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The Matsuricon 2018 Quest Log (Con-quest part 3)

Welcome to part 3 of the Con-Quest log. If you missed parts 1 or 2, allow me to recap what this blog is about. I spend my conventions doing something a little bit unusual. I’ve started to call the activity “Con-questing”.

Con-questing (Short for convention questing) basically means, I go a step further than just dressing as and acting out my character (One of my D&D/Pathfinder Ranger characters). I live out the occupation of a freelance adventurer. If you’ve played many open world RPG games like Skyrim, you know what that entails. I go out of my way to try to find people who will give me a quest, write it down in my quest log, and attempt to accomplish it to the best of my ability. So basically its live action side questing.

This time around, we attended Matsuricon, held in the same convention center in Columbus Ohio as a Ohayocon. Which was the start of my con-questing journey in part 1. So I know the lay of the land quite well. The theme of this year’s Matsuricon however was Medieval Fantasy. Meaning, well… I couldn’t not go. Yes, I had finally gotten my tax return just at the end of the summer, thus I had something to coast by on. But it would be another few months before I would finally get a job. (That being four weeks ago as of the time I’m writing this blog. Yay jobs!) So Matsuricon, for those who are unfamiliar with anime cons in Ohio is kinda the big con with a small con feel. Despite being in the same building as Ohayocon, the heart of the con is very different. It’s a little more intimate, which is perfect for adventurers like me.

Although, remember. This was a medieval fantasy themed anime con, so I somewhat blended into the background a little more. And in fact, people started getting me confused with a different OC ranger character who was actually GIVING people quests! So, its safe to say I had to track down my counterpart and figure out what was going on. After all, those who didn’t mistake us ended up thinking we planned our cosplays out somehow. I assure you, it was pure coincidence. I refer to her as “The quest giver” in my quest journal.

I didn’t get as many party members this time around, though what I did get was just as good. Plenty of reoccurring RP encounters with various other D&D themed characters. Oh, and uh... Yes, Donald Trump was holding a rally at the con in a different part of the building... Yeah... With that all said, here are the results of my adventuring.

Matsuricon 2018 Quest Log:

Completed Quests:

O | Acquire the blood of a most holy man. (Ended up stalking another “Generic Cleric OC” for a few hours. After some interesting RP encounters which usually ended with him nervously backing away from me as I earnestly requested his blood while waving my foam dagger, I finally obtained it from a different priest.)

O | Sack the holy land and shout “Deus Vult!” (Same priest consecrated a spot of land. I put a sac on it.)

O | T Pose to assert my dominance.

O | Find 5 Traps.

O | Say “Hi” to Doug at the bar.

O | Find Trump. (The entity was in the Ohayocon dealer’s room. It’s voice… I can still hear it.)

O | Find citizens to join the Enclave. (Attend a Fallout photoshoot.)

O | At the behest of Fuhrer Mustang, bring him Risa Hawkeye.

O | Tell Revi that Dutch said “Get your ass back to the boat.” (She looked like she was about to shoot the messenger, but then gave me a head pat.)

O | Join a party to do a scavenger hunt.

O | Renew a parking meter. (One of my high school pals. Wouldn’t normally follow someone that far from the con)

O | Find Jack Sparrow.

O | Befriend two adventurers. One with a futuristic weapon, another of anthropomorphic qualities.

O | Survived Bendy. (Less a quest, more of a strange encounter.)

O | Slay a dragon.

O | Fell for the tentacle monster’s trap.

O | Try to pay a vender with a single copper piece.

O | Play Dungeons and Dragons as my character. (Been forever since I played 3.5E)

O | Find a familiar.

O | Escort fantasy Midoria to the spiral stairs.

O | Hug a storm Trooper.

O | Give a donation to No Face.

O | “Find me a pencil.” (He didn’t say I had to buy it.)

O | Receive a flower from an Ouran High School Host Club cosplayer and give it to the prettiest princess you see. (This was actually my hardest quest.)

