Games for the Bored

Work, sleep, work, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat: There’s only so much the average person can take before it’s time to escape into another world. For some people, that other world is full of drugs, sex and music. For others, escape comes nightly in the form of Will, Grace, Dharma, Greg, Ryan and Trista. And then there are those who catapult themselves into the world of orcs, fairies, aliens, gangsters, soldiers and robots. They’re the gaming geeks, and this weekend, they’re all getting together at OwlCon XXIII for three days of ruthless dice-rolling and role-playing.

“We’ve got everything from live-action role-playing to tabletop role-playing to miniatures games, as well as all kinds of board and card games,” says Tim Gilheart, one of OwlCon’s coordinators. “We also have a 24-hour anime room, a dealer room and a movie lounge, where we’ll show favorite science fiction and fantasy-type movies.”

There will be a big Dungeons & Dragons contingent present, no doubt, but hard-core gamers can also expect lesser-known titles. “There’s a lot of German board games, things like Settlers of Cataan and Puerto Rico,” says Gilheart. “These games are very popular. Germans are very big on involved, advanced board games.” We knew the Germans had a reputation for avant-garde art and wacky porn, but we had no idea they were such innovators in the world of role-playing…

One of the biggest draws will be Cthulhu Live, which sounds a lot more like a theatrical workshop than a run-of-the-mill role-playing game. “This particular game was originally a tabletop role-playing game where a bunch of players would sit around the table with their pizza, sodas, dice, paper, pens and pencils,” says Michael Jason Teegarden, the Cthulhu organizer. Teegarden and his fellow game-keepers have created a live-action, improvisational event based on the original board game.

“It’s set in 1945 Berlin, just following the end of World War II,” he explains. “In kind of a recursive sort of theme, this year’s event is set as a theatrical company itself, so the players are playing characters who are part of a theatrical troupe. They are supposed to be over-the-top drama-queen types.”

The players are pretending to be actors preparing for the opening of a play. Teegarden wants the action to feel as real as possible, so he’s taken steps to ensure that the gamers will feel the stress of the situation, namely depriving them of food at the beginning of the game and coaching them on how to freak out properly once all hell breaks loose. “The game runs from midnight to 5 a.m., so everyone is pretty much die-hard and punch-drunk for the latter half,” he says.

Different players deal with the onslaught of stress in different ways. “About four hours into the game, everybody is either close to the breaking point or has already snapped,” he says. “You have half the group running around — really tense — trying to keep the situation from getting worse, while the other half is running around like a bunch of wackjobs, making the situation worse.”

All of which probably sounds a little too labor-intensive for the average role-player. No worries: There are plenty of other options for those who would rather sit on their asses, have a little fun and then go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Registration starts at 6 p.m. on Friday, February 6, and gaming continues until 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 8. Rice University RMC/Ley Student Center, entrance no. 13 (off Rice Boulevard). For information and a full schedule, visit www.owlcon.com. $16 to $28.