BasedCon AAR

And How no Balls Were Thrown at Jimbo

I know I smile and laugh and talk about how hard it is to be a book reviewer and say things like “It’s off to the salt mines” but the reality is that things have been really rough for me for over a decade now. Since my divorce in 2012, life has been a string of crises and insanity. Doing something nice for myself has meant doing something nice for my kids and then getting to be there with them. And occasions when I could find a way to do something nice for my kids haven’t been all that common either.

So when I worked the overtime, did the math and realized that I got to go out of town (okay, only three hours out of town but it was a totally separate media market at least) for a con, I was geeked. I couldn’t wait. I started counting days five seconds after I got my confirmation email. I’ve been insufferable at work because I’ve been talking about how fun it was going to be to go out of town for the first time since fall of 2011 (seriously, my last vacation was Labor Day Weekend and the Mackinac Bridge Walk, I split up with my ex four months later.) for literally weeks. I’ve been yelled at once or twice for rubbing the fact that I was going out of town in everyone’s faces but the good news is that no one seems to have died as a result of listening to my prattle.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve managed to kill any of my readers with it either. You’re probably safe. I’m mostly harmless.

All of this to say that when I made it to BasedCon it had a lot to live up to. I mean, the amount of pressure organizer Rob Kroese felt was quite honestly zero since we’ve never met or spoken and he has no clue about any of what I just said. The fact remains that he should have been feeling enough pressure to compress the entire Earth into a diamond small enough to fit into a poor woman’s engagement ring. That, by the way, is totes possible according to absolutely no one with any clue what they’re talking about.

At any rate, I was pretty hyped up when I got to BasedCon. The Con had a lot to live up to in order to my eyes. I mean, combine all of what I talked about in the first couple of paragraphs with the fact that there were going to be lots of people there that I wanted to meet on top of getting a chance to see author L.S. King (she lets me call her “Lee” but you can’t because then she’ll be a drip. Or sumfin’. For further details ask her.) I had already met her though, so I wasn’t technically MEETING her but I was still really looking forward to seeing her. There may have been one or two people that didn’t quite make it, but I know they had good reasons and now I have an excuse to stick my tongue out at them if/when we actually meet. You know who you are. Just know I won’t feel bad about it. And besides, I already told one of you I was gonna stick my tongue out at you, so now I get a two-fer.

To be fair, the word Based has a political connotation and it definitely applies here. That’s one of the reasons I went. Seriously, the first night of the con, they allow authors (both published and aspiring, more on this in a minute) to read part of one of their books. A young lady (I didn’t catch her name) walked up to the mic and read for a bit. Someone made a comment about how nice her voice was. Someone else yelled, “I’m calling HR!!” We all laughed. It was great. It’s also the kind of thing that couldn’t happen at most cons without someone getting offended. I love this crowd.

Ok, so now that I’ve spent half the AAR setting the stage, wanna hear about some highlights for Ol’ Jimbo? I knew you did.

So, the first day was kind of dragging until Lee showed up. I kinda didn’t know anybody and it sure was nice to see a familiar face. I helped her set up her table and then found some trouble to get into, trouble being my thing. Unfortunately, the BasedCon crowd is actually made up of really good people and no one else seemed to want to do anything nefarious, or even merely infamous. So I settled for going to a couple of panels. That was cool. Of course, the highlight of the night for me was going to the panel where we all got to read part of our book.

Wait, did Jimbo just say “we”?

Yup, sure did. I read from my Work in Progress that you can read here on Jimbo’s as I make it up for only five bucks a month! I read from Chapter 5 if you already have a paid sub or buy one, but that’s not the point. There are actually three points here:

1.) I was a band geek in high school, but it’s been thirty years since I’ve been on a stage and even then I wasn’t by myself. I went up there, read my passage and thereby proved to myself that I have the clock-weights to do it. This was a big deal to me.

2.) When they announced the title of my book (It Begins: Blood and Dominion Book One) I heard some reactions and they were all positive. That really had me geeked. The reaction to my writing was about the same as what everyone else got, but that’s awesome too. At least I didn’t get booed.

