Conception 2002 - Convention Report

Thursday 7th February

There were six of us going to the convention. Myself (Jonny), Bubba, Bog Boy, Demonic and Mark were going down on the Thursday evening while Evil G, who couldn't get the day off work, was coming down on the Friday evening.

Since we had a shitload to carry (clothes, electrical equipment, games and, in my case, food) we decided we'd go by car, which is where we got to the first problem of the expedition: I'm the only one with a car, and it's a bit small, and rather decrepit. Not only am I the only one with a car, I'm also the only one that can drive, which is statistically near impossible given that about 95% of the UK population between 20 and 50 can drive.

But the others assured me this wasn't a problem. They would simply hire a car, which I would drive, and - since without them I could just have driven up in my own car - they would generously pay my share of the bill. I wasn't that wild about driving a different car, and refused point blank when they suggested some kind of fucking minibus - but I eventually agreed on the condition that someone else (who turned out to be Bubba) did all the research, and I just had to type my credit card number into the appropriate web form.

Which I did, and all was going well until about 7 pm on Thursday night, when we were in a mini-cab heading towards the car hire place, and Bubba turns to me saying: "It was Avis we booked with, wasn't it?" He now claims that he was winding me up, and maybe he was, but the upshot was that I had to walk into the Avis place and say: "Excuse me, we booked a car over the Internet with someone and we think it might be you�"

Anyhow, to cut a long and fairly boring story short, we got the car, figured out how to drive it (although I never did get the hang of half the dash controls, and had to rely on Bubba to handle the aircon, a bit like you might need someone else to handle your weapons and radar on the X-Wing computer game).

Our Car

The journey itself, from the Heathrow area to Highcliffe in Dorset, where Conception is held, was fairly easy (straight down the M3 and onto the M27, take the A338 for Bournemouth, the A35 to Christchurch, then the A337 to Highcliffe) and we arrived at the entrance to the holiday camp not more than two hours after we had set out.

And drove straight past.

TIP:- Select your navigator on the basis of navigational ability, not size. (Bubba was sitting in the front passenger seat because he's the biggest. Unfortunately, he can't navigate for shit, so we proceeded to drive for about twenty minutes into the depth of what turned out to be the Hampshire countryside.)

But in all seriousness, this is an area where the convention organisers could do things a bit better. We were relying on a section on their website that tells you where it is (this would usually be shown in a frame):

http://www.valinor.freeserve.co.uk/conception/con-where.html

As you can see, it does give very nice maps to show you how to get there. But there are two problems:

a) It doesn't give you actual directions to get there.

b) It gives the name of the camp as "Naish Holiday Park".

The name of the camp is Naish Holiday Park, but it is part of the Hoborne Holidays chain. So outside, you have a damn great sign saying Hoborne Holiday Park in big foot high letters, with Naish written underneath in tiny little letters in an near unreadable font.

I actually noticed, and read the sign, as we went past. But it never occurred to me that it was where we were going. I was looking for "Naish Holiday Park", not the Hoborne thing. (Actually, the cheques you had to write when booking were to Hoborne Holidays, but I'd forgotten that).

The other problem is that there were no directions on the maps. As it happens you could give very good directions, giving details that you couldn't get from maps provided (such as the fact that the camp is actually just across the Hampshire - Dorset border). Now, because of the way the roads in the area are laid out, practically everyone will be approaching from the west on the A337. This is the directions you could put on the website for people arriving on this route:

Drive along the A337 through the town of Highcliffe. A little while after that you will go over a humped-back bridge, which will have a sign saying "Hampshire" immediately after it. Immediately after that will be a sign on your right saying "Hoborne Holiday Camp". Turn right, and follow the road down to the main reception area.

Sounds like easy directions to follow, right? If we'd had something like that, we wouldn't have got lost, and we'd have saved ourselves a half hour or more.

(I should point out at this point, if you're thinking we're sounding like shits, that this is just a minor point. It wasn't why we ended up pissed off. Read on for that).

