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Origins, in Review - Part Three
Jul. 19th, 2007 08:45 amDay 3 - July 6th
Friday was my most densely packed day, hands down. A Champions event, two board game events, and the Smithee Awards. I had a few small blocks of time to look around the art show and the dealer room, but that was it.
The Champions session kicked things off - the same GM who ran the JSA game runs a yearly event with a group of C-List superheroes called 'The Auditioners'. It's comedy superheroics at its finest. Last year, I played group sharpshooter, Rubber Band Man. This time, I took on the ineffectual Batman of the team, Dark Avenger. The awesome characters deserve a post of their own, and I may get to that next week, but for now I'll continue with the overview. This was the one event that both![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eemick2 and I signed up for. He played the team's pacifist brick, Barnraiser, last year. This time, he selected Glamour Guy.
My second event of the day should have been a game called Cineplexity. Great fun game about movie trivia - from the same folks who make Apples to Apples. I love, love, love this game. So why didn't I play? Well, see, when I showed up to play, I noticed someone in the gathered throng of people waiting for the event to start. She had been at the Cineplexity demo session I attended last year. And I didn't want to deal with her again.
Let me take a moment to explain. Cineplexity has a set of cards that describe things about a movie. You might get a "setting" card that says "Rome". Or an "actors" card that says "Tom Cruise, Tom Sizemore, or Tom Jones." Or a genre card. Et cetera. Two cards are revealed at any given time - the first person to name a movie that fits both cards takes one of the cards as a point, and a new card is flipped from the deck to replace it, and guessing resumes. Great fun game, and I'm pretty good at it. I mean, I nearly obsessively watch movies.
This gal, though. Last year, she went out of her way with each round to shout out (and I do mean shout) foreign movie titles for 90% of the combinations. And I don't mean foreign films with crossover appeal that Americans might reasonably have seen - like Amelie, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Amores Perros, City of Lost Children, Kurosawa's stuff, etc. I mean things that have had no theatrical or DVD release in the states. Crap I've never heard of.
This led me to one of two conclusions : One, she's making up this stuff, and trusting that the 'director' of each round will not call her a liar, or two, she's showing off. To highlight an example, the combination of 'Character Ages More than 30 years' (over the course of the movie) and 'Character with disability' called to mind an obscure film of which I had never heard, and which I can not honestly recall - rather than, say, Forrest Gump. Going out of one's way to avoid the obvious choices that are easily adjudicated makes me suspicious.
So when I saw her, I decided to skip.
My next event was another board game - called When Good Neighbors Go Bad. The production values for the game pieces was low, but it was very fun in a politically incorrect way. You take on the role of one of six different neighbor templates, and try to aggravate the other players (via their templates) to such a degree that they leave the neighborhood. Played a couple of rounds of that.
Then, the highlight. The Smithee Awards! The Smithee Awards take place at the Origins convention every year, and have nothing to do with gaming whatsoever. (Well.. mostly.)The concept is this - The Smithee folk watch a bunch of bad movies. They get clips from those movies to make nominations in 19 categories - but unlike the Oscars, these are categories pertaining to BAD movies. Five nominees in each category. Then they bring the whole shebang to Origins, and put on a show - letting the audience see the clips, and vote on the winner in each category. It's like MST3K meets the Oscars.
I attended my first Smithee show (their 15th) last year. I'm going to try to never miss one again. Like the characters in the Auditioners, the Smithees deserve their own post, so I may get to that later. Suffice to say, it was six hours of awesome fun.
Friday was my most densely packed day, hands down. A Champions event, two board game events, and the Smithee Awards. I had a few small blocks of time to look around the art show and the dealer room, but that was it.
The Champions session kicked things off - the same GM who ran the JSA game runs a yearly event with a group of C-List superheroes called 'The Auditioners'. It's comedy superheroics at its finest. Last year, I played group sharpshooter, Rubber Band Man. This time, I took on the ineffectual Batman of the team, Dark Avenger. The awesome characters deserve a post of their own, and I may get to that next week, but for now I'll continue with the overview. This was the one event that both
eemick2 and I signed up for. He played the team's pacifist brick, Barnraiser, last year. This time, he selected Glamour Guy.My second event of the day should have been a game called Cineplexity. Great fun game about movie trivia - from the same folks who make Apples to Apples. I love, love, love this game. So why didn't I play? Well, see, when I showed up to play, I noticed someone in the gathered throng of people waiting for the event to start. She had been at the Cineplexity demo session I attended last year. And I didn't want to deal with her again.
Let me take a moment to explain. Cineplexity has a set of cards that describe things about a movie. You might get a "setting" card that says "Rome". Or an "actors" card that says "Tom Cruise, Tom Sizemore, or Tom Jones." Or a genre card. Et cetera. Two cards are revealed at any given time - the first person to name a movie that fits both cards takes one of the cards as a point, and a new card is flipped from the deck to replace it, and guessing resumes. Great fun game, and I'm pretty good at it. I mean, I nearly obsessively watch movies.
This gal, though. Last year, she went out of her way with each round to shout out (and I do mean shout) foreign movie titles for 90% of the combinations. And I don't mean foreign films with crossover appeal that Americans might reasonably have seen - like Amelie, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Amores Perros, City of Lost Children, Kurosawa's stuff, etc. I mean things that have had no theatrical or DVD release in the states. Crap I've never heard of.
This led me to one of two conclusions : One, she's making up this stuff, and trusting that the 'director' of each round will not call her a liar, or two, she's showing off. To highlight an example, the combination of 'Character Ages More than 30 years' (over the course of the movie) and 'Character with disability' called to mind an obscure film of which I had never heard, and which I can not honestly recall - rather than, say, Forrest Gump. Going out of one's way to avoid the obvious choices that are easily adjudicated makes me suspicious.
So when I saw her, I decided to skip.
My next event was another board game - called When Good Neighbors Go Bad. The production values for the game pieces was low, but it was very fun in a politically incorrect way. You take on the role of one of six different neighbor templates, and try to aggravate the other players (via their templates) to such a degree that they leave the neighborhood. Played a couple of rounds of that.
Then, the highlight. The Smithee Awards! The Smithee Awards take place at the Origins convention every year, and have nothing to do with gaming whatsoever. (Well.. mostly.)The concept is this - The Smithee folk watch a bunch of bad movies. They get clips from those movies to make nominations in 19 categories - but unlike the Oscars, these are categories pertaining to BAD movies. Five nominees in each category. Then they bring the whole shebang to Origins, and put on a show - letting the audience see the clips, and vote on the winner in each category. It's like MST3K meets the Oscars.
I attended my first Smithee show (their 15th) last year. I'm going to try to never miss one again. Like the characters in the Auditioners, the Smithees deserve their own post, so I may get to that later. Suffice to say, it was six hours of awesome fun.
