GenCon UK mini-report [semi-OT I guess...]

Hi all,

Here's a quick rundown on UK GenCon, which has just finished - a lot of
this is pretty irrelevant (and irreverant) but I thought it might be of
some interest.

NOTE: it's late, I'm knackered, and a lot of this is written with tongue
firmly in cheek - any list members with a sense-of-humour bypass should
probably stop reading now.....

UK GenCon, 2-6 Sept 98.

Held at Loughborough University, the con is VERY different from US
GenCon.
For a start it is only about 2000-odd people (some VERY odd...), and
there
is relatively little miniatures gaming, most of the con being CCGs
(arrgh,
shufflers!), RPG stuff and LARPers (Fantasy ones and lots of vampires).
In
what mini gaming there was, GZG stuff was quite well represented - Barry
Giles of the SFSFW was running some good FT games, Gary Guy was doing
assorted FT/Trek stuff, the BITS boys were demo-ing some Traveller FT
crossovers and a couple of chaps (sorry guys, can't recall names) were
doing both SG and DS with the same lot of 6mm minis. What other minis
there
were consisted largely of a lot of Battletech, one small Warzone demo,
some
GW stuff by a local store club, and demos of Flintloque and Leviathan by
the CCI and Grendel trade teams respectively.
The trade hall hours were a ludicrous 9am to 8pm, which by the time we'd
got in and out each day meant effectively twelve-hour days. Due to this,
our crew (me, Tim and Simon - Dave couldn't make it) had no time to get
involved in any gaming - after trade closing time each night all we
wanted
to do was eat and then find a suitable bar. Trade was good overall,
similar
to last year in total though Thursday and Friday were worryingly quiet -
Saturday and Sunday made up for it, thankfully. Buying patterns were
completely different to those at wargame shows - we sold a lot	more of
the
various character figures, anime figs and general weird stuff than
military
things like SG figs. A lot of FT ships sold as usual, and the B'tech
boys
cleared us out of Microtac resin.
As usual, we spent much of the time admiring the various vampire and elf
costumes and the young ladies who were almost wearing them, but had to
be
much more careful at the ritual Rocky Horror screening on Saturday
evening
due to the difficulty of accurately discerning the sex of many of those
wearing basques and stockings....
Highlight of the Con has to be Claudia Christian as GOH, who is a lovely
lady with an evil sense of humour and a staggering capacity for alcohol.
After becoming totally rat-faced drinking god knows what in the Students
Union bar on Friday night her behaviour and language degenerated into
something more reminiscent of her character in Hexed than that of
Ivanova -
a truly wonderful sight to behold!  (Mind you, the B5 episode when
Ivanova
gets completely plastered and trashes the Zocalo bar now seems eerily
accurate......).  A moment of sheer farce occurred when a couple of
neo-fascist security goons with limited brain functions, checking con
badges at the door of the bar after 11pm to keep any rogue mundanes out,
refused to let Claudia in because she hadn't actually got her badge on
her.
They still wouldn't budge when one of the senior organisers vouched for
the
fact that she WAS the GOH, and it took someone lending her a spare badge
to
get her in.... (meanwhile, Warwick (Wicket) Davies marched in with
"Drunken
Ewok" proudly scribbled on the back of his pass). Other guests included
Michael Sheard, Peter (Chewbacca) Mayhew (who is VERY, VERY tall...),
the
very pretty girl who played Oola in RotJ and Kenny "I spent the whole
movie
in a dustbin" Baker.
The food was crap, the beds awful, bits of the organisation were
farcical
(though Chris Baylis did a sterling job against frightening odds keeping
the trade hall in line, as always), but at the end of the day we had fun
AND made money. By next year we'll all have forgotten the bad bits and
be
looking forward to it again.

Oh, I nearly forgot, they put all the shufflers in a couple of big tents
(Marquees de Sad....??), which leaked when it chucked it down on
Saturday.... <grin>

Jon (GZG), who probably disclaims most of the responsibility for
anything
said above and will deny eveything if pressed. Having had Claudia cuddle
up
to me for a photo, my life is now complete......  :)