Things Get Better

We eventually arrived at 10:40 and were very impressed with the way registration was handled. There were still people at the desk. They very quickly identified who we were, gave us the key to our chalet, and a neat little map telling us how to get there (as it happens it was only about two minutes walk away from the main convention centre).

The convention centre looked good. It had the reception area, a bar, a large hall which both contained the trade stands and was also used for gaming, plus a number of smaller area for gaming. Here are some pictures just to give you a feel:

The chalet was very nice. If you're worried about what the chalets might be like, don't be. They're warm and well equipped.

This is the living room

And here is a little movie showing what the chalet looks like from the outside.

It Gets Worse

Being a vegan, I'd bought a packpack full of food with me, and, being normal, the others hadn't. After a brief confrontation, which involved me standing in front of my cupboard, snarling: "mine...�mine" it was decided that we needed to find a 24 hour Tescos.

We headed on back to the main convention centre and asked if there were any supermarkets around. "Yeah, there's a Salisbury's down the road," someone helpfully told us, before adding with a smirk: "it closed at ten."

(As it happens there was a 24 hour Tescos in Christchurch, but they were presumably unaware of it).

Then we started to look at the sheets on the notice board listing the games being played in each slot. It was at this point that we first encountered the weirdness that was the game allocation system, which I refer to henceforth in this report as: "the Slave Auction".

First of all, we looked at the sheets and saw what games were on. Bog Boy had previously (when looking at the provisional timetable on the web) been interested in a game on Friday evening, but it turned out that this had been moved to the Thursday evening slot that we'd just missed.

To be honest, there was nothing coming up that particularly leaped out and grabbed us, but we eventually decided that one of the games on Friday afternoon (slot 3) could be a laugh. We basically just wanted to try new stuff. (I've always said that you shouldn't worry too much about what system or genre a game is, what counts in the players and the GM, so just pick a game and enjoy it).

Having decided on this game, we went in search of the sign-up sheet we expected there to be. We knew we had to buy tickets at a cost of �2 each, so we wondered over to the table with tickets, and asked for five tickets for this game on slot 3.

The blokes on the table then explained that this wasn't how it worked. Basically, all the standard non-RPGA "Living" games were lumped together as "classic" games. You simply buy a "classic" ticket for a slot, in our case slot 3.

You might now be a bit confused, so I'll give you an analogy to make it clearer.

Imagine a multiplex cinema (movie-theatre to you yanks), that at each showing shows six different films on six different screens. But, in this cinema, you can't buy a ticket for Star Wars at the 8pm showing.

You simply buy an 8pm showing ticket.

What will happen then is this: You and everyone else turns up to the cinema foyer at 8pm. An organiser will start to read out the films being shown in whatever order he or she chooses.

"Anyone for Waterworld" he'll shout. You'll watch as some people go forward.

Then he'll shout: "Anyone for Star Wars" and a whole load of people will surge forward.

Remember that the cinema management know only how many people have bought tickets for the 8pm screenings. They have no idea how many people want to see which film.

If there are two hundred seats for the Star Wars screen, and you are number 201 in the surge forward - then you won't get to see Star Wars.

You can either watch the chick flick that is next in the list. Or you can piss off.

I did ask one of the people behind the desk what happened if you couldn't get into a game and they gave a reply along the lines of: "well we'd try to see if we could rustle up another game for you, perhaps print off a second copy of the scenario and find a GM, and if that couldn't happen I suppose we could give you a refund." In other words, you would get a refund if you asked, but there was no straightforward mechanism for converting a ticket back into cash.

At first, not having much experience in conventions, I figured that perhaps there was some good reasons why they were doing it this way. But having experienced it more fully, I have now concluded that it is fucking stupid.

Personally, I would do it like this:

When organising this kind of convention, put a space on the front of the ticket for a code/name for the actual game session. When people say they want to buy four tickets for the Traveller game on Saturday evening you will check a list next to you to see how many spaces are left in this game. If there are spaces, you will write the session code on the tickets, then mark off that number of spaces from the master list.

