NonCon 6

Starting things off with my traditional statistics, this is the 6th year of NonCon, the 5th year I've been a guest, and 7th year that yon nerdy Vassar student group has been doing this sort of thing. At this point, I do believe everyone who was on staff the first year I've been has since graduated, but there's still plenty of familiar faces to greet me every time.

The con itself was quite nice this year. Physically, everything was laid out pretty much like it was last year, a good thing in my book. There were the usual issues with Friday panel turnout, last minute confusion, and me missing panels I should have spoken on, but these things happen.

The one panel I did manage to speak on was quite enjoyable however. Last year, a panel ran on game design which, frankly, fell through. This year, another stab was taken on it, where myself, the Looney Labs people, and a variety of others had some very interesting discussions about concepts like what exactly makes a game fun, shared personal philosophies, and discussed the merits of such things as pure strategy vs. luck, the ability to ruin things for your opponents, and how people can buy up so many Munchkin cards.

Speaking of which, indeed, this year featured a personal appearence by the honest to goodness creator of Fluxx, Icehouse, and so forth, and what I'm told was the third ever playing of the very crazy Giant Circular Fluxx. Picture 4 games of Fluxx being played at once, with any given player being involved with at least two at any given time and you have a start. Fun stuff.

While the Looney games took up a decent chunk of my time, a few others deserve mention.

Jungle Speed took up a lot of my time this year. I could explain it to you, but if you click that link, you'll get a nice tutorial, although you may want to mute it. It's a very finely tuned variation on the concept of Slap Jack where good reflexes aren't quite as useful as good pattern recognition. More importantly, it's way harder to get your fingers crushed here.

Puerto Rico has been on my hit list for quite some time. Much like Settlers of Catan, it's a german import with a lot of emphasis on trading. I still didn't quite manage to play a game of it this year, but I at least learned how, and look forward to trying it out later.

Go interestingly enough, saw a lot of play this year too. I hope I don't need to explain it to you, but in the right environment it becomes quite the spectator sport.

As far as my games go, I ran a few more demos of Massive Vs. Masses, and found some new fans for it. Battling Business Cards didn't go over nearly as well, but that was due to poor implimentation on my part. Had I set up the prize table on day one, there would likely have been people comparing cards all throughout the con. On the upside, I do believe everyone who played got a pick from my bad anime box, and many were happy with what they got.

Apart from gaming, there were, for me, two major draws this year. First off, C.J. Henderson came back this year. I believe I mentioned two years ago how amusing he is at a con. Very funny guy, very good author, and I got a very good deal on the stuff he was selling in the dealer's room.

Then of course there was the concert. Erica Kudisch, who was the chair of NonCon for the last couple years held a recital featuring quite a number of songs which were, in various fashions and degrees, derived from notable console RPGs. The end result was quite impressive, and far more surreal than I expected walking in. Rather enjoyable in my book.

Another interesting feature this year, which I didn't bear direct witness to, was a Victorian ball. Based on second hand accounts, it was also an amusing experience, and it was responsible for the sale of a fair number of corsets.

Finally, on a couple personal notes, this was the first NonCon in quite some time where I managed to bring along a guest. The youngest of the Five Cousins in my family came with me this year, and while she isn't usually the con-going sort, she had quite an enjoyable time. Also, it really must be said that the Li'l Cthulu 2006 day calendar is hilarious. Plus it denotes quite a few events most calendars leave off, like the birthday of Akira Kurasawa.

So, all in all, yet another highly enjoyable experience, perhaps even more so than past years. If I omitted anything important, by all means bite my head off and I'll correct it. Otherwise, I'll see you next year.