_www.FantasyLibrary.com_________ [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?]______ Synthesis & Synchronicity 008

Synthesis & Synchronicity #8

We made our way seperately to the rendezvous, arriving at different times to Stalk the halls of Harvard. Vericon was our goal, and we came bearing gifts for the natives, bait to lure them into our clutches as we sought elusive entertainment on the hoof.

Vericon is the annual convention held on Harvard campus for the past few years in the Science Building, hosted by HRSFA (The Harvard-Radcliff Science Fiction Association). Its a smaller, low key convention that is more gaming oriented and has no dealers room or much in the way of the social pressures found at Arisia.

Kiralee, Cindy & I have attended every Vericon, and every one is very different from the last. This is both good and bad, as you never know what to expect or whether it will be good fun or boring. There's little in the way of continuing traditions, and rarely are the folks running things the same from year to year. Its largely attended by Harvard students, Harvard Alumn, and the alumn of some of their related colleges like Smith, Brown and occasionally Wellesley and MIT. Sometimes it gets some really big name guests, either who went to Harvard themselves, or who are drawn by the prestige of the college name, but its definitly not a world shattering convention on everyone's lips.

Day 1

I was the first to arrive on Friday, bringing along a few trusty card games and munchies destined for the con room (a combination of con suite, cloak room and green room) marked as donations to the cause via the Western Ave Irregulars. Cindy would come a half hour later, carrying our donations of soda. This proved in all to be vital, as the convention was on a leaner budget than the year before and we ended up providing about 50%of the available food and drink for Friday.

Attendence appeared lower than in previous years, and as usual they had failed to have pre-reg pre-printed ID badges for us (again). We send our check for the convention in faithfully every year, so we can get the lower rates, and they inevitably misplace the check, or cash the check and misplace our records, etc. Anyway, we got in, thus preventing hoards of hungry students, staff, guests and vistors from starvation.

Kiralee showed up a couple of hours later, coming from her job, and we eventually bumped into each other in various places and had a dinner off campus at Unos.

I got to play Chez Geek (and win!).... but only one of the men-in-black had actually made it to the con that night, and he had only a few games, so it seemed unlikely that the other Steve Jackson Game Demos would be running that night.

Cindy & I also attended the Cheap Ass Games Demo (the demo people arrived 20 minutes at the con AFTER their demo time slot was supposed to begin, so we got the folks there to play a hand of Fluxx until they showed). We played Witch Trial, our first time playing the game (we own it, but its made really for 5-7 players) a game where everyone is a lawyer, prosecuting and defending various cases in the time of the Salem witch trials for fun & profit but with graphics from the early Victorian era for illustration. It was fun. I came in 3rd out of 7.

Cindy had gotten into two sessions of live-action "Devil Bunny Needs A Ham" another popular Cheap Ass game played in one of the upper hallways.

Kiralee attended two scarecely attended events, a reading by Julie Czerneda from a yet unpublished work, and a talk by Ellen Kushner (host of Sound & Spirit on PRI) about her radio show.

Overall the convention schedule had far too many LARPs, which had far too few players, and zero roleplaying games for the night. Open gaming was empty every time we went by. The Anime schedule looked very full, but nothing that really drew my attention to go hunt down where it was being shown (Anime is usually held in some other building on campus, and with the zero degree temps at night not worth the search).

We went home, fed our poor starving cat (because Cindy had failed her duty to feed him before leaving the house), had hot drinks and got to sleep hoping for interesting times on Satruday.

Day 2

Once more into the fray.... Vericon attendence is definitely down this year, probably an effect of the economy. We got a late start today, as many of the early morning events held no interest to us. We once again went forth and provided soda and some munchies for the con room, and brought along our electric tea pot for the convention to use for the rest of the weekend for hot chocolate etc. We grabbed some Au Bon Pan pastry on the way in for breakfast (a splurge, but it proved invaluable since we skipped eating again really until around 5pm).

