'd like to understand better, as it would make it easier to choose games I'll like in the future. I think the auction element is a nice touch, although I think an open auction instead of a round-the-table-stay-in-order style of auction would add some much needed excitement to this snoozer. And I suppose that's the crux of my dislike of Princes: I find it boring. In fact, I find it so boring that when I do get coaxed into playing, I do my best to rush the game to its final anticlimax.

Sadly, I'm not going to "get" Princes of Florence. When I first rated it on BGG, I think I gave it a seven or even an eight out of ten. It's now dropped to five. Thankfully, I don't see it getting any lower than that, but I don't see my interested in the game ever turning around, either.

Another great example is Carcassonne. Here, though, I think my biggest error was adding to many expansions to the game. That said, Jacquie and I really did over-play it. According to BGG, I've played this game fifty times. I'm pretty sure the last twenty were a lot less fun than the first thirty. To me, the game was extraordinarily fun for its first ten or fifteen plays, kind of fun for another ten or so plays, and then the fun factor slipped away quickly and quietly.

On the other hand, Settlers of Catan (the first Euro I played) got dull after several plays, but I've recently taken an interest in playing the game semi-regularly again. I don't think I'd ever start playing it weekly or anything, but I'm pretty sure I could be convinced to play it once every month or two.

Another big sleeper for me was St. Petersburg. I simply don't understand what's fun about it. I can see there's a strong strategic element to it, but I can see that in Princes of Florence and, a game I finally got a chance to play on the weekend, Traders of Genoa, as well. Knowing there's a strong strategic element doesn't make the game any less dull.

Speaking of Traders of Genoa, our first play through it (with me, Jacquie, Rich, Christine and Logan) didn't go well. I wasn't really impressed. However, one of the biggest setbacks was the rules for how the turn marker is moved ahead were misread. After a few turns, the marker hadn't moved, and I was starting to think it was going to be an incredibly dry four-hour game. By the time we figured out what we were doing wrong and that the game was really only an hour-long game, I was already getting the "I don't wanna play" blues. I'm willing to give Traders a second try, but if it turns out to be as dull as Princes, I probably won't be asking for this one to hit the table any time soon.

And then there are games that seem neat but don't really offer anything of interest. Alhambra was like this. I liked the concept and the game mechanics looked interesting. Sadly, I found it to be yet another snoozer. Rich is going to hate me for slamming a good portion of his favourite games, but it's all true.

I know that one of my issues is that familiarity breeds contempt. That's what happened with Carcassonne. As I played it more and more, my fun factor was lessened -- eventually to the point that I just couldn't find the fun in it anymore. That's a rather unfortunate truth, seeing as I've purchased almost all of the available expansions for the bloody game.

Here's a good breakdown of RPG plots for when you're suffering from writer's block: The Big List of RPG Plots by S. John Ross

Can I just say one more time that Blue Planet kicks some serious ass? I'm about halfway through the Moderator's Guide, and I suspect I'll be finished reading that book sometime later this week. I'm currently reading a section that talks about the science around compression, decompression and what happens to humans when they go underwater. I'm really digging the hard science in the fiction. Why the hell didn't I buy this game years ago? I remember when the first edition core book could be had at Silver Snail for like ten bucks.

Oh well. At least now I've discovered the absolute coolness that is Blue Planet. Thanks to Logan's searching, both he and I now have the entire Blue Planet V2 game line. Yay! Oh yeah, and Logan, I still owe you the cash for Ancient Echoes.

As I continue to read Blue Planet, I'm visualizing a world of possibilities for short-term and long-term campaigns. Because everyone in the game would be new to Blue Planet and wouldn't even have read any of the books (except for Logan and I, that is), I think the best start for the Sunday night group would be to have everyone make up newcomers to Blue Planet. We could even start the game on Earth as they go through the hell of being processed for cryo-sleep (or whatever the techie term in BP is for it). They get loaded on like cargo and then go to sleep for months while their ship -- probably a clunky, old freighter that may or may not get them to the Serpentis System alive -- heads for the worm hole.

