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Shore Leave 2023 and Game Reviews
As Jethrien has a novel coming up next year, she needs to boost her profile as a writer and her presence at cons. In this case, Crazy 8 Press has a big presence at Shore Leave and they just published an anthology that she has a story in, so it seemed like a good choice.
The con: We drove down Friday after a full work day. We didn't stay in the con hotel, which ended up being really lucky--it was apparently a mess, with AC problems and half the con-goers getting bumped to overflow hotels because a ball team didn't leave. We were at the Holiday Inn Express five minutes away, where the biggest problem was one of the two elevators being out.
On the first night, I stayed with ARR and Jethrien went to what she expected was an author party and was actually a table signing event; that was a little awkward but worked out fine.
On Saturday, we did a mix of things that each family member was interested in. We saw the Boogie Knights and the Chromatics perform (the latter singing about findings from the James Webb Space Telescope). We saw a lecture on non-dinosaur creatures of the Cretaceous (the new word of the weekend was “flaplings”). Jethrien did an ill-attended but fun panel about sequels and attended a panel about TV writers rooms. ARR and I went to the game room and tried some new board games (and all of their snacks). A couple of our later-afternoon panels of interest were busts, so we went back to the hotel room for a couple of hours to relax. Then we went to the “special event” dinner (again organized by Crazy 8 folks) and I got to hang out with Xavcat for a couple of hours. Then Jethrien dropped us back at the hotel so I could get ARR to bed and she could go to the writers bar meetup.
We also did a bunch of circles through the dealer’s room: ARR got two different 3D-printed dragons; I got a couple of new pins for my jacket and a couple of antique pins for a costume I’m hoping to make for later cons. We managed to not buy an expensive lightsaber, a dice tower or a stuffed Cthulhu; but all of them got thoroughly examined.
On Sunday morning, I saw the "Bob and Howie" show, which was amusing but mostly because I knew them and cared what they’d been up to. There was a Lego event in the kids room Sunday morning, which was just free play with two giant bins of Legos but was probably ARR's favorite part. Robert Picardo and Robert Duncan McNeil were media guests, and we saw them do a big Q&A panel. (That was particularly entertaining, but I had seen Picardo at I-Con years ago and fully expected as much.) We ate lunch (salads and sandwiches from the hotel café) through a panel about designing a monster that ended up featuring a color-changing, empathic scavenger ape/peacock that really, really needed a better name than “apecock”. And then we said our goodbyes and got on the road, through a horrible thunderstorm for the first half hour or so but a generally smooth ride afterwards.
The games:
They had a solid game room setup, with a “suggested donation” snack bar and an N64 and a crafting area. And a big sign forbidding unattended children and requiring attendees eat meals and take showers. We tried four games that all seem like they'll be dramatically different with four players rather than two.
Qwirkle - Like Bananagrams or another free-form Scabble variant, but with shapes and colors as your matching set. There are a bunch of ways to screw over your opponents which I suspect are very important to competitive play. As it was, ARR and I bounced ahead and behind in point totals as each of us managed a coveted "qwirkle" (six of the same color/different pattern or vice-versa, worth 12 points).
Wizard Kittens - Apprentice kitten wizards accidentally let out a bunch of curses, and need to remove them before the professor catches them. It's a mix of competitive and cooperative because you want to be the one who clears each curse for points, but if the professor shows up everyone loses. If you sabotage the other cats you prolong the game and allow yourself to get more bonus points...but only if you do actually finish in time.
Gimme Gimme Guinea Pigs - This feels a bit like it grew from 52-pickup. You have a hand of cards and need to put them down into the pile and pick up new ones as you try to make a set of 6, while everyone else is doing the same except when someone calls a "paws". It's a five-minute game and I suspect with more players the winner is whoever luckily picks a set to aim for that no one else is looking for.
Waterworks - I noticed this because it's a pipe-maze game, where you assemble cards with pipe pieces into a full pipe, but need to deal with leaks along the way. It's a race between players, and you can play leaky pipes on opponents to slow them down; you need to fix a leak before you can continue placing pieces. (There's also an issue of not running your pipes into themselves or in circles, but that seems to be secondary.)