My day included an impromptu game of Chez Greek in the open gaming room.... the only game we played there all day because there were rarely anyone in the room.

I sat thru three panels in a way too cold presentation room. The first was a writers panel on 'depicting the other' that spent too much time dwelling on the Sept. 11th terror attack and writing related to it, and failed to really show me anything new on the subject it was about. The panel included T. Cambell of FAANS.COM an online comic about SF fans; Catherine Asaro, a Nebula Award Winning Author; Julie Czerneda (another well published SF writer)

The second was 'The Heart Of Darkness' and was supposed to be about the nature of villians. The panel was interesting, but the moderator was way too controlling and opinionated, and far too much into her 'writing as art' to really deal well with commentary or criticism from the audience (and in some cases the other panelists). The panel included Catherine Asaro, Julie Czerneda, Ellen Kushner (Novelist and host of PRI's program Sound & Spirit with Ellen Kushner, Patricia C. Wrede (Author of many books for Young adults and Fantasy for Adults as well),and Delia Sherman (Author and now contributing editor for Tor Books). I was more disappointed with this one then the first panel.

The Third Panel was 'Games : The Developing' an open question and discussion group for game designers. It featured Alex Irvine (a Fantasy author who worked on an Online Game Project for the movie AI), Stephen Mulholland (scientist, writer & creator of the Aurora SF RPG), Phillip J. Reed (director of Special Projects for Steve Jackson Games)and Matt Pearson of Epic Adventures LLC (NERO International LARP corporate officer). The audience here was about as large as the number of panelists, but the discussion was definitely of interest.

After this I ran off, had food with Cindy (while Kiralee attended a book reading) and then picked up dinner for Kiralee which I delivered to her at the Demo of the Aurora SF RPG. I managed to rescue it from a potential disaster, as someone had guided the Author/GM to the wrong room (where he sat in wait for players) while the players were all across the hall waiting for him - I got everyone together and the game could then commence. After this good deed I headed home. (Kiralee's game was scheduled until around 9pm and Cindy was heading out to the Karioke get together that was scheduled to last about the same).

Day 3

This turned out to be the true dog-day of the convention. Kiralee had other plans and headed off early to them in the morning, expecting to get back home by dinner time. There was very little of interest on the con schedule, and a good 50% of the very diminished attendees and staff apparently failed to show up at all. Open gaming was pretty dead, and most of the remaining folks were attending an MSTK3 spoofing of Episode I of Star Wars.

I talked with staff for a bit, who felt that the timing of the convention (a week after Arisia) and the over abundance of LARPS had hurt attendence. I bid on a few pictures in the art show, and went to a panel which turned out to be another round of Ellen Kushner moderating badly (when the moderator decides to carry over the topic of the previous panel in a room for a half hour into the next panel because she wants her opinion known to the next audience about the previous subject, its never a good sign). We walked out 40 minutes into the panel, since she was pretty much dominating the whole thing.

Cindy went off to play a game with some Cheap Ass Games folks, I wandered Harvard Sq for an hour and came back for the art show close (I sat thru about 20 minutes of the Star Wars Spoofing as well). Got 4 of the 5 pictures I bid on for the minimum Bid, with the least being $10 and the most being $20. This was more or less my big splurge - I had spent only subway fare and $12 for a T-shirt at Arisia and had thus a small amount of excess funds for improving the appearance of our condo.

There was some wonderful art I didn't get, and I'm hoping to contact some of the artists to get usage of some of their art here on the website. We desperately need a new front-end art piece for the website, and I also need some good artists who need exposure to illustrate some upcoming game projects.

After paying for the art, Cindy & I retrieved the Hot Pot and headed home. Overall it was an ok Vericon, but it could have been better. It wasn't quite the 'game fest' I had wanted, but I did get some interesting contacts out of it and a few diversions. I hope that next year folks will take some of my suggestions in to consideration (and maybe I'll have some tabletop RPGs to run for the conventioneers).

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