Conventions and the Wonderful People that Inhabit their Hallways

I am now a "veteran" convention goer at 5 DragonCon's and 1 Atlanta Game Fest. Or, perhaps I am still a novice. Either way, I enjoy them very much; almost as much as I enjoy the people that attend. Let it be noted that Atlanta Game Fest had really nice, clean, and fun people attend. That is a family friendly convention if there ever was one. DragonCon, on the other hand, is a mixed bag.

Atlanta Game Fest, as you can probably guess from the title, is all about board games. I don't need to explain to you what I do there. At DragonCon, I do a few different things. First and foremost, I spend a large amount of time playing board games in the game room. Second, I wander around the convention taking pictures of people and looking at costumes. Third, I go to panels.

Now, board gaming at DragonCon can range from mundane to titillating. I play everything under the sun and generally try to play games I have never played. Conventions are a great way to try out games you have an interest in buying or to try games that you never thought you were interested in. For instance, Atlanta Game Fest was the convention where I first tried Cosmic Encounter. Anyone that knows me understands my obsessive love of this game (after all, it is my number one game). Additionally, conventions will introduce you to people that you never want to spend time with again.

Case in point: Railroad Tycoon Geezer (henceforth to be known as Geezer Tycoon). At DragonCon 08 I met this loser. He is 60. He is a model railroader (he gives the rest of them a bad name; he should be shunned from his model railroad group's meetings). He is a sore loser. I have played games with sore losers before, and even been one. I can admit it. We have all had our bouts with this illness. But I never let it show itself in public and with complete strangers. The game, as you may have guessed, was Railroad Tycoon. It is my belief that he envisioned himself as an in-the-flesh tycoon, because no mere mortal would ever act this way over a board game.

By now, if you are still here, you are probably yelling at your computer screen, "WHAT DID HE DO! STOP BEATING AROUND THE BUSH AND TELL ME!" OK! Quite your whining! There is a story behind this one!

While at DragonCon 08, I was demoing board games. It was Monday; the last day of the convention, at 12 p.m. I had two players ready to go and we were waiting for a fourth. Geezer Tycoon shows up. He says hello, asks if he can play, and swiftly tells me that he doesn't need a rules explanation, he is experienced. Uh-oh. With our hellos out of the way, we begin the game. Everything is going smoothly until about the second turn, first round. I am in last place to two experienced players and a self-proclaimed "shark at 18xx games" (not Geezer Tycoon). I see a mistake made and pounce upon the opportunity to vault myself into third place. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong person to make a play on. I had unknowingly offended Geezer Tycoon. He left two spaces into a city open (you deliver goods into city and build track to those cities in order to deliver those goods); I finished the last two spaces and took control of the city and its lucrative goods from behind Geezer Tycoon's back. Now, this is liable to happen at any point and you should be sure not to leave yourself open to it; apparently he didn't think about that.

Geezer Tycoon begins cursing and yelling at me about my "terrible move" and how I am a "f------ idiot" for playing there. I can't help but laugh. This makes it worse. I laugh harder. Someone at the table (remember self proclaimed shark guy?) then says that it was a good move and he would have done the same thing. Seeing Geezer Tycoon's reaction to this, you would have thought that the world was falling apart around him. He melts down further. He then just walks away from the table, yelling the entire time. The three of us left at the table continue the game and Geezer Tycoon comes back to the table (not without long absences designed to make us want to quit, mind you) every so often to take his turn, never saying a word.

Up until that day, I had never seen a grown man (let alone a senior) act like this. It was hilarious. At the same time, it was sad. This man must only have Railroad Tycoon and his model trains. For someone to act in such a way over a board game astonished me. Hence, I remember this story like it was yesterday.

There is a moral here, of course. For you, faithful reader, it is that if you act a-fool, I will laugh at you to your face. For me, it is that if you laugh at someone to their face, they get even more mad. Then I laugh harder. I need to remember that in the future.

Stick around for the next post! It will include the funny and cool costumes you might see at DragonCon!