Rune 89

Rune #89Volume 15, No. 3

2nd printing(Fixed date of Minicon 49 & copyright status of Ken Fleter art)

Mahew and Kelly Strait, editorsPublished by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society

You are geing this because:

You ced/otherwise contributed to this issue/Editorial whimYou are a club we’ve heard ofYou are a voting MNSTF memberYou pied this copy up at a con or similar

You ought to get the next issue if you:

• Send us a leer of comment, fanzine in trade, or any amount of money (sug-gested amount: $2.07;es to “Minnesota Science Fiction Society”), or in someother way actively tell us that you want it.

• Are a voting member of Minnstf.

You can request receiving the next issue on paper if you got this one by email, or viceversa.

For :c/o Mahew and Kelly Strait1228 E 54th St #1EChicago IL 60615rune@mnstf.orgmnstf.org/Rune

For general Mnstf correspondence:Minn-stfPO Box 8297Lake Street StationMinneapolis MN 55408info@mnstf.orgmnstf.org

Please contact Minicon, the Minnstf fallcon, and Minneapolis in 2073 as directed byea convention.

Uncredited material © 2013 Minnesota Science Fiction Society. Credited material© 2013 by the contributor(s), all rights reserved, or as marked, except as follows:Content by Ma Strait is bequeathed to the public domain. Art by Rael Kroni isreleased under Creative CommonsAribution, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0.In Rune 88, we failed to credit Rael’s blimp on the ba cover, the same as whiappears in this issue. It was and is ©her. Art by Ken Fleter is in the public domain.Except for the board minutes, nothing here constitutes official statements by the club.

Rune #89 1 Nov 2013

Hi There!Wemanaged to get another issue out!Wehope you enjoy it.e plan is for anotheraround May. Having issues follow consseems like a good paern. In this issuewe feature METHOD Con reports. LookforMinicon 49 reports in Rune 90. In fact,don’t just look for them, send us yours!

We are also interested in nearly anyother writings or art you might producethat is in some way topical to Mnstf, SF,fandom, or related to one of those, orrelated to something that is related to oneof those. If it’s something you could havea panel about, it can be here too.

Mnstf Birthse ild formerly known as Godot hasarrived and is now known as Alex. Hewas born in April 2010, and came to liveinMinnesota in July 2012, with his lovingyet exhausted parents, Betsy Lundstenand Ma Eppelheimer.

Minn-stf EventsMinnstf throws bimonthly Saturdayhouse parties. ey’re called “meetings”,but the only meeting-ish thing aboutthem is the 5-minute “business meeting”,mostly for the purpose of announcingthe next meeting. e parties officiallystart at 2pm, but are very quiet until4pm. Usually they run past midnight. Tofind the next meeting/party, look at thefront page of our website or the Einbla,mnstf.org/einbla. You can subscribe tothe Einbla by email or, for $10/year, onpaper. e next meetings:• Nov 16 at Jonathan & CarolKennedy’s, 3328 Colfax Ave S, Mpls.

• Dec 7 at Ann Totusek & Kelly James’,7765 Drew Ave N, Brooklyn Park.

• Dec 21 at Sco & Irene Raun’s, 392811th Ave S, Mpls.

And we throw conventions. To wit:• Easter weekend 2014, April 1712–20:Minicon 49 (mnstf.org/minicon49).GoH: author Catherynne Valente,author Janny Wurts, artist Don Maitz.Minicon is a general-purpose sciencefiction and fantasy convention andour biggest event of the year. See thead/registration form in this issue.

• (Probably a fallcon in Oct 2014, butnothing confirmed yet.)

• Easter weekend 2015, April 2–5 (4days):Minicon 50. GoH: authors JaneYolen, Larry Niven, and BrandonSanderson, musician Adam Stemple,publisher Tom Doherty.

• Dates TBA, 2073: e 131st World-con. Contingent on being selected bythe World Science Fiction Society.

ContentsLeers of comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Board minutes, bylaw amendments . . . 6Running gaming at a con, Ri Price . 10Minicon financials, Ma Strait . . . . . . 17METHOD Con conreports & photos . 21

Art CreditsCover: Teddy HarviaPage 5: Larry TisPage 6: Ken FleterPage 9: Teddy HarviaPage 16: Brad FosterPage 31: Alec PhillipsBa cover blimp: Rael Kroni

Rune #89 2 Nov 2013

Letters of Comment

AndMinneapolis in 2073Progress Report 6

Rune88

From Rachel Kronick:

Got my copy of Rune 88 a few daysago; it looks great! I of course found atypo almost immediately upon openingmy articles, and the cover was slightlymunged up, but su is life. I like theTeddy Harvia and Brad Foster cartoons!I might have to do some of my own atsome point…

ere was definitely a Con-sume/Relaxacon in or aer 2004, becauseI went to at least one and I wasn’t in thecountry from 1996 to 2004. Were youonly listing Consume/Relaxacons thatwere run by Mnstf? Apparently therewas one or two that Ri Gellman ranwithout Mnstf sponsorship (I think itwas sponsored by SF Minnesota, but thatmay be wrong).

Yes, I was aempting to list only the

Consume/Relaxacon’s that were Minn-stf cons, although it’s not particularlyclear whi those were. We know 2002was. 2001 and 2003 may have been, butthe records and recollections (and per-haps the reality) are so murky that Ihave given up and just marked them as“maybe”. e others certainly were not.Of course, since they ran only in a stringof years with no Mn-stf fallcons, andwere aended (I think) by mostly thesame people as aend Minnstf fallcons,the distinction could perhaps be arguedto be irrelevant. But that wouldn’t be suf-ficiently pedantic for my tastes. –Ma

From Mike Sheffield:

I notice from reading the meeting min-utes that MNSTF is working on geingtheir 501(c)(3). Having just gone throughthe process two years ago, I know itcan be difficult, especially for an orga-nization that has existed for some time.e Heinlein Society was incorporatedas a non-profit in the state of Texas inNovember of 2000, but never appliedfor federal tax-exempt status until 2010,whi made the process more difficultthat it would have been in the begin-ning. We got help from Patel & Almeida,taxexemptionlaw.com, and I can highlyrecommend them if you need assistance.ey arge $599, but will refund theirfee if the IRS denies your status.

Also, be prepared once you apply towait a long time for approval. It tookmore than a year for us to receive ap-

Rune #89 3 Nov 2013

proval, though it was retroactive to thedate we applied.

As of July, we got our 501(c)(3) status!We also hired a lawyer to get it done.

From Lloyd Penney:

1706-24 Eva Rd.Etobicoke, ONCANADA M9C 2B2

ank you for a paper copy of issue88 of Rune! It’s always a pleasure to seethis honoured title continue. Once I canget my hands on a few American dollars,I should send in some for a Minneapolisin 2073 pre-support. Or, I could send yousome Canadian dollars, and make yournext financial report even more interna-tional.

Happy belated first birthday to Nora!It is good to see Teddy Harvia’s return tofanzine cartooning. He’s been missed, ashave the Wingnuts and his other arac-ters.

