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Arisia 2007, take one
65% disaster, 35% good. And about 70% too small.
Okay, warning to newcomers: this is probably going to be a whiny post. Correction: there's no "probably" about it. I'm in a fuckload of pain, and was all weekend, and I had waited all year for Arisia - it's the high point of my year, in many ways - so you'd better believe that I'm whining about it. But having warned you, I'll throw some of this stuff behind a cut.
Second warning: I'm going to say some negative things about the hotel. Some people seem to take criticism personally, and I've had my ass flamed medium-well more than once by people who've felt that anything negative about the hotel or the con was a personal attack. Relax, okay? I know that most people were doing their best, the situation was out of our control, etc. etc. etc. I'm not trying to kill anyone's baby, and there are few people who love Arisia more than I do. Which sounds really weird to say, actually.
Third warning: I'm going to repeat some rumors I heard. I will label those clearly as rumors. I like to gossip, okay? It's not a crime.
I'm sick, sick, sick. Why the fuck do I have to get sick SO OFTEN right around Arisia? That's the one time in the year that I really want to be at my best and enjoy myself...and instead, I actually got sicker than I was before I got there.
My back is really bad, at least partly because it got worse when I got dizzy and fell through part of someone else's costume in the Masquerade Green Room and destroyed it. They were able to repair it, but you can just imagine how totally shitty I feel about all that. I don't even want to talk about it right now.
My lungs are also worse - in fact, I think that's why I fell. The only difference I've seen so far from the new antibiotic is that the glop I'm coughing up is yellow now instead of olive green. All in all, I'm in intense pain - so much so that I'm seriously considering going back onto Vicodin. And I am definitely calling my doctor first thing on Tuesday. It's clear that I'm going to need physical therapy for my back.
Another reason that my back is getting worse rather than better is probably all this damned coughing from the bronchitis - if that's what it is. It's not quite like any bronchitis I've had before. My lungs are full of liquid, and they gurgle and crackle when I open my mouth. Did I mention that when I went to my doctor last week, my sats were low? Apparently the fluid is impairing my oxygen intake, although not seriously enough to warrant hospitalization.
But what's different is that extremely thick glop is pooling in my lungs at the base of my windpipe. It flutters across the base of my windpipe - I think it's probably like being waterboarded from inside. Because when that happens, I go into paroxysms of uncontrollable coughing. The coughing is so violent that I nearly vomit, every time - although, as I've told Teri, vomiting wouldn't help. I'm not even nauseous; the problem is my airway.
I cough and cough until finally the glop comes up. And then more glop collects in my lungs, and I'm coughing again within half an hour to an hour. You can imagine what all that coughing is doing to the spasming muscles in my lower back.
As for the hotel...oh my god. It's simply not meant for conventions, and I mean that literally. At the con I called it "Arisia bonsai", but "Arisia in Chinese foot binding" might be more accurate. And the elevators!
If you haven't been to the Park Plaza, Arisia's old hotel, let me tell you about it: everyone considered the elevators there a disaster. There were eight of them, and each of them could hold a maximum of ten to twelve passengers.
At the Hyatt, there are FOUR elevators - glass ones. But believe me, there's nothing great about them*. Each of them can hold no more than seven people, and if more than seven people get on...the elevator breaks. And has to be repaired. One of the elevators was already broken when we got there, and stayed broken the entire weekend. Another of the remaining three was broken for most of Saturday. Yet another was mostly dedicated to express runs to the top floor.
So there was one elevator that could hold seven people for a convention of over 1,000. The hotel, incidentally, has 16 floors; and with my back in the state that it was, there was simply no way to take the stairs up.
Oh, I have to talk about the Elevator Bitch. She was an adult, somewhere from 30-45, who was in the elevator going up when it stopped at our floor. Just to be clear, we weren't on the elevator - we were waiting for it outside, on the 11th floor. A guy and a girl (not together) were waiting there with us. We were all waiting for a down elevator, but since there was space for one person, the girl shrugged, said she might as well go up to go down, and stepped into the elevator. I was about to say that that probably wasn't a good idea, when -
"No, no, no!" said the Elevator Bitch firmly, and grabbing the girl's arm, thrust her bodily out of the elevator. The girl gave up and took the stairs down.