O | Join a search party and find the woman with a TV for a head.

O | Find a Jojo’s reference and shout “Is That a Jojo’s Reference!?”

O | Do the Quest Giver’s Quest.

O | Do someone else’s Quest Giver’s Quest.

O | Find the Quest Giver again and give her back all these quests people keep giving me.

O | Murder 1 shit poster with my foam dagger.

O | Hug 3 furries.

O | Find Raptor Jesus.

O | Photobomb somebody.

O | Go AFK while facing the wall.

O | Acquire a starfish from Fuuko.

O | Catch a Pikachu while jumping on one leg.

O | Sit on the shoe shiner’s throne like a king for about an hour.

O | Go up to 10 Cosplays that you know and get their cosplays wrong.

O | Take a photo for a random group.

O | Help a guy find his twin brother.

O | Find a famous comic book guy’s painting.

O | Find four homestuck cosplays and say “Hi”

O | Go to a panel.

Failed Quests:

X | Join a Death Note Mafia game.

X | Escort Zorro across the con.

X | Find Todd Habericorn and tell him his Natsu is ignorant, then tell him you’re sorry.

X | Snap a selfie with Trump. (I neither could have, nor wanted to. Just hearing his voice… >.> )

X | Wait for High Five Guy’s friend.

X | Find the 3 Kittens from the Aristicats.

X | Find the fox guy who was throwing foxes at people.

Carry Over Quests: (Sunday quests I reserve for the next con.)

- Find Kirin at another Con

- Find the holy Grail.

- Make a real life potion from a game, cartoon, or anime series, and drink it.

- Find 10 Pencils and give them to the most beautiful girl you see at the con.

Here are 2 pictures of me in the background. After missing Ohayocon this year, My next con will be Colossalcon 2019, so if you have any quests you’d like to start me off with, feel free to comment below.

[conquesterandric-blog]

The Colossalcon 2018 Quest Log. (Con-quest part 2)

I suppose I learned a few things in my second con as a freelance adventurer.

Sometimes a failed adventure makes for a better story than a successful adventure.

A party of adventurers is much more efficient than a solo adventurer.

You can survive at Colossalcon without a room if you know how to hide your camp.

Welcome to part 2 of my con-quest log. If you missed the first part, Con-questing is just another layer of activities I do at anime cons. Not only do I cosplay and larp out my D&D/Pathfinder ranger character, but actually take it a step further and attempt to do that thing freelance adventurers do. You know, try to obtain quests from random people, seek out treasures of forgotten lore, and explore the extra planar dungeon space I find myself trapped in with all these strange other people. This time however, I had to work around a few real world obstacles to continue my experience. Yes, aside from gas money, I was flat broke the entire con. I had obtained my con badge far in advance, my tax return was absurdly late, I quit my 48 hour a week (Minimum) job so I could hopefully find something part time in order to have time to work on projects, so I had barely any money at that point... You get the picture. Basically I parked far in the back of the building under the shade of a tree and camped out in the back seat the entire con. (Thus the unkempt appearance in several pics.) Resorting to emergency rations if needed, trying to ignore the night parties at the bungalows that were happening near by, all that stuff.

And if you’re wondering how the hell I was able to run around in all that medieval garb in the scorching summer heat, well…

I have way more heat tolerance than anyone raised in Ohio ever should have, and:

You should’a seen Darth Vader.

But compared to Ohayocon, I noticed something different about the people in Colossalcon. Like it’s a lot of the same people, but they’re much more open to playing along and interacting with this adventurer. I have a theory though. Gotta be that people are pent up in their homes all winter, so by the time Ohayocon rolls around, its much more like they have expectations of what they want their con to be. Hence, people are a little more stressed, and thus more reserved when it comes to interacting with freelance adventurers or other roleplayers. Where as Colossalcon? It’s a summer con. People just want to have fun. They relax, they go with the flow, and are less guarded. More likely to approach or even participate. Yes, I had several people join my party and quest with me at Colossalcon. That alone was kinda more rewarding.

