Dispatch from #PAX -- part 3 (fit the final)

Part of the reason I was able to justify going to PAX is that I have a bunch of friends in Boston whom I would not normally see (except at Reunions and the occasional wedding). So I made plans to have brunch with a group of them on Newbury St. that Saturday morning. I had a little time to kill before brunch, so I planned an excursion to the consignment shops in the area. Since becoming interested in fashion (yes, this is a comparatively recent development for me), I've felt more able to identify things in consignment shops that are a good value and that will fit with my personal style, so I was super excited to exercise that new skill. I found a bright orange lightweight cashmere sweater and a nice printed shift dress that may be silk (but if it isn't, that's fine--I didn't pay a ton for it).

Then, I met everyone for brunch. Ben (the guy I'd been hanging out with at PAX) came out for the brunch as well. While he was there, he told me that his friend had come into an extra weekend pass "because Bob's kids didn't want to go." Dan asked, "Who's Bob?" but somehow I knew that it was folly to ask such a question. After all, strange people were offering me another chance to experience PAX (partially at Bob's expense) for the low, low price of $20. You don't start asking questions in the face of that kind of opportunity, rather, you start digging in your purse for Mr. Jackson and you make it happen.

To satisfy your curiosity, however, I will tell you that Bob was a person from the internet whose "damn kids" didn't want to go to PAX after he'd bought passes for them. Ben's friends Pat and Lindsay sold me their extra Bob pass. The very best part about this, however, was actually getting to meet (and game with) Lindsay and Pat. We played Pandemic (hint: it doesn't work with 5 people unless you have an expansion for it) and later we found some people who went to college with my brother (because Pat was there pretty much when my brother was!) and played Bang! I was really excited to get to know this game because it's so bizarre: it's like Mafia with cards, but the cards and all the instructions are written in a combination of Italian, English, and pictograms, and the whole thing has a Wild West theme. It's a "spaghetti western," if you will (har har). Ridiculous. Great fun. And if you're playing with opera singers, as I was, they can actually read the cards for you in flawless Italian (or realistic Italian accents) which improves the hilarity of gameplay by at least 35 percent.

Sometime between these games, I played Fluxx with Ben, Kratville, and a couple other people. I kind of think that Ben wasn't a fan of the lack of strategy involved, but we still had fun. Then this other guy had Zombie Fluxx. I'm impressed by the Fluxx variants! I will have to think about this the next time there is money in the budget for gaming!

I also watched some of the Perfect Dark tournament in the classic console room, where Ben and Kratville were competing. Ben had a good shot at the medal, but then they switched from N64 to xbox for the final round and he got pwned.

After that, I sort of crashed my friend's girlfriend's birthday dinner, which was funny because it was Ethiopian food. Why would I ever go to Boston for Ethiopian? If you've had it in DC, maybe you know what I mean. It was good, though, and I'm glad someone else had left a vacancy in the reservation so I could go and not be too bothersome! It was great to see everyone...like a mini-preview of how awesome Reunions are going to be this year.

And that was that. No Wil Wheaton sightings/signings/recurrence, but no regrets either. I did end up getting this for myself, though. :) I had such a great time. I met people. I did the Iron Guard. I admired Wil Wheaton from afar (but definitely not as far as usual). Will I go to PAX East next year? Probably. I'll even get a full weekend pass, and maybe even get one for my husband! Conclusion: PAX East is made of win.

Dispatch from #PAX -- part 2

I didn't know then that the guy in the blue sweater was going to be so important to how the rest of my day played out, when he finally let me onto the escalator. I didn't want to be a dick, so I didn't run up the moving stairs, but I did walk briskly and with purpose. The Hynes Center is a bit of a contemporary labyrinth, with angles and arcs all over the place. While we waited at the doors of the main theater, someone another floor up was visible to a bunch of people right behind me. He did something which got people excited--then he did something that made them sad. I had never seen quite so many people get so excited at the same time, and then all say, "aww!" in unison. "Yay! Awww. Yay!! Awww. YAY!!!!!! Awwww." It reminded me of being in Band again.

That's really when I realized: all these people are here to have fun. They do not care about looking stupid. They do not care about what other people may think of them (and that goes double for the few cosplayers I saw).  They do not care about anything but having a fantastic time and learning new things and meeting new people and not getting conSARS. THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY DID THIS. And you know what? So did I. But I digress.

