This past weekend, we kicked off our Con season with attendance at Marscon in Williamsburg. This is our third year at this particular Con, and it competes pretty handily with Ravencon as our “home” convention. For me, anyway, the experiences are somewhat similar, because I see a lot of the same friends at both, given that they’re so close geographically. Still, each has a slightly different flavor.

This year was new in a lot of ways, as the con moved to a new, larger hotel venue a little way down the road. In years past, Marscon was a cramped experience – the old Holiday Inn, while a very fine and friendly venue, was a little tight for how large the convention has grown over the years. The new venue, the Crowne Plaza at Ft. Magruder, provided some much appreciated space, although navigating between convention rooms required a lot of walking about from one end of the hotel to the other, especially if you were bouncing between the gaming space and the main venue for music programming. The size of the hotel is deceptive; by Friday evening, everyone had worn out the “bigger on the inside” jokes, however appropriate they were.

Thanks to a pleasantly affordable con rate, we stayed in the convention hotel, rather than at a nearby Marriott property (since as an ultra-Platinum member, I can usually stay for free there), which is always nice, as it better enables full participation in the late-night con experience while still being able to put the kids to bed someplace one can reach in a minute or two.

The Marscon crew always puts on a pretty great spread in my experience, with the universally recognized Best Con Suite In This Or Any Other Universe™, keeping attendees fed, watered and caffeinated with excellent meals, snacks and beverages. The game space is generally pretty wonderful, and there’s usually a pretty great dealer’s room, where this year I totally did not find a copy of the Paranoia RPG like I had planned, but found another game source book and a set of dice to replace the set whose D10 was sacrificed to the gaming gods two years ago during a particularly raucous Toon session when I dropped it and couldn’t find it. Also, I had an *interesting* conversation with vendor about original comic art, and learned that his fascination with comic characters in bondage could perhaps rival that of William Moulton Marston, creator of both Wonder Woman and the modern lie detector.

As is my habit at these things, I spent much of my time enjoying the varied music program (if you’re read my other Con wrap-ups, this is hardly a surprise). On the bill this year were perennial favorites and friends Jonah Knight, Mikey Mason, Wizard (and other sorts of) Rock band The Blibbering Humdingers and Filk stalwart Danny Birt (all of whom I have gushed about many times in this space, and will certainly continue to do so) as well as the biggest surprise of the convention for many of us, Williamsburg locals Griff’s Room Band, who were found, as the legend goes, busking on a bench in Colonial Williamsburg by con organizer Butch Allen, and invited to perform as musical guests. Their crowd-pleasing performance, virtuoso musicianship, and general presence as nice guys really brought a lot of fun and smiles to the convention.

There are lots of musical hightlights – everybody’s performances were fun and well-received – Jonah’s guitar playing was haunting and beautiful as usual, the Humdingers brought the magic, laughs and harmonies, and Mikey brought the rock (along with plenty of literary references and dick jokes) – plus, you know, he played that bit of the new tune from his in-progress American Gods themed EP for me, which was really pretty great. Also, one of the highlights of the convention for many people was Saturday afternoon’s impromptu duet by Danny Birt and my daughter Catherine on “Whack-a-Mole” (or as she calls it, “the guacamole song”), which, was very cute and sweet, especially since Catherine’s such a big fan of Danny’s songs, and so many of the Marscon crowd have more of less watched her grow up – in certain circles at Marscon, Catherine’s as much a fixture as Allan Wold’s beard.

I also wanted to extend a big thank you to all the musical performers mentioned above for admitting me, for a little while, into their fraternity on Friday night by being so welcoming and tolerant of my ukulele playing and shoddy harmonizing during Friday night’s Filk and Cookies gathering. I had a great time playing along late into the early morning and easing into filk circles. I even got a couple of positive comments from folks in attendance, which was a nice feeling, given that I haven’t been playing this particular instrument all that long. Maybe I’ll have a couple of tunes of my own next year!

I didn’t hit many panels this year – but I did make time to get to the hospitality suite for the launch party of Leona wisoker’s new book, Bells of the Kingdom, published by the wonderful folks at Mercury Retrograde Press, who I can’t say enough nice things about. Colleen and I are big fans of Leona’s “Children of the Desert” series, of which Bells is the third volume this fantasy series chronicling political intrigue and romance with a definite Eastern feel. Seriously, you should track these books down, especially if you’re looking for some really clever world-building. Also, Leona always throws a pretty good party – thanks for the chocolate!

Finally, I spent a good bit of time in the Marscon game room, run with good humor and ruthless efficiency by Gamesmistress Shadow. As usual, I sat down for many rollicking hands of Munchkin (including the latest release, Munchkin Apocalypse), as well as an epic Saturday evening GURPS adventure set on a steampunk version of Victorian Mars – full of Edgar Rice Burroughs-y swashbuckling, plenty of silly English accents, and two equally amazing players tag-teaming for the role of Lefttenant Raleigh, the proper, if chauvanistic, officer who will not stand for his tea time being interrupted by marauding martians. Also, plenty of increasingly obtuse double-entendres were exchanged, especially once Raleigh #2 started the wine flowing (even if we probably weren’t supposed to have it in the game room). Thanks for the fun, guys!

So, a good time was had by all, especially thanks to the presence of so many good friends – Jonah, Mikey, Scott and Kristen, Danny, Bert, KT and Kevin, Liz, Ora, Ozma and her clan, James, Dan, Scott, Sarah and all the other folks I’m forgetting, but who contributed to making the weekend fun and pleasant.