Guild of San Marcos Forum

Riots are a regular post game occurrence, like things on fire and property damage. It's bad if OSU loses and worse if they win.

I finally cancelled my plane tickets for Origins in June. Sad, but I got a full e-credit for the flight. If Origins happens in October I may need to be the co-pilot with Mark for this year...

Mark is a terrible pilot, you should steer.

Orrriiiig.....

What?

Protests and potential riots where?

Covid delay?

Right, sorry.

We will tesume the countdown at a later time.

So, GAMA is being GAMA again. Danny Loe, who has been doing a wonderful job communicating with the public through the GAMA sites as well as Facebook, who was organizing Origin's online for a week from Friday, is no longer with GAMA. GAMA has gone radio silent when they are supposed to open up Registration for online games on Friday. You have got to wonder as a non profit, whether GAMA will survive this Pandemic.

I would say wow, but where GAMA is concerned, they are the embodiment of the saying, "Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!"

GAMA gets even sadder. The team were trying to put on the best online experience on a shoe string budget. They got a rather impressive number of video bloggers and gaming gurus to put together an Origins TV. After the George Floyd tragedy, both GAMA's staff and the TV crew asked for some sort of statement against racism. The GAMA hierarchy said they needed to have a board meeting. This went on for over a week until the GAMA staff quit and most of their sponsors and all of their TV crew backed out. Late last night GAMA finally put a statement out that cancelled the online event and said racism is wrong. What mystifies me is that Origins has always been very inclusive (Pride week, LGBTQ fund raisers per con, etc.). Why they took so long to say anything when corporations that don't mean it have been flooding the airways saying this is a travesty. GAMA has less than a skeleton crew. I would not be optimistic for October, and I wouldn't be surprised to see GAMA file for bankruptcy. RIP Origins, 1975-2020...

I would hope the desire to meet over it was to make sure everyone was on the same page and that the statement was well worded.

We have all seen instances recently of organizations being told "your statement isn't good enough" (you can start with the NFL for that aspect)

It was ambitious to even attempt to throw together an online event with no experience, leas than 2 months to prep and no ability for the organizers to meet in person. Nobody had any idea of what content to create, which aspects to focus on or the best means to transmit it.

Every single one of you gets something different from Origins than I do and that is a good thing but it took decades to get the program to that point. Knowing how best to fold that into a digital experience is tough in good circumstances.

You cannot know:
-if the audience cares enough to watch a video or panel on any given topic.
- will putting all the online games on a specific service like zoom make it easier or upset people forced to subscribe to that service.
- if you leave event platforms up to the GMs will players then be put out because of needing multiple services.

That all needed some research time they did not get. It was ambitious to try and i give them props for what they did get done.

Maybe October will happen, maybe it won't. For those of you out of state, the Governor has continually insisted that "large group gatherings over 250 people" cannot be taking place in the near future. He knows they cannot control the distancing, he knows the mask "suggestion" is not being followed by enough people and he knows the state's transmission rate is still too high for that. October is sort of long range right now, much can change but it would be optimistic to say October will be clear for Origins.

I am not making any decisions on attending until September. There is a good chance i may just make a day trip out of it IF i get there at all. It may even be in the best interest of the convention to have no event at all compared to the costs of a poorly attended event. I don't know the answer to that.

But Origins has weathered a lot of weird stuff. And most of what makes it good are the people attending, not the management. If the right people are there, i don't care what the gathering is named.

And, it seems that the version of the email that announced that origins online is not happening that went out to vendors.. also said that october origins is cancelled as well.

kenderleech wrote:And, it seems that the version of the email that announced that origins online is not happening that went out to vendors.. also said that october origins is cancelled as well.

Bummed out by that, but not really surprised. And I was really looking forward to it, just us running a minimum of games and hanging out. That would have been awesome.

Origins Online being canceled is on the Internet. Fall Origins being canceled is not (yet).

Vendors got notification yesterday. People who registered might see the email by Monday. Tough to run a convention with no staff and an active pandemic going on.

As i said, they may be better off financially to completely skip the year.

The rental agreement with the convention center would be that same for the space of they have 10,000 or 2000 attendees. And a low turnout will not cover that amount.

There are regular attendees they would lose because of the virus. They would also lose a significant number hosting the con during the school year. And still more because there are people that got forced to use up their time off during the quarantine period before they could apply for unemployment.

And i love you all, miss you all, and want to see you all. But i want to keep doing that for a long time. If that means skipping a year, then we skip a year.

If Origins really does break down, we will find another regional convention and get together there. If we can't find another con...well, lots of places have tables and rooms. We will get together again.

It now seems that the October show has been canceled also.

Even when I am wrong. (Which is often but nobody gives it press)

I am honored to be given a Morgan on the internet. That is high praise.

I will miss Destination Donuts, Lan Viet and Momo Ghar this year. *sobs*

Cleveland has comparable options for those and you know it.

Fair enough...but those places are all conveniently located in North Market!

Convenient if you are in Columbus...

Very convenient, like it was planned by some mastermind to lure you back to a con year after year. Making it an unwilling destination stop you cannot resist.

I swear i had nothing to do with the planning of North Market. Honest.


* i am mostly sure it is called destination donuts because the donut is large enough to have it's own address.

Did finally get to sample some goat momo for takeout from a Nepali restaurant I've wanted to try again after they switched management. Well spiced, great taste...ground goat's a bit chewy with cartilage though. Be curious how their veggie (or potato) momos compare to Momo Ghar next time.

Though there are good Vietnamese restaurants in Cleveland, they're not near me!

Considered calling Mark this morning just to see if habit put him on the road. Decided not to wake his household with a 5 am call.

salamanca wrote:Considered calling Mark this morning just to see if habit put him on the road. Decided not to wake his household with a 5 am call.

Been trying not to think about it. Really don't want to think that I really am going to miss out on gaming this year.

I should be just figuring out how my car decided to break right now.