When they wake, maybe one of them discovers a neighbour whose tube malfunctioned during flight. Maybe this person is crippled. Maybe this person has been dead for four months, with nobody on board any the wiser. The characters could be offloaded -- again, just like cargo -- and dealt with on Prosperity Station in orbit of Poseidon. They go through the heaves that accompany waking from cryo and go through what is more-or-less a rehab/detox program for the next two weeks. And only then do they finally get to Poseidon.

Of course, at this point, the game itself could be rather open-ended, with the PCs maybe meeting on board Prosperity, becoming friends or associates, and then deciding to work together to get their new start on Poseidon after planetfall. Such an open-ended game would be difficult to run and probably not very rewarding in the end, though. If all of the characters had a solid purpose for being on Poseidon, and each of those purposes were linked somehow, then an interesting and focused story could be told. If one person is in the GEO military, another is a would-be gangster and yet another is an eco-terrorist destined to join up with the Sierra Nueva group run by Bataku, then a campaign just isn't going to work very well. If one person is a would-be gangster, another an arms dealer and another a ruined man looking for any opportunities on Poseidon, then a story could be crafted around that.

I think I'm turning into a completionist when it comes to Eden's RPGs. I placed an order for Conspiracy X 2.0 with Amazon.ca on Friday. Of course, there's one item in the package that could postpone shipment until later this week or even early next week, but I should have it sometime in the next two weeks.

Of course, I have to read Terra Primate first.

Good-bye, Guardians Of Order. The company has announced that it's shutting its doors (which really comes as no surprise, as it's been having financial troubles for quite some time).

How Lord of the Rings should've ended. Seriously, when you saw LOTR, weren't you thinking, "If they had those fucking giant birds, why didn't they just use them and not waste nine hours of film getting to fucking Mordor?"

How Star Wars should've ended. It's all Princess Leia's fault!

I'm confused. Does this mean I have to be fingerprinted? Or is it just very specific professions and students?

I'm not really quite sure about it yet, but I think my Vampire: The Masquerade PBeM that I've been running for the last couple of years is coming to an end. We're finally approaching the climax to the first story (yes, first -- it's been slow-going), and I think everyone has more-or-less lost their enthusiasm for the game.

Whether the game dies after the first story or not, though, I'm thinking of maybe getting another PBeM of some sort off the ground after Labour Day. Despite the sometimes slow pace of PBeMs, I really like the depth of character and story you can get from the interactions between the players and GMs. It also makes it easier to deal with a heavier rules system without bogging down the story too much.

I'm thinking something along the lines of Cyberpunk 2020 or Traveller or even Blue Planet would be fun to run in a PBeM format.

If you ever feel bogged down by supplemental rules, S. John Ross' rule of three is probably for you. I certainly know the feeling. There was a reason I restricted the number and types of d20 books while I was running my Greyhawk campaign.

I just heard from Steve Campbell. We've been chatting via email a bit about playing some Blood Bowl, and I guess all that talk has got him really interested in playing -- and maybe even starting a league of some sort.

Now we just need to nail down some other local players to join in.

I was unaware of the existence of Wookieepedia until about three minutes ago.

What do you do when dice go bad? Bury them, of course.

Oooo... Monopoly with a debit card. It just sounds cool. :D

One of the more interested RPG experiments (albeit a short-lived one) I participated in was a Vampire: The Dark Ages game that The Law ran a few years back. I only played in the first two sessions, and the chronicle itself died out after about five sessions. The point of the experiment was to put the onus of the system and statistics entirely on the GM.

When we were asked to make characters, we were told to generate a character's history ... and that was it. Lawrence was going to take care of all character statistics. In fact, while our histories could specify that we knew certain skills and were good/bad/whatever in them, we wouldn't actually know our stats. We couldn't compare stats to each other. We could just talk in general about being good with a sword or an expert navigator or whatnot.

I'd really like to try something like this again -- either from a player perspective or from a GM perspective. Part of the reason I liked the V:tDA experiment was because I despise min-maxing with a passion. I hate seeing my players build a perfect character out of points. I hate seeing characters with no flaws. I hate seeing characters that aren't built to need improvement. It just drives me nuts.