That's not so bad, and probably doesn't earn that woman the title "bitch". What did earn her that name was that moments later the elevator stopped on the way back down...and there was the Elevator Bitch. Yup, she'd gone up to go down herself. The guy with us yelled at her, but she basically told him to fuck off as the doors closed - because, of course, the elevator was now full.
Through many hallway and elevator conversations throughout the weekend I discovered that almost everyone knew the Elevator Bitch, remembered her from previous Arisias (though I didn't), and that she was generally viewed as human waste material.
On Saturday someone's cloak got caught in the escalator from the 1st to the 2nd floors. The escalator broke, of course, and couldn't just be repaired - state law requires that it be inspected before reactivation. So it was down for hours.
To get to the Green Room, you literally had to walk through the buffet or the dining area - a crowded space.
The function space itself was pitiful. Right now, I can't even stand to talk about it.
As for gaming panels, there were nine of them. But that was for tabletop gaming, LARPs, card games, and computer games combined. In other words, there were far, far fewer game panels than in previous years.
My own panels went quite well; I was really pleased with them, although one of them - genre fiction for children and young adults - surprised me by being assigned to the Fast Track (i.e. children's) area. As I expected, it was mostly parents who were interested in that panel. We had fun, but attendance was poor, probably because the panel really should have been in the Literature track instead. One thing that was a big surprise: the other panelist was the Young Adult librarian from our own library! The funny thing is that many times over the years when I passed him in the library I thought I recognized him from the con. But I never worked up the nerve to say "hi". I will now, of course.
The LiveJournal panel on Friday night went great, I thought. The room was packed; there were fifty people in the audience at least. I felt that I was on top of my game, and got at least three good laughs. The biggest one was when one of the other panelists was saying that she seemed to be some sort of chaos attractor, and I said "Actually, it's "Weirdness Magnet". It's a Disadvantage. You probably got some character points for it."
The RPG 101 panel was poorly attended - for one thing, it was in a panel room near the gaming area, which was totally away from the rest of the con and therefore had almost no walk-by traffic - but I thought it went well. There were about ten people in the audience at midpoint, not counting babies.
I made sure to tell the audience members at all three panels to check out the forum for that panel on the Arisia site. I later found that those forums will possibly be deleted after three weeks of inactivity, so there will still be some use for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
gateway_sf community that I created last year - and if it seems necessary, I may create a "RPG 101" community, too. There was definitely quite a bit of interest at that one.
I'll have some work to do to put stuff up on the three forums. Given how well they went, I wish that I'd been on more of them. As for the rest of the con...apart from the aforementioned disaster in the Masquerade Green Room (and I really don't want to talk about that now), the con was actually not bad for me...except that I didn't get to see much of it. No art show (except the little we could see outside our hotel room window; the Hyatt's architecture is bizarre, to put it mildly), no dancing, no dealer's row, no dealer's room, no other panels (apart from a few for Sebastian), no other events...nothing. I was simply in too much pain. And considering I've been waiting for the con for a year, that really, really, really sucks.
I'd be more upset, but somehow I seem to be too old to get that upset any more.
Oh, Sebastian stayed with my parents both nights. He came over for a while on Saturday afternoon. We got him to wear the Link costume that Teri had made. She thought it looked awful, but even she had to admit that Sebastian looked absolutely great in it. To be honest, I was stunned. Unfortunately I have no photos, because I left the camera in the car and was in too much pain to go get it, but I'm going to put him in the costume and take some photos soon. We're the only ones who saw him in the costume, by the way. He absolutely refused to wear it outside the room, although I'm not sure why.
He did several Fast Track events, and begged to stay with us Saturday night (which had been the original plan). Teri was leaning towards sending him to my parents, but I was hoping that he'd stay. But when he saw two of the costume contestants - one was Mr. Freeze from the animated Batman cartoon, and the other looked like a vampire magician - he suddenly got that scared look and decided that he really wanted to spend the night with my folks.
Next year, I'm thinking that he's not going to have that option. He's going to stay with us for the whole con.
