Maybe - depends if I can escape helping with the graduation party preparations.

I think I'm going to take the whole family over on Friday or Saturday. We'll probably just do a family day pass so they can see what we've been missing.


and something tells me, our friends at T&T will still be in the front row for Friday's auction....

I forgot about the auction on Friday...might be the deciding factor on going Friday or Saturday  

Hi,

with those early dates next year, a jaunt across the pond looks possible, to take in both that and the texas con

Cheers,
malc

Same here... Had a great time at Origins 2011

- I played a lot of Fellowship of the White Star (D&D 3.5 circa 1908 Victorian fantasy/horror) last week.

- I got to play a Pathfinder Society event, which placed my now L12 Cleric of Sarenrae into semi-retirement.

- Played some Dominion as well. It's the best card game since M:TG!!!

- The Dealer's Room was sold out (and it was nice to see it filled up). I played a playtest of a card/board game called Mage Wars (fun), picked up a couple of D&D modules to fill some gaps, and a couple of smaller items. I don't see the fun in visiting a place like Crazy Egor's when they list prices at 300% over cost (God I am not that desperate).

- The Auction this year was a joke...

Origins ran the auction this year themselves (I'll get into that momentarily...). They ran it as two parts: Part one was a silent auction on Thursday, and a standard (Ohio/Professional Auctioneer) on Friday.

They held the silent auction in one of the great halls farthest from everything else in the building (the far north end). There were maybe a few hundred items all laid out with minimum bids (like a 6th print OD&D boxed set for $200 to start [yeah right...]). You placed your ID# and bid on the sheet, and the end time was 7:00pm Thursday night. And that was hilarious because there could only be a certain number of people in the auction area as they forced people out to circulate others around 6:30pm - 7:00pm when it got busier. Nothing of interest to us worth listing.

Friday had the standard auction upstairs at the far north end of the building in an even more isolated area than last year. It ran from 8:00am - 4:00pm, with the "collectables" from 3 to 4 pm. Again nothing of interest worth listing (one of those rare dice sets and some jewelcrafted dice...).

So I ran into Ed (Healey?) from Troll and Toad Thursday afternoon during the silent auction and asked him why T&T wasn't running the auction this year (I bid against Ed twice a year when T&T sends a rep out to our local games auction in NW Chicago). He mentioned that there was a (possible / probable) rift between GAMA and T&T because T&T sent/mailed out the stuff people bought on the trade show floor, as opposed to using the shipping services of the convention center (which makes sense, because generally convention service items are always higher). That and the fact that the computers were stolen a couple of years ago probably didn't really push T&T to want to come back to Origins either.

Say what you will about T&T, but I'd rather have them organize an auction than the crap that happened this year. Put the auction back in the center of the show floor and get the foot traffic through it.

- Origins has a couple of great restaurants right across the street: Hyde Park (steak & burgers), and Barley's (Sauerkraut balls and perogi).

yaya wrote:The "Rares" were a joke and I didn't bother showing up.

A decade ago, Ken and I were running things, and we packed 'em in, nonstop action (like GenCon is now). And then GAMA decided they didn't want us. (Many of the GAMA members believed that we were siphoning off cashflow from their area. We claimed the converse, and nowadays iirc about half the payouts of the GenCon auction -- ie more than $50,000 -- gets spent in the dealer room. GAMA hosed their own members on that one.)

The vendor hall clearly wasn't filled and was probably only 2/3 the size of GenCon if not less.

At one point is was a fifth the size; they've grown back considerably.

I spoke with some of the vendors Sunday afternoon. They said that attendance was sporadic throughout the dealers hall, but sales were still good.

So that's a good sign.

Because of the auction debacle this year, I wrote a letter to GAMA and asked them to fix two things:

1) Put the auction back on the center-ground level area to create foot-traffic through the area, and to bring back T&T to run it.

2) Kiss whatever ass you need to bring WoTC back to run a Magic Tournament at Origins. A Grand Prix event would bring in hundreds of players... minimum...

They need to do these two things to keep the attendance at the same level of this year (or higher) since they've moved the event back a couple of weeks (first weekend of June) because Gencon was moved back a few weeks...