Now, there's nothing wrong with people who like to "game the system," so to speak, but it's just not something I enjoy. I have a feeling this is partially what drove me away from D&D and d20 -- too many optimal characters builds and too much focus on statistics and min-maxing. The most interesting characters are those that have major flaws and have to strive to improve. And I think Lawrence's experiment helped to nix any chance of the powergamer and min-maxer behaviour amongst the players involved in the V:tDA chronicle.

I'd like to try something like that again.

In addition to Greyhawk Wars, Chris C. and I also played Battletech and Starship Troopers Miniatures over the weekend. It was great to finally give Battletech a try, even if it was just a very simple one-on-one light mech brawl.

It was also kind of neat to finally get back to Starship Troopers. I should've read the rules in a bit more detail before playing, though. I think I buggered up several of the rules -- although I did notice a rule I hadn't noticed when I first played the game all those months ago (the flinch rule).

On Saturday, Chris C. and I sat down to finally give Greyhawk Wars a try. We had hoped to find six interested people so we could play out the entire Greyhawk Wars campaign, but we came up short (by a lot). So we decided to give one of the two-player scenarios a try. Unfortunately, we didn't have all that many choices, as the Adventure Book has very few scenarios.

Although Chris would've preferred to play a scenario involving the Great Kingdom, as he's involved in the RPGA element of that nation, we didn't have that option with the available scenarios. We chose Furyondy Frontier, which is an early war scenario that puts Furyondy up against an invading Iuz.

In this scenario, the winner is the nation that controls its enemy's capital city at the end of any turn. So for Iuz to win, the player has to capture Chendl, and for Furyondy to win, the player has to capture Dorakaa. While the west map is used, only a handful of countries can come into play through diplomacy and war -- Bissel, Ekbir, Horned Society, Ket, Perrenland, Shield Lands, Tusmit and Veluna.

Furyondy starts out allied with the Shield Lands, and Iuz starts out allied with the Horned Society, so each player has troops scattered about two nations as the game begins. As the Furyondy player, I set up first and spread my military around so that Iuz couldn't just march through, bypassing my forces and head right to Chendl. Chris set up so that he could begin preparations to attack through the eastern Bandit Kingdom areas and through the Vesve Forest to the west.

In the first three turns, we both focused on sending heroes around the board to recruit mercenaries, search for magical treasure and convince neighbouring nations to ally. In the first turn, I made a diplomacy roll in Veluna, gaining a valuable ally, but Iuz was apparently more charismatic. Iuz gained both Ket and Tusmit, thereby building up his forces more considerably than Furyondy.

In the second turn, we both sent heroes to Perrenland. Unfortunately, my diplomacy roll was an utter failure and Iuz's roll was a success. At this point, I missed an important rule. I had read that the only way to move heroes was during the "place heroes" phase, and if an enemy's army is in an area where the hero is at the beginning of the turn, the hero can't just be picked up and moved. I didn't realize that the heroes could move as infantry units during the actions phase. So basically, my poor Belvor hero got himself stranded in Perrenland at the end of turn two because I misread the rules. Iuz ended the turn with both Perrenland and Ekbir as allies, taking the neutral territories and putting me at a severe diplomatic disadvantage (as my attempt to win Bissel as an ally failed miserably).

The third turn saw both of us continue to amass our forces and find treasure. Chris was luckier than I with searching for treasure and ended up with some powerful and very useful items, whereas I wasn't able to find a single treasure until the last turn of the game (and it was only a treasure that gave me a bonus on searching for treasure).

On turn four, Iuz finally attacked my forces that were moving into position near the Horned Society. He won the battle and started to push against my line on the east. In the west, he invaded Furyondy itself through the Vesve Forest. He also invaded Bissel and pushed me out, once again stranding my poor hero there (again, not the misread rule mentioned above). That left me with only one hero. One thing I wasn't sure about is if I could continue to make diplomacy rolls in Bissel. Since Iuz had captured the territory, I assumed not.