Rumor: In the hallway, someone told me that the reason that the Park Plaza had dumped Arisia at the last minute was that the owner had seen something about the Fetish Flea or the fetish crowd at Arisia, and was offended. I also heard that the replacement convention they'd booked for that weekend (whatever it was) had cancelled at the last minute, leaving the Park Plaza empty. That sounds a bit pat to me, but I hope it's true.
But even more, I'm hoping that after next year Arisia ends up back at the Park Plaza, or at a hotel which has a decent amount of function space. I'm honestly wondering how long Arisia can survive at the Hyatt. Not more than three or fours years, I'd guess.
* - Will anyone realize that I'm talking about Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator? I wonder.
Okay, warning to newcomers: this is probably going to be a whiny post. Correction: there's no "probably" about it. I'm in a fuckload of pain, and was all weekend, and I had waited all year for Arisia - it's the high point of my year, in many ways - so you'd better believe that I'm whining about it. But having warned you, I'll throw some of this stuff behind a cut.
Second warning: I'm going to say some negative things about the hotel. Some people seem to take criticism personally, and I've had my ass flamed medium-well more than once by people who've felt that anything negative about the hotel or the con was a personal attack. Relax, okay? I know that most people were doing their best, the situation was out of our control, etc. etc. etc. I'm not trying to kill anyone's baby, and there are few people who love Arisia more than I do. Which sounds really weird to say, actually.
Third warning: I'm going to repeat some rumors I heard. I will label those clearly as rumors. I like to gossip, okay? It's not a crime.
I'm sick, sick, sick. Why the fuck do I have to get sick SO OFTEN right around Arisia? That's the one time in the year that I really want to be at my best and enjoy myself...and instead, I actually got sicker than I was before I got there.
My back is really bad, at least partly because it got worse when I got dizzy and fell through part of someone else's costume in the Masquerade Green Room and destroyed it. They were able to repair it, but you can just imagine how totally shitty I feel about all that. I don't even want to talk about it right now.
My lungs are also worse - in fact, I think that's why I fell. The only difference I've seen so far from the new antibiotic is that the glop I'm coughing up is yellow now instead of olive green. All in all, I'm in intense pain - so much so that I'm seriously considering going back onto Vicodin. And I am definitely calling my doctor first thing on Tuesday. It's clear that I'm going to need physical therapy for my back.
Another reason that my back is getting worse rather than better is probably all this damned coughing from the bronchitis - if that's what it is. It's not quite like any bronchitis I've had before. My lungs are full of liquid, and they gurgle and crackle when I open my mouth. Did I mention that when I went to my doctor last week, my sats were low? Apparently the fluid is impairing my oxygen intake, although not seriously enough to warrant hospitalization.
But what's different is that extremely thick glop is pooling in my lungs at the base of my windpipe. It flutters across the base of my windpipe - I think it's probably like being waterboarded from inside. Because when that happens, I go into paroxysms of uncontrollable coughing. The coughing is so violent that I nearly vomit, every time - although, as I've told Teri, vomiting wouldn't help. I'm not even nauseous; the problem is my airway.
I cough and cough until finally the glop comes up. And then more glop collects in my lungs, and I'm coughing again within half an hour to an hour. You can imagine what all that coughing is doing to the spasming muscles in my lower back.
As for the hotel...oh my god. It's simply not meant for conventions, and I mean that literally. At the con I called it "Arisia bonsai", but "Arisia in Chinese foot binding" might be more accurate. And the elevators!
If you haven't been to the Park Plaza, Arisia's old hotel, let me tell you about it: everyone considered the elevators there a disaster. There were eight of them, and each of them could hold a maximum of ten to twelve passengers.
At the Hyatt, there are FOUR elevators - glass ones. But believe me, there's nothing great about them*. Each of them can hold no more than seven people, and if more than seven people get on...the elevator breaks. And has to be repaired. One of the elevators was already broken when we got there, and stayed broken the entire weekend. Another of the remaining three was broken for most of Saturday. Yet another was mostly dedicated to express runs to the top floor.
So there was one elevator that could hold seven people for a convention of over 1,000. The hotel, incidentally, has 16 floors; and with my back in the state that it was, there was simply no way to take the stairs up.