My loc… looks like there will soon beannounced a Worldcon bid for Montréalin 2017. We’ve pre-supported that, and Igather the official announcement will bemade at this year’s Smofcon in Toronto.

e articles on convention costingare a good sign… many conrunners failto see conrunning as a business. IMHO,it must be run like on in order to succeed.Don’t forget the customer service end ofthings, but the boom line and completefinancial reports ensure that the goodtimes will resume the next year. It’s afine balance between business aitudes,customer service and making sure the

commiee is happy, but investing timemoney and ideas in imaginative eventswill make those experienced return, andbring in new faces to keep aendancefresh.

Hello to Jeanne Mealy! We’ve rein-vented ourselves as dealers, and we of-fer steampunk jewellery (earrings, ne-laces and brooes, some hand made byme), and hats and cushions (hand madeand/or decorated by Yvonne), plus anyother items that may have that steam-punk vibe. We have a good source ofsteampunk/Victorian-ear jewellery, andwe also hit a number of yard sales easummer, for you never know what peo-ple put out for sale.

I’ve been involved in one MarkTimeAward winner… Fears For Ears was di-rected and produced by Aida Memise-vic, five horror short stories, all wrienby Canadian writers, converted to radio-style plays, on a CD anthology. I had onerole in ea of two stories, and the diskwon the Mark Time Ogle GOLD Awardin 2002. I wish I could do more voice-work, but su projects have completelydried up around here, or I have com-pletely dropped out of the loop. I suspectthe laer.

From Larry Tisch:

523 So. G #304Tacoma, WA 98405

I just got home from work and I’mvery tired. I work at the big newspa-per here in town. Discovered a copy ofin my mailbox‼ ank you, thankyou‼ I have contributed art work to you

Rune #89 4 Nov 2013

in the past and I’m so happy you stillremember me.

ese days I’m contributing cartoonsto a ess magazine in California butthought you might like to see a few. Youmay use them if you want.

I’m not a computer guy, probablythe only one in the country, but I justlike geing printed material by mail. Sofew fanzines are actually on paper thesedays.

I’m not dead yet. I’m still here!Love to hear from anyone by mail.

And:

publius of the Luna Project, sent Min-neapolis in 2073 a Luna City or Bustmedallion as part of his pre-supportingmembership, and said “If you’re project-ing a human population of 2.5 to 3×1012

in the year 2073, with 1.7×1012 in aen-dance, I guess you’ll need to negotiatequite the facilities contract!”

We also heard from Jeanne Mealyand got copies of Banana Wings, NiceDistinctions and the NESFA InstantMessage. �

Rune #89 5 Nov 2013

Minn-stf Board MinutesAll taken by Kevin G. Austin, Recording Secretary.

22 May 2013

Location: Home of Beth Friedman,6915 10th Ave. S., Rifield, MN. In at-tendance: Sco Raun, Beth Friedman,Hershey Lima, Dean Gahlon, Kevin G.Austin, Morwen T. Cat. Meeting beganat 7:36pm.

Old BusinessFallcon: Patricia doesn’t have a signedhotel contract yet.

Botanist: Dean hasn’t contacted KimHue yet.

Non-profit status: Aorney costscame to approximately $500. We are cur-rently waiting for an IRS response. Bethdid fill out the online e-Postcard tax form990-N for Mnstf.

Signer angeover: Done!Minicon 49 & 50 proposals: Are now

up on the web on the Minn-stf recordspage.

Minicon 47 (46?) profit e: Hasbeen deposited. Beth questions whetherthis is the e for Minicon 47 or Mini-con 46. Minicon 48 profit e: No wordyet.

Webmaster: Nothing has been doneyet.

Tax form: See non-profit status entry.Annual elist: Emily sent the URL

of the Google Docs document to theboard. Beth hasn’t finished editing it yet.

2012 Minutes: Kevin and Emilyhaven’t met yet to go over the minutesthat aren’t yet on the web.

Treasurer’s Report: Dean has a copyof the report from Carol whi he willemail to Kevin who will then get it onthe web.

CONvergence Party: It will be aMinicon party this year. We’re fine withMinicon spending $300 dollars on it,but anything more than $500 will bringstrong disapproval from the board. IfJoel wants money from the board he,or someone representing Minicon, has tocome to the board and ask for it.

New BusinessPolicy for Memorials: Cards are alwaysappropriate. We need to appoint some-one to take care of doing this. More dis-cussion is needed on this topic.

Emily & Pride: We approve of Emilytaking arge of Minnstf representationat Pride. Kevin will tell her. Kevin willlook for the file of the Minnstf flyer.

Next meeting: June 9th at Beth’s at3pm.

Rune #89 6 Nov 2013

6 September 2013

Location: Home of Beth Friedman,6915 10th Ave. S., Rifield, MN. In at-tendance: Hershey Lima, Dean Gahlon,Kevin G. Austin, Beth Friedman, ScoRaun [via phone], Morwen T. Cat, JoelPhillips. Meeting began at 3:15pm.

Fallcon: No contract yet.Botanist: No contact yet. If not ac-

complished by next month we’ll dropthis.

Non-profit Status: No update.Minicon 48 Profit Che: Beth asked

Ma Strait. Ma said they are still quib-bling with the hotel over a arge, butif that continues he will just pay them.Aer that they’ll be able to determinefinal profit and send a e to Mn-Stf.

Webmaster: None yet.

Annual Chelist: Beth has edited it.She’ll either put it on the wiki or getsomeone else to.

2012 Minutes: No progress.Treasurer’s Report: Dean will send a

copy to Kevin who will get it on the web.CONvergence Party: Joel asks for

$300 from MinnStf. Board says okay.Beth will tell Carol.

Policy for Memorials: Beth will talkto Carol about being point for memo-rials. We’ll leave it up to the discretionof the person in arge of memorials ifanything beyond a card is appropriate upto a maximum of $50.

Next meeting: July 27th, 2013 at 1pmat Beth Friedman’s house.

2013-07-27

Location: Home of Beth Friedman,6915 10th Ave. S., Rifield, MN. In at-tendance: Hershey Lima, Dean Gahlon,Kevin G. Austin, Beth Friedman, ScoRaun, Irene Raun. Minutes from the pre-vious meeting were approved.

Fallcon: Contract signed. Web pageup. We approve seed money.

Botanist: We decide to drop the posi-tion.

Non-profit status: We’ve goen theofficial leer of approval. We decide toput the original of the leer in the MnStfarives.

Minicon 48 profit e: Sco willtalk to Ma Strait about it.

Webmaster: Sco will talk to DD-Band ask him if he’ll do the account move

as a project.Annual elist: Beth will put it on

the wiki.2012 minutes: Kevin will email Emily

to ask her if she can do it without hisassistance.

Treasurer’s report: Dean will send acopy to Kevin who will get it on the web.

CONvergence party: From EmilyStewart: Minicon/MnStf Room Party atCONvergence - July 4, 5, & 6 2013. etotal budget for this party was $600 ($300from MnStf and $300 from Minicon).Clay Harris reported that the party re-ceived two Minicon memberships.

Policy for memorials: Beth talked toCarol about being point for memorials.Carol is willing as long as it is under-

Rune #89 7 Nov 2013

stood that this is a non-officer positionthat isn’t tied to the Treasurer positionand instead is treated more like an on-going task. e approved amount is $50plus delivery fees if any.

New BusinessRune 88 Financial: Board approvesamounts put forward by Ma in hisemail.

