Getting up was getting harder and harder especially when I couldn't really sleep much during the night. But that's normal I guess^_~. My first thing on the programme of the day was a science talk about the cosmos dark ages.
Katie Mack started her talk with explaining what the big bang was. That was followed by Planck-era in which the temperature was so high that the four fundamental forces (gravitation, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear interaction) where one unified force. The universe was expanding and cooling down and eventually the forces seperated. When gravitation separated - Grand Unification era. Later on the universe got into electro weak era in which possibly the Higgs boson was created. Few minutes after the big bang (before some particles were created, later on first nucleos was formed)a nucleosynthesis. The universe was cooled down enough for a nuclear fusion in which protons and neutrons started to combine to from deuterium -> helium-4. ...um...recombination...-> Dark Ages (neutral gas absorbs light) -> reionization era in which stars and quasars are fromed from gravitational collapse. Radiation from the stars reionizes the surrounding area. At this point the universe was filled with hot plazma which was REALLY hot at first but later started to cool down -> formation of stars -> formation of galaxies -> formation of groups, clusters -> formation of solar system -> nowadays.
This talk was quite intensive but I appreciated it even though I'm even too lazy to type what I wrote down during the presentation. I headed to Lizards Wizards in Space! next, I did not expect a good panel discussion or anything but in the end I had SO MUCH fun at this particular panel.
The moderator Jenni Hill was a nice lady who came up prepared for the panel. The panel was about deciding who is better either Bioware or Bethesda. To decide that Jenni brought some 'quests' - questions to be answered and they would either be in Bioware's or Bethesda's favor. For me if anyone would ask me about Bioware vs Bethesda I would certainly reply Bioware without thinking much about it. So what makes some people like Bioware's games and other people to like Bethesda games? Well the main difference is that...Bioware games are story-driven and the game system is much more apparent. In Bethesda games the player is given freedom to roam the world and create his own stories/experiences.
At this panel I listened to the panelist talking about DA, SW: Kotor, NWN, Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim and Fallout 3 and wondered about how many different and powerful experiences the players had. There's not much I can type here but I have to say that I haven't seen so lively people in quite a long time. These people were talking about something they like, about what they experienced and how much fun it was. They were so carefree. Maybe I should start playing games once again to feel like this...remembering experiences from RPGs both paper-based or computer ones is something that actually makes me smile and laugh. This was the only panel in which commercialization and marketing wasn't discussed even though sexual relationships and one's (character's) sexuality was discussed too much for my taste. But it seems that's how it is in the society nowadays. Gamers are just more open to non-hetero relationships (even though imagining some players actually being in relationship is quite hard^_^).
After this cool panel I went to listen some people talking about RPG design and presentation of the game to companies. I did not learn much about RPG design but there were things told that were of interested. The most interesting thing to hear though was this...many people start gaming, later GMing and then become writers. At this point - being writers - they don't go back to game. Storytelling and keeping players engaged in the story (bioware comes to mind) is something that needs certain skills. And these skills are also required when one wants to become a writer. After creating a whole world, playing many games and creating a whole history or the world one has the urge to make profit of it somehow. I'm not sure if I would use the word profit, for me I would be glad that what I went through, created ad experienced would be stored somewhere - so I could read it when I want to. But it seems that many people want to share it and profit from it as well. (is that true? is that what Erikson and Esselmont are doing?).
Also RPG systems change. Players want something easy, they do not want to study many rules and tables. Also there is quite many universal RPG systems so why would the players need a new one?
At noon I wanted to go see George R.R. Martin but the whole thing was cancelled. Not entirely sure what I was doing instead...it's quite possible that I went to fetch something to eat. At 13:30 I wanted to attend Milenium Effects SFX Make up Presentation but that was also cancelled. So I tried to fit in Capital Suite 14 to listen more about interstellar travel - this time it was about SF Starships and real engineering and the reason why we should start planning for an interstellar future. (see http://www.i4is.org/)
After that it was time to do something more relaxing. I went to the game tent and managed to join a group of players playing Smash Up (I was interested in all AEG games there). This game is intended for 2-4 players I guess but we managed to play it in 6 players. It was kinda long but still very playable. Smash up is 'shufflebuilding' game. It means that each player takes two faction decks and shuffles them up. Each faction has different theme/mechanics. There are for example Ninjas that are kinda stealthy and kill, zombies that crawl out of the graves, wizards that draw cards and play more spells, pirates that move cards etc. Then there are bases. Each base has a certain number. When this number is reached (total power of the minions on the base) the base is scored. The player with most power gets the most victory points, the second and third player also get points. Each base also has a reward be it for the winner or the runner-ups. The first player to get 15 victory points wins the game. The game is simply but there can be some pretty awesome plays done and one base can be scored in one turn. One turn consists of playing a minion (putting him at one of the bases) and/or a action (can be attached to a base, a minion or have a immediate effect on the game - ie. kill a minion [condition]) or doing nothing, at the end of turn a player draws two cards. Each player starts with 5 cards and the maximum cards in hand is 10. Simple as that...
When it was almost 5pm I moved to Second Stage. Cosmonaut Anatolii Artsebarskii would be giving a speech. Anatolii told us about the history of (USSR) Russian cosmonautic and later told us about his Soyuz TM-12 Mission. He was a commander of this mission and he went there with Sergei Krikalev and Helen Sharman. He spent 144 days at the MIR space station. It seems he was quite a fan of coca-cola and fire^_^.
We watched a shortened version of a documentary about the mission and then we listened to more commentary about the mission. Anatolii was then answering our question and was telling us how difficult (and fun sometimes) is to adapt to a low-gravity environment. The brain is used to something but then has to adapt to new conditions, that is not that easy as it might seem. (I was glad this wasn't cancelled and was glad I managed to find out about this. Without G. Webb telling us about it I wouldn't be able to find out about it, as this is not listed in the programme guide I used.)
Next there was nothing I really wanted to attend to. So I stopped by the game tent where few people were building something out of lego pieces. So I joined and build 'something'.
In the meantime a big game of werewolves started. I guess it took ages to finish.
Worldcon was really awesome and I thank all those people who made it possible for me to attend.
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