Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Getting Ready For GameStorm

After a long and sometimes painful prep period, GameStorm 12 has arrived. Actually, it arrives in something like 20 hours, but that's close enough for government work. I've got the games I'm taking boxed up (only one crate!), the laptop ready, and I pack my clothes tonight. My intent is to be at the hotel at around 10am on Thursday to help out with a variety of things, make sure the hotel followed our floorplan for tables in the boardgame area, help Chris S. with the library, and anything else I can come up with. I'm also expecting to help the woman running the Z-Man demos get her area set up as well.

GameStorm has, surprisingly, had a negative effect on my gaming for the month - only seven games played, almost all of them at the three Tuesday sessions my game group holds, and I won't make the last two because of proximity to GS.

That said, the schedule is done, the event coordinator is happy, and I'm looking forward to catching up on some Caprica episodes tonight before getting a good night's sleep. I got in an excellent 15 mile bike ride today (not bad for this early in the year, both from a weather and a duration POV), and I'm about to take the dogs for a quick W-A-L-K before going out for dinner. After so much frenetic work, it's nice to be able to relax for a bit before going into what is going to be a four day Death March of gaming.

Here's my schedule for the long weekend:

Thursday - I start with Age of Steam - Zombie Apocalypse, run by my good friend Mike, that will take up most of the afternoon. After dinner, I'm keeping with the theme by playing Last Night On Earth (just to see if there was something I missed in my earlier play), followed by manning the Game Library while playing Washington's War with Chris B.

Friday - You might call this Doug Does Demos Day. First up will be playing a variety of new Z-Man titles in the Z-Man demo area. After lunch, I'm going to try out one of the new RGG games Tex will be demoing, in this case Sylla, then I'll try my hand one more time at the Hasborg edition of History of the World, my least favorite of the three versions I own (including A Brief). I'll round out the evening with games of Automobile and/or Steam. It will be a very busy day.

Saturday - This is my day to GM, in particular the Conflict of Heroes campaign event. I'm keeping the morning open in order to have a little more brain power to help do the 'splainin' and run the campaign. For a reward, I'll play in the Race for the Galaxy tournament in the late afternoon, followed by Dave's Settlers Catan Express game, ending up with a little late night Liar's Dice.

Sunday - I've signed up for *nothing* on Sunday. I guess I must have gotten interrupted somewhere along the line when I was picking games! It's closed now, even for admins. I expect I'll get in on some more demos, maybe something from the Bleeding Edge games set, or maybe I'll sneak into the RuneWars Epic game, which will take a good part of the day. There's also a Power Grid: Brazil tournament at the end, which would take me right up to 7pm. Regardless, I expect that it will be laid-back day of gaming, mostly just recovering from the previous three days and no sleep (I sleep terribly in hotels). I also plan to attend the feedback session.

I expect to do some blogging from the con itself, much will depend upon how well the WiFi works in the rooms.

It's been a few years since I got to GameStorm, even more since I was involved in the planning. I think my involvement was a positive thing, it was certainly nice to work with the Chris's on the boardgame area, and I felt like we all picked up various parts of the slack, mine in a great huge bunch right at the end. That said, I'm very much looking forward to *not* worrying about the con for a few months. Or years.

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