When a session is full up, you will remove it from the list on the noticeboard. That way, you will be alerted early if the games are full up. If by Friday evening, Saturday evening's games are all booked up, you can start trying to rake up additional games to put on the noticeboard.

Doing it this way would mean that people would be safe and happy about what they were doing. By contrast, at Conception, we couldn't say to ourselves: "we are playing SuchAndSuch" tomorrow afternoon. We could only say "we are *hoping* to play SuchAndSuch tomorrow afternoon" - this despite having handing over ten pounds.

However, if you really want to do this kind of non-reservation system, then I have the following suggestions to make:

Don't read out the name of a game, get all players for that and send them off with the GM, then read out the next game, and so on. Right at the start, read out all the games on offer. This avoids the risk of people passing on games that *are* on, waiting for a game that will, when the bloke gets to the end of the list, turn out to be cancelled. (Which happened to us).

The second suggestion (which comes from Bog Boy) concerns the order that the games were read out in. They seemed almost invariably to start with D&D;, before moving onto more exotic, niche games. However, while the exotic, niche games are not to everyone's tastes, pretty much everyone will play D&D.; So, it would make more sense to read out (and allocate players for) the niche games first, then do the D&D; games, which could "hoover" up all the unallocated players.

Slightly deflated by now, we wondered into the main bar and began, particularly in Demonic's case, to experience a crisis of confidence.

It was, as Demonic put it, like "looking into a mirror darkly". I've always felt that roleplaying is a bit like sex, in that if someone not involved was watching me do it, I'd be massively inhibited by the knowledge of how stupid I must look to them.

Apparently other people didn't feel that way, because there were two parties playing loudly and enthusiastically in the actual bar area itself. You'd see people standing up having a screaming match, and be convinced a fight was about to break out, until you realised they were just roleplaying.

"We're not like them, right?" we thought, "are we..?"

Anyhow, we realised we were being a bit stupid and snobbish (in our defence I do have to say that some of the people there were, quite frankly, very weird) and pulled ourselves together. This was going to be cool, we told ourselves. Perhaps we should have made more of an effort to circulate, but we were tired, so when the bar closed at around 11:30, we headed back to our chalet.

I ended up going to bed not much later. I was fairly shattered, and had suffered an attack of shatneritis, which was a bit of a surprise, because having suffered it once before, I'd assumed I had an immunity. I was wrong.

(Shatneritis:- General Tangent once played me the track Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds from William Shatner's legendary LP "The Transformed Man". It was so indescribably bad that my laughing turned into breathing spasms, and I started to turn blue. It was really scary. I imagine that this is what an asthma attack feels like. I thought it would stop when the track finished, but then the bastard put on "Hey Mr Tambourine Man. It was another 30 seconds before he realised I had reached the edge of death, and stopped it. Anyhow, on Thursday night Bubba played a sample of the Lucy track, and within 30 seconds I was on the floor, choking and clawing at my throat.)

So I went to bed.

Friday 8th February

Our food situation was pretty marginal, so the first course of action on Friday was to get into the car and head off in search of food. We eventually found a Salisbury's, and although we're Tescos people, we figured bird in the hand and all that, and went in.

We ended up with two trolleys full of food and booze. (When purchasing the Vodka I originally went for one small bottle. Demonic said it wasn't enough. I picked up a one litre bottle instead. Demonic said that it still wasn't enough. I queried. He pointed out that G was coming. I got the extra bottle).

The upshot was that the total bill came to two hundred and seven pounds something.

Yeah, we were pretty shocked.

But hey, everybody's got to eat. (Although since we ended up throwing food away on Sunday, I guess we overshopped).

When we got back, packed everything away, and had a bite to eat, we set off for the main convention centre to attempt to get into the game we were interested in.

This first time (for the last time as it turned out) it all worked out okay. The bloke shouted: "anyone for [name-of-game]?" and six voices shouted: "Yes!", five of which were us, and one of which was some bloke we'd never met before.