Walking into the main theater, I was able to take a seat very close to the aisle in the stage right section, very close to the front. I was going to see Wil Wheaton's keynote, by god, and I wasn't going to have to use the jumbotron to do it. That's what I came here for, after all...to be near one of my greatest writing idols while he exuded amazingness. Of course he's not just a writing idol for me--I was obviously the biggest tween ST:TNG fan back in the day, and I was just getting to the point in my life when Wesley was starting to look pretty fiiine (wink-wink, nudge-nudge, know what I mean?) to my little nerd-teen-in-the-making. This won't be any huge admission to the people who actually might read this blog on a regular basis, but I have kind of a crush on Wil Wheaton. But who doesn't? Amirite??

Didn't I say at the beginning of this post that the guy in the blue sweater was going to be important to the story? Well, at about 2:30--half an hour before showtime--I decided that it was necessary for me to go to the bathroom so I wouldn't be all uncomfortable and whatnot throughout the show. After all, I had been waiting in line, and if you'll recall, sitting on concrete for the past 3.5 hours. I had to go. So I put my coat on my chair to save my seat and I ducked out.

When I returned to the door of the main theater, the guy in the blue sweater was very loudly announcing that the doors were closed and that nobody else was going to be allowed into the theater, per the fire marshal's orders. He calmly told someone who protested that he had no qualms about calling the police if things were to get unruly. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. I had come all this way to see Wil Wheaton's keynote, and that was it? My lovely winter coat was going to get to see him from my plum seat and I was going to have to watch on YouTube?? I felt my mouth fall open, and my eyes go wide. This was not how I had wanted this to go, at all. But I didn't want to be a dick, so I tried to take a few deep breaths while considering my plan of action. 

With only a little hint of panic in my voice, I said to the guy in the blue sweater, "My coat is inside, on my seat. Can someone get it for me or something?" He looked at me and probably saw the broken dreams all over my face. Then the heavens opened and a ray of unearthly light illuminated him as he said, sotto voce, "Stand to my left. Wait until the crowd is gone." I swear I heard a choir of angels. 

Thanks to the man in the blue sweater, those of us with problem bladders were eventually able to retake our seats in the main theater, just in time for the speech. Thank you, blue sweater guy. I owe you like eleventy Guinnesses.  

This photo, which I took with my phone, doesn't even accurately convey how close my seat was to the dais. I could see the design on Wil Wheaton's ThinkGeek t-shirt and I could see the different looks in his eyes, a mistiness when he choked back tears or the mischievous gleam he'd get right when he was about to be cheeky (that's my favorite, fyi).

I was close enough to wonder what it would have been like if someone had introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons when I was twelve. As it was, I spent most of that time writing stories about bard guilds and knights and boarding school (somewhat unrelated, but true) anyway. Having a reason to do it and people to do it with probably would have made it all the more enjoyable. The more Wil spoke about how gaming taught him to use his imagination, the more I realized that I was lucky enough to have gone about it exactly backward: I used my imagination for fun when I was a kid, and, much later in my life, it brought me to gaming. 

As it stands, I still haven't technically been introduced to serious roleplaying games. It may happen. It may not. But the most important takeaway from Wil's keynote was that even though I technically was there alone, I was not alone. Wil talked about hot lava in the grocery store and finding adventures around every corner. I saw the people nodding around me, and felt myself nodding along. I hadn't played RPGs, but I read so many fantasy books that I had always just naturally made my life into one big RPG. Even though I didn't have a character to call my own, I had characters in my head--hundreds--living and breathing and some even dying like Aeofel...all the time. It was an entire convention center full of people who thought about things the way I did. I was, as he said in the speech, home.

I very quickly met up with my friend Ben and did the Iron Guard with his friend Dave. Then I wandered around for a little bit after the keynote, wondering where I'd have to go to get Wil to sign the books I'd brought. There was a panel I wanted to see on Interactive Fiction, so I went to that with Ben and Dave. I'll probably discuss that a bit more in the next installment. Then I pretty much had to go back to my hotel room, even though I had a wristband for priority seating for the Metroid Metal show. We'd gotten up fairly ridiculously early that morning to drive up to Boston, so I was pretty much ready to have a bath and pass the heck out. I did those things consecutively.

