Thursday, August 10, 2000

If it's Thursday, it must be the Dealer's Room!

Well, okay, breakfast first. I think we went to Dunkin' Donuts. Whee. Hey, at least they're open. More on this later. But then there we were, waiting with several hundred of our closest friends for the doors to the exhibit hall to open. (They call it the exhibit hall. I call it the dealer's room. I'm there to buy things--if it so happens that there are some pretty things to look at, so be it--but dammit, I wanna spend money!)

Whatever you want to call it, the doors opened promptly at 10, and as usual we fought our way through the crowd to the FASA booth. It was in the same place as it always is, all the way to the right closest to the front. They didn't quite do it up as fancy as they had the previous two years--the grafitti'd pillars were gone. They still had the big VOR banner and all the display tables, though. Checked out the merchandise--the new book this year is Matrix. Bought two copies, one for me and one as a prize for the short story contest. Got the prize book autographed by Mike Mulvihill, Fred Hooper, and Steve Kenson; Mike and Fred remembered me from last year, and this was my first chance to meet Steve. All were kind and gracious as usual. Mike gave me the freelancer's update he'd promised me and asked me to send him my web page URL.

Fred had his art table across the way this time, so it took me a bit to find it. He had several lovely originals for sale, along with a print of the Matrix cover, which, unfortunately for Fred, was also the free poster this year. I picked up a free poster and bought several of Fred's originals, most of which were from Renraku Shutdown. He was kind enough to sign them all for me, including one for the contest winner. Got to talk with Steve Kenson for a little while--he told me a bit about the FASA novel process (he takes 6-8 weeks to write a novel, and FASA Shadowrun novels can't exceed 80,000 words). Amusingly (and a little embarrassingly) he asked me if I was the one with the essay about violet eyes. I admitted to being the one and took that opportunity to ask him a point-blank question regarding an upcoming novel he's planning and which I had feared I was treading on his territory with something I was planning. Happily, this is not the case and I'm sure of it now.

Back over to the FASA table, I did a double-take: was that a BABY on display? A quick question revealed that yes, they did in fact have a few more and they were going to sell them at the end of the day, a few each day in the last hour of sales. I made a mental note to be there bright and early. They were also giving away badges, 7 in all, which were passes for the Ares, Novatech, and Yamatetsu space platforms. One for each $20 spent. With my two Matrix purchases and all the art from Fred, I qualified for six of the seven plus a Shadowrun ring. They couldn't find the seventh but said to come back later and they'd find it for me. Cool. Also got to see (briefly) several of the folks from the SR list, including K, Dvixen, Bull, Paolo, Jett (we still need to hook up for the DMZ transaction!), Maelwys, Adam, and Moocow.

Okay, now let's go look at the rest of the dealer's room. Dan had already headed off to the Rowan Tree and tried to scope out the weapons there, but they hadn't finished setting up yet. He couldn't wait around because he had to head off to his Fuzzy Heroes game. I cruised up and down the aisles and made a few small purchases. Found Mike Stackpole at the Flying Buffalo booth--he's a Special Guest this year so I was happy to find him when he could talk for a few minutes. We had a nice conversation about Harry Potter and the idiots who want to censor it (Mike usually runs a "Dispelling the Myths about Gaming and Evil" seminar, but not this year) and he graciously signed a copy of "Wolf and Raven" for the Magespace contest winner. The contest is gonna have some way cool prizes this year.

Attended the What's Up With FASA? seminar. They had representatives from Shadowrun, Battletech, Crimson Skies, VOR, and a new miniatures game called Crusade. Mike didn't say much here, but the big news I didn't know yet was that there's an option on an indie Shadowrun movie! Yes, kids, we might actually get to see a Shadowrun film one of these days. I'm not holding my breath but it'll be very cool if it happens.

Headed back to the dealer's room after the seminar, grabbed a con hot dog and a Coke to keep me going, and set off for another round of buying. The Rowan Tree had set up by now and during the course of the day I bought a Klingon batleth and Dan bought a custom knife/shortsword thing and something called "Uncle Weasel" (he already had the Butt Weasel from two years ago--I think he's going for the whole set). The folks at the Rowan Tree like us. Other purchases today included some very cute little dragon pics from Susan Van Camp. Saw Anthony Daniels (C3PO) signing autographs but didn't wait in line to get one.

Checked out the art show--lovely stuff there as always. Bill Hodgson, who painted the Dragonsea pic I finally finished paying for, was there, along with some Fred Hooper art (I didn't buy any more today) and lots of other cool stuff. Looked around, didn't buy anything yet.

Knocked around for the rest of the afternoon, then showed back up at the FASA booth to wait for the BABYs to go on sale. I was there about an hour and 20 minutes before the sale was due to start. Waited...waited...waited...finally it was 5. They couldn't find 'em. Grumbling ensued. People started to leave. They looked some more. They started taking names. More people left. More grumbling. Then--success! Mr. Weisman (he's da boss) said, "I don't want any more of this (expletive deleted)--get rid of 'em all today." I'm glad I showed up. I don't know how many of them there were (not many) but I'm now the proud owner of an unnumbered BABY. I don't think there'll be any more after this unless they locate another stash.

Off to the writer's workshop, only 15 minutes late. The workshop presenter was Kij Johnson, author of "The Fox Woman." She was very cool, knew her stuff, and she rides motorcycles. Excellent. I don't remember what the first workshop was on--I think it was just a general thing, but I missed quite a bit of it. The second one was on "Sending it Out"--how to get your stuff ready to send to publishers, and how to look professional. A good, useful seminar.

Back to the room and out to dinner--Giordano's Pizza tonight. We were in a bit of a hurry because the SR tournament started at 9--we were actually in it this year. We had tickets. Ate kinda fast and headed back.

The first round of the tournament was fun, if a bit disorganized. When we finally got in our group, the characters were handed out in a bit of a haphazard manner without a whole lot of regard to who wanted to play what. The shaman was already taken, so I ended up with a physad who turned out to be the team leader. Normally I like playing the team leader, but not in my first tournament and not when I haven't made up the character. But he was still a cool character so it wasn't bad. Dan got a rigger/ex-combat biker. Our GM was good and the game was fun. None of us thought we had done very well, though. We'll see tomorrow.

One last note: Don't go to a 9-1 convention game without anything to eat or at least a water bottle to fill up at the drinking fountain. Especially when even the con concession stands close up and there's nothing available to eat or drink. Don't ask me how I know this. Just trust me.

Friday->