Thursday, September 6, 2001

by the Wunderland Toast Society

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• Jake's got a new Icehouse game: Thin Ice
• GinohnNews - Labor Days
• Other new Ginohn stuff: five new Subcomics, one new Hankism, and another Hero of the Month
• Ember updated her Corner
• #12 updated his nanocrits and his LJoy Studios catalog
• Eeyore posted more Icehouse tourney photos, mostly using the overhead camera
• Eeyore also added five new signatures to the signatorium: Schiesser-Cat, Shell Game, Focus, Appalachia, & Efficiency

As I said last week, I've been to a lot of sci-fi conventions in my day. But a WorldCon is different. Of course, being at the top of the sci-fi-con food chain, you'd expect this con to be a cut above the rest. The way it moves to a different city each year also adds a lot to its charm. Plus there's the duration... WorldCon runs a full five days, twice as long as your average event. It's quite an event.

We did very well at WorldCon and we had a rockin' good time, too. Sales were great, and the debut of giant cardboard Icehouse pieces got so many people into the game as to cause us to sell every last set we'd brought! We also ran continuous game demos and even several tournaments in the Gaming events area, where we had a great time hanging out playing games with new friends and long-time rabbits alike.

The giant cardboard Icehouse pieces are absolutely wonderful. They stack! Just as the arrival of hollow icehouse pieces opened to us a vast new world of stacking game options, so too have these new pieces given us wonderful new opportunities. Key among these is that we can finally now play IceTowers, the other turnless Icehouse game, on this grand scale, and it's totally great! Playing a regular board game with giant pieces is just a novelty, but when it's a turnless game it becomes more of a sport. Of course, we've known this for years, from playing Icehouse with giant foam pieces and pyramidal pillows, but those of you who know how much easier IceTowers is to teach than Icehouse will appreciate how wonderful it is to be able to play this game, instead of that one, with giant pieces. (The teaching got even better after I threw together a one-page handout containing the complete rules to the game...)

We sold through all of the cardboard sets we'd brought too, but we'll be assembling more of both kinds of Icehouse sets soon. So, you too will be able to get a set of these amazing giant pyramids! Kristin has been doing a lot of upgrade work on the webstore this week, but we're not quite ready to launch all these new products just yet. (When these pieces do become available for sale, they'll cost $22 for a stash of 15. Shipping will be extra of course. And to those of you still patiently waiting for Fluxx Blanxx to become available via the website, thanks for continuing to be patient! It should all be available next week!)

The giant cardboard pieces begin as plain cardboard, one side of which is white. They can be painted, as we did with our main demo set, or they can be drawn upon with markers, which makes for a beautiful but slow-to-create game set. Alison began one such set at WorldCon but only a couple of pieces are done; here's Jane from London showing off the one she spent a lot of time doodling upon.

Here's a typical scene from our demo area, during one of our tournaments. Since gaming takes a backseat to other programming at WorldCon, we were able to take over the entire back sector of the official gaming area, and we never had trouble filling it with folks interested in learning to play our games. Unfortunately though, said Gaming Area was pretty far away from the Exhibit Hall, so I had to spend most of my days working apart from Kristin and Alison in the booth. Here as at Gen-Con, we yearned for a single space for both demos and vending. While Gen-Con left us feeling like we needed a bigger booth, WorldCon convinced us that Pop-Tart Cafes are the thing to do at science fiction conventions.

But as good as WorldCon was, we felt the sting of not being at DragonCon, a big sci fi con with a big gaming track, which was taking place at the same time, in Atlanta. While many of our peer game companies sent prize support and even had demo teams running events, like us, in the Open Gaming spaces, we were virtually alone as exhibitors, being joined only by Kadon Enterprises. "Why aren't you at DragonCon?" was a common question. "This one's closer," became our stock answer, but next year, when the two again conflict, and WorldCon is the one that's much farther away, we'll probably go to DragonCon. The year after that (2003) will probably find us back at WorldCon though, since it'll be in Toronto...

Happy Fall!