And as I had a Friday pass for PAX, I suspected that I'd just missed my opportunity to meet Wil Wheaton. Oddly, I was okay with that. I'd gone to PAX a Wil Wheaton fangirl and came out of it with a fresh, delicious pile of self-awareness.

I will let you know, however, that there will be another installment of this dispatch from PAX. What happened? How did I get in? Find out next time...

Dispatch from #PAX -- Part 1

Friday, 11:00a.

I am sitting by myself on a cold, concrete floor, surrounded by thousands of busy, bubbling strangers with shiny electronic devices in their hands and little picture-cards meticulously placed around them on the floor. I do not yet know who I am.

While my posterior slowly falls asleep, I gather what I know about myself and try to organize the facts into some sort of meaning. I am a geek in many ways: I can tell you why nobody can accurately reproduce a Stradivarius violin (it's the varnish--nobody knows what's in it); I can properly use a semicolon in a complex list; and I will always take pains to insist that the fourth game in the King's Quest series is called The Perils of Rosella, and that it was the first computer RPG to feature a female protagonist. (I also know how to use words like "protagonist.") While these bits of niche trivia are occasionally handy, it occurs to me that they are but the merest shadow of the collective niche knowledge in the room. This is, after all, a gaming convention. The sheer volume of rules, procedures, and facts that the couple sitting next to me must keep in their heads at any given time is awe-inspiring. They are playing Magic. It has been fifteen years since I have seen anyone playing Magic. There are thousands of couples just like them, all around me.

I have made the mistake of coming alone to this event. I figured there might be some other loners, considering the sometimes solitary nature of gaming. I was entirely wrong about this. Looking at the line around me, I feel like the only person who has come here alone. I feel strange standing up by myself to let the blood flow back into my arse, so I halfheartedly do some kind of yoga stretch whenever I start to lose feeling in my buttocks. There is some comfort in the fact that I do have at least one friend attending the event, and while I wait, I discover (through the magic of Facebook) that there will be at least one more. I wonder if I will find them easily among these tens of thousands of unfamiliar faces.

One of the games I've brought in my bag might give me a little bit of geek-cred. It's a second edition of Fluxx, by Looney Labs. I used to play it a lot when I was in high school. Unfortunately, it requires friends to play. I also brought Set (which is probably not worth any geek pointz) which I also played a lot of in high school. If I weren't so introverted, I probably would have met someone in line to play with by now. Yes, that's right. An introvert came to a gaming convention alone. I feel like that's the punchline to something, but the only possible joke is my life. Being on the periphery of the periphery reminds me that I've always lived with one foot in each of two worlds--races, classes, spheres of societal influence. Now this: I'm geek/not-geek. I'm here, but I don't belong.

(Much of this was written while sitting in line, so I'm going to add an editor's note here. Pro tip: sitting on concrete saps your joie de vivre. AVOID.)

An enforcer (what they call the volunteers they have to answer questions and herd cats) walks through the crowd shouting for Jacob Wilson. After each repetition of his name, some wise guy shouts things like, "Your Mom's here!" or "You forgot your lunch!" and people laugh. Sometimes applause erupts, and I worry that I'm missing enforcers spiriting Wil Wheaton through some hidden door. Most of the reason I decided to come in the first place was because he said he'd be doing the keynote. The applause, however, is usually because someone has managed to take down one of the oddly flimsy metal line barriers--the material is strong, but the construction is faulty. The crossbars are very easily knocked off the posts. Other times, the applause is for some kind of game that's being projected on the wall across the room from where I'm sitting. People are standing and waving their arms. Enforcers are also walking around handing out small prizes for trivia contests.

Strains of rock music ("Carry On Wayward Son," among others) float up out of nowhere and die out as quickly as they arose. Roving camera crews pump up the crowd as they pass through the doors. They have to set up for the keynote, so they get to go first. When the door opens to let them through, the crowd doesn't need any more pumping up. There is a guy playing that sailor jig on a concertina just because he can. They are excited. They are passionate. They are one hundred percent ready to not be sitting on concrete anymore, and so am I.

Friday 2:00

When the doors open, it is a mad dash to get inside, but we are all hurrying up to wait. Once you enter the main hallway, there is a set of escalators going up to the main theater, where the keynote will be. I can see the bottom of the escalator when a man in a blue sweater cuts the line off, starting with me. There are too many people on the escalator. They will be utterly screwed if it stops, so they decide to let people up in waves. I am the very first person in the second wave.