All The World's A Stage

Ambercon North 2004

It was the con of Names for Things that Are Not their Proper Names.

The Hotel of Which We Do Not Speak (the Isabelle, or something like).
The Hotel that is Cursed Forever (Town Inn Suites, for being bad).

Seriously, for the organizers, I'm sure it was something of a small nightmare. For me, who arrived at noon on Friday, I had no problems. I parked. I visited and ate (Thai, I think, with Ms. F who gave me tips) and developed a strategy for getting as much as possible out of the hotel if they wanted to move me, then I checked in with no problem and didn't get to use all the cool ahead-of-time roleplaying I'd done in my head.

"That isn't acceptable. I want both nights comped, I want a key with access to your pool and your business center, and I want free parking." (All I really wanted was the key, but what the heck?)

Anyway, hotel issues aside, the basement space all my games were in was very cool. It was a little damp, so my sinuses weren't thrilled, but not so much that it infringed on my enjoyment.

Friday night after a nice dinner at Living Well, I played in Kit's To Live and Die in Texorami. For you fellows with any knowledge of this game, I didn't make a character ahead of time, and I was told anyone who didn't make a character ahead of time is somehow related to Jack.

More on that in my next post.

Saturday Kit and Brianne and I went via subway to Casa Loma, which made me unbelievably jealous of rich people, and gave me lots of Juliana ideas. Pictures, I hope, sometime soon.

Saturday night we played Lean Times in Amber. This one was Elyssa's story, or the beginning of the real meat of what will be Elyssa's story, so I'm going to stay out of the way on it. It was set post-Carnival in time, which means we stayed fuzzy on most of what will happen during Carnival. Some real good roleplaying at the end. Lovely. New Characters in our Amber are: Johnson, a sailor currently working as a bodyguard to the Duchess, who has a lemur; Wren, a new (3 days new) watch detective in Southside who is asking way too many questions about the Crime Lords and will likely be dead soon; Griz, a female sailor currently acting as Wren's thug; Wilfred, a male prostitute that has now been gotten off the streets and given a job as Wren's Secretary; Fioonan (sorry JP, notes aren't here), the heir to some italian sounding house, who works as a heraldry scholar, and as a doctor. People got to watch the Duchess and the Duke interact in their 'very polite, under stress, not happy to see each other here' mode. That was fun too.

Sunday morning after checkout my game was with Rae... I forget the name of the game, but it was the one with a goat. It was a silly game, but fun.

Long trip back, no idea why. More traffic coming out of Toronto, I guess, but we gabbed the whole way back - some of the way there was spent listening to musicals until the popularity song on the Wicked CD got us talking about high school.

I hope some of you folks who missed this year will be back next year. I hope to be back, and I hope to have the full four days. (We missed you Bryant.)

Posted by Liz at September 27, 2004 9:08 PM