On turn five, Furyondy was able to push Iuz's forces back out of its own nation, but since Iuz had lost initiative that round (he only won initiative on turn three; every other turn, Furyondy had initiative), he had a chance to regain his territory. An error on my part gave Iuz an easy move into Chendl to do battle, and after a brutal battle that involved five units and a bunch of mercenaries on each side, the capital city of Furyondy fell to Iuz.

Overall, we found the game itself to be fairly enjoyable, although the way battle lines are set seemed a bit odd. We're thinking about redesigning the battle rules a bit for a future game. Still, as we're both fans of the World of Greyhawk D&D campaign setting, we quite enjoyed our time doing battle for the fate of the Flanaess. We'll probably be giving it another try in the coming weeks.

I finished reading the Blue Planet V2 Player's Guide on Sunday and started flipping through the Moderator's Guide. I'm really liking the whole concept around Blue Planet. There's so much packed into the Player's Guide, and yet there are still a lot of questions unanswered (which I suspect will be answered in the Moderator's Guide and the supplements). Just to put together a plot for the game will require some serious focus.

It's looks like a second Evening With Kevin Smith DVD is in the works. The first one is so much fun that I've watched it three times in the last eight months or so. It baffles Jacquie to no end.

Speaking of Silent Bob, did any of my faithful readers check out Clerks II over the weekend? I didn't, but I'm interested in hearing about whether it was any good. The trailers didn't do anything for me -- but I'm a sucker for Kevin Smith films, so I know I'll go see it anyway (shit, I went to Jersey Girl, after all).

These B Team minis are great. :)

Somehow I ended up looking at this Quidditch game entry on BGG, and I got to thinking that the Euro StreetSoccer could probably be revamped a bit to play out a game of Quidditch.

I am such a geek. :P

Aaaaahh. Aren't the Mythos plushies cuuuuuute?

Check out the Star Wars Miniatures starship interior terrain. Too bad I'm far too lazy to make this.

Apparently Gary Gygax's old gaming group reunited this year at the Lake Geneva Gaming Convention to play out a scenario using the original Chainmail rules and involving a battle that took place a decade before the Temple of Elemental Evil module.

According to CBC.ca, Fido will be making its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. I'm very tempted to try to get tickets. Just read the description.

I think I want Shocking Roulette just for the absurdity of it.

Now this is a game room. Just beautiful.

Funny. I was just scrolling through my BGG ratings and I saw Through The Desert listed. But I read it as Through The Dessert. Then I suddenly had pictures in my head of little men riding wild cherries and berries, and linking up to vanilla sundaes with hot fudge.

I hate to admit it, but I'd probably go see a DragonLance movie if it actually got made. I couldn't ever get into the novels, and I think the campaign setting is utter shite, but it's an animated fantasy movie. I'd have to go. :(

I'm just about done reading the Blue Planet V2 Player's Guide, and I have to say I like the setting. It's depressing. The world has gone to shit, and now Earth has discovered and colonized a fresh world that the corporations are now helping to destroy. It's just sad.

However, it has that element of the frontier that really appeals to me. It's like they took the cyberpunk genre and crossed it with space exploration and the Wild West. Very nice.

The system seems fairly straightforward and workable, as well. The entire thing is based on d10 rolls, and it's based on rolling under a target number on one, two or three d10s. Combat is bloody lethal, though. It's meant to be fairly realistic, in that if you get shot, stabbed or even punched, there's a good chance you'll be seriously injured, if not killed. Getting into a fight can have rather nasty consequences.

More information about Sealand.

This recipe for making cheap wine might just work, but I'm sure the finished product tastes like ass. As the author points out, it's basically hobo wine. It might be fun to try for shits and giggles, though.

I think I heard about the Principality of Sealand at one time or another, but I'd completely forgotten about it. It seems the "independent nation" has suffered a major fire that has caused significant problems for the floating principality.

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that if that War On Terror board game wasn't so bloody expensive, I'd buy a copy of it. :)

A Lego dice tower! Brilliant! Now I just need some Lego and a lot of spare time.

Blue Planet really seems like a cross between the dark future of the cyberpunk genre and a game about life on a frontier.

