Emerald City Comic Con, Part 2

One of the things that is pretty mandatory at a con is cosplay. And boy, did we have it.

I saw some really great costumes up close, and I could tell some of them had a lot of work going into them: Others had less.

But there were two that really stuck with me: One, a mom dressed as Toriel from Undertale, and the second: A man in a magikarp helmet, red underwear and shoes.

That’s all. Just a hat and his skivvies, wandering the con. What a champ.

Anyway, the real thing I want to talk about is tabletop gaming, and boy, did we have that, too. I was expecting a few dedicated rooms, a containment area… Nah. Nah, son. I got there and I noticed that gaming wasn’t isolated to a room, it was an entire floor of the convention center. Pinball had a room, with easily a dozen and a half machines, possibly more. There was lending library so you could play anything you wanted while you were there. Old games, new games, you name it. Sign-up tables for extended sessions, story gaming had its own designated space, there were four or five Pathfinder games a night, dozens of games of Follow and Fiasco and other story games every day, just one after another, with professional facilitators to move games along and help them flourish.
We own an entire floor. No one else owns an entire floor quite this well. Even the show floor was about 35% gaming, Artist’s Alley was seeded with gaming drawings. Catalyst had a booth, even, where I got to try a nice dice-based game called Shadowrun Encounters. The whole place was pretty loaded, but I managed to restrain myself from buying a dice ring.

I signed up for a game of Fiasco on my second day and learned what all the fuss was about. I threw down against Team Skull Grunts in the indie gaming room and showed them who was boss. I ran into a little six year old in a Guzma outfit with adult-sized Guzma goggles.
It was great. All of my hesitation about Comic Con being too much comic and not enough gaming vanished on the first day and only went into negatives from there.

More to follow, everyone. Stay tuned.