Lulu's Conception Report, Part 1

(Filed by our Gaming Correspondent, Daddy)

Well, we did it. Sort of. We didn't stay till the bitter end, because I was ill, Mummy was just getting over being ill and Daddy was just starting on being ill, which is something he traditionally does on the Sunday about three and a half minutes after the big closing ceremony.

Conception started at about 10.30 when we arrived at the holiday camp. The nice peeps behind the desk were ready with our keys, and I officially declared the Convention open with a short speech. In Shriek.

We took our keys off to the place that would be my home for the next four nights - lodge ML6. Andrew, who is Mummy and Daddy's friend who sorts out the accommummydation was very kind and had made sure we had a lodge that was really near the main building so I wouldnt have to go too far in the coldy weather. Just as well too, it was freezing when we got there.

We seemed to have soooo much stuff to unpack. Mummy had loads of stuff in the car (as well as me), and Grandad came to help too with his car which is even bigger. It's all mod cons when we go on holiday, and no mistake. I had my high chair, my wipeable tarp thingy for it to sit on, a whole box of toys, my walker, my door bouncer, my sleepy bouncer, Whoozit, Rabbit, my chew toys, my blankies, my dummies, my vests, my tops, my trousers, my nappies, my creams (got a nasty bit of nappy rash you see) and everything but the kitchen sink really, because happily enough there was already one in the Lodge.

We even had custom made clothes (see post below) including Website Advertising, which Daddy assures me is a very big thing.

The Lodges are quite warm places, and have comfy sofas and comfy beds. I know this because due utter hatred of my travel cot I always spend nights away from home cuddling Mummy in which ever bed she's sleeping at the time, and due to my snotty cold in addition it was a foregone conclusion. Mummy and I were both snotty at this Conception, so Daddy ended up sleeping in the other room after the first night after he was subjected to the Snorting Twins all night long and got no kip at all. He did offer to take me the second night but Mummy reckoned that if he did he'd just get my cold anyway and then we'd all be ill, which is fair comment I suppose.

All in all, it was just like home really, except every time we went out there seemed to be more and more rather large men in black clothes and beards. Which brings us to what we were going there - games and gamers.

Conception isn't the biggest gaming convention in the UK, that's called Gencon. But it is the biggest one in the South of merrie old England, and is all for charity instead of money, which makes the peeps who come along much more generous with their donations.

Daddy's first function in all this is to organise the LARPs. These are the games where all the peeps dress up and actually act out what they are doing 'live' instead of rolling dice and/or moving figures about a tabletop. Daddy has to work out who gets which games and then slot people into them, and sometimes he writes them too. This year his LARP involved lots of ladies in school uniforms. Legitimately.

Daddy said he'd never written so much plot for a LARP before, but it went really really well. And there were lots of cool school uniforms - piccies will no doubt follow. Some of the last minute players even went into Bournemouth in the morning to buy shirts and ties to look more like wizards from Bogbort's - now that's what I call dedication.

Anyway, once we'd got all our things squared away it was time for Mummy and Daddy to argue about who was responsible for leaving behind all the stuff they left behind. Which included a full 75-litre rucksack, which you'd kinda think would be hard for them to miss...but eventually Mummy took me over to the house again to pick everything up.

While we were gone, Daddy had to go over and do his other job for the first time this year. This job is called Calling the Muster. It seems to mainly consist of standing next to Duncan (who is apparently a bit rusty, not sure what that's all about, I can't see all that many flaky bits on him) in front of lots and lots of gamers and yelling a lot whilst waving bits of paper. I have pointed out that this could equally describe being an MP and is presumably not as well paid, but he says even he has some moral standards when it comes to employment.

As Daddy calls the muster the people gradually go off to their games and eventually only the people who couldn't find a game they liked before they got filled up or have just turned up hoping for a random space are left. Then he and Duncan get to work running around, remembering who had a spare space and who didn't and in Daddy's case sometimes literally going into the main hall and shouting for anyone with a spot to wave their hands and shout back what it might be.

Daddy says he's never seen Conception so busy. Obviously number ten, or 'X' as it was known, was the bee's bottom. Or something like that anyway.

When Mummy and I got back from the house I had my first meal in this new place - daddy biscuit, nana, apple and dates to follow, always a good combination. Once I noshed it down Mummy put me in the new 'car buggy' (which is like the Tank in almost no way at all whatsoever, being small, impossible to steer one-handed and light as a feather by comparison) and walked me over to find Daddy in the main building.

The big bit of the holiday camp is the Main Building. It is shaped like a big L, with the main hall at one end and the bowling alley and the main dining bit at the other. And a bar in the middle, naturally. Trust me when I say that if you're going to game for five days, twelve hours a day, you'll need that part. It was fascinating to watch how the complexions grew whiter, the circles around the eyes grew wider and darker, the heads dropped lower and the look of utter determination just to get through till the next game was over got stronger and stronger. And that was just Daddy!

Anyway, we found him over in the main hall, running his Dungeons and Dragons game based on the Order of the Stick, which he thinks is a very very funny Webcomic indeed. Apparently he had it looked over and personally approved by the author himself (who even made some minor corrections to the character's abilities) so it was as real as it can be - and this year helped by, bizarrely enough, being run for a group of people who didn't know the comic but liked the idea of a bunch of incompetent misfits such as he described on the signup sheet so much they signed up for the game anyway...

I went back to the Lodge with Mummy and had my tea while Daddy finished up his game, and had my tea. We seem to have a decent enough cooker and grill thingy because I managed to have my potato stars and some sliced up chicken fillety pieces which were a bit dry but that was OK, because it meant I could munch on them good and proper. It must have helped because I popped yet another tooth the day after!