Anyways, just found that interesting, because remember. I’ve been to all the Ohio conventions a thousand times, but when I experience them as a freelance adventurer, I get to see different sides to them.

So yeah. All that said, here is what I accomplished at Colossalcon 2018. This time, let’s start with the failed quests.

Colossalcon 2018 Quest Log:

Failed Quests:

X | Bounty Hunt Storm Trooper X. (We had a swordsmen, a gunman, and a black mage. He had a party of 5, all armed with laser blasters. We lost.)

X | Find the Vault 101 Rock. (We found a Kingdom Hearts rock instead.)

X | Acquire a boyfriend for Jody.

X | Hug Monika. Just Monika. (Failed because none showed up at the photoshoot and I couldn’t abstain from hugging all the Sayuris while murmuring emotionally uplifting encouragements.)

X (Sorta) | Solve the Riddler’s Conundrums.

X | Count all the Deku scrubs. (At this point I was too bored of counting quests. They aren’t very fun to be honest.)

━━━━━━━━━━

Carry Over Quests:

- | Join a Death Note Mafia game.

━━━━━━━━━━

Completed quests:

O | Recruit a mage, a healer, a tank, a rogue, and an animal companion for the duration of two quests.

O | Infiltrate a photoshoot and try to convince everyone there you are a character from that series. (So apparently none of the final fantasy cosplayers have played FFXI.)

O | Save an NPC’s family from Shadow Link.

O | Find Sailor Pluto and say “Hi”.

O | Unionize the fellow adventurers

O | Find an oversized cosplay and take a picture with it.

O | Find out who pulled the fire alarm. (It was actually the Kalahari staff. They wanted to fix an AC unit, so they pulled it to get everyone out of the building. It was pulled a second time by accident when they went to reset it.)

O | Hold the Door for 10 minutes.

O | Acquire 10 hugs again.

O | Team up with the Saiyens.

O | Circumnavigate the entire exterior of the Kalahari building. (Twice).

O | Duel on the bridge.

O | Give a Kaiju a hug.

O | Objectively “Have a great con.”

O | Follow R2D2 around like a duckling.

O | Pat head and rub belly at the same time.

O | Find Amethyst and Garnet.

O | Find 2 Yugis in one place.

O | Start a game of Ninja

O | Find a cat, get a cat quest.

O | —Cat Quest: Find an assortment of Rainbow Monkeys and Snakes.

O | Show a party where to get food. Acquire a free meal. (I am still eternally grateful!)

O | Escort a party to the volleyball court.

O | Acquire Treasure for Santa.

O | Help Caden find friends.

O | Acquire Food for Security.

O | Escort another group to the volleyball court.

O | Acquire 3 Rathian Plates for the monster hunter lady.

O | Get picture taken with a badge checker in it.

O | Find an easter egg with a pet in it.

O | Duel 2B.

O | Fistbump Prompto.

O | Hug a Noctis.

O | Take a picture with Sexy-time Waluigi.

O | Loot a Dragon. (Yet again, I acquired whatever a Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid” cosplayer was willing to lend me.)

O | Find a 1994 penny.

O | Count all the dogs at the con. (We estimated about 3 1/2)

O | Chidori a Naruto Character.

O | Hug someone while doing the dooglebob scream. (Awkward...)

O | Hug Laura Croft. (Guess she really wanted a hug. Dunno why she made it a quest.)

O | Give a piggy back ride from one end of the hall to the other. (And back.)

O | Help a tired fox locate her best friend.

O | Slap my adventuring Companion. (Quest acquired by his friend.)

O | Ask Ignis to make me a sandwich.

O | Ask Arden to murder me.