I don't see how War On Terror could even remotely be considered a family game, but hey, whatever works for marketing. I'm still trying to decide whether this is in poor taste or not. I think I'm leaning towards "yes," though.

Nearly a year ago, I played Granada: The Fall of Moslem Spain. In that game, I played Spain and David B. played the Moors. That game ended with a strong Moorish victory. It took us awhile to set up a rematch, but it finally happened last night.

For the rematch, we switched sides. David played the Spanish and I played the Moors. I hoped to repeat David's success a year ago. My goal was to take Lorca quickly and then punch my way through whatever defences David had to make my way to Cordoba. To begin with, I set up Boabdil in Ronda and al-Zagal in Illora to fight in the west, and Amir Ali in Vera and Al-Zagri in Majacar to fight in the east. I decided my most important stronghold was Granada, so I put Ali al-Attar there with some forces and kept him there for the entirety of the game.

The 1481 season went really poorly for me. I didn't get a single activation, and through a flukey die roll, the season ended rather quickly. David had set up to protect Lorca with one of his leaders (I don't remember which one), and he had put most of the rest of his leaders in the west to punch through and take Pinos Puenta, Malaga and Granada. He had also kept one leader back just outside of Cordoba to stop al-Zagal's impending invasion.

The first thing David did was rush across the border with Ferdinand and take Pinos Puenta. I only had one infantry unit there, and I had expected it to fall, but even I was surprised at how quickly it fell. Poor planning on my part, but I was less worried about losing Pinos Puenta, and I was a lot more worried about losing Granada.

In 1482, my activation rolls weren't much better, and David had attacked al-Zagal, doing some serious damage to the troops under his command. Over the next few turns, I was forced to have al-Zagal retreat back into Granada to prepare for a strong defence of the capital.

However, David made a small error. He forgot about Boabdil and moved all his units in the west into Moorish lands, leaving Cordoba undefended. At the first opportunity, I peeled off Boabdil's infantry units (leaving just two cavalry units) and shot straight up into Cordoba, taking the fortification without incident.

David was forced to divide his forces up a bit. While Ferdinand tried pounding on Granada over the next couple of years and some of David's other leaders started taking all of the two-point fortifications in the west, he was forced to send one leader back to try to retake Cordoba. Some lucky die rolls kept Boabdil in charge, but after some attacks, he was only holding on by a thread.

The dice started to help me out, though. While David's reinforcement rolls were on the very low end, I started getting half-decent reinforcements. Between 1483 and 1485, Amir Ali and al-Zagri attacked Lorca, only to be fended off twice (in 1483 and 1484). They lost significant forces, but they slowly started whittling Lorca's defenders down. After a battle, they retreated to nearby Oria and Contoria to wait for the end of the year so I could reinforce their numbers. Some good rolls meant I was able to build them right back up again at the end of each campaign year.

As David took every two-point fortification west of Granada, I continued pounding away at Lorca. Finally, in mid-1485, Lorca's defences had been reduced enough al-Zagri and Amir Ali were finally able to slaughter the rest of them and take the fortification, ending the game in a Moorish win.

Now that I've played Granada from each side, I finally understand why the "activate one" option exists. As Spain, activating one unit is useless. You typically want to have as many units activated as possible, as the Spanish player has so much to do. As the Moorish player, I found myself often just waiting for the year to end so I could reinforcements. In a few cases, I rolled well and had the ability to activate three units, but I often found myself unable to really activate three units.

It seems the Moorish player really wants to push time along and wait for campaign years to end while the Spanish player needs the years to go on as long as possible so he can beat on the Moorish forces and take as much ground as possible (and there's no way the Moors can defend all of their fortifications).

While I still think the activation rules are wonky, I have a better understanding of the game now and would definitely be willing to play it again. Perhaps the best aspect of the game is that it only takes about two hours to play it until there's a clear winner.

Neat. Tokyopop has turned Kingdom Hearts into a manga. If I start picking these up, maybe I can finally find out how the story ends. I never could finish that damn game. I got stuck on one of the last bosses.

And now that I've been challenged, I'm taking Blue Planet off the shelf right about ... now.

