As it was possible to book games in advance (which is something I like in a con - partly from anal tendencies, but from sheer practicality I think turning up knowing you have something to do is a plus) I jumped straight in with a game of Spirit of the Century. This is the new (ish, still) pulp game by Evil Hat, which gets a lot of forum buzz and from talking to "industry" folks there is a real success story in shifting copies. I have it, but hadn't read it or played it. So now I have some idea what the fuss is about. Having an excellent GM in the shape of Steve Pettifer didn't hurt either. We had 3 PCs plus one group PC, and everyone got to do cool stuff through a range of exciting scene set-ups. All of us were new to the game. One litmus test is that we were all keen to take our character sheets away with us! Characters are defined very simply, in terms of basic skills and the famous Aspects, which we soon got into using. There are also Stunts, special stuff linked to skills, but those felt a bit more ancillary. One downside is that it really needs the special Fudge dice - you can make do with ordinary d6, but it would be a pain to translate to +, neutral or - every time. You could use the system for other things - and indeed people are starting to do so, which is a good indicator of success - but it'd have to be in genres where characters are very capable, as legendary/superhuman-type levels of performance are easily accessible. I still wish the book wasn't so thick though...

After that, a late lunch, then prowling the stands. Met up with the guys from Colllective Endeavour and  angusabransonfrom Leisure Games/Cubicle 7, and bumped into  pwca(and was dismayed that our joint efforts failed to sell someone on Carcassonne). Picked up a copy of Sorcerer and Sword for research. The RPG area was substantial enough, but I didn't find much to excite me - perhaps I've reached the point of jaded old stager (definitely the case with environmental events - if you go to enough you've seen most of it).

The trade halls officially closed after 5pm - apparently gaming shifted to a nearby hotel - and I went off to the pub with the Collective Endeavour guys for drinks and food. Enjoyable chat, including a lot of stories of their encounters with Noted Industry Figures at cons in the US. That Gregor Hutton likes his stories!  ;)  Slightly marred by them having to wait 2 hours for their food. Mine arrived quite quickly, enabling me to point out the benefits of vegetarianism.  :p  Played a round of B-Movie, Iain Mcallister's card game currently in development. You take turns to make film titles by playing cards with elements like "Revenge of the" and "cheerleaders" in a chain, trying to put good ones on your own and bad ones to other people's, then tot up scores and try to sell them to a studio to accumulate money points. I'll be watching out for this as a potential addition to the stock of amusing pick-up/filler games.

All told, it was an excellent effort for a new con. The scale of the event was impressive - although it covered card games, board games minis, etc as well, and as I was really only interested in the RPGs it was effectively smaller. The standard of organisation was definitely on a par with existing, more established events. The organisers' stated aim was to establish something that could be a regular fixture on the level of major gaming cons elsewhere (with an undertaone of disappointment about Gencon UK), and the talk in the pub afterwards was that after the first day we thought they'd proved themselves enough to repeat it. If I was picking downsides - the venue had a slightly confusing layout, and they'd spread into all parts of it. So for my morning game I had to spiral deep into the bowels of the building (in a room lit only by fluorescents, leaving me with a headache for the rest of the day). Catering could be improved - when I got there after 2.30 it was pretty much baked potato or nothing.