Oh, I have to talk about the Elevator Bitch. She was an adult, somewhere from 30-45, who was in the elevator going up when it stopped at our floor. Just to be clear, we weren't on the elevator - we were waiting for it outside, on the 11th floor. A guy and a girl (not together) were waiting there with us. We were all waiting for a down elevator, but since there was space for one person, the girl shrugged, said she might as well go up to go down, and stepped into the elevator. I was about to say that that probably wasn't a good idea, when -
"No, no, no!" said the Elevator Bitch firmly, and grabbing the girl's arm, thrust her bodily out of the elevator. The girl gave up and took the stairs down.
That's not so bad, and probably doesn't earn that woman the title "bitch". What did earn her that name was that moments later the elevator stopped on the way back down...and there was the Elevator Bitch. Yup, she'd gone up to go down herself. The guy with us yelled at her, but she basically told him to fuck off as the doors closed - because, of course, the elevator was now full.
Through many hallway and elevator conversations throughout the weekend I discovered that almost everyone knew the Elevator Bitch, remembered her from previous Arisias (though I didn't), and that she was generally viewed as human waste material.
On Saturday someone's cloak got caught in the escalator from the 1st to the 2nd floors. The escalator broke, of course, and couldn't just be repaired - state law requires that it be inspected before reactivation. So it was down for hours.
To get to the Green Room, you literally had to walk through the buffet or the dining area - a crowded space.
The function space itself was pitiful. Right now, I can't even stand to talk about it.
As for gaming panels, there were nine of them. But that was for tabletop gaming, LARPs, card games, and computer games combined. In other words, there were far, far fewer game panels than in previous years.
My own panels went quite well; I was really pleased with them, although one of them - genre fiction for children and young adults - surprised me by being assigned to the Fast Track (i.e. children's) area. As I expected, it was mostly parents who were interested in that panel. We had fun, but attendance was poor, probably because the panel really should have been in the Literature track instead. One thing that was a big surprise: the other panelist was the Young Adult librarian from our own library! The funny thing is that many times over the years when I passed him in the library I thought I recognized him from the con. But I never worked up the nerve to say "hi". I will now, of course.
The LiveJournal panel on Friday night went great, I thought. The room was packed; there were fifty people in the audience at least. I felt that I was on top of my game, and got at least three good laughs. The biggest one was when one of the other panelists was saying that she seemed to be some sort of chaos attractor, and I said "Actually, it's "Weirdness Magnet". It's a Disadvantage. You probably got some character points for it."
The RPG 101 panel was poorly attended - for one thing, it was in a panel room near the gaming area, which was totally away from the rest of the con and therefore had almost no walk-by traffic - but I thought it went well. There were about ten people in the audience at midpoint, not counting babies.
I made sure to tell the audience members at all three panels to check out the forum for that panel on the Arisia site. I later found that those forums will possibly be deleted after three weeks of inactivity, so there will still be some use for the
gateway_sf community that I created last year - and if it seems necessary, I may create a "RPG 101" community, too. There was definitely quite a bit of interest at that one.I'll have some work to do to put stuff up on the three forums. Given how well they went, I wish that I'd been on more of them. As for the rest of the con...apart from the aforementioned disaster in the Masquerade Green Room (and I really don't want to talk about that now), the con was actually not bad for me...except that I didn't get to see much of it. No art show (except the little we could see outside our hotel room window; the Hyatt's architecture is bizarre, to put it mildly), no dancing, no dealer's row, no dealer's room, no other panels (apart from a few for Sebastian), no other events...nothing. I was simply in too much pain. And considering I've been waiting for the con for a year, that really, really, really sucks.
I'd be more upset, but somehow I seem to be too old to get that upset any more.
Oh, Sebastian stayed with my parents both nights. He came over for a while on Saturday afternoon. We got him to wear the Link costume that Teri had made. She thought it looked awful, but even she had to admit that Sebastian looked absolutely great in it. To be honest, I was stunned. Unfortunately I have no photos, because I left the camera in the car and was in too much pain to go get it, but I'm going to put him in the costume and take some photos soon. We're the only ones who saw him in the costume, by the way. He absolutely refused to wear it outside the room, although I'm not sure why.
