PBMCon 1995 From: llucky@crl.com (Bob Thomson) Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 00:00:00 +0000 PBMCon 1995 PBMCon number one is over, and it was a huge success. Over a hundred play-by-mail players were joined by dozens of roleplayers and Magic players in a small hotel on the outskirts of Chicago. There were ten different PBM companies present running a dozen different games. A great time was had by all, though the T-shirts that Ken Mitchell designed ran out far too quickly. Rich Van Ollefen of Flying Dutchman Games did an excellent job of organization. The convention ran like clockwork. The PBM area was a large room with vendor booths around the outside and many, many tables in the middle. From ten am to ten pm on Friday and Saturday and ten to four on Sunday this room was filled with players making deals, writing orders, scanning rulebooks and having a good old time. Some players only played one or two games while some brave souls played six or seven. The role-playing group was very active the entire weekend, and there were Magic tournaments Friday and Saturday nights. Since the Magic events happened after PBM was finished for the day, the PBM players and moderators got to play. In fact, John Van de Graaf of Graaf Simulations was a winner Saturday night! Rich Van Ollefen contributed free passes to PBMCon as a door prize for some con earlier in the year. The Magic players who won these passes showed up at PBMCon early for the Magic tournament and, having nothing else to do while they waited, started checking out the PBM scene. We set them up in a head-to-head game of You Rule! They enjoyed this so much they joined in a full-sized game the next day. Is this the first recorded conversion of Magic players to PBM? Dave and Elaine Webber of Paper Mayhem drove up on Saturday, bringing stacks of sample issues. Paper Mayhem gets a lot of credit for the success of PBMCon. They ran free advertising for the con for months and even put it on the front cover one issue. Flagship also provided some publicity. The long-distance award goes to Steve Tierney and his brother Alan. Steve is the "Chief Surgeon" of The Madhouse, a British play-by-mail company. They came to check out the US scene and scarf up a few game licenses to take home. Steve was surprised at how serious everyone was about their gaming. "Back home," he said, "all the players would have a pint of lager in front of them." The con finished with a bang Sunday afternoon with the Nuclear War card game tournament. This game is the traditional conclusion of Flying Buffalo's annual convention in Scottsdale, and it was a blast! (So to speak.) PBMCon will be back next year, and we at Llucky Llama will definitely be there. You Rule! results at PBMCon You Rule! was one of the most popular games at PBMCon. We started two eight-player games on Friday and on Saturday we started a ten-player game and a five-player game. All four of these games ran until Sunday afternoon. We also a number of solo and head-to- head games. All in all we typed in over 350 sets of orders. Boy, were our fingers tired! We had a special two-page version of the rules that enabled new players to play even if they'd never seen the game before. Every turn included tips on strategy and introduced new orders the players could use. This worked very well for us and we are eager to take this system to more conventions. Even though none of the 35 or so You Rule! players at the con had ever played the game before, they all seemed to catch on. Final Results: Game Name Codename # Provs ==== ================ ========== ======= C1 1 Larry York Pastoral 22 14 turns 2/3 Mike Firsching Mystery 14 2/3 Ken Mitchell Kennyra 14 8 players 4 Joe Paduch DaLlamasFr 13 5 Phil Matushek GrayWolf 7 C2 1 Herb Helzer Zaphod 15 15 turns 2 Mark Apolinski Astro 12 3 Lloyd Unger Krell 11 8 players 4 Roman Noriega Namor 8 C8 1 Lee McGuire DesFox 13 9 turns 2 Jason Hunter Bobb 10 3/4 Dave Aber Ehdd 9 10 players 3/4 Steve Matushek Airhead 9 5 Mike Firsching Who 8 C9 1 Alan Winterrand Llola 12 9 turns 2 Jonathan Gad VoidLord 11 3 C. Randy White Sarkon 8 5 players -- Llucky Llama Games Bob and Debbie Thomson 80-Q North Cabrillo Hwy. #226 (415) 712-0283 fax: (415) 712-0284 Half Moon Bay, CA 94019 llucky@crl.com Play by mail and email. "Hot games by cool people" Up