TsunamiCon Day 2: games, escape rooms, larping and more

Here we are! Day two of TsunamiCon! It’s the second day of Wichita’s big three day tabletop gaming convention. If you missed out on yesterday, day one’s liveblog can be found here. Day two took it to a whole new level with all sorts of nerdiness. I embraced it all and spend more of day two browsing around, talking to people and learning more about the gaming community.

Without further ado, let’s start day two. You can get all the information on this convention at http://www.tsunamicon.org. Or you can check out their Facebook page.

Day two brought a much bigger crowd of people as it’s the weekend and more demos, contests and gaming would be taking place today. After grabbing lunch, I made my way over to the Scottish Rite Center to begin day two.

There were all sorts of people dressed up today. Many of the costumes were all handmade. I was quite impressed with the level of effort people put into their costumes and weaponry.

This guy made his sword himself for the cosplay contest. He was just one of many people all decked out in some gear. I’ve seen people in what looks like Game of Thrones outfits but I’m sure they are actually dressed up as other characters I’ve never ever heard of.

There’s no shortage of food. The brand new cafe/bakery called Tabletop Java Shop was on hand serving out treats and drinks. They even had meeple shaped sugar cookies. For those people that don’t know what meeples are, they are the wooden shaped characters used in the game called Carcassone.

The Scottish Rite Center also had the kitchen up serving hot dogs, hamburgers, etc. This might be a food review opportunity later.

A group of roleplay gamers, showed me their online game. This allows people to get their geekery on from home instead of having to deal with coordinating schedules to meet somewhere. Don’t you love technology?

I met the game designer from JTP Games. He creates a bunch of games; one of them called “Farts Are Funny”. He drove down from Kansas City to demo his games. After playing “Farts Are Funny” and chatting with the guy, he seemed like a really good dude. So what did I do? Bought a copy to show him some love. You can learn more about their games on their Facebook page. One lucky family member will be receiving a copy of this game in their stocking for Christmas.

It was nice to see some familiar faces. The guys from Puzzle Plex were on hand to support TsunamiCon and had a free mini-escape room for attendees. This was a lite room for first timers. I invited my brother who stopped by and we gave it a go. Between the two of us, we escaped the room. Afterwards we chatted with one of the owners of Puzzle Plex. Be on the look out for their new room coming later in October. Follow them on Facebook for more details.

Many representatives from Cardboard Carnage have spent the past couple days showing people how to play all sorts of new games. These guys are incredibly knowledgeable on what feels like every boardgame rule there is. There should have been an elective class like this in college. There have been studies that playing board games can help prevent cognitive decline and dementia. So it would have been more helpful for me than than World History 1865 to Present in college.

I watched some people do some Live Action Roleplay; also known as LARP’ing. This was combat larping so there was “violence”. While it’s very light, I watched two ladies swordfight. One of them accidentally took the pointy edge of the foam sword to the throat. It was possibly the highlight of my day. I never knew it could be so brutal.

I also spent some time speaking with the director of the event, Erik Carl; very cool dude. Hell, everybody here has been exceptionally nice to me. But Erik was really instrumental in putting this together and I know the boardgame community really appreciates what he does.

Look who’s back. It’s Bar On Demand!

Bar On Demand’s specialty drink is called the Tsunami. I had to try one…..

So I found a board game inventor who is working on a game called Thief’s Hoard. It’s a chaotic, backstabbing game that was a ton of fun. I played this game a few times and loved every second of it. They will have this game on Kickstarter soon, so if you’re interested, check out their Facebook page. It’s created by Brass Engine Productions.

It’s 9pm and now I’m watching some live RPG event called Drunkards & Dragons. It’s like comedy improv for adults; I was surprised how crude the humor was. Surprisingly, I’m enjoying it.