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In a story 30 years in the making friends friends finally got me to the Total Confusion Gaming Convention 2024. Here’s the story in video so far:

Yes the venue is the same as Pintastic 2023, in fact Dave Marson was there putting out some cards promoting Pintastic 2024.

Here’s a few pre-setup images

Including the open gamming room (same area as the free play room at Pintastic.

One of the rather cool things is their library of games, old and new, that can be borrowed for play.

Those shots are all before the gaming began, once things got rolling the place really filled up, here is a shot of the same room in the evening.

Of course this is just the straight board gamming area which is my interest, the rooms on the other side of the hotel which were the club rooms were for assorted role playing games and the end room which was the tourney room for Pintastic is for D&D.

The real stars of the place are the people some who were there to work.

And many many others who thanks to that hard work where there to play, here are a few: Michael

That foyer area where I talked to Michael was where the band played at Pintastic was full of gaming tables, many of them games I’ve not heard of. It’s sobering to think that the games I brought were 33 (Blackbeard) & 46 (Source of the Nile) years old. (I also had a brand new copy of Dynasty Baseball but I digress)

What was rather interesting about talking to Leanne…

…was that she was the exception to the rule in that her husband didn’t really talk on camera but she did, usually it’s the other way around.

I talked to Patrick just before the start of the Advanced Civilization game

of all the events there that was the one I most wanted to play in but I didn’t sign up because I figured I’d never make it there in time, but I got out of work early the night before and ended up waking up by 5 AM so I was there ready to play but alas the open seat that I had been told existed did not as the person who reserved a spot that wasn’t there turned up at the last minute.

On the bright side by 3 pm the game was still going strong (Civ takes 8-9 hours one of the best games ever but BOY it’s long).

There are two things that you must realize about total confusion that took me off guard. The first was the lack of noise. Being used to Pintastic the sound of the various Pinball machines are always around you, with Total Con that simply doesn’t exist.

But the 2nd is more subtle. With a pinball convention it doesn’t matter what room you enter or what the theme of a particular pinball machine is, all pinball players might stop to play it for a second which makes it a group unified. It is the complete opposite here. Again you have a group of people who are all gamers and in that sense similar Here there is pretty much an army of people but each in a particular niche to play a particular game or a particular type of roleplaying game, or miniatures games.

There were a few who brought games to introduce people to them, one game that I had such an interest in myself was being played right behind me called John Company, all about the East India Company which had a huge influence on the world’s history. Chris was kind enough to give me an overview:

Of all the games I saw there on day one it was the one I was most tempted to just try but it was late in the day and I was going home for the night.

At least on day one there weren’t a lot of people just wandering to find a game of any type, but I did meet a podcaster A. Lewanika Miller who turned out to be one of the most interesting people I met that day.

After the camera was off we started talking cooking in general and Italian cooking in particular which is a passion of his and would have made a good interview in itself but my battery was low and I forgot my spare.

You can find his podcast here.

I’m typing this at 3:30 AM having woke up at a bit after 3 getting 3 1/2 hours sleep. I’ll likely leave for the Hotel before 4. I’m going to bring a couple of old Avalon Hill games to join Blackbeard and Source, namely History of the World (of which I found an extra copy in the house with the original cover art not the one in that image) and Age of Renaissance one of the best games there is.

I’m also doing something original with both Blackbeard and Source. Both games are still set up and are considered “in progress” so any person who walks by can choose to just “jump in” and play the question being. Can they beat the scores of the people who have played thus far or manage an outright win?

Today I’ll be sleeping over a friend’s house who is a 15 min drive from the hotel so I might stay late and/or do more. There seemed to be very little interested in the Dynasty game from the day 1 crowd, perhaps some sports gamers will be there for day 2. It will be a tad more complicated being a Friday in Lent in terms of dining (no grilled chicken Caesar) but it won’t be boring. I’m actually rather curious how many if any all night games are going on and might leave at 4 AM in order to find out.