We were ushered through to join our GM (who checked with the organiser that there were only six, because that was the maximum number for this scenario) and he took us off to the table allocated to this session.

As I said, it had all gone smoothly, but I couldn't help thinking how lucky it had been that exactly six people had said yes. What if, besides us, four other people had wanted to play the game - and had bought tickets in anticipation?

But I kindof forgot that when we got into the game. It was pretty short, only about two hours because we bashed through it pretty quickly, but the GM was very good and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Unfortunately, it was the first and last "official" session we got to participate in.

After the game, we visited the trade section, bought a few things, abd then purchased six tickets for Slot 7 (Saturday evening) since we were hoping (especially Bog Boy) to play in the Witchcraft game.

After that, we started kicking around ideas, and I mentioned that it would be a good laugh to do a demonstration session of Pimp: The Free Collectable card game, which we published back in issue 5.

The others agreed that it might be a laugh, so we went in search of the organisers to find out how we'd go about doing this. At first it seemed that it was all very free and easy, but there is a fine line between being helpful and flexible and just saying "you can do what you're like, we're not bothered" and I feel that the Conception organisers are closer to that point than they'd presumably like to be.

We told the organiser that we'd like to organise a demonstration session of a game, for Saturday afternoon.

"That's fine," he said.

"How do we go about doing it?" we asked.

"Just write up a notice and put it on the notice board," he replied. A bit of extra discussion established that this was the second (mostly blank) noticeboard adjacent to the main noticeboard that held all the slot timetable sheets.

"It's a bit rude," Bubba warned him.

"Well in that case, it's probably best to do it in your chalet then."

"Okay," Bubba said, "we were thinking of marking it as adult nature, 21+."

"We think it's legal!" I added.

"Fine," he replied.

The only proviso he made was that being a game on-site, participants would have to have bought Slot 6 Classic tickets (�2 each).

To be honest, I was a bit non-plussed about this. It was all very well being casual and laid-back, but didn't he have any curiosity about what the game was, or who we were?

Anyhow, we knocked up a temporary poster and put it up on the noticeboard, advertising it for Slot 6, Saturday afternoon. Then Bog Boy pointed out that no-one was looking at that noticeboard (they were looking at the main timetable board).

So we wondered over to the reception desk and asked if we could add ourselves to the sheet on that board for Slot 6, and they said we could. So we did.

However, it turned out that there were duplicate master sheets listing the slot contents on the desk itself, which the organisers were using, and we still weren't on these, which turned out to be quite a mistake.

A little while later we came back with a new, improved, and hopefully more visible poster, which we put up. Then we waited in hopeful expectation for the next afternoon.

The mark II poster

That evening we didn't bother trying to get into an organised game. Given that the game Bog Boy was interested in had moved, Evil G was arriving by train at Christchurch station, and Mark fancied cooking something - it seemed easier to just stay in.

So after I'd picked up G from the station, we played a game of D&D; with Bog Boy GMing (part of an ongoing campaign we're doing).

Saturday 9th February

I spent Saturday morning re-reading the Pimp rules (it was two years ago) and marking up cards (most of the ones I had were blanks which I'd never bothered to mark, but I wanted to make sure I had enough if loads of people turned up).

Marking the cards

There were quite a lot before I started.

The spares

Demonic and Evil G took one of the Japanese Ninja-Bitch cards (stats of 7-9-8) and showed it around the complex:

Demonic goes visiting

Afterwards, they and the others played another game of D&D;, which I sat out since I was still busily marking cards and reading rules.

Then, at about 2pm (ish) we wondered down to the main complex to pick up our "players" (hopefully).

I introduced myself to a woman on the desk, telling her that I was running a game which was up on the slot list on the board, and asked her what happened. "Are they going to read out my game with the others?"

"No," she said, "you just shout out what your game is."

But it wasn't clear when I was supposed to do this, and it seemed a bit rude to barge out in front of the bloke who was doing the "official" shouting.

So I waited patiently whilst he solicited players for the games on offer.

