Telling about the NordCon, day 2

This weekend I was at the NordCon [linked content is in German], which is the largest gaming-convention around here. In this post I'll just tell you what I did on Sunday and how much fun it was. Check out the post about Saturday first, if you like. Again: This post might bore you, just as a forewarning.

My second convention-day was off to a slow start, as these are bound to be. I arrived at 9:30 in the morning, having set a date with a buddy at the Jugger-field for 10:00. He didn't show up, as it had gotten rather late in the mead-tent for him and he was still asleep in his place on the other side of the city. I didn't mind much, met up with another buddy who had brought his kid along and, after having stashed the stroller in the wardrobe, we decided to take a turn through the tabletop-gymn and see what the Warhammer-crowd had crafted to be looked at and ridiculed for the immense expenses they were pumping into their hobby. I used to play darkelves around 9th grade. Then I got a life. Burn! (in all seriousness: I envy and pity the fools who are in the miniatures-hobby. Envy as I have tasted the sweetness of fielding an army that you painted and constructed yourself, having built up a personal relationship with every one of these miniatures over the course of them becoming what they are. I myself am at constant risk to go down that path again, whenever I see a fantastically made custom miniature someone spent so much time, creativity and skill on. Pity because I know how much GW is draining their finances [other companies make it hard to find someone to play against] and how much of a fringe hobby they are following even at a nerdy convention. Their gymn is usually the place with the worst air and the fewest females.)



After that we went back outside to the Jugger-field, because there was to be a show-battle from the real-weapons-faction. Two teams of five people each would beat the crap out of each other with swords, axes and maces, blunt but actual steel, protected by plate-armour, chainmail, and wooden shields that would slowly desintegrate over the course of the battle. A buddy of mine had seen these guys the previous day and told me it was totally worth watching. It was. After a spectacular, no-holds-barred fight, the bruised and battered armored figures crawled off the field of honour, probably hurting all over but all seemed rather happy about the battle they had just played out. Crazy, awesome dudes (and one dudette), all of them.

Being all pumped from watching medieval violence unfurl directly infront of us, we decided to get some action ourselves. As the Jugger-field was now in the posession of a bunch of little kids (and kids in Jugger are horrible opponents - can't really hit 'em and they are quite quick), we decided to go upstairs and get in on the zombie-nerf-gun-action again. That took the next two hours. After that, we were somewhat exhausted and beaten and it was clear that there wasn't much physical stuff we could do anymore on this convention. It was going to have to be some regular RPing or maybe a boardgame.

As the only RP-rounds that were offered were 8-hour DSA-sessions neither of us had the nerve or the time for, we decided to take a detour through the shopping-corridor set up on the first floor and then find a nice boardgame to play. I found myself a set of really cool-looking scifi-dice, of which I bought four D4, a D6 and two D10. Then we found ourselves said boardgame. We got one of us to actually buy the thing, Core Worlds and learned and played that for the next two hours before splitting up and going home. More on that game in a review in the next few games, though.

The NordCon was, as it has been every year for me, a lot of fun and an inspiration to do stuff I wouldn't regularly do. Maybe I'll craft myself a post-apocalyptic outfit by next year so I can go dressed up myself. Maybe. Downside are, as usual, the creepier people always drawn in by events such as these who totally uncalled for want to tell me about the age of my soul and are actually rather serious about it (and the thought that what they believe is not common knowledge or general consensus on how the world works doesn't even appear to them). Also, looking at the way a friend of mine gets treated every year by socially inept idiots who find themselves in a position of not being a total outsider due to their weirdness (in the convention-setting, suddenly, looking like an ogre is cool, and acting like one [the worse offense] is suddenly somehow acceptable), clumsily hit on anything with two legs and boobs, makes me really glad that I'm NOT an attractive woman but an average-looking man. Seriously, guys, turn down the creepy pickup-attempts, you're giving the entire nerd-dom a bad name and scare of the few sane women the hobby is drawing in...