Join me next time, where I shall post the results of my con-questing at Matsuricon in Columbus Ohio. My next conquest this year will be at Colossalcon again. This time, preferably with money. And as like last time, here are some pictures of me questing that I was able to track down on facebook. Some correspond to the quests.

Quest 15: Follow R2D2 around like a duckling while quacking.

Quest 29: Get picture taken with a badge checker in it.

Quest 30: Find an easter egg. (Found by our party black mage, as seen in the picture.)

Quest 31: Duel 2B

Quest 34: Sexytime Waluigi

[conquesterandric-blog]

WTF is HVZ?

So yeah. If you caught my last blog about what I do at anime cons, then you could probably guess that I’m the kinda guy who likes to... augment my reality with a little immersive fiction. Ever since I was little, my friends and I were out fighting each other with sticks, dividing the yard into various territories which we would battle over. This time however, we trade the quest journal and fantasy adventurer gear in for nerf blasters, foam darts, socks, bandanas, tactical vests to hold all those plastic ammo clips you’re going to need to defend yourself against the undead menace... And of course you will want to drop all that once you get tagged, and have to join them. For after dying, the game does not end. It changes.

Humans Vs Zombies (hvz) is often described as a game of tag where nerds with nerf blasters run around and shoot nerds with bandanas on their heads who are trying to sneak up and grab them. Another way to look at it however, is live action left 4 dead, but spread out over the span of a week (Save for invite games, which could be anywhere from 1 day to 3 days long), and you only start off with a handful of zombies and a majority of human players. Over the course of the game however, particularly past the midweek or midday point, the balance of the game shifts into the favor of the zombies, and the humans find themselves backed into a corner where they have to grasp for any advantage they can to survive the next day.

It’s a game I hold very near and dear to my heart. After all, its a game that taught me how to keep my cool in intense pressure. It’s a game that taught me a lot about body language, and how to spot suspicious people at a distance just by their movements. It’s a game where you can build trusting bonds of friendship that will last for ages. After all, you know someone is trustworthy when its just you and five other dudes (term is gender neutral in this case) bracing for a charge where you are greatly out numbered. And it’s a game anyone can join, regardless of how athletic or skilled you are. Because its a game that almost universally (Least in most schools I see) encourages community over skill. I’ve seen seasoned veterans, crippled old men, little kids, grandmothers, and college kids all play this game. Doesn’t matter. Anyone can pick it up, anyone can join, and anyone can leave with a story to tell. Which brings me to my next point.

My name is Andric. The dude in the cute matching red pants. And I’ve been playing this game for the past 10 years. I am a member of Red-Team, a team of players from Athens, Ohio. And trust me on this one. I have nothing BUT stories to tell, tactics to teach, and Athens lore to preserve.

[conquesterandric-blog]

How I spend my time at conventions. (A freelance adventurer’s Ohayocon 2018 quest log)

I’ve been going to anime cons since 2007, and yeah. Over the years, I have thousands of experiences to share. But as you could imagine, I hit a point where I’d been to so many that the experiences blur together. And of course, the boredom inevitably shifts in. Add to that, there are certain sociological shifts that occurred in the anime community which have kinda changed how people interact with each other at anime cons. As anime becomes more and more mainstream, this is inevitable. Though please understand. I’ve seen anime cons in their pioneer stage. They were a lot more fun, a lot crazier, and it was so much easier to talk to people. Because everyone you met was predisposed to be your BFF, since finding people to talk to about anime in those days was… Kinda a challenge. But yes. I’ve seen Collossalcon before it was in the Kalahari when it was just a bunch of sweaty otaku shoved into a hotel that was way too small for it. (And yes, I was there for the infamous “tornado con” that one year.) And I remember when the first anime punch back when… You know, that was a thing.

So as I got older, and people at cons started to get rather stand-offish and were less inclined to meet people, things started to become stale. I mean granted, I’m a social introvert, but I don’t consider myself shy. I just don’t talk to people unless I have an excuse to talk to them. So, I got to thinking. How can I change the experience to make interactions easy, and still add to the list of unpredictable and fun things to do at a con?