While I was scoffing Daddy came in and Mummy told him she was already cooking his tea – she was very obliging through the whole Con and cooked nearly all of Daddy’s meals, wasn’t that kind of her? Then we went back across so Mummy could Work On The Desk.

Working On The Desk means that you have to sit down a lot, and talk to all the gamer peeps. It looks maybe a bit boring (well, except for all the people cooing over me but I’m used to that by now, what with being so gorgeous and all) but looks pretty well-paid though. Loads of people gave her money for doing it so maybe she should quit her poopy job at the kitcheny place and do this instead? She could make a mint! But even though I got a little bored occasionally there were some compensations...


Daddy came back over to the Desk a little while later ready to Call Muster again – this time I got to hear him in action.

What a noisy man my Daddy is. After that experience there’s no way he can claim I get it all from Mummy ever again, that’s for sure. He also seemed to be very eager to find a person called ‘Charmingly Shallow’, but he didn’t seem to want to step forward and make himself known…

Once Daddy called the muster, he went into the main hall to run his first Goblin game of the Con. It was called ‘Goblins and Commanders – The Bottom End Of The World’ (weeeell, alright, he didn’t say Bottom but this is theoretically a family-friendly Blog after all, so…) and like so many of the games he writes all the players were playing Goblins. They had to assassinate a Humie general and crawl through the sewers (ewwww!) to reach him.

Needless to say, being Goblins, albeit of the scary sneaky kind, they made a bit of a hash of it. They did a lot of hiding and sneaking but not quite enough moving about, and they kept getting cornered by Humie guards. Luckily for them the Humies couldn’t quite figure out where they were going next and kept going the wrong way, so eventually they managed to get to the general and fulfill their mission. Unfortunately the general’s mysterious wizard adviser managed to wipe them all out after they got the general, though one of them might have escaped if he hadn’t gone all heroic and actually gone back for his Feebleminded comrade-in-sneakiness instead of shimmying out the window. Most un-Goblinlike behaviour, Daddy assures me.

The Feebleminded person was played by someone called Knobby the Goblin, who didn’t look green enough to be a Goblin at all, except curiously enough during the closing ceremony on Sunday afternoon. Daddy waved a finger at him and reminded him of all the things he’d done during and after the party the night before, and called him a very naughty Goblin indeed.

Apparently in former Conception years Daddy used to run a thing called Goblin Day on Fridays, where he and sometimes other people would only run games with Goblin characters in them. I think that must be why he has ended up being known as Goblin Boy to everyone, and even has the name printed on his Conception T-Shirts. Knobby was once mad enough to do all three games one year with the same Goblin character called Knobby, and that’s how he got his name, see?

Knobby the Goblin, not as green as you'd expect

I went back for bedtime about 8, and this was when I started getting all snuffly and snotty, as well as a bit crabby because I wasn’t feeling well and was a bit miffed that we didn’t go back home so I could have my own cot instead of the poopy travel one. So I pretty much ended up sleeping on Mummy for the night whilst Daddy tossed and turned in the bed next to her as I grumped and mimped and moaned. A lot.

In the morning, a somewhat bleary-eyed Daddy got me up for my first bottle and we fell back asleep on the sofa together as we often do at home. I woke up about 8 and he played with me until half past when we went in to get Mummy up so he could go and call the muster.

Well, it wasn’t a pretty sight, I can tell you. There were moans. There were groans. Tears after bedtime just wasn’t in it, dearie dearie me. You’d think he’d invited her to a ‘bring your own red hot poker’ self-torture party the way she carried on. Pretty much like most mornings really, now I come to think of it.

Eventually however we were able to extricate Mummy from her pit by running out of the bedroom with the covers, and off Daddy went to do muster and also something very special – yes, Daddy actually got to play a game instead of running one! He had spotted a game of 3:16 the night before and ran to the signup boards threatening to flatten anyone who got in his way in case the last remaining spot in the game went before he got there with a pen.

However, pleased though he was, there was a small sting in the tail – namely that sneaky Duncan had given that game Table 1 – right by the Desk so when I arrived with Mummy a little while later after breakfast, Daddy was right on hand to play with me whenever Mummy wanted him to…

3:16 is a very noisy game, it seems. I’m sure I heard quite a few of those bad words that Mummy and Daddy tell each other off for using, and had to Shriek quite loudly so I wouldn’t hear them properly. Naughty Daddy. But in 3:16 you play really bum-kicking space marine types, so I suppose it’s not realistic for them to use words like ‘poop’ and ‘bellybutton’ for emphasis. Though some of them did appear to be using the other kind instead of things like punctuation and grammar, now I come to think of it.

In the afternoon we had a new thing – my first game. Well, sort of. Daddy promised that he would try to run at least one game in the Lodge so she could play it, and they agreed that he would run an old classic he wrote with Uncle Dave, called Midnight’s Children. We played with Aunty Lucy, Lippy and Ryan from Yorkshire, and two other peeps who were brave enough to sign up despite the sheet saying that there would be a cute, gorgeous, but also very loud young baby present throughout. It’s a two parter as well, they were very brave to stick with it until nearly midnight. I was a tad mimpy through a lot of it, but in the end Daddy said that it was a fairly good ending after Aunty Lucy’s character got Dominated by the enemy Sorceror and killed off half the other characters, and Ryan’s got dropped off the back of the Sorceror’s Dragon boss and ended up as jam.

I always have jam with my morning toast. I wonder what flavour it was?

(Part 2 of this report will be filed by our exhausted and still rather ill correspondent when he can find time between feeding and changing to write the rest of it…)