I've been trying to get myself psyched up about reading the Blue Planet V2 books. I even got to the point of picking up the Player's Guide yesterday and opening the book to leaf through. Then I realized how dense the text was and put it back on the shelf.

This is going to take some real effort.

Chewbacca looks pretty good as a puppet.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely getting into a war game kick again. I have Avalanche's Granada: The Fall of Moslem Spain booked for Monday night, and I'm in the process of setting up games of Star Fleet Battles, Advanced Squad Leader and Greyhawk: Wars. This is what happens when I get burned out on Euros.

I'm working on a rewrite for a client piece today and not having much luck. I hate writing advertorial. For a break, I'm coming back here.

Terra Primate is calling to me. It wants to be read.

The more I think about it, the more I want to go to Origins again next year. I'm pretty sure I can swing it if I watch my entertainment expenses over the next twelve months. There's a very good chance Jacquie and I will have to make a trip to Nova Scotia sometime next summer, but if I watch my spending, I think I can swing both.

Neat. I didn't even know there was a Kitchener Chess Festival.

Now that Origins is over and I have a bunch of new books, I'll get back to some of these brainstorming sessions.

I guess I have to make mention of the big fucking Blue Planet purchase that Logan and I made. I think we each bought just about every book available for Blue Planet V2. Six frickin' books, man! And I haven't even started to look through them them yet.

I don't know who will be interested in playing it, but considering the amount of shelf space the books are taking up, I feel the need to actually play this. Of course, Blue Planet isn't a typical kind of sci-fi RPG. It was built to be more of a hard sci-fi game rather than an adventurers' game. I'll have to look through the core books and see if I can come up with some neat ideas for how to deal with it.

I flipped through Godlike on Monday. This is a World War II era supers game where the first super appears in 1936 and then more and more of them start rapidly appearing across the globe. The supers become an integral part to WW2 on each side, but the real message is that supers don't really change anything. They simply fit into the events rather than change history too much.

Thankfully, Godlike only cost me $5 at Origins, so I won't feel too bad if it never gets played. And at the moment, I don't see how I can make it work. However, the idea of playing supers in another era is kind of interesting. I believe The Law and I chatted a long time ago about what it would be like to run a Victorian supers game.

Prior to Origins, I'd spent a fair bit of time playing heavier games -- mostly war games. Then Origins came, and I spent four solid days playing nothing but Euro games and other lighter fare. Now that Origins is over, I feel Euroed out and I'm dying to get into something meatier. Maybe it's time I learned Advanced Squad Leader.

Highlights from Origins 2006...

Meeting Reiner Knizia. But seriously, I didn't have anything to say to him. I just like a lot of his games, and since I had the opportunity to meet him and get him to sign a game without standing in line, I took it. I think this would've been a bigger highlight if I'd had the chance to play a game with him.

Hanging out with a group from Missouri who were quite friendly.

Meeting someone I've played many games with on BSW and BGG.

Playing seven games of back-to-back Werewolf with the Looney Labs folks. Too much fun, but I decided only to do this on one night instead of every night like some of the Werewolf crew.

Drinking beer at Barley's, a great microbrewery right across the street from the Convention Centre. It's a good thing I only went there twice -- once on Wednesday night and once on Saturday night. I could've just sat there for hours drinking the Russian Stout.

Seeing Great Cthulhu but knowing I couldn't afford to buy him.

Chatting with Steven Long at Hero Games.

Wasting a half hour of the Indie RPG Revolution guy's time by asking him question after question about the games he was selling.

Seeing Kevin Siembieda from Palladium and realizing that he doesn't look nearly as evil as he's made out to be. I figured he'd have horns, a forked tongue and a long devil's tail.

Biggest disappointments from Origins 2006...

Caylus is waaaaaay over-hyped.

Not seeing one copy of Busen Memo for sale.

Ooooooo... Spider-Man 3 teaser trailer.

Look carefully and you can spot me in this picture from Wednesday night in the CABS Board Room at Origins. ... Well, you can spot the back of me, anyway.