And then I started larping as my Pathfinder character, Tobias Wren. A freelance adventurer of the ranger class, who was always struggling to keep up a living wage outside of the guild monopoly. Of course I’d always been curious as to how freelance adventurers market themselves. So… I went to the dealer’s room, obtained a leather bound journal (And an animal companion), and started to market my adventuring skills. Then, using the front page of the journal, I started to market myself to random con-attendees like you probably have been at one point. Most just read the sign and laughed, or complimented that they liked what I was going for. (The whole starving freelancer thing.) But the few who actually thought it out and decided to give me a quest found amusement as I flipped the journal open and wrote it down. And this was the result of my questing.

Ohayocon: 2018 Quest Log.

Carry over quests:

(Since they were good ideas, but were given too late for me to do on Sunday. Thus they are pending for Colossalcon.)

Recruit a mage, a healer, a tank or rogue, and an animal companion, to join the party for the duration of at least two quests.

Infiltrate a photoshoot and try to convince the people there that you are a character from that series.

━━━━━━━━━━

Completed quests:

(Quests that were obtained and completed.)

O | Figured out why my amulet of trap finding kept going off.

O | Found "Da Wei" (Yup. And I didn’t even need Ebola.)

O | Escorted a woman to her friends.

O | Escorted a warlock to his friends.

O | Hugged 10 random strangers

O | Hugged 3 “Gorgeous” women

O | Got 5 princesses to tell me "Your princess is in another castle" without telling them to say that.

O | Acquired Bubble Tea for a con security guard at the prop check table.

O | Escorted a pack of trolls to Con Ops.

O | Found treasure by the elevator on the third floor. (It was a glow stick)

O | Looted a dragon & Acquired a trophy from a dinosaur. (I kinda combined these two from two different quest givers.)

O | Joined in a game of "Cards against humanity."

O | Best Bishojo Link in a duel. (Sort of.)

O | Try a puzzle app game.

O | Dance with the dancing girls in the hallway.

O | Acquired an animal companion.

O | Have a picture taken of myself.

O | Walk from one end of the con to the other without spotting any undertale cosplays. (Just put my cloak hood over my eyes.)

O | Acquire pink lemonade and a fill a plastic cup of water for Gaming staff members.

O | Approach a Daenerys cosplayer and do a Jorah Mormont impression.

━━━━━━━━━━

Failed Quests:

(Quests that for some reason or another were never able to be completed.)

X | Find a man with an exclamation mark on his head at the bottom of the large escalators.

X | Find a lost cloak. (Another adventurer found it.)

X | Find a missing hotel key and return it to the hotel.

━━━━━━━━━━

And after that, my fate was sealed. I became the “con-quester.” After honing my craft a little more at Colossalcon (I’ll post that quest list later, as it’s much larger with more fun quests.), I have since created a few common sense rules.

Adventurer’s Code:

I reserve the right to deny quests.

Must be legal.

I will not accept real world currency as a quest reward.

Nothing involving alcohol. (I know. Dude in his 30s who was born on St. Pattrick’s day that doesn’t drink. Strange, huh?)

Consent must be obtained if I have to do something to someone.

No more “Counting” or “Free Hugs” quests. (They get boring.)

Only con Staff and Venders can ask for me to buy things.

I can draft party members to aid me in quests. (I don’t have a camera or a phone with a good one, so I generally party up with people who do.)

I’m perfectly fine with people copying me. Rival adventurers are always fun to compete against.

There will of course be more of my heroic con-questing, so if you enjoyed reading this, feel free to stick around. And of course if you want me to elaborate on any of my side quests, like that time I found “Da Wei”, feel free to ask. The next con I will be covering is Colossalcon 2018, and that consequently will be the next one I attend this year as well. And for the hell of it, here’s some pics of me I was able to salvage from the bowels of the book of faces.