Anime Detour Room Party: Boardapproves a party and an amount of $200.

Min-I-Con: Board says they’re okaywith another convention calling itselfMin-I-Con. Dean will let the personknow who asked.

Harassment Policy: We decide thatwe’ll start with a meta-harassment pol-

icy that will be put into the By-Laws.Kevin will come up with wording andemail the anges to board-at. Beforewe make any anges we will email tonaer, and the concom list, and post toMnStf and Minicon LiveJournals. Bethwill email board-at with a URL ofa web site concerning anti-harassmentpolicies as they pertain to conventions.We will also look at the policy emailedby Betsy, the Minicon 27 policy, and theWisCon policy. Our goal is to have apolicy by the fallcon.

Convivial 3 Spammy Links: Kevinwill ask Laurel to remove the links thatwe got an email objecting to.

Next meeting: August 26th, 2013 at7pm at Beth Friedman’s house.

26 Aug 2013

Location: Home of Beth Friedman,6915 10th Ave. S., Rifield, MN. In at-tendance: Hershey Lima, Dean Gahlon,Kevin G. Austin, Beth Friedman, ScoRaun, Morwen T. Cat. Meeting began at7:08pm.

Old BusinessMinutes from the previous meeting wereapproved.

Fallcon: Beth and Patricia took careof PayPal.

Botanist: Off the web and directory.Done.

Minicon 48 Profit Che: Che hasbeen sent to Carol. Board still doesn’tknow amount.

MnStf Web Account Move: DD-B iswaiting for confirmation to be sent to

Dreamhost that he represents MnStf be-fore he proceeds. Sco will fax the nec-essary proof.

Annual Chelist: Beth will have iton the wiki by the next meeting.

2012 Minutes: Emily will have themdone some time in September. If thereisn’t any progress by October Kevin willbug her again.

Treasurer’s Report: Dean will send acopy to Kevin some time aer Worldconwho will get it on the web.

Min-I-Con: Dean emailed the personwho wanted us to okay them callingtheir conventionMin-I-Con and gave ap-proval.

Convivial 3 Spammy Links: e linkshave been removed.

Harassment Policy: Changes were

Rune #89 8 Nov 2013

suggested to the two amendments. AerKevin makes the suggested anges hewill post them on theMnStf andMiniconLivejournals and post them to Naer andHershey will email them to the Miniconconcom list. Further discussion of the

actual policy should be ongoing on theboard at list. We will start by lookingat the Minicon 27 policy.

Next meeting: September 21th, 2013at 3pm at the Minn-Stf meeting.

�

Amended BylawsAt its Sept 21 meeting (minutes not yet available) the board amended the bylaws byadding the following text to By-law II – Meetings Of Members:

7. e society shall have an anti-harassment policy, applicable to meetings ofmembers, that has been approved by the board of directors, and shall publish thatpolicy on a web page that is prominently linked to from the main page of the society’sweb site, and shall be available in printed form at meetings of members.

And this to By-law VI – Conventions:7. Ea convention, as defined above, to be held shall have an anti-harassment

policy that has been approved by the board of directors, and shall publish that policyon a web page that is prominently linked to from the convention’s main page, and inconvention publications as appropriate.

As per By-law X – Amendments, by publishing these in , these are now inforce. e first convention affected is Minicon 49. e full bylaws can be viewed atmnstf.org/records. �

Rune #89 9 Nov 2013

Running Gaming at a ConCopyright ©2004 Riard E. Price. Licensed under the Creative Commons Aribution-ShareAlike 3.0, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

is is an abridged version of a document called Staff Guide for DucKon Gamingthat was wrien by Riard and Kevin Price in 2004. It is still, in my opinion, a quiteuseful guide even aer all these years. Enjoy it with my complements. —Ri Price

Rune editor sez: I’ve edited it down a bit further, but mostly just to make it fit ourformat. is is an interesting read. At Minicon we do some things very differently— for instance we have nothing like the staff budgeting system described here — butmu is also quite familiar.

1. Introduction

is Guide is intended for the edifica-tion of those poor souls who (throughill oice or other circumstance) arearged with running the gaming area ata con.

e first dra of this document wascommenced on Monday, June 09, 2003,by a recovering Ri Price.

2. Philosophy

Hi, my name is Ri Price. At the time ofthis writing I have been running gamingat DucKon for four years. Here are someof the things that I have noticed duringthis time and some of the conclusionsthat I have drawn from them.

It appears that convention aendeesfavor short games. Most games that lastfor over an hour have a very poor levelof participation. is makes sense whenyou think about it. A SF con is generallyexperienced as a number of hour-longevents whi all occur at preseduledtimes. Fiing a game in means findingan hour-long blo of timewhen nothingelse is going on.

us we concentrate on shortergames. Many of our most popular boardgames already fit this criterion well. (e.g.Selers, Cheapass games and Al Sliwin-ski’s home brew games.) Another initia-tive that has been looked into is “walk-in/walk-out” games. By this I meangames that are run continuously orrepetitively for an extended period andthat allow players to join at any time,play for a while and then leave whilethe game continues without them. Wehave also considered “old standbys” suas Life, Monopoly and Risk. But gamelength must be a criterion.

We have tried running a role-playinggame where aracters could join orleave the event at will. Creating a worth-while event of this nature is a seriousallenge.

e above is not to say that weshould discourage people from runninglonger events. Some have had success inthe past, especially a few role-playingevents. But the gaming staff’s energiesshould be focused on shorter events.

It also seems that trying to use the go-pher hour system to “recompense” peo-

Rune #89 10 Nov 2013

ple for running games is more troublethan it is worth and not cost effective.See the staffing section for more on this.

3. Yearly Cycle of Tasks&Deadlines

ings have to happen on time. Every-one knows this.e tri is to knowwhatthings and when. e list below assumesthat the con occurs early in June. efollowing things will have to be done bythese dates.

1. Preliminary staff list, August2. Room layout, September3. Initial event sedule, September4. Final staff list, October5. Budget request, if/when they ask6. Start to contact gaming companies,

October7. Start to contact “regular” event

runners, November8. Initial web page text, November9. Start creating sedule, Jan/Feb10. First web update with sedule,

Jan/Feb11. Department information form for

ops., April 112. Outline of progress report material,

April 1313. Staff badge requests, April 1514. Final published sedule, May 115. Final program book and web text,

May 116. Signage request, May 117. Final event sedule, T−14 days18. Final staff sedule, T−12 days19. Finish gaming control book,

T−10 days20. Print sedule flyer, T−9 days21. Pa games & equipment, T−5 days

22. Setup game room, T−3 hours

A “master calendar” that assignedthese tasks to individuals with exact duedates would be the approved way of han-dling this in the business world. Fen areseldom this precise, but if you want it —go for it!

4. Budget

Most of the budget of gaming consistsof staff and guest cost. (See section 7.)In addition a few other items should beconsidered.

1. Spike tape for “Life Size Kill Dr.Luy” is is used to “draw” theboard on the floor. Tape color shouldstand out on rug color. Two rolls (1/2”× 60 yd.× 11 mil. gaffers tape) go forabout $10.