He did several Fast Track events, and begged to stay with us Saturday night (which had been the original plan). Teri was leaning towards sending him to my parents, but I was hoping that he'd stay. But when he saw two of the costume contestants - one was Mr. Freeze from the animated Batman cartoon, and the other looked like a vampire magician - he suddenly got that scared look and decided that he really wanted to spend the night with my folks.
Next year, I'm thinking that he's not going to have that option. He's going to stay with us for the whole con.
Rumor: In the hallway, someone told me that the reason that the Park Plaza had dumped Arisia at the last minute was that the owner had seen something about the Fetish Flea or the fetish crowd at Arisia, and was offended. I also heard that the replacement convention they'd booked for that weekend (whatever it was) had cancelled at the last minute, leaving the Park Plaza empty. That sounds a bit pat to me, but I hope it's true.
But even more, I'm hoping that after next year Arisia ends up back at the Park Plaza, or at a hotel which has a decent amount of function space. I'm honestly wondering how long Arisia can survive at the Hyatt. Not more than three or fours years, I'd guess.
* - Will anyone realize that I'm talking about Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator? I wonder.
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The publicly stated reason...
The BPP is a better hotel for Arisia--but we'll be in the Hyatt two more years. I think that at the debrief there will be a lot of processing of what worked and what didn't, and some appropriate reallocations of space.
On another note, about the "oops" on placing your panel in Fast Track. There was a similar panel about juvenile fiction last year, I was on it, IIRC. The audience was adults, and it was sparsely attended. I think we need to learn from this and move this or similar panels in future years.
Re: The publicly stated reason...
About rumors: they do fly, don't they? I have to admit that I was amazed to see in the flier for Boskone that they're going to be at the Westin in Boston. Why can they get a good hotel and we can't?
I've only been to Boskone twice, and both times it sucked.
I have to admit that I'm thinking it would be good to go to more cons. For one thing, I never really get a chance to do any gaming at Arisia, and I'd love to run some one-shots.
Re: The publicly stated reason...
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Sounds like you did a lot of good work, especially given the conditions.
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*nods* It doesn't surprise me in many ways. It really is a testament to excellent game design that RQ II/III are still taken so seriously and played even tho' they're 22-26 years old.
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Mongoose's RQ has been universally considered a very poor product. I am yet to fine a single review that says its of value. However the setting....
Well, Robin Laws is a very clever person. Clever enough not to avoid any discussion of the rules in the Second Age sourcebook, making it useful for HeroQuest/Wars, RQ III and RQ II players as well.
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Reviews by bloggers and on LJs, well, you have to know the person involved to tell whether they also fall into this category. I've seen good products given bad reviews because of folks with personal grudges, personal playing style preferences or dislikes for some of the most ridiculous elements.
On the other hand, I've seen things I consider rather poor games (in my opinion) get good reviews for the exact same reason, someone had a personal thing they wanted that they considered more important than the whole.
I've seen the mongoose books, and have most of them. I will say that they are selling better than some other game lines at our local game store. They do need better editors and copy editors to go through and make sure what is in the books fails to contradict the others, and to avoid typos, dropouts and cross-references to nowhere. But I've seen similar over the years in numerous other product lines (like the 1st edition of ANYTHING published by White Wolf, for example).
I don't like the rules changes to the magic system in many ways, especially the runes, as it seems on the surface to cripple the magic using characters badly. But, that may be the intent of the designers, I don't know.
The Glorantha setting features look better than I've seen in some settings in recent years, even if they don't match those of RQ3/2.
But I won't know anything for sure until I've sat in on a game or two... and right now I'm not seeing much in the way of non-D20 games running in our local area of any note, despite book sales.
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Well, everyone has their own opinion (of course) and the best way to judge an unowned product is
to review as many reviews as possible.
e.g.,
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12385.phtml
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12408.phtml
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12628.phtml
Overall it is considered a below average product.
I was involved in the MRQ playtest process so I have an axe to grind ;-). I'm glad they incorporated the "Rune Quest is about questing for runes", which I initiated and went on about like a pork chop, even if Steve Perrin's magic system received very short shrift (I note that Perrin isn't mentioned in the credits).
1st edition WW was their playtest products. It was very clever marketing on their part. Everything sold at least twice ;-)
Comment #1 to above
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As for me...they reminded me of the elevators in Commando. :D