The usual crowd of sci-fi and fantasy folks, sprinkled with us historical folks, descended on the Columbus Convention Center on July 5-8, 2001 for the annual Origins Convention. It's the usual madness of color and products punctuated with sober moments of design philosophy. This is the last vestige for the boardgamers with booths from the major companies like The Gamers, GMT, Clash of Arms, OSG, Decision Games, Columbia Games, and other smaller companies. And indeed, this is what draws MagWeb.com to the show.

I will point out that for serious military history buffs, the War College is a great place to sit and listen to lecture after lecture. These go on all four days in two hour increments. The biggest difficulty is deciding which of the two lectures per period you want to hear. There's a real dilemma choosing between Frank Chadwick and the Macedonian Art of War and Col. David Glantz' WWII East Front lectures. Other speakers included Charles Sharp (WWII Soviet), Dana Lombardy (Napoleonic), Kevin Zucker's (Napoleonic), Lt. Col. Matt Caffrey's (modern air warfare), and Gary Wray (multiple topics).

This year, Origins placed the miniature gaming events and the boardgame events into one big hall. That was ALL the events, sci-fi, fantasy, and historical minis and boardgames. The good news was that it had great lighting and could be cross pollinating in terms of getting folks to look at other genres. The bad news is that it could at times get rather loud in the cavernous hall.

All sorts of board games were played, from family style games like Scrabble to RR games to the usual mix of wargames of every era and time.

GMT had a couple of large scale games, for example, Wilderness War (French and Indian War), which really looks neat as a demo (see at right). Gene Billingsley noted that a few hundred customers have commented that they would like to buy a game in such large scale.

The dealer area was packed with products of all sorts, mostly sci-fi and fantasy, and mostly card games by the overall walk through. The military history section kept getting encroached by the sci-fi and fantasy crowd, which isn't such a bad thing, but the Troll Lords across from me didn't seem to get the draw, nor the other pair of fantasy companies the next row over. Their products look good, but when the section is labeled on every map as "military history," what's the odds that their audience finds them? On the other hand, Moments in History was put way away from the section. I suspect the history buffs will find the dozen or so historical companies, but the reverse is not necessarily true.

Tim Dupertuis (at right) was again manning the Armorcast booth. He used to do 25mm GamesWorkshop models, but GW ended the license, so he switched to Battletech in 25mm. FASA went under and Jordan Wiseman bought the rights to it under Wizkids or something like that. Tim notes that the license is intact and transfers to the new owner.

The Art show is always a highlight, and for the first time, I purchased art there. Now that printing technology is so low cost, the artists can reproduce their work for mass sales. For example, 8.5x11" signed prints go for $10. I bought three, including one from a Todd Lockwood (no relation that we could figure).

I caught a couple episodes in the 24-hour a day Japanese Anime festival. I have no idea what I was watching, but these cartoons can get rather wild, and most certainly are colorful, even if the plot makes little sense to me. Then again, I did come in at the end. All I can say is the Solar Spaceship makes it and destroys the evil fleet commander. I will say that at one point after one episode, someone else in the audience said sarcastically, "I'm glad we know what's going on." My sentiments, too, but no one else spoke up. I did get an anime poster of one sort or another for being there at the end. It's colorful.

Prices

Since I pay for the MagWeb.com dealer booth (that's $500 plus another $50 for electricity! An average month of household electricity doesn't cost me that much!), I don't know what the price of admission is, but I think it's $50. The downside is that you have to pay for each event, where you get nicked $1.50 or $3, sometimes $6 for every event you participate in. I think the War College was $15 or $20, but nobody checked my badge, or lack thereof, when I sat in on one of the lectures.

The usual concession stand pricing, which is about double or more any other pricing, never ceases to amaze me. $2.50 for a large soda in the gaming hall is a tad excessive, especially since you could take a two-minute walk to the food court and cut your costs by a 1/3. We ate breakfast there twice at somebody or other's diner--they make a decent three-egg omelette with home fries ($4.99) and french toast with bacon ($4.99). We had a gyro meal ($5.99) there for lunch and I enjoyed that too, but then again, it's convention food.

The hotel across the street, Red Roof Inn, was $90 per night, plus about $10-15 in taxes. That's about right for a convention hotel, although the included breakfast was pathetic--watered down juice, packaged (!) muffins/danish that tasted like the plastic they come in, and something not quite right about either the tea or coffee. But the room was generally quiet, the bed comfortable, and the location great. I will note that it had the most anemic shower (though the water was hot), and despite my best efforts, sprayed all over the floor, and of course, there was only two towels for the two of us...

One aspect ticked me off--Red Roof parking. They have a lot across the street. Red Roof charges $10 per day to park there if you are a Red Roof customer. It costs $5 to park there if you just drove in. Worse, the damn RR card had to be refreshed EVERY day, or you couldn't get out and back in. Oh, the front desk said it was good for the length of my stay, but either the clerk lied or was inept, because the LCD screen counts down the number of hours left on the card, and sure enough, the next day, we couldn't get out of the parking lot for dinner, nor back in, until we got it recharged at the front desk--walk back across the street, etc. And I'm paying twice as much for this "service?"

