Random KumoriCon Thoughts

[benlehman]

I posted an "executive summary" of KumoriCon here. These are some random thoughts.

The con staff was incredibly disorganized. They were, with a few exceptions, very friendly, but no one knew where we should go or who we should talk to. Despite running a big chunk of the RPG track, I never got a badge all weekend. Finally I decided to just ignore the bureaucracy rather than work with it, which was fine.

Within five minutes of walking around, Alexis looked around and went "well, there's a lot less blackface than at a gaming con." This was true. She then added "of course, there's a fair amount of orientalism." This was also true. Baby steps?

We had fantastically awesome players. One of them, a 17 year old girl from the Olympic Peninsula, managed to exactly summarize my (and her) game play preferences as follows: "I like playing like this. You role-play a lot, but when it's time to roll the dice, you roll the dice."

Hugely friendly in terms of content and reception. We packed every game that we ran (7-player Bliss Stage games!)

I got to watch Alexis run Bliss Stage. She's much better at running the game than me. I have learned a lot that's going to go into the next revision of the book, much of it GM advice, but also including new rules like rules for some players only playing Anchors.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/-thiefofhearts-/]

Speaking from experience in running tabletop at anime conventions, the organizational structure sounds sadly like part and parcel for a lot of shows. There will be one guy who knows what to do, it will likely not be told or forgotten by the people who should know, such as front desk/con ops/help desk.

My advice to you for next time to when you've agreed to run such events, ask where to pick up your badge and who to talk to at the show in case there's any questions.

Also, could you explain the use of the term "blackface"? I haven't exactly seen too many gaming cons that had the literal meaning of that or vaudeville revivals. I have seen far too many gaming shows with a surprising amount of "Hi-Tech Kilt" use more than the average anime con.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of people at gamer cons cosplaying dark elves in a way that ... strongly resembles blackface.

Anime cons do not have these people.

Let's just leave it at that for now.

yrs--
--Ben

[l-the-fangirl.livejournal.com]

...Eew.

[matt-rah.livejournal.com]

>>"I like playing like this. You role-play a lot, but when it's time to roll the dice, you roll the dice."<<

Fuck. Yes. That's it, right there.

Matt