2. Prizes

a) Dealer dollars—$15 per tournamentb) Hand painted robber figures for Set-

tlers tournament—$30 biannuallyc) Misc. prizes for other special

events—$20d) Sedule flyer printing — use bu-

reau of propaganda (or equivalentdepartment) for this

5. Web Page

It is important to keep the gaming webpage on the convention web site current.e actual maintenance of the web siteis the duty of the webmaster but con-tent is ours to supply. When you wish toange the gaming page, send an emailto the webmaster specifying what youwant done. Content does not have to be

Rune #89 11 Nov 2013

HTML. But you should make your de-sires clear. For example:

1. Put the following game descrip-tion behind “Give Me e Brain” in the“Board Games” subsection of the “GameDescriptions” section of the page.

- - - - - Start - - - - -GodzillaWouldn’t it be cool to be a walk-

ing disaster area? Breathing flamingradioactive blasts at waves of tiny,think-they’re-so-smart humans! Smash-ing their shiny city buildings into eco-friendly rubble! Grabbing their beautifulwomen and waving them around on thetop of tall buildings (no wait, that’s theother movie). What could be cooler? Howabout if you were one of a GANG of walk-ing disaster areas, competing with eaother to see who can be the most destruc-tive? is is the rough-and-tumble worldof Godzilla, and it is going to be a VERYbad day for Tokyo. An Al Sliwinski game.

- - - - - End - - - - -2. Add the following new subsection

at the end of the “Game Derscriptions”section of the page.

- - - - - Start - - - - -Card GamesCupidoe planet Cupido is a peaceful and

serene place to live, but its single popula-tion leads an intense social life. A youngCupidoian who wants to go out on a datemust find nine other Cupidoians of dif-ferent sexes whom it likes, who all like it,and who all like ea other. Cupidoianparents receive government subsidies tohelp offset their phone bills. Cupido is

a home brew card game created by AlSliwinski.

- - - - - End - - - - -

eweb page will go through an evo-lutionary process over the course of theyear. It should go something like this:

Soon aer the previous year’s con,the old site will be replaced with one forthe new year. At this time you shouldsupply the webmaster with the text foran initial gaming page. is page shouldhave the following sections:

1. Introduction (welcome message)2. Contact information: “Please send

any ideas, offers, suggestions, orquestions to…”

3. Policy (usually same as last year)4. As the sedule firms up other sec-

tions should be added. For example:

a) Board Game Tournamentsb) Special Eventsc) Board Gamesd) Card Gamese) Role Playing Gamesf) Miniatures Games

5. If you run tournaments, considerpublishing the rules on the web.

6. Other special sections can also beadded. For example the “Philosophy”section of this document was takenfrom a similar essay published on theDucKon 12 web site.

Around May include a room lay-out and a sedule spreadsheet. (See theSeduling section below.)

Rune #89 12 Nov 2013

6. Game Room

It is important to have a good scale dia-gram of the gaming room. measure theroom in person. Never believe the hotelliterature. Most of the tables should bethe standard 6’ by 30” size. We also use afew that are 8’ by 30” and some 4’ or 5’diameter round tables for role-playing.

I use the AutoSket drawing pro-gram from Autodesk, Inc. to make thediagram. I then convert the finished fileto jpeg format for use on the web. I haveaccess to a printer that can do 11” by17” sheets. is lets me make large-scaleblowups of the sedule and room dia-gram,whi are posted in the game roomduring the con.

7. Gaming Schedule

e initial sedule can be cribbed fromlast year’s sedule.is should be in theform of a list of games to be run. islist (with descriptions) can be publishedon the web site. It should be updated asevents are added.

Assuming a July convention, the ac-tual sedule with spreadsheet listingtimes and table assignments should bestarted in January. By this time the roomdiagram should be done. is sedulemust be firmed up no later than April 1for the program book.

8. Staffing

Staffing and the BudgetAt $25/head, staff members can seemexpensive. In fact, they are one of thelargest portions of the Gaming budget.

However, don’t let this discourage youfrom budgeting for as many staff mem-bers as you’ll need. A great way of figur-ing out how many staff members you’llneed is to figure out how many hours ofwork you’ll need done and divide by 10.(Always round up.)

Please note that is a budgeting me-anism — its purpose is to estimate theapproximate hours that youwill need be-fore you know the details. Detailed con-siderations (Multiple table games, nonstaff run games, etc.) can only be esti-mated at this point. But see “e StaffSedule” below.

Also note that we are only budgetingstaff hours during the convention. emany, many hours of prep time are notbudgeted here.

e GuestsMost of the rest of the budget for gamingconsists of guest costs. is should all bein the form of freememberships. Gamingnever pays hotel room or transportationcosts for staff or guests. “Guest” in thegaming context means a representativeof a gaming company or a game designerwho spends ten or more hours run-ning and/or demonstrating games. eseevents should all be seduled in ad-vance and should all appear on the pub-lished sedule in the program book.ismeans that “last minute” guests shouldbe avoided. And this means that youreally have to start contacting gamingguests in October‼!

Rune #89 13 Nov 2013

e Staff SeduleAs soon as you have a preliminary eventsedule, you should begin puing to-gether the staff sedule. e actual slotsin the sedule can stay blank for now,but this will help you keep tra of howmu help you’ll need, so you can makelast minute budget adjustments as re-quired. Starting in May, you should starttalking to the staff and fleshing out asedule that keeps everyone happy. As ageneral rule, people who are doing moreof the grunt work (manning the sign-uptable) should be expected to do an houror so less work, and people having morefun (running events they like) should beexpected to do an hour or so more work.

9. Events and How to Get Them

Contacting game companiesIt’s never too early to start talking togame companies about their presence ata con. Many companies have groups ofvolunteers in major cities that they’remore than happy to send to a localconvention. If you contact them earlyenough, you can sometimes even secureprize support. When contacting gamecompanies, it’s important to have the fol-lowing bits of information available:

1. Aendance figures for last year. (Getfrom registration.)

2. Projected aendance figures for thisyear. (Get from registration.)

3. Contact information for the dealer’sroom. (Get from dealer liaison.)

4. Contact information for geing adsinto the program book. (Get from bu-

reau of propaganda.)

Contacting other event runnersIt’s also never too early to start contact-ing the people who ran events in pre-vious years, and find out if they wantto run events again. Oen these peopleare more than happy to put in hours ofwork in running events in exange onlyfor the table to run them at. If peoplevolunteer large quantities of their timeand are running clearly popular events,consider asking them to be guests.

Being contacted by game companiesSometimes the game companies willcome to you. is is a good thing, butkeep in mind that you don’t want morethan two (or maybe three) companiespresent at a small science fiction conven-tion. If you don’t think you have room,politely turn them down and keep themin mind for next year.

Being contacted by other eventrunnersYou will receive lots of email from peo-ple who want to run their own events.ese people are vital to keeping Gamingrunning, so treat them with respect. Youneed to get the following from them toproperly sedule their games:

1. Names of the events2. Descriptions of the events3. Durations & maximum player counts4. Table size and/or other requirements

Being contacted by yokelsYou will also receive email from peo-ple with no real understanding of how a

Rune #89 14 Nov 2013

convention is run. People will email youasking for their events to be put in thesedule up until the day before the con,and honestly expect you to accommo-date them. People will also request fourtables to run an event that you knowwillflop terribly. No maer how mu thesepeople may frustrate you, it’s importantto remember that you’re an official voiceof the convention. Treat even the yokelswith respect, and be polite when turn-ing down their requests. ere comes apoint, however, when it’s acceptable tojust ignore them.

