Gaming & Guinness, an annual gathering that my good friends and I have been doing since 2006, is not really a mini-convention. I mean, a lot of the trappings are there - the preparations, the scheduling, the swag, the games the socializing, et cetera - but there are typically only eight or nine of us in attendance, and we are not really interested in any sort of expansion (nothing personal! it is just hard enough to find tabletop games that accommodate nine players).
But whatever G&G is, it isn't anything we are willing to give up on, even in the face of a global pandemic. When we held G&G XIV.V last year at this time, we thought for certain we would be playing in person again by now. But late in 2020 we came to a grim acceptance of how unlikely this was to happen, so we postponed G&G XVI until September of 2021 and elected to try yet another weekend of virtual gaming in May to tide us over.
But I can't lie - it was hard to get excited about it.
The event had been on the books since January, but I couldn't muster any enthusiasm for it until maybe three or four days before. But then we got the schedule figured out and knew who would be running which game, and my eagerness returned as I had hoped.
Unlike a proper convocation where everyone is in for every game, other commitments bobbed up so we only had all nine of us scheduled for two slots, and then an illness took us back down to eight. But Pete cooked up a pot of the amazing chili verde he usually does in-person and then delivered it to the Edmonton contingent. This inspired Jeff to buy a brisket on Friday, get up early to smoke it and (with a little help -cheers Earl!) deliver generous portions of meat across the city.
We did most of our gaming on Steam's Tabletop Simulator while chatting each other up in Google Meets. Pete and I got a game of Space Hulk in before five of us got together to play The Captain is Dead (and a first-time win for us in TTS - after getting wiped out super-quickly in our first game. In the evening we swung into Roll20 and Colin ran us through a brilliant D&D one-shot where we played goblins avenging ourselves on a village full of adventurers.
Wits & Wagers on Saturday afternoon, Circus Maximus that evening, a few games of Trivia Murder Party to fill in the gaps, and then Fortune & Glory to wrap things up Sunday afternoon.
And yeah, it is awkward remembering how to manipulate cards and dice in TTS, and there are always issues with sound or video or some sort of lag, and no, it isn't even a shadow of what we experience in person.
But it was a damn sight better than nothing, which was the only real alternative.
We still got to roll some dice, just virtual ones. We still got to drink some Guinness Bombs together, just at a distance. But seeing the smiles, hearing the laughs, getting a good jibe in on someone or rolling a natural 20 in a clutch situation and hearing the exultation from friends you have had for decades?
That is a helluva decent way to spend any weekend, whatever you want to call it.
See you in September my brothers!
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