Dexcon 15 Signature Events

Between Rich changing jobs recently and Diabolik running Pro Tour Qualifiers for Magic there has been very little time to sit down and produce the podcast.
We've been asked to be the official broadcasting partner for Dexcon 15 taking place July 4 through July 8.
I'm sure you are questioning what that means. Short answer is live coverage of 4 of Dexcon's Brand New Signature Events Series.

What are these Signature Events? Well I'd suggest going to www.dexposure.com for the best information, but I'll give a rundown on what Bacon Ice Cream will be doing.

First things first we have the $5000 (that's not a typo)  Interactive Puzzle Challenge where 30 participants will be locked in a ballroom and have 5 hours to solve a puzzle. Every hour that ticks away takes with it $1000 from the prize pool. Bacon Ice Cream will be live streaming the contest to the rest of the convention along with allowing those unlucky people who can't make it to Dexcon to watch live online. <br>

Then we have Space Cadet Live. Space Cadet the board game is an upcoming release from Stronghold Games but the creators have decided to make it a live action game as well. The live game will have teams of players competing for a grand prize of $1000. Each team will be in charge of a different section of a spaceship and will have to deal with the different situations that arise over the course of the game. We will be live broadcasting this as well as streaming it live to the internet for everyone to experience.

For those of us familiar with Warhammer 40K there is going to be a spectacular Team Space Marine tournament where squads of players with put on Space Marine Armor and duke it out for $1000 prize pool which will also be available to watch live on site and online.

Bacon Ice Cream has also been asked to stream the Iron GM Challenge that will get the winning GM an invite to GenCon. Basically GMs will be given unknown elements to then incorporate and create a RPG game which will then have players vote on after playing through the campaign.

All in all we are very excited about the new and improved Dexcon 15. With over $10,000 in prizes going out to the winners we expect a lot of excited and exhausted people over the Fourth of July weekend.

You should check out www.dexposure.com for more information about the other Signature Events along with details on how to pre-register for the entire (or part of) convention.

Pics from Dreamation

So while I was out attending the Dreamation and Wicked Faire I brought my new digital camera and snapped some shots to test it out. So here most of them are....

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

This was a POV shot from our table space in the Registration room at Dreamation. Registration is covered up with white table cloths because it was around midnight. I think this was Friday night.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

This was our table where we had the Killzone 2 and Halo Wars demos running for people to check out and so that Rich could run his social experiment. It's also where I did some interviews when we couldn't find anywhere else to talk.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

I believe this was the AVATAR LARP system's annual high council meeting. I know Avie and Kate and Tiny were there but I didn't stick around long enough to find out definitively.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

This was a panoramic shot of the Board Game room and the Big Board on the back and left walls. This was at Midnight on Friday Night and look how packed it was....

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Now this was Saturday morning at 9am in the same room. The board games were really hopping even at that early hour.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Here is Jonathan Lavallee hard at work Beta Testing one of his projects, Championship Fight Card, a Facebook app.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

The table of prizes you can spend your points on that you earn by playing in different games during the convention. Some of them are pretty cool, others are just nostalgic, but all of them are FREE!

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Knight Realms was represented at the convention and running some modules.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Ah...my friend's at security. They had this Profit Sharing Plan that I had to inquire about. It involved them taking my profits. I wasn't such a fan....but it was funny.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

One of the vendors that was set up, but in the hallway heading to the Dealer's Room. I thought it would be a cool panoramic shot.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

This was most of the dealer's room. The weaponry is from Griffon's Claw Armory who I run into at just about every convention I go to.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Smirk & Dagger was at the convention and Curt Covert sat down with me and talked about some of the most recent releases and about something that he is currently working on.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Jonathan Lavallee talking to, and joking with, a reporter who came down to the convention and was talking to different guests.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

I blinded Dave Simpson with my camera. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of abuse I laid upon him for the entirety of the convention.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

There was a movie theater attached to the hotel and gamers set up in the hallway leading to it. I wonder how many normal people ran away....

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

This is where Rich and I shot the opening and closing segments for the convention where the waterfalls were running the entire time.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

The NAGA and PRGA and Indy games were given the entire boardroom area of the hotel which meant they were segmented away from the rest of the convention but they had such a great area to be put in.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Jennifer Rodgers is an artist who has been working with a variety of Indy Games.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

There was a ton of Street Fighter 4 going on, both on the big screen in the Video Game room and at our table between sections.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

There was a LAN setup and a variety of people there to help with tech support and running the equipment for the Electronic Gaming.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

The Con Suite where refreshments are made available to the Con goers so that no one drops dead from lack of sugar.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

Mike Lorenzo running his Zombie game he talks about in our interview.

