As I’d mentioned previously, and did a bit of twittering about in theater, the family spent the weekend at ravencon, which politely decided to set itself up about 20 minutes from my front door this year. This was the first year doing the whole weekend (last year, we did a spur-of-the-moment Friday night drop-in), so we were hoping to get in full weekend slate of geek friendly entertainment.

Truth be told, it’s almost too much entertainment (and this is a reasonably small convention), but once you convince yourself that it’s perfectly acceptable and expected to only catch up with a small portion of the programming, things become a little more bearable.

Overall, we had a good time, playing some games, taking in some panels, engaging in some geek-friendly banter, people watching, and picking up some interesting goodies that’ll keep us busy for a while.

Might as well get the goodies out of the way first, here’s a portion of the stuff we came back with:

Lots of books, mostly, a couple of t-shirts, a few games, and a copy of Cthulhu Sex magazine (that came into my posession completely by accident); this picture might have half the total haul in it.

Also in that pic you’ll see a copy of my convention badge (your pass to all the weekend’s entertainment) – I was delighted to find that I had been issued badge number forty-two, which is significant if you know your humorous British science fiction, and of course, you do, don’t you?

Rather than a chronological account, I’ll just hit some of the highlights of the weekend:

Virginia Creepers, a documentary about horror movie television hosts in the Commonwealth, which was very well done, even if it wouldn’t have suffered if it were about twenty minutes shorter. I vaguely remember the existence of these sorts of shows, though mostly, my practical experience consists of Elvira and MST3k, and I’m sorry I missed most of it with the advent of cable TV and home video.

I also attended the controversial “I hate Heinlein” panel, a debate of sorts about the merits of the influential author, including comments and memories from Yoji Kondo, a scientist and author who knew and worked with Robert Heinlein, and edited an anthology of his work after his death. The general consensus was that while some of his work feels quite dated and disturbingly sexist, people are still talking about his works decades after he wrote them, and underscores his significance regardless of how someone feels about them.

Also of note, I suppose, was the “Knitting and Science Fiction” panel, where Colleen made a few new friends (and, I suspect, a shot at landing on the actual program next year, thanks to the goodies she showed off), and a discussion of “game supplements every gamer should own” with Steve Long from HERO games.

Games…we played some games too. Friday night we had a fun session of D&D 3.5; it was nice to play with out being the dungeon master for once, and the kids got to play at the con, which was one of their goals. Our party of four ran through an adventure designed for six, and we totally failed to rescue the kidnapped noble’s daughter. My ranger got whacked by a sewer-dwelling gator, and my body was later tossed to a school of ravenous piranah as a distraction. It’s good I became fish food, because I was able to distract Catherine when she got fussy.

I also played a rousing and VERY LOUD session of Toon, the cartoon RPG (think Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, etc), with one of the MIBs from Steve Jackson Games. I hadn’t played this in more than fifteen years (this is what we did nights at scout camp of all things); I had fun, and everybody watching had fun, enough that Colleen sat down and downloaded the rules (it’s only available as a PDF now, it’s been out of print since the mid-90s) so we can add it to our game cabinet at home.

Beyond the panels and games, though, the real fun is hanging out, watching people, checking out the costumes, and having conversations with fellow fans and people who are doing and making interesting things; whether it’s talking about the new Doctor Who season with webcomic editors, listening to authors talk excitedly about how the writing process took them in directions they didn’t expect (and then buying a bunch of their books!), talking guitars, kids and last-call convention pick-up lines with a Wizard Rock band, discovering a neat new (to me) webcomic after the creator asked me where I got my t-shirt, or tripping over the Guest of Honor in the hallway as she rushed to a panel.

Suffice to say, we had a lot of fun. Can’t wait to do it all next year. Of course, before then, we have MarsCon in Williamsburg in January, where maybe I can trip over Jim Butcher!