After which there was only one group left, and when Bubba went over to talk to them they had come to do live roleplaying. Bugger.

Now the truth here is probably that no-one at the convention wanted to play the game. But I can't help thinking that it might also have been because:

a) The board that our notice was up on wasn't very noticeable; and

b) He'd read out all the other games, one after the other. Someone listening to this would have had no way of knowing if we were there are not. Would you - owning a generic �2 ticket to a game - pass on all the games that were on offer, in the hope that the game advertised on a scrappy poster was actually on? If he'd told everyone that our game was on offer at the start, some of them might have thought: "Hey that sounds like a laugh!"

At this point I headed off to the trade area in search of some retail therapy (stopping only to graffiti our poster). I managed to get a couple of old games I've been looking for, then bought the D20 DragonStar Starfarer's Handbook from the Caliver stall.

There was a bit of a funny episode there, because when I handed over my credit card, I realised that I recognised the bloke. When he mentioned that they were Caliver, I realised that it was Jay, the editor of Valkyrie magazine (in "other" part of his job) who I write a column for (I'd only met him once some eighteen months before which was why we'd failed to recognise each other).

I said: "Aren't you Jay?" and he was like: "I know from somewhere, don't I?"

Anyhow it was good to meet up with him and have a chat.

But I was still pretty depressed over the whole pimp thing, so me, Evil G, Demonic and Mark headed off for the beach (the holiday camp in "real-life" is a summer, sea-side holiday camp), equipped only with a litre plastic bottle containing a half litre of Vodka with a splash of orange juice, and a plastic spade I'd purchased from the camp shop.

It seemed like an appropriate thing to do.

Jonny Heads For The Beach

I built a dam.

It was good.

Evil G pissed in it:

So did Demonic and Mark:

That didn't help me feel any better.

Eventually darkness started to descend, along with some rain, so we headed back. On the way, now slightly drunk, and with me proudly clutching my sand encrusted spade, we went back into the main convention centre and had another chat with Jay (showing him the pictures on the digital camera as proof of our exploits).

That evening, sobered up, we headed back down to the centre for our game of Witchcraft. Again, they read through the list of games, and we waited, but they went through the whole list without mentioning Witchcraft.

At this point, there were two groups of players left, including us.

The organiser / shouter bloke looked at the other group, and asked: "What did you want to play?"

It would have been bad enough if they'd answered "Witchcraft."

What actually happened was that one of them started to chant: "Witchcraft! Witchcraft! Witchcraft!" over and over again, in a really bizarre high-pitched voice.

Bog Boy just looked at us and said in a very low voice: "I'm not playing with them."

I, meanwhile, was hunched against a displayboard trying not to laugh.

The organiser then went over to the other group and explained, as best we could gather from overhearing, that the Witchcraft game was cancelled. At least, I'm guessing that's what he said, because they spent the rest of the evening in the bar playing some kind of card game. I don't know if they got any refunds.

Then he walked off, leaving us standing in the foyer clutching our slot 7 tickets.

Demonic and Evil G were, by that time, not particularly bothered about roleplaying, but the rest of use still wanted to get another session in, so Bog Boy and Mark bought four tickets for the 9:30 slot the next morning (it has to be this one, because we were leaving in the afternoon, which would stop us playing in the later slots). We were hoping to play a demonstration game of Spycraft, but after that evening we weren't hopeful.

They actually found it quite difficult to buy the tickets. They were standing by the main desk where the tickets were sold (it had lots of little piles of them) waiting to be served. There was an organiser in the area behind the desk, apparently reading something or doing some kind of clerical work.

They waited. And waited. And waited.

Mark started saying to Boy Boy in a loud voice: "Look just put the money down and take the tickets."

Even then the bloke didn't come over, but they carried on waiting, and eventually he deigned to serve them.

Then we went back to the chalet. We were going to play another game of D&D;, but in the end no-one could be bothered, so we ended up wondering around the bar trying to take some pictures, and discovered the arcade area.