Overall: This con was fun as a one-off (I haven’t been to a Shore Leave in probably 20 years) and an excuse to see people, but I doubt it’ll become a mainstay.
The con: We drove down Friday after a full work day. We didn't stay in the con hotel, which ended up being really lucky--it was apparently a mess, with AC problems and half the con-goers getting bumped to overflow hotels because a ball team didn't leave. We were at the Holiday Inn Express five minutes away, where the biggest problem was one of the two elevators being out.
On the first night, I stayed with ARR and Jethrien went to what she expected was an author party and was actually a table signing event; that was a little awkward but worked out fine.
On Saturday, we did a mix of things that each family member was interested in. We saw the Boogie Knights and the Chromatics perform (the latter singing about findings from the James Webb Space Telescope). We saw a lecture on non-dinosaur creatures of the Cretaceous (the new word of the weekend was “flaplings”). Jethrien did an ill-attended but fun panel about sequels and attended a panel about TV writers rooms. ARR and I went to the game room and tried some new board games (and all of their snacks). A couple of our later-afternoon panels of interest were busts, so we went back to the hotel room for a couple of hours to relax. Then we went to the “special event” dinner (again organized by Crazy 8 folks) and I got to hang out with Xavcat for a couple of hours. Then Jethrien dropped us back at the hotel so I could get ARR to bed and she could go to the writers bar meetup.
We also did a bunch of circles through the dealer’s room: ARR got two different 3D-printed dragons; I got a couple of new pins for my jacket and a couple of antique pins for a costume I’m hoping to make for later cons. We managed to not buy an expensive lightsaber, a dice tower or a stuffed Cthulhu; but all of them got thoroughly examined.
On Sunday morning, I saw the "Bob and Howie" show, which was amusing but mostly because I knew them and cared what they’d been up to. There was a Lego event in the kids room Sunday morning, which was just free play with two giant bins of Legos but was probably ARR's favorite part. Robert Picardo and Robert Duncan McNeil were media guests, and we saw them do a big Q&A panel. (That was particularly entertaining, but I had seen Picardo at I-Con years ago and fully expected as much.) We ate lunch (salads and sandwiches from the hotel café) through a panel about designing a monster that ended up featuring a color-changing, empathic scavenger ape/peacock that really, really needed a better name than “apecock”. And then we said our goodbyes and got on the road, through a horrible thunderstorm for the first half hour or so but a generally smooth ride afterwards.
The games:
They had a solid game room setup, with a “suggested donation” snack bar and an N64 and a crafting area. And a big sign forbidding unattended children and requiring attendees eat meals and take showers. We tried four games that all seem like they'll be dramatically different with four players rather than two.
Qwirkle - Like Bananagrams or another free-form Scabble variant, but with shapes and colors as your matching set. There are a bunch of ways to screw over your opponents which I suspect are very important to competitive play. As it was, ARR and I bounced ahead and behind in point totals as each of us managed a coveted "qwirkle" (six of the same color/different pattern or vice-versa, worth 12 points).
Wizard Kittens - Apprentice kitten wizards accidentally let out a bunch of curses, and need to remove them before the professor catches them. It's a mix of competitive and cooperative because you want to be the one who clears each curse for points, but if the professor shows up everyone loses. If you sabotage the other cats you prolong the game and allow yourself to get more bonus points...but only if you do actually finish in time.
Gimme Gimme Guinea Pigs - This feels a bit like it grew from 52-pickup. You have a hand of cards and need to put them down into the pile and pick up new ones as you try to make a set of 6, while everyone else is doing the same except when someone calls a "paws". It's a five-minute game and I suspect with more players the winner is whoever luckily picks a set to aim for that no one else is looking for.
Waterworks - I noticed this because it's a pipe-maze game, where you assemble cards with pipe pieces into a full pipe, but need to deal with leaks along the way. It's a race between players, and you can play leaky pipes on opponents to slow them down; you need to fix a leak before you can continue placing pieces. (There's also an issue of not running your pipes into themselves or in circles, but that seems to be secondary.)
Overall: This con was fun as a one-off (I haven’t been to a Shore Leave in probably 20 years) and an excuse to see people, but I doubt it’ll become a mainstay.