10. Events Needing Special Consid-eration

TournamentsTournaments can be a great idea, butthey can also bafire if you don’t haveenough people to play in them. e bestway we’ve found to run tournaments ata con is to make it easy to qualify byleing people play the game at any timeto earn points. And by determining thewinner purely by total point score. isway, no one has to be playing the gameat a specific time and the tournamentdoesn’t conflict with any other seduledevents.

Big EventsLife Size “Kill Dr. Luy”:Apopular twiston a classic Cheapass game, the life-sizedversion of “Kill Dr. Luy”, is certain toaract a crowd. However, it also takesquite a bit of time and effort to set up,run, and tear down, as well as a sig-nificant unk of space. e large size

“board” is approximately 16’ by 22’!

1. Consider using gophers to help set up2. Arrange for hotel staff to vacuum

floor and remove tables and airsfrom room before setup

3. e minimum setup time is an hour!e room should be unbooked for thetwo hours before the first round isseduled to start

Makoto: Makoto is the popular gameof beating up metal poles with a longsti. Different game operators work fordifferent rates. Makoto takes up a fairlylarge area (10’ square is minimum) andcan make more noise than some peopleare comfortable with.

“Sanctioned” EventsSome game companies allow people runwhat is called “sanctioned events.” Wehave not had good experiences with thisconcept. If you decide to try it again thenplease get approval for the event fromthe company no later than the end of theyear. In no case agree to a last minute“sanctioned event”.

LARPsWe have had some bad experiences inthe past with LARPs, due primarily tothe tendency for those running LARPs toarge an additional fee to their players.It has long been the DucKon Gamingstaff’s policy to not allow any games torun at the convention where membershave to pay additional fees to play, so it isvery important that anyone who wantsto run a LARP at your con understandsthat is must be free to con members.

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We do not permit “ad hoc” LARPsto be run at our con. Only LARPs thathave been approved and preseduled byGaming are allowed.

11. Packing

e Gaming Control Booke key to an orderly game room is amanned sign-up table and the GamingControl Book. (IMHO this is the best ideathat I ever had.) e book has to be puttogether in the last few weeks (aer allseduling has been frozen). It has 4 ma-jor sections.

1. Instructions: is is where I put the“signup sheets and what to do withthem” page, amaster copy of the gam-ing sedule, a diagram of the gamingroom and a number of copies of theStaff Sedule (more than enough forall staff to take their own copy).

2. Sign-up sheets: is section consistsof a number of tabs (one for eaday and a few extra). Ea sed-uled event has a pre generated sign-up sheet that contains the name, cate-gory, start time and day, duration andmaximum number of players plus asign-up list. Most sign-up sheets areprinted two to a page. Some are full-page sheets and some are special for-mats (for scoring etc.).

3. Rules: is section is a reference.It contains rules for all tournamentgames and a number of Al’s homebrew games.

4. Scoring: is section contains tour-nament score sheets and other sutools.

GamesIt is vital that a copy of every sed-uled game be available at the con. I leaveit to the gaming company representa-tives and other guests to supply theirown games. But I bring the rest. I bor-row copies of those games that I don’town from other members of my gaminggroup. I assemble and pa these gamesduring the week before the con.

Equipment1. Signup table supplies: pens, marking

pens, tape, scissors, paper tablets2. Signage3. Bulletin boards (from signage dept.)4. Table placards (from signage dept.)5. Game supplies:

a) Score padsb) “Life size Kill Dr. Luy”: tape mea-

sures, floor layout diagrams, spiketape (2 rolls), “Nice Try” cards (Iprint these to order. Need about50.) �

Rune #89 16 Nov 2013

Minicon Financial Reportby Ma Strait

Yes, it’s time again for another dryfinancial discussion! Read on for gorydetails of this year’s Minicon internals.Let’s start with the Minicon 48 report.

Income

As you might expect, we got most of ourmoney from memberships:

Gross income from registrations was$19,130. Of this, PayPal took $186.16. Wegot $445 from dealers’ tables.

e art show took in $1122.58 for artsales, and paid out $828.10 to artists, fora net of $294.48. For purposes of the pieart, I’m treating this as a simple profitof $294.48, since we were never ownersof the $828.10.

We spent $1683.45 on t-shirts fromOffworld and took in $1255 for sales ofthis year’s t-shirts and those of previousyears. We paid $10.31 in credit card feesfor people who ran their cards with GregKeer. is makes a net loss of $438.76.

We ended up with $337 of cash whiwas deposited, and we failed to keeprecords of what it was from. e bestguess is that it was more dealers tables,plus a few dollars from elsewhere mixedin by accident. is is the “mystery”wedge above. Yes, we’re going to try tonot do this sort of thing.

Expenses

Hotel, food and drink, and GoHs are thebiggest costs:

We paid the hotel a total of $5946.93,whi includes function space costs,GoH rooms, and consuite and bar roomrental. Aempting to break it down, it ismore or less true that we paid $4816.93for function space and the consuite/barand $950 for GoH rooms.

GoH costs were: $950 for rooms, $405for food, $1357.26 for travel, and $10.31to mail a t-shirt to Julie Czerneda, for atotal of $2722.57.

Rune #89 17 Nov 2013

Consuite+bar $4,250.09Publications $1,753.16PR1: $86.79PR2: $744.48Program book: $625.00Other: $296.89Room parties $955.61Chicon: $798.30Marscon: $149.31Capricon: $8.00 [sic]Badges+forms $770.89Music $309.92Meetings $244.87Tru $239.05Green room $200.00Banking $112.45Rumpus room $105.27Registration $61.00Programming $37.90Film $21.97Next Gen $4.29 [sic]Blue tape $75.56Dealers dollars $159.00Web hosting $90.00Cash tips $100.00

Bottom Line

We returned a profit of $2111.03 toMinn-stf, whi is short of our target of $3200by $1088.97.

Why did we blow our goal? Mostlybecause we budgeted $2550 for func-tion space and instead got arged $4817.Ou. e reason is primarily that, be-cause we sold 276 room-nights, there’s abase $1500 fee for the space. If we hadmade 300 room-nights, this would be $0.I implicitly budgeted $0 for this portionof the bill because I used last year’s bill to

set the overall hotel budget. But it turnsout that in recent years the hotel has notbeen arging us the $1500, even thoughwe didn’t get 300 nights those years ei-ther. is year decided to sti to thecontract, whi obviously we can’t com-plain about. Other hotel arges werealso somewhat higher than expected.

On the other hand, we budgeted for463 members and got 515. is got us anextra $1700, whi cancels out most ofthe unanticipated hotel bill. (Interestingnote: these extra members got us onlyan additional $33 ea, not the $40–60you might expect, reflecting the fact thatmany of them were ildren, formerGoH, or partial-weekend.)

Driving the total ba towards thered was the fact that we lost $400 ont-shirts instead of making $200 as bud-geted. We also spent $550 more on pub-lications than budgeted for, mostly dueto the cost of PR2 going up substantiallyover last year. On the other other otherhand, the average department came inunder budget, and no department wentsignificantly over budget, whi is verynice.

