The Ubercon Report: Part Three: Games Played, Overall Convention
Posted by erin at February 24, 2003 07:23 PMI’ve been really lagging in finishing up my report of Ubercon, despite work being totally dead lately.
Games Played
While at Ubercon I played several games besides Cthulhu that I had never played before. Some of the games were out of print, or the editions I played were out of print. It was really neat to be playing a game in a conference room and have someone walk by and say “Wow! Is that Game X?! I haven’t played that in years! I love that game!” I can’t say why I got such a kick out of that – it must be me sinking further into geekdom.
Click below for more:
Awful Green Things From Outer Space - In the Steve Jackson Games room we played Awful Green Things From Outer Space, which is out of print. It’s a two player game. The board is a map of a spaceship and one player plays the crew while the other player plays the awful green aliens that are trying to take over the ship. Aliens and crew members have movement allowances and hit points, and 6-sided die are used to determine outcomes. Effects of the available weapons on the aliens are determined at random by drawing cards. J---n played the aliens and N. played the humans (well, not humans so much as other aliens) while M---n and I looked on and gave input. The aliens won. It was an OK game, but only for two people – not four.
Illuminati - Illuminati is an awesome game involving non-collectable cards and conspiracy networks. Each player works to control a conspiracy-based organization like “The Bermuda Triangle” or “The Network.” Each large conspiracy group builds an empire using smaller conspiracy groups, like the Moonies, Punks, the IRS, Hackers, etc. Money is collected on each turn. Players can then use that money to effect the outcome of bids for control of cards. There are two ways to win – either control a set number of cards (usually 12), or complete your group’s individual objective. Illuminati is awesome because cheating is allowed! The only rule about cheating is that if someone catches you at it and calls you on it, you have to undo your cheat. We played the first game of Illuminati in a tournament-setting and I won! I have a gift certificate for the Complete Strap in the mail.
Chez Geek - Chez Geek is played with a deck of colorful, humorous (non-collectable) cards. Each player plays a roommate in a geeky house. Your objective is to collect enough “Slack Points” to win. Some of the jokes on the cards were pretty good, and the art was funny enough. I’m not sure how the makers of the game would define the word “geek,” as I found much of the game to be an accurate reflection of post-college life, non-specific to geekdom.
Overall Convention
Overall, the convention was much more fun than I had anticipated. The hotel, despite it’s difficult location, was very nice and looked like a castle on the outside. I liked the food at the pub and restaurant inside the hotel, even if it was hideously over-priced. The only other options for food were the surprisingly-not-horrible sandwich vending machines.
N. and I went swimming in the hotel. [One of these days, I’m going to have to get a new swimsuit. I’ve had my current suit since 1993. It still magically fits, and only some of the stitching is coming loose – not bad for a decade! ] Anyway, N. insisted that swimming at the convention would be “awesome” but it was not. The pool was filled with little kids who were clearly not there for the convention, and the hot tub was filled with old people, also not there for the convention. N. had assumed that interesting and large geeky conventioneers would fill the hot tub and tell stories of geekdom. This was disappointingly not the case.
Overall attendance at the convention was very low. That was fine by me, since it meant everything was pretty casual, and there was lots of room for pick-up games. I kind of felt bad for the organizers, though – the scheduling was ridiculously well-organized, and the organizers seemed very experienced with organizing conventions. Why was attendance so low?
For one thing, this was the first-ever Ubercon, and it was over a holiday weekend. Maybe some geeks already had plans. Maybe the convention wasn’t well-advertised. Maybe the total lack of mass transit directions on the Ubercon web page led to a lack of draw from the New York Metro area.
Whatever the problem, I hope that they decide to throw another Ubercon, and that it is a success!
Comments Individual Archive Index
February 24, 2003 07:48 PM, Maggie said:
How about swimming without contacts? I mean, you wear them, right? I like swimming a lot, but I haven't done it much since I really hate being blind in public.
February 24, 2003 11:21 PM, thecomicman said:
i think the main reason no one went was because they called it Ubercon NYC, but put it in Jersey. you can't call something 'NYC' and not have it there. i, for one, was annoyed when i found this out, seeing as how i wanted to go, but Jersey is just too far away for someone with no car and no money.
February 25, 2003 09:56 AM, Erin said:
Oh yeah... I idiotically wore my contacts swimming. The next day I tried to put them in and they burned like hell. So I switched to glasses for the rest of the weekend and threw that set of contacts away. There's more where they came from.
I also dislike public blindness. I'm already paranoid about swimming enough without the additional blindness paranoia.
February 26, 2003 09:51 AM, ET said:
FYI - Water turns green around evil lizard clones.
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