Rogue Cthulhu's Origins 2K Photos

... A new day dawns, the dew falls away. Time to go see if Henry has fixed our schedule problems yet (yeah, right). If not, we've always got "Plan A". ... What kind of moron schedules major construction during the middle of a 10,000 person convention? The same kind of moron who would shut down the FOOD COURT during a convention of 300 pound gamers, that’s who! A substitute food court was eventually erected in a spare hall, but the selection sucked and half the attendees didn't know where to find it. I can't even imagine what kind of money those vendors lost because of this.

... With our schedule problems still not solved, and no breakfast to be had, Thursday morning was off to a bleak start. But once the games got rolling, there was no time to worry about it. Our events were packed. I guess the word got out last year that the Rogue name means quality, because player turnout was excellent!

... There were even a few cases where we had to convince people that we were not running their Cthulhu event. They had signed up for one of the RPGA's Cthulhu events, but the players for some reason came to us and INSISTED that it must be one of ours (because we were running all the Cthulhu). Well kids, not all the Cthulhu, just all the good Cthulhu. Sorry folks. Next time, look for the label.

... The RPGA did manage to schedule a few more Cthulhu events than last year. They put on 6 slots instead of 4 (two titles instead of one). Although the RPGA’s schedule nearly doubled over all from last year, on the few occasions we managed to find time to check out the competition, the RPGA’s gaming area was like a cavernous wasteland! We hear that it thickened up later in the show, but at mid afternoon on Thursday, it was definitely a ghost town. ... It’s hard to conceive why the RPGA would be given SIX HUGE ROOMS (not to mention the entire lobby that connects them) for their events, but independent gaming groups like ours can’t even get one small room. Even more than that, can’t even get all their games in the same room! No, we had to be spread out all over hell’s half acre! True, the RPGA put on more events than we did, but let’s look at that. We put on 31 events this year, and the RPGA put on 82. That’s 82 events between ALL of their game systems, their entire show. We put on more than 1/3 the size of the show as the RPGA, but we weren’t given even 1/10 the space consideration.

... Last year our show consisted of 30 events, while the RPGA’s consisted of 44. Their entire show was only 14 more slots than ours, and yet they still got the customary “Mammoth Cave” like gaming area all to themselves. They got an entire room bigger than the one we had, just for their Headquarters. Now wait a minute, Robert Weise told us the RPGA doesn’t even run those games, they just lease them to the convention. So why do they need an RPGA Headquarters at all? That was last year anyway. This time, we have it straight from the horse’s mouth that the RPGA is in charge of running their games this year. There’s no dodging the bullet now, Bob. Your group is on the hook for everything that went down this year, and we have at least 5 first hand accounts from people who said your show this year was as bad as ever. Maybe worse. I got one report from the mouth of a Paragon Level RPGA member, a hard core long time fan of your group, who said that we saved her weekend. Saturday night she told us of having just come from an RPGA event that was the worst run piece of schlock she had ever endured. She and her son were sure they would have to leave the con feeling down, until they came to us!

... There’s no dust on these tables. Thursday was a big day for us. Running back and forth to the Events Management booth, setting up decorations and finding our players in the places where the schedule said the game was supposed to be, and bringing them to the place where it actually was, kept us very busy. In addition to our regular events, Thursday is also the day we run our single biggest game, "And Then There Was One". Lots of work to do. Lots of games to run. Lots of players to service.

... In all fairness, WotC did eventually get us our private room. It was in the ass end of nowhere and we didn't get it until half way through the con, but we got it. Corralling the players remained a problem, and it had long tables instead of round ones and no table cloths, but it was a good size for us and the acoustics were better. Best of all, we had it all to our selves.