It all started with an e-mail from Wizards of the Coast.  The e-mail contained a link to their convention page, which was featuring Origins and Gen Con.  Wisconsin is so far away from Cincinnati, which is where I live.  I’ve also never been to a gaming convention before and thought Gen Con might be too overwhelming to start out with.  Origins sounded perfect…not quite as big as Gen Con and only two hours away from Cincinnati.  

My husband and I packed up the car Saturday morning and took off for Columbus.  We found the convention center, parked the car, and walked into the convention center with no idea what to expect.  First step, register and receive our passes.  This was no problem since they had at least 30-40 stations whose sole responsibility was to register people.  We grabbed our program and began to explore. 

I really wanted to watch a D&D game in progress.  I’ve only experienced D&D through the eyes of my own group…I was curious to see if everyone else plays the same way as we do.  My one complaint about the convention is the schedule of games that was printed in the program.  Due to the number of games being played throughout the weekend, the schedule was many pages long.  The print was small and you had to refer to a key to determine what day, time and place the game was being held.  I could never figure out what room the game was being played in.  Part of this is due to the fact that this was my first experience with Origins.  There were also several customer service stations I could have stopped at to ask for help with the schedule.  I may have actually asked for help had I not wandered into the Exhibitors Hall… 

Wow…I have never seen so many games in one place in my whole life.  There were games I’ve never heard of before.  Dealers from all over the United States were there to sell, sell, sell.  Needless to say my husband and I spent the rest of the day (and all of our money) in “the game room.”  The one thing I was surprised about was the number of gaming accessories (buildings, terrain, rivers, graves, just about any prop you might need) that are available.  One dealer was even selling molds so that you could make bricks to personally design your own castle, church…just about any type of building you want.  Once assembled, you have the freedom assemble them and paint them so that they look exactly the way you want them to look.  Check out the links below to see some of this cool stuff. 

The “Guests of Honor” list begins with Adrian Paul, star of the TV series, Highlander and the movie,  Highlander:  End Game

http://www.celebrityblvd.com/adrianpaul/  http://www.highlanderendgame.com/closingpage.html 

You never know what to expect from TV/movie stars but Adrian was polite, and seemed very down to earth.  He talked about his new series, Tracker, which is being filmed in Toronto this month (July 2001).  From what Adrian said, he plays an alien tracker sent to earth to track down criminal aliens.  He didn’t go into a lot of detail but said the show would have both comedy and action.  He also admitted he was disappointed with the way Highlander:  End Game turned out.  He attributed the movie’s problems to the fact that too many people had control over the script. 

Other Guests of Honor appearing at the convention were: 

Armin Shimmerman, Quark the barkeep on Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine and Principal Snyder in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: http://www.amuletsgarden.com/armin/

Teryl Rothery, Dr. Frasier on ShowTime’s original series “Stargate SG-1”: www.TerylRothery.com  

Julie Caitlin Brown, Na’Toth from Babylon 5: http://juliecaitlinbrown.outpostatlantis.com/  

We also met Margaret Weis and her husband, Don Perrin who graciously autographed copies of their latest work together, a sequel to The Doom Brigade entitled Draconian Measures.  Be sure to check out their website at http://www.mag7.com/Default.htm.  If you buy a book from their store, www.egameguild.com , Margaret will autograph it for you before it’s shipped. 

Jean Rabe, author of several Dragonlance novels, including Downfall, Betrayal, and The Silver Stair was also kind enough to personalize a book for us.  Check out her website at http://www.sff.net/people/jeanr . 

--Tonya, Wizard's Keep staff