Convulsion'n'stuff.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 05:06:18 +0100 (BST)


Can't quite discipline myself to write any sort of "proper" Con report -- I think it was one of the best in the series, from a strictly personal PoV, but I don't think I can really articulate why without delving deeper into self-analysis than would be tasteful for a family audience such as the Digest. Ditto for highlights and lowlights, though I can't say there were many of the latter, fortunately. (I'll nominate ending up with nothing much to do on Saturday night (story of my life, really), then.) Probably the Best Bit was the stretch-version "Greg Reads" on Sunday night.

So, in my usual Reactionary manner, what I'm going to do mainly is comment on _other_ people's comments. Oh well.

Rick Meints suggests some Lessons in con-running (not clear if these are drawn _from_ Convulsion, applied to it, or what):

> 2. You cannot advertise too much. The advertising campaign must
> extend beyond a web page (which should allow email registration)

Nice idea -- though it actually working would be a distinct boon. Having a mafunctioning one is surely worse than none at all...

> It should also focus on "new blood" from the region.

> 3. Events need to focus on getting new players interested. Just
> appealing to the old timers isn't enough any more.

Don't see how this realistically applies to Convulsion, unless you hire a _much_ bigger hall of residence... Obviously a very good idea for the longer-term, though. (See you all in the next millenium, and fingers crossed HW is out?)

> 4. More games, freeforms, and interactive events, and less seminars.

I have to say that this idea is Real Sucky, to use the technical term. Remember the dark days of the first run of Home of the Bold, when the entire Con ground to a halt for most of Saturday, leaving the majority of the attendees nothing to do? (Nothing programmed, anyway.) C4d was nothing like this bad, but I found I had a fair bit of "dead time" as a result of not getting into any of the three freeforms I tried to sign up for (who _do_ you have to sleep with? (As opposed to you have to sleep with if you're _playing_ Life of Moonson, which was alarmingly obvious from the show of hands afterwards... B-} )). Bring your own panel was an interesting idea, and I might well have done, had we been given _any advance notice whatsoever_ that this was being scheduled.

Jean Durupt:
> My personnal low points were that I missed the story of Griselda aboard the
> craddle, and that I did not find Danny Bourne.

Yeah, bring back the Voodoo board! At any rate, I'm glad I bumped into you without such aid, even if you did Cruelly Mock my French accent. *sob!*

> The Vivamorti vampires have a link with Vivamort, we can suppose that
> Vivamort has some divine magic to teach, and they have only to find some POW
> points.

I think I prefer the RQ3 explanation, admittedly a shameless RetCon, that they're simply sorcerors. (Though not _necessarily_ RQ3 sorcery style sorcerors, though that fits with their western prevalence, and soulessness.) The "Cult of Vivamort" is just a theist rationalisation, I reckon.

Slainte,
Alex.


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