Evil G Discovers The Arcade

Sunday 10th February

Sunday saw us get up bright and early in an attempt to make the 9:30 game. I actually walked down to the main complex at 8:30 with Demonic and Evil G - who were getting breakfast - and ended up bumping into one of the organisers (Laurie) of the upcoming Battlemasters convention. We had quite an interesting chat, and he suggested we go to that convention (20th and 21st April).

By 9:25, Bubba, Bog Boy, Mark and myself were all lined up and waiting for the slave auction, and discussing tactics. It was clear that there was some kind of Darwinian principal going on, and perhaps we ought to take advantage of it. (The main tactic we were considering was to start jumping up and down chanting "Spycraft!" in loud, high-pitched voices, to put off potential rivals).

At 9:30 the organising bloke came out and started shouting out the games. He shouted out D&D;, Shadowrun, Rolemaster and Cthulhu, and got some takers, but not that many. Then he looked at the 20 or so people remaining and asked: "What are you here for?"

We were a bit surprised by this, given that there was still one more entry on *his* list, but we realised that the first answerers get the game, so we shouted out "spycraft" and put up our hands.

Unfortunately, so did another biggish group.

The bloke then went back into the main room and shouted: "Is anyone GMing Spycraft?" Presumably he got an affirmative answer, because we then heard him shout: "How many can you have?... Six?"

Then he came back, pointed at the first group, and said: "one, two, three", and then pointed at the four of us, and said: "four, five, six".

At this point Bog Boy, who was getting very pissed off by now, said: "Look you guys go in, I'm going back to the chalet."

I said: "No, I'll go, I can start writing the article."

And then, literally not more than four or five seconds after he initially allocated us three places, we saw him count three further people through and disappear back into the main room with what were presumably the Spycraft players.

We were stunned. He didn't even say something like: "Sorry lads, you hesitated," which would, whilst being breathtakingly rude, at least have been honest.

He just pissed off, leaving us standing in the main foyer with four now useless Slot 8 tickets which we had paid eight quid for.

A furious Bog Boy stormed back into the reception area, threw the tickets down onto the desk, and walked out. We followed.

(If any of you saw three blokes walking away from the convention centre at around 9:25 on Sunday morning, with a fourth bloke walking behind them shouting: "It's not me, right? That was complete crap, right?" that was us. We then got back to the chalet, where I vented my anger by spending ten minutes striking messianic poses on the veranda with the aid of my spade).

Now you might think that we were all a little childish here, and that we should have asked for refunds on our tickets. But I would like to point out the following:

a) The ticket money goes to charity, so you'd feel a bit of a heel asking for it back.

b) We came here to roleplay, not to get refunds. Considering that we spent, between us, in excess of �600, getting �8 back seems pretty pointless.

c) Boy Boy threw down four Slot 8 tickets, immediately after the conclusion of the slave trading, onto the main desk in full view of several of the organisers. It would have been obvious to them that these were purchased tickets, being handed back in, by people who hadn't been able to get into a game. Any one of them could either have offered a refund, or asked if they could find us a game. They didn't. They just watched.

It was after the Messianic pose episode that I sat down in the chalet and wrote the bulk of this article.

There was a further interesting postscript, about an hour later, when Bog Boy and Mark came back from their shopping. (I was still typing away at this point).

It turned out that they had got talking to Jay (editor of Valkyrie) and had told him about what had happened, focussing especially on my "episode". (When he asked them what I was doing, they could have just told him that I was typing an article, but instead they told him that I was doing Hitler impersonations on the Veranda).

But when they were talking about the Spycraft fuckup, another bloke browsing the stall happened to overhear them and said: "Yeah, I wanted to play in that." Like us, he'd ended up paying two quid for a slot 8 ticket that he never got to use.

It got worse. They happened to find the area where the Spycraft game was going on, and found out something very annoying:

There were only four players. (Presumably two of the second three who got counted through, either changed their mind, or had only been trying to get through to the bar and had been accidentally counted).

Fuckup and fiasco all the way down the line.

Postscripts and later thoughts...

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