Day 2 Total Con Marlborough Mass Less Totally Confused about the Role to Play and the Art

Posted: February 24, 2024 by datechguy in fun, gaming, online gaming, special events
Tags: , , , ,

My Trip home meant three extra games joined me for Day 2 of the Total Confusion convention in Marlborough. I took along Age of Renaissance, one of my old favorites, Groo because it’s quick, dirty and fun and a copy of the original Avalon Hill History of the World as I had mentioned in passing that I had two and a friend had inquired about buying one of them.

After a slight detour due to forgetting my wallet (fortunately discovered at the nearest Dunkin rather than after hitting the highway I got to Total con by 6:30 and found myself surprised. Having survived many an all night game I expected to find at least one crew with some kind of game, either board or a Role Playing Game (or RPG as they’re known) to still be in progress surrounded by beers and or chips but I went from one corner of the place to another and the only games that could be even slightly considered in progress where the two I had left set up ready to continue.

Now this might be due to it being the Thursday to Friday period rather than the Friday/Saturday period (I’ll check this morning when I get there) but I was still surprised. But slowly the gamers filed in after breakfast and the various games set up and the games were on.

As you might expect the crowd was much larger and more vendors turned up to tempt players with games, accessories and items of interest. I noticed a fair amount of families with younger children all playing various games most of which I didn’t recognize but the real scenes in the open play room where the huge elaborate setups for various games or giant boards, stuff that isn’t practical at the house.

It became very clear that many of these setups were labors of love and thus one of the joys of being there, but there was a second joy you saw a lot of, less elaborate but no less significant, the joy of teaching a game you enjoy to a new crowd and seeing them take the same joy in a game that you’ve had in years. That teaching element is a vital part of the main area. and I found myself sharing that joy as well with what I brought

I had several wandering players join into my Blackbeard and had three different leaders over the course of the day before a young man managed to take a huge treasure, upgrade to a squared rigger and get to 100 points to win outright. Alas the same interest was not in Source of the Nile, I did however have more luck with Dynasty baseball teaching a fellow how to play and recruiting him into my 1972 league taking the Reds.

It was near this time that it hit me that while I had some good shot and interviews from my own area (open board gaming) I had done very little with either the RPG crowd or the miniatures crowd that was located in between. This was part of the “Army of Niches” aspect of the event that I mentioned yesterday. Not wanting to miss that perspective I headed over the final room where RPG’s took place intending to start filming there and go down the all peeking into each to give an account of the incredible variety of RPG’s in progress.

Much to my surprise I was greeted by a fellow who asked me not to film in that room out of respect for the privacy of the players. It’s the type of thing that I might have expected to hear a quarter century ago when gaming wasn’t as mainstream but I was shocked to hear it in 2024. Either way people were there to enjoy themselves and that trumps video so I shot and gave the perspective from outside the room instead:

I had more luck in the miniatures painting area where a woman named Carol was painting with great detail some figures. She was kind enough to interrupt her work for a long interview.

You can find her work online here but I also should note that her artistry is not limited to items of small stature as evidenced by the large model ship behind me which was also an example of her work.

Alas the lack of sleep was starting to get to me and after some cheese pizza from Linguini’s (Friday in Lent you know) I was already thinking of crashing when I ended up as part of demoing the online version of the baseball game in the 4 pm tournament whose games were tight and kept the adrenaline pumping through the victory. But by this time I was pretty much spent so after packing up my games and setting up Blackbeard for a new session (leaving word that people were welcome to play it while I was gone) I prepared to head for my friend’s house in Westborough just 12 minutes away when I was intercepted by one of my Blackbeard players Kevin (2nd place) who insisted I meet and interview the gamemaster of the RPG they were running.

Bill was an affable fellow who was there with his grandchildren and they had one of the clubrooms put aside for their event and the interview frankly was golden.

When I think of role playing games I always think of my college crowd playing D & D and come from it from that angle. I didn’t realize how limited a view this was until talking with Bill.

Yes this is role playing but the forethought and preparation for this scenario was incredible. The aspects of writing, engineering and even specific props and costume for the particular scenario were stunning. This gave me a real understanding of what a convention like this can mean to those on the Role Playing side of the gamers aside. In theory one and practice one can play a RPG anywhere as the primary ingredient is imagination and there are plenty of people at Total Con doing just that.

But the kind of elaborate setup with months of preparation and props made and controlling the aspect to give the player the experience of being where they’re pretending to be. It’s in all practical sense, a theatre production and thus art generated by people with imagination willing to put in the time and effort to entertain a group of total strangers simply for the sheer joy of it.

If that’s not worth the price of admission to Total Confusion I’d like to know what is.

Here are a few quick clips before I go. More tomorrow.

https://rumble.com/v4fcohu-quick-clips-from-total-confusion-2024-day-two.html

And Now Some Total Confusion Total Con 2024 That is. Day 1

Posted: February 23, 2024 by datechguy in fun, gaming, special events
Tags: , , ,

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.

So Google AI Knew Col Lawson was right all along!

Posted: February 22, 2024 by datechguy in culture, tech
Tags: , ,

Col. Tad Lawson: [drunkenly] There are no Nazis in Germany. Didn’t you know that, Judge? The Eskimos invaded Germany and took over. That’s how all those terrible things happened. It wasn’t the fault of the Germans. It was the fault of those damn Eskimos!

Sometimes we let our myths get ahead of us.

Decades of TV and Movies depicting computers and AI as something sentient, capable of independent thought or even beyond humans in terms of humanity or right and wrong has corrupted public perception in the same way that 60 years of Disney movies full of talking animals has made some people forget that animals are dangerous and if given the chance will kill and eat you.

Thus we see the shock SHOCK that Google’s AI seems to be incapable of showing a white person thus the Vikings, the founding fathers and all the popes become people of color.