Looking to M49

Making the Minicon 49 profit target isgoing to be… a allenge. Mostly this isthe same problem as above — we bud-geted far too lile for the hotel, the Mini-con 49 budget having been made beforeMinicon 48. ere are a handful of otherdifferences that make the total deficitabout $4000 if we go ahead and do every-thing like we did last year. Now, that’s

Rune #89 18 Nov 2013

not a deficit that means we can’t payour bills, it’s only one that means we’retotally blowing our profit target. In fact,we still make a small positive amountof money, but this means that we’d beleaving Minn-stf to run almost entirelyoff savings for the next year. How canwe fix this?

1. Make 300 room-nights. is savesus $1500. Easy, right? Well, we’re push-ing rooms and we’ll see what happens.

2. Stop losing money on t-shirts. isis a gimme. T-shirts are not meant to bea big profit source, but we should at leastbreak even. We should do pre-orders sothat people who know they want shirtscan get them and then bring fewer to thecon where there’s a risk they don’t sell.

3. Save money on progress reports.We currently send one by email and oneby post (with either sent the other waywhen that’s the only way to get it deliv-ered). e email half was a cost-savingmeasure introduced a few years ago.Now, I’m prey sure that the fact thatwe send PRs at all, by any means, setsus apart from most conventions thesedays, who instead want you to repeat-edly e their website in hope thatsomething new has appeared. While Ithink it’s important to do PRs and tosend at least one of them out on paper,we can cut ba on how many peopleget them. We have recently been mailingto everyone who has aended Miniconin the last 5 years. Is this worthwhile?I’ve come around to a philosophy thatthe primary purpose of a PR is reportingprogress to themembership, not being an

advertisement. Aer some thought anddata analysis, we’ve decided that send-ing people who have come in the last 3years is both sufficient to report progressto all likely members and the most cost-effective if we make an educated guessabout PRs’ effectiveness in enticing peo-ple who haven’t come in 4+ years (i.e.low). is will save us $200.

4. Various small savings here andthere by all the departments. Depart-ment heads have been told that theirbudgets are the same as last year (withsmall adjustments), but that it would benice if they didn’t spend everything theywere authorized to.

If all that goes well, we can be withinspiing distance of our profit target, ifyou can spit over a distance of $1000.

ings we do not plan to do:1. Cut the consuite/bar budget. We’re

commied to above average hospitality.2. Raise at-the-door membership

rates (we’ve already advertised them,if nothing else).

3. Use eaper badges. It’s true thatwe could save $1/member if we usedeap paper badges, but our prey lami-nated ones are well-liked.

4. Swit to all electronic progress re-ports (see above).

I’m open to more suggestions, or ob-jections against the points here.

Looking to Minicon 50

Minicon 50 is 4 days and has 6 GoHs,but has a profit target of −$1800 setby Minn-stf, i.e. we plan to dip into oursavings to have a big anniversary year.

Rune #89 19 Nov 2013

ismakes the budget a bit more relaxed.Currently the projection is that we justabout nail our profit target. But since itlooks like we will have had, optimisti-cally, $1000 shortfalls in the precedingtwo years, it would probably be niceto try to do somewhat beer than thatto make the whole 48–50 run come outeven. is also adds insurance againstunanticipated expenses.

To this end, although I had hoped toleave registration rates exactly the samefor Minicon 50 as for 48 and 49, I’m pon-dering raising them a bit. My thoughtis that we’d raise the at-the-door ratefrom $60 to $70 while leaving the pre-regrate constant. is would put the at-the-door rate about where it was, correctedfor inflation, when we bumped it from$55 to $60 for Minicon 43. (See graphbelow, whi is ploed using inflation-corrected amounts and annotated withraw dollar figures.) As I’ve espousedupon in these pages, I’d like to continuedriving down pre-reg rates, so if at allpossible I will avoid raising those. In any

case, I certainly don’t want to give theimpression that we are taing an extraday onto Minicon 50 and then argingthemembership extra to cover it whetherthey wanted it or not. Keeping the at-the-door in pace with inflation doesn’tviolate that, I think.

As I showed in Rune #88, if our mem-bership goes up, the cost per membergoes down rapidly, so how necessaryall this is depends on the registrationnumbers. Unfortunately, we won’t evenknow the M49 registration numbers be-fore seing the rates for 50, since wewill open registration for M50 at the be-ginning of M49. Knowing only the M49pre-reg numbers isn’t particularly useful,since our statistics show that when thepre-reg goes up, at-the-door goes down.Higher pre-reg numbers seem to simplyindicate that more people have remem-bered to pre-reg. So we could set the M50rates now, but since there’s no rush, I’dbe happy to consider comments betweennow and April from anyone who has anopinion. �

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

2013

dol

alrs

0

20

40

60

80

100Last pre-reg

At the door

$70

$15

$60

$2

$3 $12

$50

$40$45

$45

c50

$6,7,8

$30 $60

$40$45

$70M50

Rune #89 20 Nov 2013

Three Reports andLots of Photos fromMETHODCon

Emily Stewart

is year’s fallcon was held at a newlocation, at e SpringHill CamelCaseMinneapolis West. I believe the new ho-tel was a significant improvement overlast year’s hotel. e largest advantagewas that the function space was all onthe main floor. Hotel awesomeness in-cluded:• Our own entrance to function spacethat did not go through the mainlobby

• e ability to open a window or doorif the room got a lile stuffy

• Easy access for delivery of the Satur-day Dinner

• Walking distance access to severalrestaurants

• Five minute driving distance toCostco and Rainbow Foods for supplyreplenishment

• Free breakfast for sleeping roomguests

• A manager with a arming ruralMinnesota accentOn the last point - If there is anAmer-

ican version of the stately yet deferentialaccent, it would be from Minnesota. Saythe following in the style of MoorheadMN, and you’ll agree. “I hope everythingis going well for you folks.” and “Goahead and let me know if you need any-thing else.”

e only serious kvet that I heardwere that the weekend conflicted withsome other conventions. It’s just not thatterrible to live a life with too many cool

things to do.ere were games, games and more

games. Everyone played some gamesthat they wanted to play, but I positthat no one got a ance to play all ofthe games they wanted to play. Playedgames included but were not limited to:Story Wars, Lost Cities, Zar, Igori, Mon-eyDu, Betrayal at House on the Hill,Candamir, Netrunner, Tiet To Ride,Transamerica…

e programming was appropriatelyvaried andwell received, including a car-pooling to Butler Gardens in Minneapo-lis for a Nature Walk, a world buildingthat was very silly, halloween themedcupcake decorating, and live concerts byTeresa Chandler, Cirsten Paine and NateBulin. Beer and wine tasting was notas popular as Spirit tasting last year,but Spirit Tasting caused less controlleddrunkenness.

ere was a Minicon 49 Program-ming Brainstorming session and a Mini-con 49 concom meeting, both of whiwere reasonably aended. e program-ming brainstorming session was smallerthan last year, possibly because therewere the aforementioned conflicts withother local conventions. We still had anice collection of ideas, several of whiare excellent for our pool of panelists andour audience.

e Saturday evening dinner was ex-tremely well received and I was happyto share my love for a local restaurant

Rune #89 21 Nov 2013

with friends. e food came from BestOf India in Saint Louis Park, whi is thebest Indian food I’ve ever had.

