On
noon Friday, February 1st 2002, the Conflict Simulation Society
opened its 29th annual Winter War convention at the Chancellor Hotel
Convention Center in Champaign, Illinois. Gamers who normally only go to big
conventions like GenCon or Origins will find a horse of a different color here
in Champaign. Winter War is a small,
fan-driven con with a distinct vision of what a small game convention is
supposed to be. The leadership in the
CSS has no desire to emulate or compete with the big guys. For example, Winter War eschews seminars and
keynote speakers. It’s all about the
games, baby, and not the pseudo-celebrities the game industry has spawned. For many attendees, Winter War has a homey,
family-reunion atmosphere. I know I get
reacquainted with a lot of great people each year that I haven’t seen since the
previous War.
Despite
this approach, the event does not strike me as insular or clannish. Newbies are welcomed with open arms at most
games, with much space being allotted to demo games and “newcomers welcome”
events. My first try at Illuminati was a pick-up game at
my first Winter War. Some friendly
gamers were willing to take the time to show a rookie how to play. This year I got to return the favor by
introducing new players to the joys of Fluxx, Icehouse, and Chrononauts. That’s the way the hobby should be and
that’s the way it is at Winter War.
This
would be my eleventh year participating in the Winter War experience. Over the years I have worn many hats at
Winter War: attendee, judge, RPG coordinator, AD&D tournament organizer,
general gopher, publicity grunt (guy who puts up fliers on campus), junior
auctioneer, registration desk cashier and even a stint as president of the
Conflict Simulations Society. This year
I went into Winter War with only one firm commitment: I was scheduled to be
Keeper for a Friday night Call
of Cthulhu game. I arrived early assuming that I would be put to work in
other areas, which turned out to be a safe guess. Boxes needed to be lugged about, table rearranged, and signs
posted.
After
the general of hubbub of firing up the con, things quieted down a bit with some
time remained before the start of the first slot at 2pm. I finished up my final notes for my Call of
Cthulhu scenario and meandered over to the dealer tables. The first two dealers to arrive were just
setting up their wares. One of the very
first things I saw a dealer unpack was a Chinese Chess set. I was stunned. I had been puttering with Chinese Chess and other chess variants
for about a year, but I had been unable to buy a Chinese Chess set
locally. My homemade paper set was not
exactly cutting the mustard, but I hadn’t yet reached the point where I was
willing to pay the prices import websites were asking. Once again I found that the dealers at
Winter War surprised and delighted with their interesting selection of
merchandise.
Meanwhile,
the miniatures enthusiasts were putting together their games. Although I was hot and heavy into Battletech for a while, I’ve never
been much of a miniatures kinda guy. I
can’t paint worth a darn, for one thing.
Still, I’ve played a few mini’s games at Winter War just because of all
the great toys. One of the best set-ups
this year was an Outrider (Games
Workshop demo guy) running a 54mm 1:1 scale game set in the Warhammer 40K
universe. This guy had great big,
freakish figures and an excellent piece of terrain to fight over. It looked like an engine room to a starship,
with a working lava lamp fully integrated into the set as the “warp core” or
somesuch. Neat!
The
main room with miniatures and dealers also hosts some unique boardgames. Several con regulars have put together
custom boards and rules for their favorite games. One of these treats is “Kingmaker on the Big Board”. The rules don’t deviate too far from regular
Kingmaker, but playing on the gigantic (4’x5’?) board with painted figures
instead of counters is a lot of fun.
The fellow who runs it, John Satterfield, is a great guy who helps
novice players navigate the game. Other
big games that can often be seen at Winter War include Shogunmaker (a
Kingmaker/Shogun (Samurai Swords) fusion), Complete History of the World
(expanded version of the Avalon Hill game on enlarged and modified map of the
world), and a titanic Advanced Civilization board.
So
I got in on some open gaming at one of the tables not being used for the Friday
afternoon slot. We played what had to
be the longest and least fun game of Fluxx I have ever seen. Fluxx is another all-time favorite of mine,
but the cards were just not playing right. I think my friends Gopher and Dave
were scarred for life by the experience.
It was their first time at Fluxx and probably their last. Too bad.
Continuing in a Looney Labs
vein, I broke out the Icehouse pyramids.
We played some Ice Towers and a little stacking game that I can’t quite
remember the name of. The number of
inquiries about the little plastic pyramids surprised me. People seemed fascinated by the toys.