As far as the AI is concerning Col Lawson was right. Given the choice between showing the Nazi’s of 1944 as Caucasians or Eskimos they’ll give them that Inuit look every time.

Why? For the same reason that it doesn’t dare show an image of Tiananmen Square…Because it’s a computer program doing what it’s been ordered to do by the people who wrote it.

The reality that Google AI is just a computer program, a complex computer program, with access to all kinds of data, but a computer program that operators under the parameters that the programmers have given it and if people understood that this is what it is then all of this stuff would be no big deal.

But folks have been sold by language and culture to convince you that it’s something it’s not.

Just like “The cloud” People upload all kinds of things to “The Cloud” not thinking that what they’re doing is uploading things to large server farms run by various companies.

If people thought of their data being freely to these folks they might think twice, but because it’s called “the cloud” that thought doesn’t hit them.

Anyone who trusts AI to do anything other than what it’s been told by the people who programmed it and thus the people who paid the people who programmed it are fools.

Don’t be a fool, no matter what Google Gemini tells you, it wasn’t the Eskimos.

More proof Liberalism is a dangerous mental disorder

Posted: February 22, 2024 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

The political left is a vast echo chamber where ideology greatly outweighs reality, groupthink has replaced individual awareness.  Basic scientific truths do not exist at all, nor do philosophical and moral truths, because of this reality is malleable.  It is impossible to live in environment devoid of reality without experiencing a breakdown of sanity. 

These Marxists that call themselves Progressives, Liberals, or Democrats have infested all of the major institutions here in the United States and across the world.  Because of this the world is descending into a chaos caused by this ideologically driven abandonment of reality.

Transgenderism is the epitome is this rejection of reality.  The political left has completely rejected the fundamental scientific truth of biological sex.  This article is proof of how far into insanity the left has descended: This British Health Official’s Take on Transgender ‘Chestfeeding’ Is Something Else (townhall.com)

A health official in the United Kingdom claimed that breast milk from biological males who “transitioned” to live as women is just as healthy as breast milk from a female who has given birth. 

The Telegraph reported this week that a leaked letter from a University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust medical director claims that breast milk produced by “trans women” as a result of taking so-called “gender-affirming” drugs is “comparable to that produced [by a mother] following the birth of a baby.”

This insanity is now endangering new born infants.

Lottie Moore, who works at the think tank Policy Exchange, told The Telegraph that the letter is “unbalanced” and “naïve in its assertion that the secretions produced by a male on hormones can nourish an infant in the way a mother’s breast milk can.” 

“A child’s welfare must always take precedence over identity politics and contested belief systems that are not evidence-based. The NHS should not be indulging in this nonsense,” Moore added.

Young girls are now at risk of serious bodily injury from the left’s insanity:  ‘Trans’ Athlete Causes Multiple Injuries in Girls’ Basketball Game (townhall.com)

A male athlete who identifies as a woman reportedly injured three female athletes in a girls’ basketball game earlier this month. As a result, the game ended in a forfeit.

The trans-identifying player for KIPP Academy in Massachusetts reportedly injured three girls at Collegiate Charter School of Lowell before halftime on Feb. 8. According to The Daily Wire, the male player who thinks he’s a girl is six feet tall and has facial hair. KIPP has reportedly refused to confirm the player’s gender.

The reaction from the offending school is pure insanity.

“The Charter School supports this decision and reiterates its values of both inclusivity and safety for all students,” the statement added. “We take the standards set by the MIAA and our Board of Trustees seriously and strive to uphold them on and off the court. We also follow the guidance from the MIAA and state laws regarding equity and access for all student-athletes.”

The statement omits the fact that these female athletes were injured by a male who was allowed to play against them in the name of “inclusion.”

“A man hitting a woman used to be called domestic abuse. Now it’s called brave,” women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines said on X. 

Here is another major denial of reality by the political left that is causing serious mental health repercussions: Understanding and Managing Climate Anxiety: A Modern Mental Health Concern (mrctv.org)

The media has a lot to answer for – namely, for making people (including children) so petrified of an impending climate apocalypse they can barely function in daily life.

In a recent Bloomberg article, reporters interviewed therapist Caroline Hickman, who described using exposure therapy to help a child who was afraid of dogs. However, she was reluctant to see climate anxiety as the same type of irrational fear. 

“We don’t 100% know how to deal with it,” she said, adding that “it would be a huge mistake to try and treat it like other anxieties that we are very familiar with that have been around for decades. This one is much, much worse.”

…Climate anxiety disrupts the ability to function day to day. Children and young people in this category feel alienation from friends and family, distress when thinking about the future and intrusive thoughts about who will survive, according to Hickman’s research. Patients obsessively check for extreme weather, read climate change studies and pursue radical activism. Some, devastatingly, consider suicide as the only solution. 

The Biden Regime is the very embodiment of the insanity of the political left: Biden Admin Shells Out Taxpayer Dollars On Getting Americans To Eat Trash-Fed Bugs | The Daily Caller

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) began funding research into trash-fed crickets as an alternative to conventional and “unsustainable” protein production in July 2023, a federal grant listing shows.

The $130,000 grant supports research that “addresses the need for more cost-efficient production of crickets as a sustainable protein source,” according to the listing. Specifically, the grant will support research into using municipal landfill waste to feed crickets that will later be harvested for human consumption.

USDA awarded the grant to Mighty Cricket Inc., a private firm that sells cricket flour, cricket protein powder and cricket oatmeal. The agency believes that using landfill waste to feed crickets could help the firm “procure cricket feed at lower cost than what is available on the market,” leading to savings that could then be passed along to the consumer.

USDA’s grant listing criticizes traditional animal farming for being too resource-intensive and too harsh on the environment.

Older Entries
Newer Entries