Photo by Emily Stewartree days before the convention, on

October 15th, many people were sad-

dened to hear of the death of HansRiegel, son of the inventor of the GummiBear. A small plastic ninja and some ofher friends had an open sing along inremembrance. You can see that the bearon the le is a lile drunk and leaning onhis lemony friend. e second one fromthe right is actually Admiral Akbar, oneof Mr. Riegel’s closest friends ever sincethey met on Riegel 7 ba in the 80s.

Apparently, Diet Coke is totally dif-ferent than Coke Zero, and Diet Cokeis mu more desirable. ose of us thatremember the cola wars ba in the 80sknow that this dispute is not worthy ofmilitary action.

Method Con: A relaxing conreport, by Dave Romm

Cupcake decorating on Friday. Photo byDave Romm.

Method Con (a.k.a. METHOD Con)was held October 18–20, 2013CEat the SpringHill Suites Marrio, aange in venue from previous years.A nice ange, as the smaller hotelfit the small con very nicely. Justover fiy people inhabited severalfunction rooms of various sizes andshapes, all close to one another. estaff was friendly and helpful. eGaming Room was almost alwaysbusy with gamers, and the Program-ming Room’s adaptability made itideal for brainstorming, a buffet din-ner or music concerts.

I had a relaxed time. Carole and I dued in briefly onursday to help set up, butPatricia Zetelumen, Emily Stewart, Laura Krentz, Liz Fish, Hershey Lima, MagentaGriffith and the concom had everything in hand. We hung out, got the niel tour.Carole eyed the Jacuzzi, and made plans.

e theme of the con was “Steampunk”, off of whi hung decorations and badgedesign. A few people brought their steampunk costumes, and had their pictures taken

Rune #89 22 Nov 2013

against a green screen.

Saturday gaming. Photo by Dave Romm.

For a relaxacon, there was a lotof hands-on programming. I didn’tmake any steampunk water bolesor decorate any cupcakes, but I didplay a bit of Money Du. At the din-ner break, a bun of us went to arestaurant so close that several peo-ple walked. I had Tea-Soaked Du,whiwas delicious, but we all tried abit of everything. Rounded out Fridayby spending time in the Music Roomlistening to Laramie Sasseville, NateBulin and Peggy O’Neil.

Carole did sneak off and take a nice long hot tub soak. Aaah.e clouds dissuaded us from stargazing or eing out the lunar eclipse, but

Rael Kroni ran aWorldbuilding sessionwhiwas appropriately silly.e sessionresults were le on the wall, adding to the decorations.

On Saturday, I missed the Nature Walk, but got to the Minicon 49 Brainstormingwhi was followed by a Minicon 49 concom meeting. Many niy ideas were slungand added to the wiki for further consideration.e plans for Minicon are proceedingapace.

Nate Bulin and Teresa Chandler in con-cert Saturday night. Photo by Dave Romm.

e Indian buffet dinner was wellorganized far in advanced. e finalrealization was delicious and com-munal. More music, a few games,some ham wine, a couple of con-certs… wow, the day went qui.

Sunday was the relaxing day ofthe relaxicon. I didn’t even get toClosing Ceremonies. Made the din-ner expedition to the Tea House. eDead Dog Party was laid ba. Afew games, a few conversations, butmany were on their smartphones. Wecould do that at home. So we did.

Method Con may have beensmall, but the swirl of events and different combinations of people at those eventsmade it seem larger, at least to me. anks again to Patricia & co.

Rune #89 23 Nov 2013

Matt Strait

I read, I think in an old Rune, that oneshould leave out of your conreport thepart where you explain why you arrivedat the con late. “We already know thatyou got a flat tire”, it said, “Everyone getsa flat tire. Skip that part and start whenyou get to the hotel.” But I’m not goingto.

e goal was go get the four of us,me, Kelly, Cally and Joe, from Chicagoto METHOD Con in one car. We had puttogether a nice puzzle of a plan. I wouldarrive with the kids at the grandparents’house in Oak Park as soon as possibleaer Becca got off presool, puing methere at about 12:30. Cally would piup Kelly from work at 1, the earliest shecould get off, and meet me in Oak Park at1:30. Joe would leave work early enoughso that he too could arrive in Oak Parkat about 1:30. But first the cops pulledsomeone over right in front of Cally’sdriveway, bloing her exit and seingher ba about 40 minutes.en, in somesort of cosmic balancing, Joe broke ev-erything at work right before he plannedto leave and then had to spend about 40minutes fixing it, puing both cars at myparents’ house within 2 minutes of eaother.

Topics of discussion in the car in-cluded vacuum decay, the effect of salton yeast, the security implications of set-ting the executable bit on JPEGs, the in-accuracy of the scale on scale drawings,what we think about various sorts of bar-riers on the side of the Interstate, ways ofrefuting the historical reality of Noah’s

flood with physics, why you should nothonk at a moose, and ninja cats.

Aer the inevitable construction de-lays and pit stops, we eventually madeit to the hotel at about 10pm. We foundthat we were in a king suite, whi ini-tially seemed like a bad thing given thatthere were four of us. en we learnedthat it had a sofa bed, so we figured itwas fine. en we learned that the 2-queen suites also had sofa beds, so Joeand Cally could ea have their own bed.We dithered, but finally decided to keepthe room we had so as not to jeopardizeMETHOD Con’s strategy of booking allthe rooms directly above the functionspace to minimize the ance of noisecomplaints, this having been a majorproblem at our previous fallcon hotel.

e definition of “suite” has beenbent well past its breaking point by themarketing people.e room has a typicalnumber of square feet, but is all twistedaround itself and has a quarter-wall be-tween the front and the bawhi I sup-pose is meant to provide proof that it’sreally two rooms. Due to the constraintsimposed by the floor plan, the sofa bed ispositioned so as to completely blo thepath out of the room from the ba half.Is that even ok by the fire code?

Finally we went down to the con it-self. Got badges, whi were buons, onwhi you write your own name. ecircular symmetry led me to write myname sideways by accident. Only whenI pinned it on did I realize my mistake.Oh well. Got a program book. I’m happy

Rune #89 24 Nov 2013

to see a real program book at a fallcon!e con space consisted of 6 rooms.

A member’s first allenge is to deter-mine whi one is the consuite. One ofthe two big rooms was marked “Gam-ing and Consuite”, and a small roomat the far other end of the hall from itwas marked “Consuite”. Hmmm… As itturned out, the laer had more food, butthe former was more the social centerof the con (gaming was not mandatory).One could be sociable in the small room,but it only supported about one and ahalf conversations at a time. e otherbig room was “Programming”, and wasused as su.

e other three small rooms were:“Music”, a function roomwhi hadmu-sic and a fridge with beer and cider.“Cras-Music”, a suite. e ba halfwas cray, and the front half I observedbeing used for overflow socialization andquiet reading. And “Late Night Gam-ing”, a suite whi was indeed used forlate night gaming, as well as general so-cialization/reading space.

I participated in Rael’s “Let’s Builda World” programming item. In this ac-tivity, the group ooses several cate-gories su as “biology”, “economics”,“mood”, or “physics” and everyoneshouts out aracteristics that the worldshould have within ea. en you voteon whi ones to keep and perhaps try tomake it all fit together somehow.

