THE REPORT
We finished the special KublaCon episode at 4am and left for San Francisco at 8am.
Making heroic fantasy television isn't always easy.
We slept in due to exhaustion and drive times.
Riley woke up early and ran the booth with our friend the YETI who has finally returned to gaming after 10 years. The funny thing about the YETI was that because it had been so long since he'd been a gamer, he had a nearly moldy 2nd edition D&D players handbook and boxes of "vintage" magic the gathering cards.
We kinda giggled under our breath about it, but nonetheless thought it was rad he returned to the sport.
Before transforming into our costumes we went to the Hyatt restaurant "SWIFTWATERS" (which kinda sounds like it could be a town name in Forgotten Realms settng) for breakfast. Unfortunately it was lunchtime and we all gulped down too much coffee and paid way too much for a simple meal.
We headed back up to the room to change and then hit the convention floor. Riley had just been given the game QUEST FOR THE DUNGEONMASTER based on the 80's D&D cartoon and several guests were at the table playing it with him. A few peole came up and chatted to us. One dude came up and just started blabbing away about PARANOIA because Riley just bought the campaign module and it happened to be sitting in front of us. He also talked about a game where you chase and collect lab Monkeys and then suddenly subject jumped into the Batman cartoon series.
He talked for 10 minutes without us saying anything. We were sort of humored until he started staring at Shakuntala's breasts and told her that her outfit was really revealing.
Then from the depths of the con came RICKY BROWN, our biggest fan and co-star in Episode 7. He was looking even more youthful with a new short hair-do. We hugged him and then he gave us a gift, a can of SPAM!!
We made plans to meet up with him in the afternoon to do a radio show on JUSTICE RADIO after his MTG game.
The radio show went really well except that everyone always asks us the same question: how us 4 girls started gaming and then they want US to elaborate on how weird it is. Its not weird! For the last time LOTS OF WOMEN ARE GAMERS! After the interview we agreed to prompt future djs or interviewers beforehand to skip the subject because not only is it an uneducated question, it wastes airtime..We'd much rather talk about fantasy movies, realms, books, records, special effects, tidbits and background stories on making the show, raising horses, if Monkeylonda is really pug, etc.... We did however turn it around and talked a lot about the Forum and gave RICKY the mic.
The funny thing about doing the radio show was that before we sat down at their booth and put on the headphones we'd been sitting at our table for hours with very little traffic. But by mid interview, we had a whole audience of people before us and were suprised to sign several autographs afterwards. Signing autographs is always a bit weird but it does make us feel good about what we do and everyone is always pretty funny about it.
We returned to our booth for another hour or so and made a plan of action for the night's game of D&D. We invited Forum members RICKY BROWN, OGMA, DASFIZZLA,and THE YETI to play with us. Riley ran an 0-LEVEL adventure and we all picked out our characters at the booth. It had been awhile since Ricky played so we gave him some gaming tips while the YETI searched for a pizza delivery menu.
We met up an hour later at a table outside of Knuckles Sports Bar so that we could easily have beer with our pizza and game. We hesitated to buy RICKY BROWN a beer, but then again, we all had one and DASFIZZLA, Ricky's KublaDad was all for it.....
Being that it was an 0-LEVEL game based with characters who had never been on an adventure before, the game was completely out of control. There was zero teamwork and OGMA and MYSTIKA joked that the game was full of a bunch of ZEROS NOT HEROES!
It played very much how you'd expect if a bunch of country-folk went into a dungeon looking for an Ogre and they didnt know how to fight. It was pretty hilarious.
As we were playing some drunk jocks came out of Knuckles Sports bar and stopped at our table. Staring at the dice one of them looked at his friend and said, "WHAT IS THAT SHIT?" as he walked away.
We all started busting up!
When Ricky was asking a question about a melee batttle he'd lost some HPS, Riley just looked at him and in his very own Californian-way said, "THATS MELEE DUDE"...a new classic..
While we were playing, RICKY'S buddies , who kinda looked like Non-Gamers (although we remembered they played MTG last year....) walked by 2 different times during the game. The first time they stopped and quietly spoke to him. The second time, they didnt say anything and just pretended to coincentally walk by. Seconds later RICKY left the game and DASFIZZLA took over his farm boy character .
The next night we found out that Ricky and his friends went to an all nude strip club in San Francisco and Ricky got his first lap dance. What a well balanced kid! Play D&D then go out to the Strip Club.
The next day, we sat at our table and played Munchkin and Quest for The Dungeonmaster while people came up and talked to us. We got invited to "AN INDUSTRY PARTY" : Industry being gaming which was pretty cool.
At the party we drank a couple beers with the KublaStaff. A little later we were chatting with JAPJI by the snack table, talking about how aweosme the dude in the Strorm Trooper costume was. We went on and on for nearly 5 minutes before a dude across the table said, "Hey guys umm.... I'm the Storm Trooper". We asked him if he was coming to the screening later that night and he said, "Yes."
Who would have guessed he would wear his STORM TROOPER OUTFIT!!
Just imagine how rad a screening would be if there was a Storm Trooper in the Audience?
It totally made our night.
There were some technical difficulties in the beginning. The Speakers weren't hooked up, but the crowd stayed and Riley did a great job of entertaining them while the staff figured the sound out.
The episodes were hit. Everyone was laughing and yelling back at the screen.
For once the gaming episode was the hit of the night, because the entire audience
were gamers.
"DON'T DO IT SHAKUNTALA" " OH NO FORTITUDE SAVE", "HOORAY BONEY M!", etc.
It made us so happy to be in MST3K scenario... we knew this was worth all of our efforts.
During Episode 5, the KublaStaff brought Red Vines and Popcorn and everyone cheered!
For the finale, we showed our KublaCon special "THE KHAN OF CONS" which featured skits with lots of the Convention attendees. Ricky Brown made his first big screen premiere and it was cute to see him catch a bit of the lime light at age 18.
After the screening was over, RICKY,SHAK and V MICHAEL NITLING went and got drinks from the liquor store cause we were sick of Hotel prices. (They even bought ingredients for making White Russians 'cause we'd been talking about THE BIG LEBOWSKI earlier. However , the party was almost all girls so no one drank any of it).
By the end of the night, we had toilet paper hanging from the ceiling, made up songs on guitar and Yukelele and Ricky Brown showed up in a SPACE GHOST outfit.
It was really good times...
Here's a movie of us playing D&D that first night :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgkQzFeQYWYand of Riley the Magnificent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LBWQf7RRYQ