Seven
o’clock was fast approaching and along with it the start of my Call of Cthulhu
event. I scuttled up to the room where
the RPGs and Advanced
Squad Leader people were congregated.
As I plonked down my gear Dave Hoover was setting up for his Feng Shui game. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mr. Hoover’s
GMing abilities. Year in and year out
he runs tons of different RPG events that have attracted a loyal
following. He’s one of those lynchpin
guys that every small con needs to be successful. Also on the RPG bill that evening were a Star Wars LARP and
someone running QAGS: The
Quik Ass Gaming System. I later
found on the freebies table a stack of QUAGS QIK START character sheets that
had the rules for the game printed on the back of the sheet. QAGS looks like a good fast,
quit-screwing-around-and-lets-play approach to RPGing, similar in overall
concept to S. John Ross’s tour-de-force
pick-up RPG Risus.
The
Call of Cthulhu game went well. I had
been a little spooked by last year’s game, in which all the PCs were dead or
insane only two and a half hours into the event. (Don’t annoy the Star Spawn, folks.) This time casualties were only fifty percent. Not bad for a bunch of PCs who started the
game being poisoned by their crazy uncle!
I got decent reports on the adventure from Gopher, Dave, Pat, and Chris,
all of whom I have gamed with extensively in the past. Best of all, George said it was my best
effort to date. He is a Cthulhu fanatic and has played in every single Cthulhu
game I have ever done at any convention, going back about a decade now. He’s been there for the successes, like Castaways of Cthulhu, my Gilligan’s Island meets the
Deep Ones adventure. George was also
there for the debacles, like the time I ripped off part of a fairly new Chaosium module only to discover half the
players had read it or played it!
After
the game wound down Pat, Dave, Gopher, and I ran over to the pizza joint across
the street for a late supper. We called
it a night just as the midnight games were starting.
The
next morning my wife dropped me off at the Chancellor just in time to meet back
up with Goph and Dave for breakfast at Aunt Sonya’s, the restaurant next to the
Chancellor hotel. The pancakes there
are excellent. We devoted a good
portion of the rest of the morning to a game of Settlers of Catan. Thanks to John Satterfield for loaning us
his copy of the game. After a fun game
of Settlers, Gopher and Dave then headed home just as the auction rolled around.
Winter
War’s live auction continues to be a bit of an anomaly. I know that many smaller cons have gone to
silent auction or eliminated their auction altogether. In the age of eBay you’d think that a small
con game auction wouldn’t generate much interest. Yet year after year we get almost more items than we can sell in
the allotted time. Not to mention that
both buyers and sellers go away happy with the prices. Once again I acted as back-up auctioneer,
taking over when Rusty started to go raspy.
Rusty is a wargamer of the old school, while I’m a D&D
snotnose. Yet every time we do this
auction thing I always end up stuck hawking a bunch of wargames with place
names I don’t know how to pronounce.
The rest of the staff, mostly grognards, just chuckle and
correct the whippersnapper.
The
other thing about the auction that is a perennial harp of mine is high minimum
bids. Every year a handful of items end
up getting passed on because the seller selected a minimum bid too close to the
actual value of the product. I don’t
want to tell anyone how to handle their business, but just hear me out. If you got an item that you think is worth
$40, DO NOT START THE BIDDING AT FORTY BUCKS.
No one, and I mean no one, will bid. For a $40 item you need to
start the minimum bid at $5 or $10.
Even someone who wants your item, has the $40 and is willing to pay $40
will not bid if the starting price is $40.
Everyone wants to think they are getting a bargain. I’ve seen this again and again. The lower
you start the higher people will bid.
I’ve repeatedly sold so-so stuff for near new price by starting the bid
for it abysmally low. Meanwhile, some
guy puts minimum $15 on mint items worth more than $30 and the room goes
silent. And if your not willing to risk
possibly selling your $40 for five bucks, then you need to consider the
possibility that maybe an auction isn’t the way you should be selling your
stuff.
All
that aside, the auction is a lot of fun.
Seeing all the old stuff that comes up is a hoot. I bid on an old copy of Dungeon, for
example. A copy of the Blitzkrieg Module System
came up for bid and sold for about half of what I’ve seen on the eBay.
The one thing I really wanted, a Traveller
lot, was bought by one of the dealers.
