Battles with Integrity

I've seen and heard of many friends and acquaintances who have been directly hurt by the current mini-Depression, and everyone, it seems is affected in some way. I am curious to understand how much this will affect people when it comes to spending money on luxuries.

Each year, I have the opportunity to catch up with friends at the local gaming conventions. There are three I try to attend each year, on each of the three big 3-day weekends. DunDraCon on President's Day weekend (also it's often on or near Valentine's Day), KublaCon on Memorial Day weekend (which generally conflicts with university graduation and/or miriammiriam's birthday), and Whatever They're Calling It Now on Labor Day weekend. I look forward to each of these (some more, some less, but all are on my calendar one way or another).

Now the economy is tanking. Banks are unwilling to loan money. Employers who wanted those loans are unable to buy/hire/expand/build. Consumers (you and me) have to tighten our belts, which consequently kills sales for stores which cut costs (aka workers) who stop spending... you see where that goes. Heck, you know where that goes. We can see it all around. What I'd like to know, in an admittedly unscientific fashion, is what is the concrete effect this has on people around me.

To that end, here is a poll. I've opened the poll to everyone, and the numbers will be freely available, but only I will see individual answers. I may anonymously re-post responses to the last question.

Please tell me, what are you doing this weekend, and how has the economy affected your plans?

[Poll #1346997]

In general comments, if you care to share outside of the private poll, how is the economy affecting you and yours?

I just submitted a proposal for the following game to Endgame for their Minicon this coming Saturday.

Game System: Paranoia^XP
Scenario Name: Diplomatic Impugnities
GM: Brian Williams
Variations: What is your Security Clearance Citizen?
Power Level: See Above.
Number of Players: 6
Characters provided? Yes

Description: The Ambassador is here! Congratulations Troubleshooters! You have been offered the privilege of safeguarding the Ambassador of, um, Alpha Complex to, um, Alpha Complex! Protect him from Communists, Mutants, Traitors, Secret Society Members, and evil agents from other cit... from far of Sectors of Alpha Complex. Pay no attention to the strange and possibly treasonous practices of the Ambassador and his staff as they visit Alpha Complex from far Alpha Complex. Friend Computer expects that every clone will do his duty!

An original Adventure from Brick Snowflake Productions.

This will be a draft playtest adventure. If it goes well enough, I'll propose it for DunDraCon, sharpen it up, perhaps playtest it again during the winter break, and run it at DDC08. You guys should take a couple hours out of your Saturday and come on down to Endgame. It will be an unforgettable experience.

P.S. I need a Paranoia icon. The Computer is Your Friend

Just back at work from KublaCon. No time to post when I dragged my sorry self home last night because between the ride home from KC and the actual getting home, we detoured to a lovely birthday party where the host and guest-of-honor was simultaneously rissymonster. The food very tasty, and the company was great fun. Would that I could have gotten earlier and stayed later.

I'm still rather bushed, though a second full night's sleep should go a long way toward my return to restfulness. I hope to see about a third, a fourth, and maybe even a fifth before I stop with the nice restful sleep thing.

I have more specific con thoughts, but I need to organize them, and need to be more alert before I can start with the organizing. I'll try to get in a post or two within the next day or so. I also look forward to hearing about other peoples' experiences at KublaCon.• • •Also, I started my History 32 class today. I expect it will also be good fun, if a bit rigorous, but I expected it to be so, trying to compress 18 weeks into 14 days. On the upside, I expected I should have to spend each entire weekend working on papers, but it turns out not to be so, so I'm very happy that I don't have to. There will be lots of reading, but we won't have a semester worth of papers to crank out as well. I'm grateful to Dr. Rose for recognizing that ti would be nigh impossible, and pleased that he designed the class that way.

He does want me to keep a journal, consisting of my notes, reflections on the readings, and critiques of any of the media we see. I imagine much of it will end up here, on the way to being turned into a journal suitable for submission to the professor at the end of the class. I surely don't want to send it to him hand-written (aghast).

Ok, back to work for me. Cheers, all.

~Brian

p.s. If you went, did you have a good time at KublaCon?

There's a bloke who ran a free and unofficial shuttle service between BayCon and Fanime last year. This year he's doing the same, but including KublaCon. He posted about it on the kublacon community.

It's a neat idea. Feel free to repost or mention it to your Kubla, Baycon or Fanime friends.

In light of the expectation that I hope to run a GURPS Discworld game at DunDraCon, I suppose that I should create a Discworld specific filter. I appreciate all of the support and advice I've received so far. I am definitely going to have a lot of fun working on this one. Some folk may wish to offer advice and/or laugh at my poor attempts to put together an adventure that does justice to Pratchett to get the goods. Of course there are others, those who could not care less, whether it be about gaming, Pratchett, the confluence of the two, silly gags, or whatever.¹ Also, there might be those who think they might enjoy playing in such a game and would prefer not to have heard all the jokes beforehand, and therefore wish to be unaware of the plot before I hit them over the head with it like a cold ham.² A filter will allow those who wish to, to watch this train wreck, while also allowing others to avoid the unneccesary³ cluttering of their F-lists⁴.

This will be my very first opt-in filter, so folk will have to let me know if they want to be allowed inside the curtain that filters out the others.

Incidentally, there will likely be a playtest or two before DDC, so feel free to bear that in mind.

¹ aka most of Mankind.
² Both of you.
³ or unwanted.
⁴ like this post.

And now... a poll!

[Poll #824117]

From the Endgame website, for all of y'all you guys:

Title: July RPGnet Mini Con
Description: RPG.net and EndGame bring you the July 2006 Mini Con.

Saturday July 15, EndGame along with our sponsors, RPG.net present you with a full day of gaming goodness. ( Read more... )

There's still space available for many of the games, so check them out. Come out and play.

Crossposted to kublacon:

Welcome! This is a community for gamers interested in Kublacon, the Bay Area game convention. Feel free to ask questions, talk about your convention experience, answer questions, talk about games you want to play, games you want to GM, or whatever suits your fancy.

Which is to say, I just created an LJ community for Kublacon. Feel free to join me there. :-)

We need volunteers at KublaCon. Eight hours of help gets you a refund on your admission. You can do it all in one day, or split it up between 2, 3, or 4 days.

Give us a hand.

KublaCon is fast approaching, and deadlines are looming. Specifically, tomorrow is the last day to pre-register for the discount rate of $35. Groups and clubs can still register for cheap, but there's no sense in dallying when you can get in right now. Also note, the Settlers of Catan Regional Qualifier Tournament will be held at KublaCon again this year, and you need to pre-register for that anyway, so get up on it!

Click on Kubla for the link.


Oh, and the new Khannections Newsletter is out, too.