The Games We Play

I didn’t see the hotel until I was already past the exit off highway 101, which runs along the San Francisco peninsula from San Jose to the Golden Gate bridge. I grimaced and pulled to the far right lane, hoping for a close second chance exit. Millbrae Boulevard is next, but it is about another mile down the road. The area is new to me, so pulling off and rounding onto a residential street (not a frontage road; inlets from the Bay run alongside 101 to the east) I was a bit anxious that the surface streets back south wouldn’t be a straight shot to my destination.

Four-day weekends are a rarity in the cube-dwelling universe. Usually when they happen a Significant Holiday is taking place which translates more often than not into plans being made with only partial consent of all parties involved. For once my alternating schedule of Fridays on and Fridays off had meshed with a fairly innocuous Monday-falling federal holiday and the result was four days without work. I hadn’t squandered the days; in the span from Thursday night to Monday evening I had planned a dinner with Dr. Mac, HB and , Ryan‘s wedding, some work for Bosslady; some quality time with Nik and, of course, KublaCon with Lister.

Kublacon was to be my second gaming convention. My first had been back in February where I had sort of re-entered the world of tabletop gaming after a long stint where my gamer tendencies had been forced to subsist on video gaming alone. My experience then had taught me things about myself, but more importantly it had been fun. Enjoyment is something I strive for; I have a valued opinion that too many people settle for activities that are only marginally interesting to them and then spend a lot of time complaining about how bored they are. Boredom is my arch nemesis. I feel life is too short to sit around wanting for something else to do so when I find something I like, I go for it.

The Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport is a tall, circular building surrounding an enclosed atrium, high windows stretching from the ninth floor down to the lobby level which splits into a dining atrium area and a convention or ballroom floor below. Already late from a stop to examine a broken server, I hurried in, lugging my backpack overloaded with heavy game manuals, dice and binders stuffed with graph paper. I descended the steps from the registration area and lobby to the ballroom foyer where the convention staff had set up their registration tables.

I am apt, in situations like this, to merely find the closest line that has formed and get into it before completely surveying the situation. Typically this results in me being in the wrong line, but one of these days I will select the correct line first and be halfway through before I realize I’ve accidentally done myself a favor. In this case, I’m not in the right line since I’ve pre-registered so I ducked out and wandered up to the alphabetized pre-reg table and was handed a bag with a convention book, a name badge on a shoddy lanyard and had a bright orange plastic wristband wrapped around my left arm. I was instructed to keep the band on for the duration of the convention, which is going to be interesting since I need to depart the convention at one point to attend a wedding and I’m not sure this gaudy orange is really going to make a great accessory for formal, wedding-appropriate attire.

I’m supposed to be meeting Lister here, so I begin to bumble around the convention areas, trying to keep an eye out for my friend. You might think that a guy like Lister, who stands probably 6′ 2″ or more and has a linebacker’s build, would be fairly easy to find. I suppose that may be true in a typical crowd, but gaming conventioneers are not typical in any way. Aside from the full-costumed LARPers and dozens of interesting games being played in the open gaming area, the Dealer’s room which is adjacent to the open gaming tables and will later be cordoned off with massive partitions set into ceiling tracks and it emits a steady beacon of hypnotizing energy that draws me in and keeps my head down and eyes locked on thousands of bargains, homebrews and rare imported games of all shapes and types. It is difficult to search for someone when you see three end-to-end tables stacked with polyhedral dice of all shapes and colors.

Eventually I am able to build up a tolerance to the retail floor and I began to walk the convention rooms, up and down several halls poking my head into various rooms, mostly full of staff preparing for the weekend’s games. Some of the rooms look interesting and I find myself getting distracted again. I had to make at least three complete circuits of the Atrium and Lobby levels before I finally saw Lister across the room in the beckoning Dealer’s area, and after a bit of maneuvering through the growing crowd I managed to make contact and exchange greetings.

My travels around the convention areas hadn’t even touched on all the places where games were being held or would be held. After a brief stop in Lister’s room to collect Whimsy and one of Lister’s gaming buddies (Audrick), we headed back downstairs to see about getting into a game of Necromunda. The miniatures gaming area had some impressive (and some decidedly non-impressive) terrain boards set up, but no obvious place to play our game. With a shrug we wandered back into the open gaming area where we all fell under the spell of the seller’s wares.

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