In this lot was an old Judges
Guild Traveller module, and FGU
sci-fi game (Starships and Spacemen might’ve been the title), and the books
from the Deluxe edition of the original Traveller with a sweet Spinward Marches map. The thing that blew me away though was the
pristine copy of the original sci-fi RPG, Ken St Andre’s Starfaring. (If you ever see a copy, don’t buy it unless
you’re a hardcore collector. It’s only
vaguely playable. But make sure you
flip through it and check out the cartoon-style illos if you get a chance,
though.) Still, my interest was in the
Trav books and the map, which I managed to buy off the dealer in question for
$15. Not too bad for near-mint copies
of Books 0-3, The Imperial Fringe, and the nifty map, certainly in the same
general price range as the Traveller
Trader. On Don McKinney’s
recommendation I did not get the Judges Guild stuff. Don’s a huge JG fan and a supermonster Traveller nut. If he can’t recommend the JG Traveller
material, then no one can.
After
the auction closed down the Blind Sniper game got underway. Anybody who likes limited information games
like Scotland Yard, Kriegspiel, Battleship, hidden movement wargames etc.,
ought to get a kick out of Blind Sniper.
Gaming guru Bruce Gletty runs this 20-player game behind a wall. Only he gets to look at the copy of the
official map (the original SPI Sniper map, the one with the slanted
buildings). Only he sees each player’s
piece on the board. Everyone else makes
do with a map and a secret turn orders/turn results sheet. It’s every player for themselves as everyone
tries to achieve the objective and not get killed by other players. Written orders produce results like “see
man with flamethrower in hex 3217” or “he blasts you with the machine pistol,
you are crippled”.
Blind
Sniper takes a long time with huge turn results lag times because of the
written orders/written results stuff.
It’s standard operating procedure for the players to put together
pick-up games of other stuff. This year
I managed to play another game of Settlers of Cattan, 2 hands of Chrononauts
(best time travel game I’ve ever played), more Icehouse games, Chinese Chess
and a nifty card racing game called Formula Motor Race from
GMT. Meanwhile at another table my brother-in-law-in-law,
Rod, got in games of Britannia and Republic of Rome. All these games took about, oh, six or eight hours during which
time I managed to accomplish very little in Blind Sniper. Then James Holzhauer crippled me with the
aforementioned machine pistol. Oh
well. Maybe I’ll do better next year.
Meanwhile, in the auction/Blind Sniper room Ken Burnsides was running demo games of his Delta V project, a real-physics space combat game. Fans of Star Fleet Battles would do well to check this game out. Normally, I like my space combat games fast and sloppy, along the lines of Full Thrust, Star Frontiers Knight Hawks, Triplanetary etc. Still, I’ve got to admit that Mr. Burnsides has some very good stuff. His slick segmented movement system allows for nearly any vector on a hexmap and his energy allocation looks a lot less distracting than SFB’s. Although he was not demonstrating it, he claimed to have fully integrated 3-D rules. Additionally, his paper spaceship figures (not counters, figures) were neat-o! I want toys like that for my Traveller games. As a final note, Mr. Burnsides would probably do better not to harp on SFB so much in his sales pitch. I have a feeling that if he is going to attract an audience for his game, it will probably come from SFB’ers looking for an alternative.
A
quick trip to Stake-N-Sheik with Pat and Mike finished off the evening. Then home to bed.
Sunday
morning I was pretty well gone. Two
days of a normal 8 to midnight con schedule combined with getting up several
times to feed my infant daughter left me drained. I helped Susan, the convention registrar, at the front desk a
bit. I played a hand of euchre with her
and two of the dealers: Nancy from the Game Room in Washington and Lori from
Bear Productions. I excused myself for
a while while they engaged in their annual girl talk session.
Later
Susan, Don (the con chairman), and Al Conrad (club treasurer) compared notes
and paid the bill to the hotel.
Attendance was up to an all-time high I believe. The con broke even. Relatively few complaints were received. I’d call the Winter War 29 a success.
In
conclusion let me say that I had a hell of a good time. My hat’s off to the entire convention staff,
especially to Susan McKinney, who misses most of the fun while working at the
front desk. If there’s one bit of
advice I can give to anyone attending future Winter Wars, it would be this:
Remember that the woman at the registration desk is a gamer too and she has
volunteered her time so that the con will run smoothly. Go easy on her, folks. She deserves better than she gets from many
con goers.
Hope
to see you at Winter
War 30!
The official Winter War website
My Winter War 30 pictures | My Winter War 31 report