My husband and my daughter and I went to a rather large and out of state role-playing and gaming convention last week. This was to serve as our one big summer trip (rather than a theme park or camping out) and as our official "honeymoon" vacation. Hint: Ohio is not an extremely exotic location for a honeymoon, but staying in a hotel with two beds and 8 total people can make it so.
We had a good time, some of us might even say we had a blast. Others of us (namely me) were somewhat disappointed by the loss of our first and second choice options as far as the gaming went. Quickly choosing third options, I attended one average game far too early in the morning for me to be truly alert and followed that up by meeting a game master with no other players to show up the next morning. He was very nice and helped me get a refund on that game ticket. Yes, at this con (and at many others like it) I not only paid for my drive there, the hotel and its parking fees, the entry fee to the con (which because of my membership in a particular club, I got at half-price), I also had to pay for each game I wanted to be guaranteed entry to... thus the game tickets that are paid for in advance. I'd also (rather wisely I thought at the time) bought a few dollars worth of generic tokens; this means that I can walk up to a game at the beginning, check with the game master if they still have room and will allow me to join in and get a seat if they are not already full. When a person gains unused generic tokens from her two family members during the con because they are simply too busy to utilize them, what does she do with them? She turns them in for cash! Of course, I did not get to preregister on-line like originally planned because the husband and I (and most of the con goers it seems) assumed that the time for preregistering would last longer than a week (maybe it was literally two weeks, but I blew one getting the info from the computer on how to choose my game preferences).
There I was, bored and feeling kind of lonely with my husband in one room and my daughter in another, both much busier than me, gaming at a con to which I was a stranger in a strange city. I tried the hucksters' room several times, I checked out the movie viewing room, I played a game or two of some tabletop stuff that I would never pay to play "in real life", as if my generic tokens weren't really made of money. I did not get aggressive and go hunting other games' game masters and shove generic tokens in their faces until someone let me into their nearly full or overly full games. I took a mystery novel and a bookmark to the food court or to the different quiet gaming rooms and absorbed the weirdness that is a gamer con. I'd also come armed with some card games, just in case I wanted to set up an impromptu game in a hallway. When I saw that all three of the games I'd brought were being offered in the tabletop game room for tokens or tickets, I felt kind of funny about offering to run them for free... it didn't seem fair somehow. Then I started thinking that I might not know all of the rules and didn't want to embarrass myself in front of the possible players.
Now ask me what I will do to embarrass myself in front of others...
I did sign up for and attend all four nights of a LARP during the con. There was a fifth night offered (that city's regular game) immediately after the con officially shut down, but we were leaving (and exhausted) that night so I didn't go - hadn't expected to. I did enjoy those LARPs and loved meeting all of the people, both in and out of character. Some of the outfits worn were just gorgeous and some served their characters very well - the ladies looked like ladies and the gentlemen looked like gentlemen, and the ruffians looked like... well, gorillas (you know who you are - "snort, snort"). During those nights, I ended up playing one character for a single night only (Friday) and another character all those other nights (Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday). They both got some things accomplished (not all of them expected, had some surprises there), and enjoyed themselves for the most part. Both have taken away some new tidbits of information or gained a new contact or something helpful. All in all, a very profitable experience for them both (and for me). That basically saved my whole con experience. I even forgot all about the possible costume contest (heroes and villains, I think) and probably would have enjoyed seeing that, but missed out on it for whatever reason (probably a time conflict).
All of that explanation means that costumes were involved with my characters. My Ventrue wore similar suits for two evenings and then a glorious golden gown with royal blue sash on the formal night. Abi always involves heavy eye makeup and certain identifiable jewelry, usually silver or gold, rather rich looking and suffused with precious stones. My Malkavian on the other hand is an unassuming friendly little thing that was visiting on the artists' night when everything went to hell in a hand basket. She came rather nicely dressed (for her) in a long green dress and minimal jewelry; all mixed costume beads and plastics, precious metals and gems, flowery pink touches everywhere (keeps the demons away, don'cha know), her ever present butterflies and her gigantic pink bag (with more butterflies and flowers), hair done in a ponytail tilted to one side with crystals wrapped around it. Yes, that's Lucy - and on a good night for her, a pleasant mood, no screaming (at least not until the rats showed up and ate the Justicar) to distract her.
I get totally into character as I am dressing the part - hair and makeup, dress and jewelry are all a large part of putting the character "on" for me. So there I was, strutting around like a confident and elitist business woman or dancing about in unsure circles on where to go next as my crazy and loving ing'enue. That's what I do to embarrass myself in front of others, and on purpose!
As the three of us (real life husband, daughter & self) were finally leaving the con and hotel, I requested that we sit down in a real restaurant to eat dinner together. It didn't matter what kind of restaurant really, so long as we had time together to reminisce and sit back to ourselves. Cracker Barrel never looked so good, but we still wish our favorite fish dish were back on the menu (yes, all three of us had a single favorite dish that we would habitually order at the same time, varying the sides and drinks).
We never got all the way through the book on CD that Dan selected for the car ride... he had to finish the story from the book he had at home so that I could return the CDs to the public library. I still have to unpack the last of my things tomorrow. It happens to be the Fourth of July tomorrow - thus I am off from work as is the husband. Of course it is summer, so my daughter doesn't have to worry about her weekday schedule much until late August. I hope it takes a break from raining long enough to appreciate the outdoors a little. We haven't even planned what to cook for our meals at all... hope we don't go hungry!
Happy Independence Day, America.
I still love our Brit, Welsh, Scot and Irish friends, btw.