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

The RC Tanks that I never get to play. I really want to play with them....

From Diabolik's Total Nonsense and Ridiculousness

The leader of Double Exposure, Vinny with his +20 shirt of Smiting....


Well that is everything I shot at Dreamation. Wicked Faire coming soon....

Diabolik's Take on Dreamation

So I am sitting here as Rich goes to get some tacos to feed our bellies, and I wanted to share my feelings on the con so far.

I like this hotel a little better than the last Dreamation, but I still prefer the Hilton in East Brunswick just because of it's layout.

This hotel has an odd layout so it is cool, but much more spread out than I would like. I enjoyed popping in and out of rooms and seeing what was going on at any given time, here I have to travel around half the hotel just to get to the wargaming areas.

Aside from that, there is a movie theatre in the hotel basically. It seems that the hotel is connected to a building complex that has a Kiddie Academy and the Theatre and other stuff.

As for Thursday, I was disappointed by the lack of a Mafia LARP and the chance to talk to Tony D. As of right now Tony isn't even at the con yet, but he is scheduled to be here for a module at 2pm. His LARP is scheduled for Sunday at 10am. Rich and I set up and shot a 25 minute opening segment for the show and he and I edited it last night and it should be squared away and on the site and Itunes and YouTube soon. I really enjoyed shooting that segment. It was the first time since the reorganization of Bacon Ice Cream that we have covered a bigger convention and I liked not being super serious. I was always trying to be serious and professional, and now I say fuck it, this is me and deal with it. Plus I think it makes better content. We decided to go check out Dave Simpson's game Blood & Leather which I demoed back at last Dreamation. Played it twice and got the hang of it, pointed out s few little issues with it, but otherwise it is a good game.

Friday I was supposed to help run the MosterPocalypse demo for Dark Tower Games here at the con because I am a Press Ganger for Privateer Press. I was supposed to be here at 9am for it, but we learned that the hotel was not going to have internet access available, and we were told that it was $11 a minute (which we assumed was an hour, but we were told minute). This meant that I could not take the exam that I had to finish before 11pm on Friday would not be able to be done at the hotel. I tried to get up super early after we got back to the house at 3:30am and that didn't happen. I must have turned off the alarm without realizing it.

So Rich woke me up at 8:30ish and I got prepped and then took the exam. I got a 68 and I am rather pissed at myself for screwing it up, but hopefully I can pull that grade up. Anyway....

We got here after fixing our feedburner feeds which were screwing up the Grazr feeds, and fixing my Twitter account and just getting some stuff squared away. we got to the con a little after 4, chilled with some of the guys (I have to say that I am missing Eric from Asmodee) and then started editing footage. I was wandering around and I noticed Kate's super cute hair and wanted to investigate and it turned out the Jon from Firestorm Ink was running his Battle of the Bands LARP for CyberGen. He asked if I wanted to help, and as I offered at last Dreamation because, while Jon is a talented motherfucker, he can't juggle all the hats and get everything done. He asked me to be the company spokesman and try to get some of the bands to drop out of the competition.

I actively did everything I could to manipulate the bands to do what I needed them to do, and in the end I ended up charging one female band member with stalking the guitarist of the House Band, having a different band thinking that the other members of the band poisoned one of the members, and got one of the bands disqualified for tampering with the electronics of the show. It was a ton of fun to help out, especially for someone like Jon who appreciated it and also gave me the opportunity to do whatever I wanted to do.

After finishing the larp I headed back to the booth and Rich started playing Street Fighter 4 while I sat down and edited the footage I shot of the FoodMachine tournament and by the time I coouldn't see anymore I was nearly done, just looking for some internet to finish it up and it will be posted.

So Rich and I flipped a coin and decided to spend the night behind the booth rather than packing everything up and heading to the house. It went pretty well, I caught about 3 hours of sleep and woke up to run the Mosterpocalypse Demo at 9am. No one showed up. I spent a bunch more time taking pictures and talking to friends and just generally fucking around. Played a little SF4, wrote this blog post, talked to Jon about his new Facebook App. Aside from that I am sitting here waiting for tacos to arrive, taking in the atmosphere, and anticipating the soon to come debauchery of Wicked Faire.

More to come later.

DIABOLIK