We built a planet with a square orbit.It’s a square because there’s no gravity,so it travels in a straight line. However,the single quantum meanical observer

in this universe lives in a bla hole nearthe planet and follows the laws of car-toon physics. e priests signal this en-tity with a laser to tell it whi way theplanet ought to be moving, and, just likewhen you run off a cliff and suddenlystart falling only when you realize youought to be, so it is with the direction thisplanet moves. Physics otherwise in thisuniverse works as expected, but could bearbitrarily modified in cartoonish waysif the priests ose to send other mes-sages. But they don’t want to, becauseea time the world turns a corner, ev-eryone swims naked to the temples ontheir islands for the Great WahhhooooFestival, whi I guess is good enough forthem.

We also voted in a number of ar-acteristics even more difficult to recon-cile with ea other than the ones thatproduced the preceding sentences, andsome that just didn’t have anything todo with anything. I feel empowered toignore these. While I enjoyed it, I thinkI’d like to try it again sometime with theunderstanding that once we’ve voted insome aracteristics, the following onesshould try to build on what we haverather than just being as way as pos-sible.

Aer building a world, I played ashort game of Zar and went to bed“early”, with the hope that an investmentin a bit of sleep would pay off over therest of the weekend.

Saturday we all got up at 8:30ish andtook advantage of the free (and good!)hotel breakfast. We had been instructed

Rune #89 25 Nov 2013

by the hotel to take the food and thenhide in our function space instead ofcrowding the rest of the guests in thebreakfast area. No problem; that’s what Iwould have preferred to do anyway.

Once I was really awake, I aemptedto form the Illinois Science Fiction So-ciety (ILSTF) with Joe, Kelly and Cally.e purpose of this society would be tolend more structure to the regular gamenights we have been having in Chicago,whi oen contain quite a bit of non-gaming and have a rather Minn-stfishfeel. Immediately we had our first fan-nish sism. ey didn’t like the name.At first it seemed like the abbreviationcould be preserved, if not the full name,but ultimately support arose for callingit the Star Traders Society instead, whiis kinda hard to beat into “IL-stf”. (Alongthe way, we established that in any casewe would not want to call it Ill-stf.) Ihad planned to work on cribbing bits ofWSFS and Minn-stf documents togetherinto some founding documents for thisunnamed society, but didn’t get far, dueto the naming controversy, before I hadto aend to other business.

e first bit of other business was theMinn-stf board meeting at noon, whiI aended with my Minicon assistant-air hat on. Aer this, I entered intoHeavy Discussion of ImplementationDetails for Minicon with several peoplefor a good while.

At 5:30 was a Minicon concom meet-ing. It was seduled to be an hour long,but was sparsely aended, so we com-pleted everything it was possible to com-

plete in 35 minutes. While not being asproductive as I’d like, we got some realdiscussion in and I think people cameaway with more understanding of wherewe are and what we need to do. Apoint of discussion immediately aer themeeting proper was the way that Mini-con represents itself by the style of itspublications. We just put out PR1, whimost people got by e-mail. People with-out e-mail got a postcard. is postcardhad particularly low production value. Iprinted it at home and the toner appar-ently didn’t bond well to this card sto.Sneakily enough, they looked fine whenI printed them, but then half the tonerfell off the in the mail. Hershey pointedout the glossy flyers that other cons havebeen puing out and wondered why weweren’t doing that. Well, I hate those fly-ers, because the feeling I get when I lookat them is, “oh, so that’s where my $55pre-reg is going”. And they are incon-gruous with the actual con experience.Neither those cons nor Minicon feels likea glossy flyer. ey’re mumore home-made, like a nice low-budget flyer, andI prefer that. I allowed, however, thatperhaps a glossy bookmark was withinmy feeling of what Minicon was like.

Aer the concom meeting was din-ner from Taste of India, brilliantly ar-ranged by Emily Stewart. We had a buf-fet, with plenty for all, at $12 ea. Weshould do exactly that next year.

Aer dinner, I played Blohead fora lile bit, then did a casual Magic dra,played Corsari-go and Story War. erewas a general desire to play Star Traders

Rune #89 26 Nov 2013

voiced, but the players never were allfree at the same time, so I did some wan-dering the hall and conversing instead,then played most of a game of Zar andwent to bed around 3.

Sunday was short for us, as we hadto leave by noon to get ba to pi upthe kids. Had hotel breakfast again andhung out in the consuite. Upon thosepresent, I inflicted the question of whythe fallcon in 1986 was apparently calledNot-Anokon 8, despite being only thefourth Not-Anokon. We have excellentevidence of this name, it having beenprinted on a registration confirmationpostcard. e previous year was calledNot-Anokon ’85, Not-Anokon 1985, andpossibly also Not-Anokon 3, althoughthe evidence for the laer is currentlyonly that Beth remembers calling it that.In any case, it was the third Not-Anokon,so that would make perfectly good sense.And, of course, I realize that theyweren’tmeaning to be rigorous about namingthe fallcons, them being, as they are now,somewhere on the line between a partyand a convention. So I’m fine with theambiguity about the 1985 fallcon name.I just want to know, if Not-Anokon 8was named that because it was funny,what was the joke? It did come just aerMinicon had gone through a number ofyears of strange numbering, and maybeit was playing off that. A few people haveoffered to do some digging.

General thoughts: e hotel seemslike a goodmat for us.e set of roomswe had was appropriate and a nice mixof big and small. I would have liked

for the big consuite-and-gaming room tohave had some more comfortable seat-ing, like two or three coues. As thebeer candidate for being the social hubof the con, it would have benefited frommore support for conversation as wellas gaming. (Speaking of whi, it hadexcellent support for gaming, meaning amix of rectangular and big round tables.Far too many cons have gaming roomswith only the big round tables, whi areawkward for most games.) I said beforethat the consuite supported about oneand a half conversations.Whenwe speakabout arranging space at cons, is num-ber of conversations supported a goodmeasurement unit? If so, my ideal fallconconsuite-and-gaming room would sup-port two conversations in addition to thegaming tables.

To the best of my knowledge, wedidn’t get any noise complaints.is wasa bit surprising to me, since the consuitewas only a few doors down from sleep-ing rooms not occupied by any conmem-bers. e con bloed rooms above thefunction space to minimize noise com-plaints, but not adjacent to it. e ad-jacent ones, unfortunately, were jacuzzisuites or some su and therefore moreexpensive. Having surveyed a number ofsleepers, I don’t think that any noise atall travelled to the second floor, so I won-der if we just got luy that the presum-ably mu more abundant noise leakagedown the first floor hall way didn’t leadto any trouble.

Compliments to Patricia et al forpulling it off!

Rune #89 27 Nov 2013

Minicon 21 Figurine Visits Methodcon, by David Dyer-Bennet

Rune #89 28 Nov 2013

Rune #89 29 Nov 2013

   

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Next up, Minicon 50: Apr 2-5, 2015, author GoHs Jane Yolen, Larry Niven, and Brandon Sanderson; musician GoH Adam Stemple; publisher GoH Tom Doherty.

MINICON 49April 17½-20, 2014

Author Guest of Honor: Catherynne ValenteAuthor Guest of Honor: Janny Wurts

Artist Guest of Honor: Don Maitz

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