3.) We were limited to two minutes of reading. At two minutes thirty seconds you got pelted with Nerf balls. I managed to get done at about the two minute twenty second mark just before I got nailed. That was pretty cool.

Then we had Nerd Trivia. I…

Err…

Well…

YOU CAN HAVE MY NERD CARD WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!!

Yeah, that didn’t go so well. I need to watch more Monty Python, I guess. And I didn’t do too well in most of the other categories either. Basically, my team came in last place. But I take full responsibility. I mean, I’ve been called The King of the Nerds at least twice (true story) and it was my job to lead my subjects to victory. Sorry, Chris.

And after that I took my sorry behind to be because I had been up really late the night before dealing with a few things and then up early to go to the con. I was OTJ: One Tired Jimbo.

Saturday is the big day at any con, and BasedCon is no exception. There were a bunch of panels on things I really liked. History and the Power of the Narrative was a lot of fun for a history nerd like me and the panel on the Cuban Missile Crisis had me entranced. Again: History Nerd. I was having a great time. Then there was the superhero panel. Then came lunch.

Let me say this much about BasedCon: The food is included in what would otherwise be a very expensive ticket and it’s good. They serve lunch and dinner on Friday, all three meals on Saturday, and breakfast and lunch on Sunday. That’s seven meals included in the price of your ticket. Breakfast and lunch were buffet style and dinners were sit down meals. Next year I’m getting the salmon if they offer it again. This year I got the chicken both nights and it was excellent.

They also have a really good con-suite with a bunch of good snacks, some of which were home baked and plenty of beverages. If you go hungry at BasedCon you’re doing it wrong.

Anyway…

After lunch was a panel about Fiction and Role Playing Games that really had me amped up because I love both. (Write that down. It’ll be important later.) I meant to take a lot of notes at this one and failed because I was too in to what was being said to write any of it down, so if you read this and you’ve got some good notes, send them to me. Needless to say though, it was a good time.

Then I totes skipped the next panel because I’m not much at planning cons and I really needed to poop. Yeah, that’s TMI but whatever, I’m Jimbo.

Dispatches from the Culture War was fun, informative and, if you’re the based type, inspirational. We’ve had a couple of interesting wins lately and that makes me happy.

After that came what ended up being probably the highlight of the weekend for me: I got to play the Ascendant RPG, GMed by its creator, Alex Macris who also wrote the Ascendent graphic novel that I reviewed here. I’m not going to do a full review of an RPG that I’ve only played once and haven’t had time to read through, but I will say that it as really fun if a bit crunchy and that I found the Hero Points mechanic to be a really cool thing to include in a superhero game.

Alex was a truly awesome GM in that he not only knew his game and how to run it, he managed to guide nine(!) total n00bs through an adventure and make sure we all felt included and had enough of a grasp of the game to play it effectively. I was so impressed that I just bought his book about GM’ing but I haven’t read it in the five solid seconds that I’ve owned it. I’m not a superhero; I’ll just play one at the gaming table. So he did an awesome job and then a bunch of us got autographed graphic novels. That was really cool because the only thing better than an awesome graphic novel is an autographed awesome graphic novel.

And yeah, it was even more cool playing Ascendant because I got to play the game with the guy who created it, but it would’ve been fun either way. That was just bonus money.

And that capped Day Two of BasedCon for the Jimbo.

Sunday was fun but, as at most cons, short. There were three panels in the morning, all of which I enjoyed. The Military Sci-Fi and Fantasy panel was probably my favorite, but Catholics in Space and AI and the Death of the Shared Narrative were cool too. Then came lunch. Afterward, it was Real American Heroes which gave me some things to think about since I’ll have on in my current WiP if I do it right and it was good to have some input that might come in handy later.

And that was that. Rob came up. thanked us all for coming and asked us to come and take some of the food from the con-suite so that it didn’t go to waste. I actually kinda bounced without doing so though. I was tired and it was a long trip home and I wanted to stop by my sister’s house to see her and my mom (mission accomplished there) on the way.

I can’t wait to go back next year. Rob throws a great Con and I just know it’s gonna be a good time again. For now though, I gotta get in bed. Work in the morning.