This year’s TotalCon was another fantastic convention. Being it was our forth year, you never know what will happen. My wife and I left Thursday night at 10pm from Maine because the weather reports were calling for lots of snow. Of course they had been saying it on and off for weeks and the storms didn’t come or didn’t give out a lot of free snow. We got into Massachusetts and stayed at Best Western in Haverhill. Funny place really. 24 hour CVS next door. Shady people coming and going. Cops on the hill. But our room was nice and my wife and I enjoyed the quiet time.
Friday afternoon we left Haverhill and went to Mansfield for TotalCon. We got to the hotel before check in, but the front desk manager, Teddy set us up in a nice room early and really took care of us. Which of course was nice after he and I went at it during the first TotalCon I went to because of different issues. He has really come a long way and I highly recommend dealing with him when it comes to customer service. My wife and I got settled we got our passes and headed to the vendor room to visit Brenden Hill from Crossroad Games. I have been a customer of Brenden’s store for quite a few years. While at SnowCon we networked him up with Angie Heroux (who makes stuff happen at TotalCon) which led to him coming to TotalCon as a vendor. He also brought Jeremy Brown from The GUILD (a youth leadership program). After saying hello to him we visited Tricia Pfeffer (another vendor) and Don Higgins (diva artist and friend). I will say that the vendor area this year was really well stocked. I left with a Heroclix Sentinel during that visit. The evening schedule was crazy. Wes (the big guy who runs TotalCon) ran some panels that Blix (Studio 187), Ben Morgan (Chapter 13), James Carpio (Chapter 13), Don Higgins and myself sat in on. The first was a good discussion on art and horror. The other…I can’t remember…LOL. And NO, I was not drinking. When we finished that up it was off to Cube of Death, the true convention game show.
Cube of Death was created by Peter Bryant (Blix). He pitted all the industry guests against one another with a teammate who was a convention patron. I had Mike Thompson on my team (a friend from the old Silven Crossroads). The first round I was in pitted me again legendary Tim Kask and super madman Dr. Nik (IronGM TotalCon finalist). Now understand, Tim and I had been having friendly banter about Cube of Death for a few weeks and he was on the fence about playing because he didn’t want to feel like some young guy was trying to get a notch on their belt. But we got him to play anyways. Tim and Dr. Nik were about to smite my team until we pulled off some stupid miracle win. Ever get that really crappy sinking feeling of just’ yuck’? That’s what I felt like. Next thing I know they have me up against Gary Ashford (a fellow Cyberpunk alumni) who proceeded to school me in a bad way. And while his team would have won anyways, their final blow was an inaccurate question that Blix didn’t understand, Red Dwarf related. I’m not sure who the industry guest was that won. I was playing Phantasy Star 2 on my wife’s iPhone after my loss, but the winning team was pretty awesome. I forgot to mention, my wife was the Cube of Death scorekeeper. That was pretty funny too.
After Cube of Death I went back to my room with my wife and chilled before going to the GM Social. There we bumped into Dregg (James Carpio) and Mary (his GF). We chatted until Tim Kask joined us. I apologized for Cube of Death and Tim had a lot to say about it. My history with Tim actually started at last TotalCon after a nice casual chat about FUBAR on a Sunday morning in the hall. We sat and listened to Tim tell some fun stories (totally un-game related, just what I like) and some other industry stuff too. From there it was off to bed.
Saturday was my crazy day. At 10am I had a young audience G-Core game using Marvel characters. Dreg and Mary joined us along with a father and son and three others. G-Core is always one o those games that works GREAT at conventions. At SnowCon we had some issues with people who had more attacks than others. This time I made sure to keep everyone engaged. I ran a Days of Future Past game that included the Fantastic 4 reserve team of Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Hulk and Spider-Man. I even had Mary playing Dr. Doom and Dreg as the Hulk. The other players had She-Hulk, Iron Lad and one other (my brain is still fried). But the general story was that Doom and Iron Lad showed up looking for a time disruption which ended up with Sentinels pouring through a portal. Highlights gave us Ghost Rider turning a Sentinel into his very own Hellfire Sentinel and Wolverine learning that Dr. Doom’s armor is NOT a good thing to grab.
Our afternoon session was just as fun. Ben Gerber joined us as the heroes went through the portal. The roster consisted of Dr. Doom, Death’s Head 2 (Marvel UK), Spider-Man and Wolverine. I think by this game my brain was baked from Sentinel warfare. The game went smoothly.
My later afternoon consisted of showing Mike Thompson the new Chronicle 00:Book 1. I also did another panel which went well. Wow. I don’t remember much about that one either…. I do recall discussion about how to get started in the industry, which I think was probably the most valuable bit from the whole thing.
Saturday night was reserved for my ‘ADULTS ONLY’ Fuzion Bloks 2 game: Seals of the Apocalypse. We had a GREAT group of players including Dreg, Mary, Blix, Mike Kaffes, John Sussenberger, Tricia Pfeffer and Brenden Hill. At first we thought the game wouldn’t run because someone had taken our table… But luckily Angie let us use the GREEN ROOM for the game. Yeah, that’s right. Probably the only real quiet room at the whole convention. We had a blast. I had multi-media stuff that wouldn’t work due to internet issues, but I made up for it. The game was the second part to the Seals of the Apocalypse campaign pitting players against the Four Horsemen in a world much like our own and without any cool stuff per say. I handed out a Mystery Inc (Scoobie Doo) parody team and an A-Team parody team. Highlights included lots of pot smoking and throwing Suzie-Q’s at a monster called a ‘Bloater’. Now I don’t promote drug use. For the purposes of the game we had people stoned. And instead of a real person as the Horseman Famine, I created a new breed of tapeworm….and I supplied gummy worms for that special feel.
But it was the Dilly Green Bean Games’ cocktail hour that topped it all. We had Dreg, Ben Gerber and his wife, Ben Morgan, Blix, Mike Kafes, Don Higgins and his girlfriend, Tricia, Brenden Hill and Jerermy Brown, Angie Heroux and my wife all packed into a hotel room drinking Woodchuck (except myself who doesn’t drink) and chilling. And then came that knock. Mr. Tim Kask joined us! After Tim put Blix in his place, he proceeded to entertain us into the wee hours. We were laughing so hard at his stories that the lady next door came knocking to complain about the noise. I can’t discuss Tim’s stories in any detail. We all were sworn to secrecy. …LOL! And after Tim and the last people left it was off to bed (around 330am).
Oh and that lady next door. About 4am her and her man were going at it. Talk about a screamer.
Sunday my wife and I packed up and headed home.
So my overall rating of TotalCon this year? I give it an ‘A’.
The panels were well run (great job Wes!!)
Cub of Death was exciting!
Game sessions were a BLAST!
The DGBG Cocktail hour was a success!
Staff were amazing! Especially Angie Heroux!
So a BIG THANK YOU to EVERYONE that made TotalCon an AWESOME TIME!