You'll have to pardon my rant. I used to write for Hotel Business magazine, and I learned a thing or two about hotel operations during the year or so I was doing articles for it. I also stay at a lot of hotels/motels throughout the year due to traveling for MagWeb.com. So I'm probably pickier than the average wargamer. It's the little things that separate hotels. For example, you can get tea or coffee any time of the day or night if you want to go down into the lobby of the Red Roof. Smarter run hotels now provide little Mr. Coffee machines in the room directly. It was just dopey things like that--nothing major, but just idiosyncratic inconveniences through the stay. I suppose I could remedy some of these things by calling the front desk, but given that a personal appearance for parking didn't change a thing, I doubt anything else could be done either. And I really shouldn't have to do so. All in all, a sub-par performance. The company's slogan, "Hit the Roof," is usually used to describe getting irritated or even angry. There's more truth in advertising than Red Roof Inn probably wants to admit.

On the other hand, we had wonderful and reasonably priced dinners at Damon's next door, an Indian restaurant we always go to at the north side of town, and the usual oriental orgy at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet also on the north side of town. And I will say that we filled up the gas tank with $1.249 gas at a BP--about 30 cents a gallon less than what's here in New Jersey.

It's not a Convention Party Until Someone Breaks

In a sad bit of news, I was walking back to my hotel at about 12:45am or so on one of the nights and saw an ambulance team carting off a convenion goer on a stretcher. I don't know who it was, but I heard later that he reappeared at the convention at around 5am, probably a little battered, bruised, and worse for wear. From what I understand, he either mis-stepped on the escalator, or the escalator malfunctioned (I saw it being worked on during other times at the convention) and he tumbled down. I don't know how far, but if it was at the top, it's at least a good storey or two.

Now that I know he's OK, I can't rule out that he might have be paying more attention to the shapely belly dancer who just passed by rather than the escalator.

Booth Babes vs. Booth Bimbos

The whole idea of these double B's is to use their double D's to bring hormone-crazed customers into a booth for a product pitch. Well, they're not double D's, but shapely enough to stand out from the usual crowd.

So let's give credit to Decipher Games for having Booth Babes. They were pleasant, modestly dressed, and if there's professionallism for booth traffickers, they could win an award. On the other hand, another company, which I refuse to mention, had Booth Bimbos. Of a flashier nature with skimpier costumes does not a bimbo make. However, insulting convention goers as grfreaks, geeks etc.--with their back turned and ambling on their way, not to their face--smacks of bimboism. Now, when a couple of people overhear, it's time to ax 'em and get a couple replacements who may think attendees are freaks and geeks, but keep their mouths shut.

On a more pleasant note, a story related to me by one dealer made him appreciate the dedication of a scantily clad booth babe at a different booth. As he was walking down an aisle, said babe had to leave the booth, and since it was crowded, she crawled under the table and out into the aisle right towards him. There he was in his own fantasy of a scantily clad babe crawling on hands and knees towards him.

Now, in Hollywood's version of this May-December tale, the camera would go soft-focus, everything moves in slow-motion, music would well up in the background, and you'd get a couple minutes of agitating pecs and buns. Since this is reality, she stood up, walked down the aisle, and the dealer continued to meander on his way. But he got to tell a good story.

Astute MagWeb.com members will of course notice the "booth babe" in the MagWeb.com booth, our own VP Susan Lockwood. We're going to have to come up with an additional term for her as she not only helps create MagWeb.com but owns a chunk of the company, too: "booth businesswoman?"

Tally of Games and Events

According to a hand-out on events (tournaments, demos, games, etc., for sci-fi, fantasy, historical, etc.), Origins 01 offered the following number of events: 770 Board Games, 223 trading card games, 91 non-tradable card games, 18 LARPs (Live Action Role Playing), 88 Historical Miniatures, 703 Roleplaying games, 82 Seminars, and 10 "Special Events" for a grand total of 2,207 Origins 01 events.

MagWeb.com participated in the "Maze of Games" event for the first time. We gave a free 50-hit MagWeb.com account as a prize. Basically, you posted a puzzle poster in your booth, and people try to solve the puzzles for tokens, which are redeemed for prizes. I don't know who completed the visual puzzles, but I think there were 50 in total. For example, in our booth, the poster had a "J" and "the" with pictures of a camel's hump, a chess pawn, a watch band, a small child screaming "WAAA", and a gun. Put them all together (they were in no particular order on the poster) and you get "jhumppawnthebandwaaagun." That translates into: "jump on the bandwagon." Well, you do have four days...

On top of that, there were additional puzzles to supply to aspiring puzzle solvers. We were given a crossword puzzle about half the size of a typical Sunday paper crossword, and not an easy one either. Susan (she of cleverness and a crossword puzzle fan) and I (I of dunderheadedness and declarer of a moral victory if I get two clues correct!) tried to solve the clues and didn't make it much more that half way. The puzzle was labeled "14," and I believe someone said there were 16 crossword style puzzles in all. Er, you do have four days...

2002

Origins 2002 is back in Columbus from July 4-8, 2002. It will be run by GAMA, the games manufacturer's association, as Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro dumped the convention. I would like to put in an appeal to move the convention to a non-holiday weekend. The week ahead or behind is A-OK by me. I guess I'd sort of like my long weekend back to chill out, and I believe you'll find more people attending the show. If you read the description of dealers from a couple shows back, the military history dealers are shrinking.

Origins 2001

Convention Introduction and Overview
Historical Boardgames
Historical Miniatures
Richard Borg's New Ancients Game
Frank Chadwick's New Campaign Idea
Artillery Evolution from Napoleon to American Civil War

Previous Origins

Origins 2000
Origins 1999
Origins 1998

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