Scott Tepper: Randycon 2008 and Illicit Gaming Accessories

So this past weekend was Randycon.  I know.  You’ve never heard of it.  To call it an actual convention is a little bit of a stretch.  It’s named for our friend, Randy Chertkow, who started our weekly gamenight.  Years ago he decided that for his birthday, all he wanted to do was get together with friends and play games for the entire weekend.  So he contacted a hotel, booked their meeting rooms for the weekend, and arranged a special rate so that it would be more convenient and inexpensive for his friends to stay at the hotel.

Randy also arranges for food to be delivered throughout the weekend, so that people embroiled in a game of Descent, for example, who don’t want to leave the hotel in search of nourishment, won’t go hungry.  This has been one of the more challenging components to organizing Randycon.  One hotel that the event was held at initially allowed food to be brought in.  Later on, though, they changed their mind and insisted that food and drink could not be brought in, but rather needed to be purchased through the hotel.  With about 75 people to feed, this change would be financially unfeasible.  Since it’s costly and time consuming to host any kind of gathering for a large group of people, Randy asks attendees to pitch in by contributing what they can, although over the years, he has had to make up quite a substantial amount of the cost out of his own pocket.

While Randycon lasts from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, this year, due to some scheduling issues I was only able to spend Saturday at Randycon. (Sunday, my volleyball league had its end of season tournament. My team came in 1st place for the season, and 2nd place in the tournament. Whoo-hoo! Note to self: I need to remember to buy court shoes so that I don’t slide like a clown on a banana peel when running for the ball).

As is often the case at a gaming event, I ended up teaching some games:  Cuba, Gipsy King, and Ta Yu. I also got to play a game of Bausack: Sac Noir. Although my game library already contains Bandu, now that I’ve played with the Sac Noir version, I think I’m going to have to acquire a copy of it. The pieces are more unusual and a lot more challenging than the Bandu version.  Bausack is also more difficult in that you don’t start with a base, so you see more aggressive bidding to prevent people from acquiring stable base pieces.

In the evening, multiple games of Witch Hunt (Werewolf) always break out. I am not a very good Werewolf player. Playing Werewolf makes me anxious because I can never tell who’s lying. Added to that is the reality that am not very good at being deceitful. I would always much prefer to be the moderator, and have done so many, many times. This past weekend, for the second time in my life, I ended up being a werewolf in the game we played. The only other time I was a werewolf was last year at Randycon. Last year I was able to pull it off and successfully work my nervous anxiety into my defense when accused of being a werewolf. This year, I tried to do the same thing, but my friends picked me out right away. It didn’t help when they accused me of being a werewolf and I started to blush. Darn my uncontrollable vasodilation!

Although I didn’t get to play anything with them this time, both Scott Alden and Derk Solo of Boardgamegeek.com were at Randycon again this year. They appeared to be staked out at the Agricola table, which was in constant use the whole weekend. The other game that was in constant rotation was Rock Band for the Xbox360. Several of the guys (and gals) in our gamegroup are wizards at this game, and after playing it, I can understand how addictive this game can be.

Every year, I find myself wishing I had more time to spend at events like Randycon.  With a relaxed atmosphere and gaming amongst a large group of friends through all day and night…who could ask for anything more?

Will I soon be a fugitive?…

Another nice thing about Randycon is that I get to catch up a little and play games with some friends in the area that I don’t get to see very often.  Michael Pennisi is one of them.  He’s always a formidible opponent and has a knack for quickly dissecting a game’s mechanics.  Both he and Ray Petersen, with whom I played Cuba(it was one of the closest games I’ve ever played.  Michael won with only 4 points more than the player in last place.), both asked me if I had read a recent story in the Chicago Sun-Times about the banning of baggies.  Apparently, aldermen in the city council have been pushing for legislation that will ban small baggies in the city of Chicago because some people use them for storing and selling drugs.

Hmmmmmmm… That’s going to be a problem for me.  If you looked in my pantry right now, you would find not one, but three boxes of the little plastic zipper snack bags.  Whenever I go to the grocery store I always worry that I might run out because I’m constantly using them for...not drugs…but game components.  I prefer the smaller bags because they are more compact and less wasteful than the larger sandwich bags.

Can you imagine if these tiny bags actually do become as illegal as the drugs that they can contain?  You might see me one day on an episode of Cops where a policeman pats me down to find me transporting a bag of…meeples.

I need to start practicing now for my mug shot, because I’ll probably just start blushing.

© 2008 Scott Tepper

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Can you imagine trying to explain that you don’t use the baggies for addictive… substances… ...without blushing, Scott? Posted by Nathan Morse on Mar 11, 2008 at 08:00 AM | #

This year featured some promo-only Randycon dice! I taught some number of people Race for the Galaxy (the only game I packed), taught one game of Agricola (thank you to the two people who brought copies...hard work to assemble), and finally learned Descent. (My copy is punched, but unplayed at home. I’ll probably bust it out on a slow D&D night now.) I missed out on learning Galaxy Trucker. That was on my list to learn, but I didn’t commit enough to it. Someday! Rock Band - I almost packed a Wii, 4 Wavebirds, and Super Smash Brothers Brawl, but I wanted to avoid what happened with Rock Band. :) Friday and Saturday nights ended for me around 5:30 in the morning, playing Race...waking up at 11am to play some more. Randycon is a fun experience - the single unifying experience being that you know him. Or have friends who know him. We chuckled about one year how a couple showed up to play, not knowing anything beyond that there were games being played - who’s Randy? (Sadly, they fled in embarrassment. If you’re that couple, and you read this, we’re still sad to this day that you left.) Posted by Jimmer Sivertsen on Mar 12, 2008 at 06:27 PM | #

These smaller invitation events are wonderful. Randycon sounds like a blast. Posted by Charlie Davis on Mar 23, 2008 at 03:13 PM | #

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