Things I learned from Origins that I'll keep in mind if I ever go again (and I'd really like to go again)...

1. Don't bother bringing games. Everybody and their mother has games, and there are also a lot of games that you can borrow from CABS or other groups. There are games to play, so save on the packing space and don't bring anything. If you join the RPGs, though, dice might be a good idea.

2. Don't bring a GBA. It won't get played.

3. Don't bring an iPod Shuffle. It won't get listened to.

4. Don't bring books to read during downtime. I brought an H.P. Lovecraft collection, Tribe 8, Cat and Wushu. I didn't even look at them. Trust me. There is no fucking downtime. Save on space and leave that kind of stuff at home ... unless you need it for a game you are sure you're going to play.

5. Bring a big empty bag to take home all the stuff you buy. I should've brought a big duffle bag to store all the crap I bought, but instead, I ended up lugging stuff home in a big, ugly, pink Paizo bag. When flying, I guess bringing such a duffle is an absolute necessity.

I've now had a complete day to rest up ... and I still feel exhausted. I think I'm going to need a couple of nights of nothing but rest before I start to feel normal again. Maybe all that staying up until 2:00 a.m. is what did this to me. Maybe it's thrown my sleeping patterns off.

So the last day of Origins, Sunday, was mostly a write-off. We were getting packed, checking out of the hotel, making sure travel plans were worked out (they weren't, but it all worked out in the end) and taking one last spin around the vendors hall to spend money.

Despite the fact that I spent more money than I should have, I'm still glad I took that last spin around the vendors hall. The cheap RPG place had reduced everything to $5 apiece just to get rid of it all, so I picked up a couple of books that looked neat, including Terra Primate and Godlike.

I also got sucked into buying a subscription to Against The Odds. The Clash of Arms guys were just too nice and helpful. I wasn't planning on subscribing at Origins, although I have been pondering a sub for awhile, but the guy I talked to was just so cool that he sold me on a one-year subscription. I walked away with a copy of the newest issue, as well as die-cut counters for their new postcard game (a brilliant idea).

As much as I had hoped I would, I didn't get back online yesterday to write about the events of the day. But that's cool. I ended up spending most of the day hanging out at the L2 Design booth and chatting with Art. I helped mind the booth, but we chatted about games and such. I even found out he used to be an Apple reseller, so despite my intention to leave all channel talk behind, I found myself talking shop.

Let's see. How about some highlights?

I stopped by the Hero Games booth and chatted with Steven Long, one of the creators of the system. Rich, are you jealous? ;) The guy was very nice, helpful and more than willing to chat about the system. I told him I was interested in how the system worked and that I'd like to pick up a copy of Hero Sidekick when it's back in print (which he said will be fairly soon).

That doesn't mean I'm going to be a Hero convert, though, so don't get your hopes up, Rich. ;)

After cruising by the Palladium booth several times, I finally caught a glimpse of Kevin Siembieda. Guess what! He doesn't have any horns. Heheh. I didn't really look around much in the booth. I didn't really want to be asked about what Palladium games I play/enjoy/are interested in. I had a rather poor image in my mind of how such a conversation would likely go.

I dropped by the American Go Association booth. The guys there were offering to teach people go, so I sat down for about an hour or so to learn the basics of the game and the simplest of strategies. I think I have more of a handle on the game now, but I can see why people say it takes hundreds of plays to even begin to understand the game.

Later on in the evening, I found the Looney Labs Werewolf and joined in on the fun. After seven games of Werewolf, though, I gave up and went off to bed.

I slept like the dead last night. This morning, I wandered around a bit, got into a handful of games up in the Board Room and in one of the booths with ... oh, hell, what's the company's name? It's the one that puts out Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. Playroom?

Anyway, I was introduced to Reiner Knizia's Poison and his brand new game, Dead Man's Chest. And then I got a chance to meet Reiner himself. I bought a copy of Poison and got him to sign it. Tres geeky, for sure, but I couldn't turn down the chance (especially when there was no line-up).

I'm about to head off wandering again. I think I'll head back up to the Board Room for some more games ... or maybe I'll cruise by L2 to give Art a bit of a break.