Perambulations in Verbiage

I need to be better about taking pictures at cons. I have a cell phone with a camera, AND a digital camera, and yet...no photos.

This was my first time attending Origins, but my second time attending a con in Columbus in the last 12 months. Overall, I rather liked it as a convention. If I were looking to go strictly for fun, I'd probably even prefer it to GenCon. Origins seems like a large-size regional con, and strikes a nicely managable middle-ground between hotel cons which can be too small to keep me entertained, and GenCon which is now so huge as to be overwhelming. (You can't even really "do GenCon" anymore. It's simply too large for any one person to see everything, or get to do half the things you might be interested in.) From a vendor perspective however, I'm not certain that Origins is as neccessary as it used to be for exposure, unless you really want to cover the Ohio market.

Highlights include:

Spending time with the Brits who head up and write for Cubicle 7, as they are lovely people and we see them far less often than I'd like. Damned Atlantic ocean!

Being introduced to "Rastamouse". Totally not kidding. It's a British kids show featuring a crime fighting Rastafarian mouse and the Easy Crew. (In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, yes, there has been some controversy over racism over it.) I just think it's a damned cute show. Plans are in the works to make Jamaican meat pies and drink dark&stormys and Red Stripe while watching a Rastamouse marathon. "Makin' a Bad Ting Good!"

Coming home with a shiny new copy of "Die Profundis" 2nd edition.

Playing Battletech in the Icarus! Some Battle-techie used his internet-fu for logos and names, and came up with the art we used in our old Firefly campaign for one of their pods.



Lowlights:

Not getting to play Mouseguard. All the sessions were sold out. Alas!

Spotting old-school wooden chess sets and vinyl roll-up boards at the Chessex booth, getting excited, and then forgetting to buy one! Ack!

The virus/ear-infection/whatever-it-is that I picked up on the plane on the way there. It's now a week later, I'm home, I'm on antibiotics, and my ears & throat STILL HURT. Boo.