…which got us hella lost in Reno
CritterCon 2025 (#18)
Con Day Four Sunday
In which we spend our last day at the con doing seminars, watching more video carnage, spending money, watching Canadian Reality Questers get rich, eating pie, saying goodbye to friends, and returning home the fast way.
We all had a delicious breakfast at Pancakes-A-Go-Go, then Spike, Brian, Peter, and I were off to the first of two seminars, the always sold out “Ask A GM Anything” session. It runs 90 minutes (9:00-10:30), and this year filled a 1,500 seat theater. It was also broadcast live on the con’s tv channnel. The four of us were part of a 25 GM panel, and when we say Ask anything, we mean it. It past years we’ve been asked to sing, do improv, juggle, give our shoe size…and a whole lot more. Sometimes, we even get RPG questions.
My questions this year were “What is the biggest lie you ever told a player about their character?” (Answer: “Your chances of dying are almost zero.” In fact, they were more like 80%.) My other question was: “Can you recite a poem in Canine?” I did, choosing “Jabberwocky.” The crowd seemed impressed, and my question asker was quick to note that I spoke in a Basset Hound accent.
A half hour after that seminar, we all went to the humongous bitchfest that is the “We Hates It!” Which was 2+ hours long, with Peter, myself, a wolf named Velly, and a cat named Pietro as wranglers of those stepping up to the microphones from all over the con and town. We did put some limits on things, mostly no politics and a 2 minute limit on the bitching.
As always, we heard bitching about game design, GMs, players, genre movies, scheduling games, prices of games, bad die rolls, sucky game night snacks, and about 100 other topics. It was fun and, one assumes, therapeutic.
Just as the bitchfest ended, so did the RQWC finals. The whole con ground to a halt as we watched Team Girls With Cats grab the prize MacGuffin just .75 seconds ahead of what Team Mumbai Girls would have. It was breathtaking to watch.
And then we met up with the entire fame & friends mob and hit the Dealers Room for a feeding frenzy of consumerism. Each of the kids got several items, and so did most of us adults. We stopped by Yoyo’s booth and saw that they were sold out of almost everything. Duke’s booth was pretty much the same.
At 3:00, we watched the RQWC awards ceremony. Team Girls With Cats got $300,000.00, a nice trophy, t-shirts, and hugs from Duke and his team. Then Duke anounced some small changes for next year, plus the big change of his company signing over operations of all Reality Quest tournaments, including the World Championships, to the Reality Quest Foundation.
The con closes at 4:00 pm, so we were back in our suites and transferring out stuff to The Bus by then. At 5:00, we were all off to the Post Con Cool Down Pie Fest, where, as every year, we chatted with folks and ate way too much pie. I had 7 slices of 7 different pies. We also said goodbye to various friends who were portaling home, including all of our buddies. By 7:30, we (Grace, Annie, Mara, Blue, and the 6 kids) had waddled back onboard Sweetie, who got us home about 2 hours later at 6:30 PDT.
As I write this, Blue & family are home on their farm, Annie is asleeep in her apartment, Grace is asleep in our bed, and I’m about to join her. I hope y’all enjoyed this con report. We’ll do it again next year.
CritterCon 18 Is Over
But we’ll be back next year for…
CritterCon 19!
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