On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Roger Burton West wrote:

RBW>Hmm. It certainly seemed to be to me - Star Trek guests are famously
RBW>expensive, after all, and while there certainly are roleplayers who'd be
RBW>happy to stand for hours in a queue for an autograph it's not as though
RBW>it were a media con - or as though Doohan himself had ever had anything
RBW>to do with gaming.

I seem to recall the Q actor having been there the year we were there.  
I'm still not sure it was jumping the shark, though it was probably at 
least visiting the aquarium...

RBW>The mood in the corridors, at least as I perceived it, was "we have
RBW>celebrities of our own, we don't need to borrow them from other
RBW>hobbies". But I might not have heard what was going on at carpet-level,
RBW>as:

I think the only thing we heard was that the actor (whose name escapes me; 
I've never been a Trek fan much) either was or wasn't a wonderful guest.  
And it's been so long that I cant' remember which it was.

RBW>I remember it all too well. Happy fantasies of flamethrowers.

Quite.  I was in a leg brace at the time, having ripped up my knee, so I 
had a perfectly good excuse to hobble through, dragging my foot through 
the layouts, but I don't remember exercising the privilege much.  I'm just 
too nice, I guess.

RBW>Not officially to start with - there was one dealer selling them, and he
RBW>brought models (and offered a discount to anyone who'd walk around in
RBW>one for half an hour), but that was it for several years. Not quite the
RBW>same thing as putting on an official show.

If the porn folks are putting on official shows, I probably don't want to 
know about it...

RBW>Probably. I'm pretty sure you didn't play in any of the Dual Worlds I
RBW>ran, because I got a list of everyone's names for that...

No, we played in a "GenCon doesn't allow LARP so we're not.  We're just 
acting out our tabletop roleplaying, and yeah, sorry we couldn't mention 
it in the brochure, and what do you mean 'is this game going to be ADA 
compliant?'" game, and... uh, that one game with the line "The *meat,* 
sah," and... uh... probably a couple others.  And then we played tourist 
around 3rd Street, and Carl got to see Lake Michigan, the size of which 
caused him to become geographically confused because clearly that was the 
*ocean* which ought not be anywhere nearby, and we went to the Safehouse, 
and we spent the rest of the time on the city buses because our hotel was 
somewhere in Iowa.

-- 
Karen J. Cravens  silver@phoenyx.net