MarCON. It's a fun-based CONvention held in Columbus, OH - held in the same hotel that Origins is held in.

Here's the URL: www.marcon.org

This year was kind of OK. My partner (we shall call him Tim) and I arrived in Columbus at around 6-ish. Just in time for the rush hour finale. MarCON is held in the Hyatt where Origins is held, but the place had been sold out so MarCON got rooms (at a room rate of $99 a night - not a bad trick considering there were major golf and vollyball tournaments at the same time) at the other Hyatt, 7 not-too-far blocks north. There was a Hyatt shuttle, but it only left on the half-hour and only twice more (2 AM and 4 AM) after 11. Tim and I only took it at 2 AM and 4 AM Friday night and Saturday night and a short ride to the CON on Sunday (we walked back to the Hyatt where we left our car on Sunday after 6 - the CON and Hyatt service had ended then). So transport and housing were not bad compared to other years where we'd have to deal with the constant thrumm of room parties next door.

The sales room was somewhat large, selling fantasy jewlery and sci-fi books and paraphanelia and anime. Not a lot for the casual gamer or comic book enthusiast except for maybe 2 old gaming stores selling not much (though one had a lot of Avalon Hill) and The Soldiery (as usual). For comics, there was one store in the corner selling Trade Paper Backs (yay!) and some relatively unknown comic book writers/sellers outside the doors signing books. I figure that I know enough about comics to represent John Q. Public (and I know a lot more than I let on) and if I haven't heard about these comics, they've got to be unknown. Didn't look bad, but it wasn't interesting to me.

The Klingons were there in force this year - they set up their booth and at one point even threw my good buddy Hooded Cobra Commander into the brink. Actually, there was a whole crew (Hi Reuben!) of Cobra soldiers wandering around in addition to Tomb Raider (was she ever yummi), a paint-ball gun-wielding Neo, MK-Scorpion, Resident Evil, Hal Jordan and (a damn good) Space Ghost (had a beer with those two), and the typical various generic fantasy and goths. The usual old-scary-men-in-Sailor-Moon-Outfits were there too. Frightening. The Masquerade on Saturday was amusing. The show was good and the presentations were excellent, especially the winner - this one person had built a life sized troll-like beast from Discworld. I don't read Discworld, but I recognized the figure (big sloping jaw, large arms and hunched shoulders). It was huge. I have to admit though, one of the presentations was a little too, umm, overdone and I couldn't help but laugh aloud at how terribly goth it was. The half-time show was very amusing - fire eating, pirate skits, and a sexy bit of belly dancing.

I avoided the movie rooms, but there were three of them and they showed a lot of anime and movies, including (everybody now...) The Matrix.

Didn't catch too many seminars this time around, but they had Filking (avoided), speeches, and Richard Hatch and BoJay from Battlestar Galactica showed some sort of BG short film that I missed - looked to be a presentation for the BG movie. I did get a Hatch signature for the little lady at least.

THE GAMING. The gaming rooms were SO FAR from the main convention, you'd think that it was a CON unto itself. If it weren't for QUAGS and the SJ-MIBs and the Saturday Midnight Mega-Paranoia, there would have been no role-playing at all at this CON. QUAGS is Quick Ass Gaming System - bunch of really nice and fun guys who made their own mini GURPS/TWERPS. You can check them out at www.hexgames.com. The experience points are pieces of candy. Project-G (their "special adventure") rocked. The MIBs also ran lots and lots of Chez Geek among many Illuminati (and what looked to be Cheapass Games Demo Monkeys running around running Cheapass games) games. Roger Betchel runs a Mega-Paranoia Live Game every year at MarCON. It runs at Midnight on Saturday - which is NOW when all the parties, the slave auction, the dancing room hosted by Dr. Demento, etc... are planned for. 16 players. Roger had 16 players this year at MarCON (I was too drunk, sorry, Rog...). Down from 45 last year. Down from 112 the year before that. Nuts. He also runs it at Origins, which is much less of a party-CON. It runs on Saturday as well and is TONS of fun (so's Roger!). I hear tell that Roger has something extra special planned for this year's Origins Mega-Paranoia, so BE THERE. Also, a few other games were run at the convention - but my GM for GURPS Horror copped out on us. THE BASTARD.

There was no USB Casual this year. It's a party hosted by Yukon Jack with lots of strippers. This was probably because most of the Hotel was under construction including where they normally have the party... oh sh*t. Pay attention now:

ALERT - ORIGINS CONVENTION GOERS - ALERT!!!!

RUMOR HAS IT THAT THE FOOD COURT IN THE HYATT WILL BE ENTIRELY CLOSED DOWN FOR ORIGINS. They'll feed those old men in fezzes, but not hungry CON-goers. SO BRING FOOD WITH YOU TO ORIGINS! THERE WILL BE NO FOOD COURT! (Friend Computer says rumors are treason subject to summary execution so please, please, PLEASE someone confirm this in the forums below.)

Back to the parties - The only time I saw Dr. Demento was at all the room parties. Great parties in the rooms - went door to door to door. The Slave Auction on Saturday night in the CON Suite was OK, but there weren't enough women. No alcohol allowed in the CON Suite. Remember that, people. You can't even use it to bid on the slaves with. Keep that in mind - Tim had his bottle of Finlandia vodka taken from him at the door with the promise that he would get it back when he left. Unfortuantly, it turned out that within seconds one of the MarCON staff had noticed the no-no bottle, grabbed it and put it upstairs in an empty room, then disappeared. This staffer didn't have the sense of mind to tell anyone else WHERE she would be, so it took Tim 3 hours to get his bottle of vodka back. Luckily, it was still good for the QUAGs party and he got a 2 2-litres of Coke bonus. I say they should have given Tim (I'll give you his real name if you want it) free tickets to next year for his inconvenience. Later on Saturday night, the hotel nazis shut down all the room parties and confiscated a keg of beer that Hooded Cobra Commander was bringing to the QUAGs party. Those guys sure know how to party though. Good drinking and stories - I even got baptised as a Hexgames Gnome.

Sunday was fun playing QUAGs and as a gnome, I was tossed in as a random NPC.

MarCON was somewhat down from it's years past and needs a good kick in the ass to get back to where it was. Looks like it's dwindling down though. Maybe next year it will come back, huh? They could probably advertise a bit better.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)